[quote=Tuco]
I actually explained it
No, you didn't. You said you would feel more forced to make this kind of choice if you had more room in your party (which is a dubious and fairly counter-intuitive claim in itself since usually the less room you have, the least you are left free to experiment with classes, but I didn't argue about it)
You never said in what way that would be bad, given that as you pointed out yourself, you'd still have two slots to experiment with "whatever you like". Which reasons suggest you wouldn't, with stricter party restrictions.
By the way yes, I'm opinionated about these things.
For some of you this may be just about making a poorly argued throw-away comment "I prefer four because six super slow", based on guts feeling more than facts, about a game you will mildly care about for two weeks and then throw to the pile of old stuff.
For someone like me the genre is a lifelong passion, and good titles in it are stuff I plan to go back even dozen times, if the depth is there.
I did. Games designed for parties of 6 tend to expect you to have specific roles in your party because everybody can 'fit them in' and it starts to become somewhat mandatory to emphasize the difference between roles by making them necessary to be affective. If the game designers can't be sure about it because the party size is smaller and they still want to allow for diversity they have to account for that by allowing different playstyles that support un-optimized parties.
Having a party where 3 companions - no matter their class - will work gives you more freedom than parties where you can experiment with just 2 out of 6 party memebers (except if you expect games to give you 19 different companions, like you mentioned BG2 + expension - but usually you will find rather far less, even more when they are voiced and have deeper story lines).
Again, like I wrote before, BG3 seems to take this into considerations. Other games might fail at it. For me BG never worked properly without wizards to break magic defenses or clerics to use divination spells to help with specific attacks. Dragon Age Origins on the other hand I've finished on the highest difficulty without problems even with characters and parties that where far from optimized. Pillars of Eternity 2 also worked for me perfectly fine without designated mage or healer, same when I included them.
Also saying you can play with less than 6 - well lets be real, those games that are balanced towards 6 tend to be harder with smaller parties forcing you to min-max even on lower difficulties. One could argue - as Larian did - that you can mod a 4 player party to 6 - but I absolutely agree that that isn't the same as it causes balacing issues as well... (and technical problems often)...
For the last part... Sorry, but you are not the only one who has been playing these games for more than 2 decades. I would guess many people around here can claim the same. Some might actually be passionate enough about games that they actually might even work in the industry... so assuming someone's opinion or passion to be superior to others might be a bit aloof... just saying as it really doesn't help the conversation at all...
To be perfectly clear - I'm not even arguing against the bigger party size. I'm indifferent about it as long as the solution they go with is properly implemented. I just don't think there is the one correct answer - its game design and that's about personal preferences and just reading here I see solid arguments from both sides (even if I don't agree with all of them).
