So the tooltip indicates drops are based on the average of stuff that already drops for you, and you can manipulate this by enhancing your own gear to increase its light level and the like. Usually my approach is acquire salvage, take the 2 weapons closest to my existing PL and boost them to full, then with new boosted PL, go buy a store green shield and/or grenade to further pump my new average up.

Rinse repeat.

My question is this: How, if at all, does the presence of other people in the area (arkfall/etc) affect my drops? I've noted that drops at an arkfall (common ground drops) can vary rather greatly from my PL. On average, when they drop low, its lower than I usually see. But I can also get, and usually do get gear better than my average. So it all works out. Mainly I appreciate that more people = more chance of drops, usually because of the swarms of mobs, but since they all die quick, the RNG gets rolled more often.

But lets imagine a scenario where some 5000s show up to the same arkfall in newbie-town. Do things scale based on their averages? If things get more difficult do drops improve? Do we still all get individualized drops, so if I'm 1700 I'll see that range, the guy at 1500 will see his range, the 4000+ guy sees things his range, and the poor 900 that shows up sees his? And does the poor 900 guy have the chance to not get onehitkilled if they do show up at the arkfall?

Do arkfall PL cap out depending on the zone they spawn in?