What about those that don't want to play classes that always have a pet or summoned creatures ? I'd rather play with 5 or 6 companions than 4 companions and 2 pet... But that's just a personnal opinion...
my post was not suggesting that people use summons and other things as a substitute for larger parties, it was showing how you need to consider each additional party slot added as potentially two for balance purposes. Currently already for example you can have three familiars in your party which begins to become kind of cheesy. It would be a shame for things to turn out like pathfinder did with party optimization resulting in silly pet spam once they add mercenaries and the other companions.
When the party is limited in size it shapes the way you must approach each encounter, as you cant have as well rounded a party, nor can you depend on a series of one trick ponys. Thus the differences between two prospective parties becomes much different resulting in radically different approaches to any given encounter compared to larger parties which will have more chances for all the bases to be covered blandly.
In a game designed around smaller parties allowances have to be made which allow for more novel approaches to compensate for this. But in a game designed around bigger parties the expectation of more mundane and direct solutions to encounters can be made. So its not as simple as just 'deciding to use fewer people', as the game as a whole is changed by the alteration of any single element of it.
