Poll on preferred party size

[Lanyon]

The discussion of the decision to change the party size to 5 for PoE II on the other thread has me seriously bummed out, so I thought I'd see how other people feel about party size.

Personally, I feel that 6 is still the best number. The success of PoE was due solely to the nostalgia a lot of CRPG gamers feel for the old IE titles, and the entire KS campaign was driven by the promise to bring back that style of game (isometric view, real-time-with-pause tactical combat, 6-member party, etc.).

As Feargus stated:
 

 

Five enables for you to cover every major RPG role — tank, damage-dealer, ranged, magic, and healing — while still giving the player room to experiment with character builds

 

But it's not supposed to be about having every party member fulfill a single niche. Where's the backup? I don't know how everyone else plays, but I love how having 6 allows you to build some redundancy into your party. Cleric went down early? Or your Mage? No problem, the Druid can step up for either of those roles and fill in until we can get the Cleric or Mage back on their feet.

Having 5 seems to me to be a recipe for disaster in encounters when an 'essential' character goes down, because with 5 that seems to be any one of the characters! I feel like this is going to generate less 'close call' encounters when you have a party member go down, but can fill in their role with your built in party redundancy, and squeak out a victory. With 5, I feel like difficult encounters will be dependent on making sure everyone remains alive throughout the entire encounter! I don't know about anyone else, but I don't like the idea of that... I want some tension in my battles.

As an example, I literally just exited PoE about a half hour ago before coming on this forum, after finishing the battle with the Torn Bannerman commander on the Cragholdt map. My party consists of myself (Paladin), Eder, Durance, Aloth, Grieving Mother, and Hiravias. In my party, Hiravias is kind of the 'extra' character whose abilities I find myself not using often... but when I DO need him, I NEED him! In this fight, everyone was down except for my PC and Hiravias, and my PC had maybe 10% endurance left. But old Hiravias had a few scrolls of Revival on him, and between summoning things down to take the heat off of him and reviving first Eder, then Aloth, then Durance, I was able to regain the upper hand and win the battle. It's battles like this that make the game so enjoyable for me... it took some thought and preparation, and when the dust settled I felt the satisfaction of a fight well fought because of how close it was.

With a 5 member party, there would have been no Hiravias to save the day. With a 5 member party, I feel like these kinds of battles will be much fewer, if at all, and the combat won't be as enjoyable as a result.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: fixed some spelling/punctuation errors

Edited January 30, 2017 by Lanyon

[Sedrefilos]

How can we tell if we don't play or at at least watch a demo of 5-party combat encounter?

Why don't you put 3 party or 7 party choices?

[Lanyon]

How can we tell if we don't play or at at least watch a demo of 5-party combat encounter?

We can't and I'll happily concede that... but I'm still entitled to my opinion, as everyone else is. And my opinion is that the 6-member party size should be left as-is.

 

 

Why don't you put 3 party or 7 party choices?

 

Because those aren't really serious options, whereas 4/5/6 are due to past precedent and what's been announced.

[Undecaf]

I don't really care if it's 5 or 6. 6 is just fine (and traditional), but all the loss of 1 really does is slightly increasing the load on the remaining 5 making each a bit more important part of the whole. I can live with that (provided the encounter design is well done).

[evilcat]

Not enought options, party of 2and3 make sense since we focus on player character and use companions as support. Party of 12 makes sense, since only this option give full tactical value. Everything less is just casual mode for chummers.

 

Generally i prefer 4+ so i can have some freedom, but will wait with complains after play with 5.

 

There is also field to improve, how interesting fights could be done. Can you translate the thrill of DarkSouls into poe mechanic?

Can we have interactive background? Changing conditions?

 

What if... we define some special attacks as Finishers, and if we perform them on unconsious enemies (frozen, tripped, stuned) we perform coup de grace on them killing instantly or dealing ton of damage? That would be more interactive than increase number of character.

Edited January 29, 2017 by evilcat

[MaxQuest]

Voted for 6. (Mostly against 4) Reasoning:

 

- while having 4-man party in Tyranny I had often catching myself thinking "it would be less fuss to just solo this encounter". And after a solo-potd run I just grew stronger in that thought. Encounters were designed around a small party, and as result were not as difficult. This plus the fact that you are getting more xp when solo, just leads to the fact that you'd better play without a party at all.

 

- adventuring with only 3 companions really limits one's freedom. For instance in DA:I I always felt bound to travel with Blackwall + Cassandra + Solas, as after lots of experimentation it turned out that they are the most optimal partners for every dps-character I would make.

 

- some classes start to really shine when you have 2 of them in your party; specifically priest and cipher. Having a small party size would potentially deny this, as first you will have to assemble the core of your party. Tbh sometimes I even wanted a 7th slot to squeeze one more niche companion and achieve (in my understanding) a perfectly balanced party, ready to face virtually any possible encounter.

 

 

P.S. Yet, 5-man party might indeed work nicely as well. In my opinion it all depends on how versatile multi-classing is going to be.

Edited January 29, 2017 by MaxQuest

[SkySlam]

I think a "neutral/open" option should be added to the poll.

In my personal case, while I'm strongly against a party size of 4, I'm willing to try their idea of 5 characters.

Edited January 29, 2017 by SkySlam

[Sedrefilos]

 

- some classes start to really shine when you have 2 of them in your party; specifically priest and cipher. Having a small party size would potentially deny this, as first you will have to assemble the core of your party. Tbh sometimes I even wanted a 7th slot to squeeze one more niche companion and achieve (in my understanding) a perfectly balanced party, ready to face virtually any possible encounter.

 

This is true for Pillars 1. We don't know how classes will work in Pillars 2 yet.

[Eivenne]

I don't care that much about the combat, with multi classes we can probably fulfill every role with only 5 characters. I'd like to have 6 party members purely because of the role-playing aspect, I want to read as many interactions between companions as possible, see how they influence quests. Many players will want to experience Deadfire with Aloth, Eder and Pallegina in their party, so basically during the first playthrough we will only get to know one new companion and that's not enough. 

[Archaven]

there's no reason for them to hard cap people with 5. and they keep enforcing it's a game design. i'm just hoping that they dont bar the modding community from adding in the 6th slot in. 

[MaxQuest]

This is true for Pillars 1. We don't know how classes will work in Pillars 2 yet.

Fair enough. How it will turn out for PoE2 depends on the multi-classing system and ability of frontliners to contribute at crowd-controling.

[desel]

I imagine that at least an option for the sixth party member slot would be totally doable.

This as a stretch goal = easy moneyz.

[theBalthazar]

6 is always better. It is the strengh of the first game.

 

An army to control.

 

Tyranny is a false good idea because simplification (love by guys who wrote tests but not by true players)

 

Increase pathfinding is a better approach.

Edited January 29, 2017 by theBalthazar

[Starwars]

I would've liked 6 party members, always liked that number in previous games and always felt it provided for some good experimentation in party composition.

 

But... 5 might work well as well. Wasn't thrilled when I heard that they were decreasing the party limit but it's not a deal breaker. If it had been 4, I would've been very disappointed.

[Archaven]

I would've liked 6 party members, always liked that number in previous games and always felt it provided for some good experimentation in party composition.

 

But... 5 might work well as well. Wasn't thrilled when I heard that they were decreasing the party limit but it's not a deal breaker. If it had been 4, I would've been very disappointed.

 

Probably that's their initial plan. They tested the water with Tyranny and saw people's reaction.. and they up to 5 with this.

[LordCrash]

6, not more and not less. If somebody only wants to go with 4 or 5 nobody forces them to use 6.

 

Why making so many classes if you can only use some of them? Also a party of 6 is imo the sweet spot for D&D style RTwP combat. It allows for various fighters, rangers and casters and even for taking along somebody you don't even need that much in combat.

 

Reducing the party size is something that is ok in 3D games or in games that work in fumdamentally different ways but not for an Infinity engine type of game.

 

 

 

This is true for Pillars 1. We don't know how classes will work in Pillars 2 yet.

Fair enough. How it will turn out for PoE2 depends on the multi-classing system and ability of frontliners to contribute at crowd-controling.

 

"There are a few keys to making Deadfire’s multiclassing work in ways that 2nd Ed/3E multiclassing generally does not. I’ll go into this in detail in an update next week, but it was the subject of a large amount of design internally.

 

In the end, our math is balanced such that, e.g., a fighter 6/druid 6 (displayed collectively as a 12th level warden, btw) has about 75%-85% of the fighter power and druid power as a 12th level fighter or a 12th level druid.

 

That may seem odd, but what we found in looking at various multiclass combinations from different editions of A/D&D is that the 50/50 power splits (e.g. 3E wizard/clerics) are the ones that perform and feel the worst. The ones that operate in the 90%+ efficacy band compared to single-classed characters feel like no-brainers. The 75-85% range is powerful enough that the combinations don’t under-perform, but they don’t inherently outshine the single-class characters.

 

While the numbers for all of these calculations will be available for players in game, our goal is that someone who multiclasses because they have a specific character concept and isn’t going to min-max everything will have a viable and good and cool character. Min-maxers can go to town and eke out marginal gains, but they should be just that: marginal."

​

http://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/156540101641/i-know-that-you-tried-to-avoid-trap-builds-in-poe

Edited January 29, 2017 by LordCrash

[LordCrash]

- double post -

Edited January 29, 2017 by LordCrash

[eisenschwein]

I imagine that at least an option for the sixth party member slot would be totally doable.

This as a stretch goal = easy moneyz.

 

^ This.

[Sedrefilos]

6, not more and not less. If somebody only wants to go with 4 or 5 nobody forces them to use 6.

 

Game design forces you. The game is designed around played with party cap. If you play with 4 or 5 you increase the difficulty when you don't want to.

As for Sawyer's post about multiclassing, we still don't know how it's gonna play. After all, if devs say it'll play better with 5 than 6, I trust them more than any speculating fan.

Sorry but until I see a gameplay demo/video of a combat encounter that proves 6 is better, I cannot support this.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Sedrefilos

[Ganrich]

I would've liked 6 party members, always liked that number in previous games and always felt it provided for some good experimentation in party composition.

 

But... 5 might work well as well. Wasn't thrilled when I heard that they were decreasing the party limit but it's not a deal breaker. If it had been 4, I would've been very disappointed.

.

 

Pretty much feel kinda the same. I want to try five with all the changes, and then I'll give it a pass or fail. If it was 4 I'd be really irritated, though.

[Eurhetemec]

This is a truly pointless poll. You can vote for six all your like, but all it does is remind the devs why they shouldn't bother to post here. Too many people aren't interested in hearing their opinions or reasoning, and think that they know better.

Edited January 29, 2017 by Eurhetemec

[LordCrash]

 

6, not more and not less. If somebody only wants to go with 4 or 5 nobody forces them to use 6.

Game design forces you. The game is designed around played with party cap. If you play with 4 or 5 you increase the difficulty when you don't want to.

As for Sawyer's post about multiclassing, we still don't know how it's gonna play. After all, if devs say it'll play better with 5 than 6, I trust them more than any speculating fan.

Sorry but until I see a gameplay demo/video of a combat encounter that proves 6 is better, I cannot support this.

 

You know, better is relative. Not everybody wants to min-max the hell out of the game.

 

For what are only four companions better? Gameplay? Maybe yes, probably not. Roleplaying? I very muhc doubt so.

 

And if Tyranny is anything to go by reducing the party isn't a good idea...

 

 

This is a truly pointless poll. You can vote for six all your like, but all it does is remind the devs why they shouldn't bother to post here. Too many people aren't interested in hearing their opinions or reasoning, and think that they know better.

That might be connected to the fact that Obsidian didn't deliver ANY serious explanation for the reduced party size yet. Why holding back with such crucial information? It's something I expected them to be very open and transpartend from the start. Being secretive about that surely doesn't help anybody around here. Edited January 29, 2017 by LordCrash

[Lanyon]

Game design forces you. The game is designed around played with party cap. If you play with 4 or 5 you increase the difficulty when you don't want to.

 

This is not true in the slightest. As someone posted in a different thread, in PoE it was relatively easy to create a balanced and powerful party of FOUR if you so desired, let alone a party of FIVE.

 

With that being the case, it seems nuts to me to potentially alienate a significant number of fans by taking away the traditional party size of 6 members when every game out to date (including the old IE titles) could be played with fewer numbers IF YOU WANTED TO. Hell, most of the titles have even been solo'd by people.

 

All the change to 5 members is doing is creating a situation where people that would prefer to play the game in the traditional IE fashion (with 6 members) WON'T HAVE THAT OPTION.

 

Not cool.

[Archaven]

This is a truly pointless poll. You can vote for six all your like, but all it does is remind the devs why they shouldn't bother to post here. Too many people aren't interested in hearing their opinions or reasoning, and think that they know better.

 

It's not pointless. Devs are not always right on the decision they made. Sure they may not care, but if said majority of its fans are unhappy they'll reconsider their stance.

[Lanyon]

This is a truly pointless poll. You can vote for six all your like, but all it does is remind the devs why they shouldn't bother to post here. Too many people aren't interested in hearing their opinions or reasoning, and think that they know better.

 

What's pointless is your entire comment. Obsidian have always been one of the best developers when it comes to listening to fans and taking popular/controversial forum posts seriously.

 

And it doesn't remind the devs why they shouldn't bother to post here (what an asinine thing to say). They encourage fans to speak their minds.