6 Person Party vs. 5 Person Party (Argument Number 4,721)

[Crucis]

I know there has been a ton of controversy around Obsidian's decision to drop from a 6 person to a 5 person party. I was not a fan of the idea then and after playing Deadfire a little more, I can confidently say I'm still not a fan of the decision. Let me explain another reason (4,721) why:

 

This morning before work, I played for about 20 minutes and was finishing up exploring the second map of Neketaka (the one north of the starting map/dock area). I came across a Water Guild building where an additional party member can be obtained. I am roughly 18 hours into the game and currently have 5 party members. Through these hours, I've learned more about each member and now it's come to a point where certain members are concerned about other members and want to help them. One of these said members is someone I would like to drop, but since I can only make a 5 party group, this is something I don't want to do, since their relationship is starting to form. This means I will miss out on the party member I just obtained from the Water Guild.

 

An argument could be had that this inspires multiple playthroughs (something I'm fond of), but knowing that I used to have a 6 party team still sticks in my craw, since I could have instantly added this new party member and started using them and learning more about their story and their abilities.

 

What I'm getting at is due to the 5 member party decision, I feel I'm missing out on more character development and story. I feel the decision to move to a 5 member party has really limited the story and character stories in this regard.

 

Please sound off with your thoughts.

 

 

For what it's worth, Jayngo, I always find it useful to grab as many of these companions and sidekicks as possible.  Why?  Because they give you options, for one thing.  Sometimes you end up in fights where your current party comp just doesn't seem able to handle the opposition, but mixing it up can be the difference between winning and losing.

 

Second, even with 5 party members, it's easy enough to pick up new people for your extended party.  Say that Aloth is in your full party and you come across Pellegina.  Just add her to the party, and move Aloth to the reserve.  And then you just get back into the party management screen, and flip Pallegina into the reserve and put Aloth back into the party.  Now, yes, this doesn't address the 5 vs 6 party size thing.  But what is does do is give you the option of having her available.  Also, in any boarding action, all those reserve extended party members ARE aboard your ship and will fight with you, even if you can't outright control them.  So, it certainly pays to have a larger extended party, even if you're still stuck at only 5 in the active party.

[Crucis]

Following the same idea, I could also say that six characters suck, because it is not seven. Indeed, I could start using the seventh character right away, no problem !

 

 

But wait, what about eight or nine characters in my party, would not that be great, too ?

 

 

Joke aside, they decided to go with this number because of the amount of micro needed to use with every characters. Later in development, when they implemented successfully the AI Behavior system and thus alleviated the problem considerably, it was already too late to start changing things up.

 

 

I remember watching a stream about it, from Obsidian. I think it was on Twitch, if you want to look it up.

 

Among the most recent ones.

 

 

 

Regarding OP post. The same argument can be done against 6 man party. and party of 7. You can't have everyone at every given time. You couldn't have everyone in BG1&2. Seems like the best way to solve your problem is not designing more companions than there is party slots. Even if party size would be still 6, two unfortunate persons (Maia and Takehu for sure) would be left out.

 

 

I disagree with both of you.  The difference between 6 and 7 (or more) is that 6 has been the party size across all of the BG and IWD games, as well as PoE1.  6 is the traditional size.

[PIP-Clownboy]

 

It's cool that they added that. At the same time, if gameplay is tedious enough that you are supposed to not play the game, than something is quite wrong. I have turned all the scripts off and it has very enjoyable. Making "not playing the game" the default option the game is designed for, seems like a bad bad bad idea. 

 

 

BG had script support. 

 

By your logic, auto-attack shouldn't even exist as the game is playing itself

[algroth]

 

 

 

Obsidian really didn't have any good reasons to do this drop in party size in the first place; I've got a feeling it's one of those brain dead inane ideas that came from someone influential and no one that wanted to keep their jobs could criticize it.

No, it was simply lack of V I S I O N.

Not what you meant, but I do believe this was one of the stated reasons: Characters and mobs have much more abilities than the old IE games, and also more of them have flashy visuals, leading to more visual clutter which they wanted to cut down on for clarity, especially for new players. Iirc anyway, don't quote me on that.

 

 

Ah, I was just referencing this argument here: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/95739-big-patches-after-release/?p=1972042 But yeah, from what I recall that was art of the issue and it's certainly a reasonable worry. My understanding though is that the main reason behind it was that contrary to the IE games where half of your party would usually simply auto-attack, in Pillars fighter-oriented characters were a lot more active and thus required more micromanagement and was thus more confusing or harder to micromanage for the player. Balancing was another reason I recall being stated, inasmuch as it's easier to balance around a five-man party than a six-man party as you're getting rid of the bag of variables that the sixth member brings to the table and so on.

[Tigranes]

Actually playing through, the availability of multiclasses is a huge gamechanger in terms of the possible flexibility and power spread, so I think it was a reasonable decision to balance it for 5 party members from a gameplay standpoint.

 

As someone who enjoys both story and gameplay, no, I think party sizes has to be primarily governed by gameplay considerations and not story. I think it causes more problems to go  "oh the default party size is 15 but people who don't want a completely unbalanced godmode experience should deliberately restrict themselves to 5".

 

One nice trick would be to allow people to 'pocket' inactive party members and allow them to still talk and participate in questing. But ultimately, just like quests with multiple outcomes or the fact that you can choose different dialogue options, part of having choices means missing out on things, which is not really such a catastrophe except we are all such FOMOs these days.

[gloomseeker]

 

Regarding OP post. The same argument can be done against 6 man party. and party of 7. You can't have everyone at every given time. You couldn't have everyone in BG1&2. Seems like the best way to solve your problem is not designing more companions than there is party slots. Even if party size would be still 6, two unfortunate perons (Maia and Takehu for sure) would be left out.

I get what you are saying, but BG2 was like 150 hours. By all due respects, Deadfire is like 50 give or take.

 

I don't know, I'm just biased toward the 6 member party. For whatever reason, when I came across certain characters in BG, I could tell almost immediately if I wanted them in my party or not. I think that's where Obsidian is missing the whole "Alignment" thing. I think it needs to be implemented badly. Maybe don't say Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc, but this would really help when it comes to party composition and knowing who would be a bad or good fit.

 

 

Regarding the alignment thing we could argue it's still in there since some party members are more compatible than others (and by more I mean a lot more). 

 

Plus if you're playing a character who likes to jest you will have a much easier time keeping them happy (which in some way isn't so farfetched as a leader with a sense of humour is probably much nicer than a stern authority figure). 

 

Last but not least, I love the BG series but you had to stick to your party composition throughout the game (or go out of your way to avoid talking to them before recruiting them) because characters didn't get any experience when they weren't on your team. At least in PoE companions who are benched are not left so far behind that they end up being ridiculously underpowered (and that could be a problem with BG2 if you played with perma death on and had one of your guys kick the bucket). 

[flamesium]

I think it improves the feel of combat, but it's disproportionately limiting in terms of party and quest interaction.

 

It's not so much that it's a drop from 6 to 5 party members. Assuming most people like to have a core team of 3 or 4 party members pretty much locked in, it's the drop from 3 to 2, or 2 to 1 'luxury' party members, which is significant.

[Wormerine]

 

Regarding OP post. The same argument can be done against 6 man party. and party of 7. You can't have everyone at every given time. You couldn't have everyone in BG1&2. Seems like the best way to solve your problem is not designing more companions than there is party slots. Even if party size would be still 6, two unfortunate perons (Maia and Takehu for sure) would be left out.

 

I get what you are saying, but BG2 was like 150 hours. By all due respects, Deadfire is like 50 give or take.

 

I don't know, I'm just biased toward the 6 member party. For whatever reason, when I came across certain characters in BG, I could tell almost immediately if I wanted them in my party or not. I think that's where Obsidian is missing the whole "Alignment" thing. I think it needs to be implemented badly. Maybe don't say Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc, but this would really help when it comes to party composition and knowing who would be a bad or good fit.

  

Where do people take those numbers? I would agree with you if I didn’t replay both Baldurs Gates recently. They are actually about 50h each, and by that I mean doing all quests, reading all lines, doing all that is there to do (BG+TotSC, BG2 without ToB). On the other hand, I am over 50h mark in Deadfire, I haven’t been wasting any time I am seem to still have bunch of stuff to go through.

 

I disagree with both of you.  The difference between 6 and 7 (or more) is that 6 has been the party size across all of the BG and IWD games, as well as PoE1.  6 is the traditional size.

So?

[algroth]

 

 

Regarding OP post. The same argument can be done against 6 man party. and party of 7. You can't have everyone at every given time. You couldn't have everyone in BG1&2. Seems like the best way to solve your problem is not designing more companions than there is party slots. Even if party size would be still 6, two unfortunate perons (Maia and Takehu for sure) would be left out.

I get what you are saying, but BG2 was like 150 hours. By all due respects, Deadfire is like 50 give or take.

 

I don't know, I'm just biased toward the 6 member party. For whatever reason, when I came across certain characters in BG, I could tell almost immediately if I wanted them in my party or not. I think that's where Obsidian is missing the whole "Alignment" thing. I think it needs to be implemented badly. Maybe don't say Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc, but this would really help when it comes to party composition and knowing who would be a bad or good fit.

  

Where do people take those numbers? I would agree with you if I didn’t replay both Baldurs Gates recently. They are actually about 50h each, and by that I mean doing all quests, reading all lines, doing all that is there to do (BG+TotSC, BG2 without ToB). On the other hand, I am over 50h mark in Deadfire, I haven’t been wasting any time I am seem to still have bunch of stuff to go through

 

 

To play devil's advocate here, with Baldur's Gate II you have an advantage in prior experience with the game, meaning that you know what to do, where to go and who to speak throughout most of the game, whereas Deadfire is a brand new game and is likely taking longer because you don't yet have that same experience with it just yet - maybe you take longer on this or that quest because you're looking for alternative solutions and so on. But having said this, based on the content I've found so far I'd say they look to be about similar with respect to size - though based on what I heard and so on I wouldn't be surprised that the length of the main story for Deadfire is shorter, whilst the side content is more expansive. This, I understand, is the what the devs have said about Deadfire relative to the first Pillars too.

[gkathellar]

 

 

 

Regarding OP post. The same argument can be done against 6 man party. and party of 7. You can't have everyone at every given time. You couldn't have everyone in BG1&2. Seems like the best way to solve your problem is not designing more companions than there is party slots. Even if party size would be still 6, two unfortunate perons (Maia and Takehu for sure) would be left out.

I get what you are saying, but BG2 was like 150 hours. By all due respects, Deadfire is like 50 give or take.

 

I don't know, I'm just biased toward the 6 member party. For whatever reason, when I came across certain characters in BG, I could tell almost immediately if I wanted them in my party or not. I think that's where Obsidian is missing the whole "Alignment" thing. I think it needs to be implemented badly. Maybe don't say Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc, but this would really help when it comes to party composition and knowing who would be a bad or good fit.

  

Where do people take those numbers? I would agree with you if I didn’t replay both Baldurs Gates recently. They are actually about 50h each, and by that I mean doing all quests, reading all lines, doing all that is there to do (BG+TotSC, BG2 without ToB). On the other hand, I am over 50h mark in Deadfire, I haven’t been wasting any time I am seem to still have bunch of stuff to go through

 

 

To play devil's advocate here, with Baldur's Gate II you have an advantage in prior experience with the game, meaning that you know what to do, where to go and who to speak throughout most of the game, whereas Deadfire is a brand new game and is likely taking longer because you don't yet have that same experience with it just yet - maybe you take longer on this or that quest because you're looking for alternative solutions and so on. But having said this, based on the content I've found so far I'd say they look to be about similar with respect to size - though based on what I heard and so on I wouldn't be surprised that the length of the main story for Deadfire is shorter, whilst the side content is more expansive. This, I understand, is the what the devs have said about Deadfire relative to the first Pillars too.

 

 

Have to agree. Like, yeah, I can blaze through 90% of BG2's content in 20-40 hours, but I've played it a stupid number of times. Your first time through BG2 is an exercise in, "oooh, what's over here? Another quest line! I could swear there was a main plot I was supposed to be doing."

[VincentNZ]

Fair points on both sides. I prefer a party size of six as well, but thought the four of Tyranny was appropriate. You have to keep in mind thought that BG 2 you had 16 (17 with ToB and 21 with EE) companions to choose from, each one with a quest, dialogue and interaction. Tyranny had six companions, but introduced the last three rather late, and if I recall correctly they were also bound to certain alignments. Deadfire has 7 companions, as well as four sidekicks, which puts them between those two, so it makes sense in a numerical way to have a party size of five.

Also the management argument is valid, as PoE is a lot about skills and synergy between them to get the best out of it. On a high difficulty level that is. Managing another party member would increase the workload on an already micro heavy game.

 

However, as it is a Infinity game, and it definitely is a spiritual successor to BG and direct to PoE1, a party of six is the default. When people think about these RPGs they have their old party from BG1 and 2 in mind. So that is indeed a valid argument for six.

Furthermore, while Deadfire is in between when counting the sheer number of companions, both Tyranny and BG2 offered a deeper level of characters, quests, story relevance and interaction. I would even include the first PoE to have deeper companions, since we met three of them and shaped their form. Yes, we got romances and actual interaction in dialogues, meaning one-liners, as well as idle chatter. Nevertheless, the moment I leave Neketake with my full party I have depleted all dialogue options, interactions and am stuck with a mostly silent party for the rest of the game.

I can still switch and might here something new, but the relevance and depth of other games is just not reachable in PoE2 concerning the companions. If I switched companions around in BG2 I could still have interactions 40 hours into the game, and in Tyranny Barik, Verse and Lantry always commented on the issues at hand.

 

In the end this is what we have, and we are stuck with it. I would not want a mod that allowed a crew of six either, because it would break the balance as well as the artistic choice the Obsidians made for this game.

[Aridea]

I know there has been a ton of controversy around Obsidian's decision to drop from a 6 person to a 5 person party. I was not a fan of the idea then and after playing Deadfire a little more, I can confidently say I'm still not a fan of the decision. Let me explain another reason (4,721) why:

 

This morning before work, I played for about 20 minutes and was finishing up exploring the second map of Neketaka (the one north of the starting map/dock area). I came across a Water Guild building where an additional party member can be obtained. I am roughly 18 hours into the game and currently have 5 party members. Through these hours, I've learned more about each member and now it's come to a point where certain members are concerned about other members and want to help them. One of these said members is someone I would like to drop, but since I can only make a 5 party group, this is something I don't want to do, since their relationship is starting to form. This means I will miss out on the party member I just obtained from the Water Guild.

 

An argument could be had that this inspires multiple playthroughs (something I'm fond of), but knowing that I used to have a 6 party team still sticks in my craw, since I could have instantly added this new party member and started using them and learning more about their story and their abilities.

 

What I'm getting at is due to the 5 member party decision, I feel I'm missing out on more character development and story. I feel the decision to move to a 5 member party has really limited the story and character stories in this regard.

 

Please sound off with your thoughts.

 

If this is about what I think it is about, then dropping one of them (or both) should not break that banter chain and you will not miss on anything. They will just talk about it after you get them both in the party again. At least that happened with me (if I am getting your references right).

 

Re-6 vs 5 party - I don't really care. I'd prefer to have all of them with me if I could just to hear their interactions and to build their dispositions toward each other. But if there is a new limitation, it doesn't bother me. I guess I will just be running more to the inns to change parties for particular quests/moments.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Aridea

[Crucis]

 

I disagree with both of you.  The difference between 6 and 7 (or more) is that 6 has been the party size across all of the BG and IWD games, as well as PoE1.  6 is the traditional size.

So?

 

 

So?  That's all you've got is "so?"

 

Let me spell this out for you.  There's a history in these isomorphic fantasy cRPGs (i.e. the BG and IWD series as well as PoE1) of having a party size of 6.  It's tradition.  And frankly, I think it should have stayed at 6, if for no other reason than tradition.

 

Besides, 6 is a good number for a party size.  It's enough to allow  you to form the core of a party's needs and have a couple more slots to play around with.  At 5, there simply isn't as much room for experimentation, at least for me.  I always like having at least one strong frontliner, one healer, one trapster (mechanic, whatever you want to call it), and one spellcaster of some type.  And having 2 more slots allowed me to adjust the party's comp to fit whatever play style I wanted.  Looking for a stronger melee party, use one of the slots for another frontliner.  Want a good support mid-liner, add a ranger or a chanter, perhaps a cipher, etc.  A party of 6 was simply a good number that allowed for a reasonable amount of party comp mixes without going overboard.  Setting the party at 5 leaves a lot less room for fiddling around with party comp, IMO.

[neotemplar]

I did my first full run with the 5-members party, but after trying 4 I think that for me managing 4 is optimal.

There is a huge growth in buttons, controls and overall micro, especially for multiclasses, and on high levels my control panels start to look like some airplane cabin.

 

I was against party size restriction, but now I see that it makes sense.

 

All my future parties will be 4.

Edited May 18, 2018 by neotemplar

[PIP-Clownboy]

 

I was against party size restriction, but now I see that it makes sense.

 

All my future parties will be 4.

 

No it doesn't make 'sense', as you just conveyed with your 'choice' to just take 4. Both games never required or forced you to play with 6 or 5

 

Though at this rate POE3 will slash it 3-4, remove all AI and most of the complexity and become Dungeon Siege 4

[Crucis]

I did my first full run with the 5-members party, but after trying 4 I think that for me managing 4 is optimal.

There is a huge growth in buttons, controls and overall micro, especially for multiclasses, and on high levels my control panels start to look like some airplane cabin.

 

I was against party size restriction, but now I see that it makes sense.

 

All my future parties will be 4.

 

 

I agree that there are a lot of buttons, but it is NOT that difficult to manage a party of 5.  Just make sure that most of the party has their AI engaged and you can let them go.  The AI in POE2 is solid, and thus far, it appears to me that AI controlled party members don't do stupid stuff.