Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Mega-threads and Guides Party Size Discussion

They were called the fantastic four for a reason....ain’t nobody heard of the fantastic six !,

Just sayin.

...

Neeext!

theres the sinister six tho...

Saying there will be more companions and more classes but having only 4 slots in your party is a contradiction. In BG1/2 there are so many characters that you are troubled to choose who will be in your party of 6. And here in BG3 you will be even more troubled. More companions but less slots is a contradiction. Escape the LArian formula

6 Man Party. That should be the goal for maximum for variety and camaraderie value.

its not that im not monitoring this thread, its more that all has been said.
It should be a six character party, no whats n iffs.
So there realy is no point for this side of the argument to make that many more posts.

If only one or a few people said it, then Larian might think only one or a few people wanted a 6 person party.

+1 for six person party.

Yeah that's one thing I wish the mods would do in this subforum, namely merging all same-topic threads. It would be so much more efficient for everyone concerned if we didn't have so many separate threads for some of the issues being raised.

It's like cutting off the hydra's heads; every head dealt with seems to sprout two new ones. In addition, the admin team are real people with real lives.

It would be helpful if people didn't start new threads before looking to see if the subject has been covered before. Sometimes people don't know how to do this, some don't think to do this, and others just want 'their' thread to stand out, if only briefly.

Really?!! Huh. Wonders never cease. I was sure you guys were robots.

I would prefer larger parties, not for some game mechanic reason, but because I love to have as many party members interacting as much as possible.
I don't give a flying red dragon if there's a change in difficulty, I want to be able to have those interactions go off as much as possible. I love Baldur's Gate for the characters and story not the mediocre ADnD game system, I played NWN, I loved NWN:SoU not for the clanky and painful 3E interpretation, I love NWN2 for their characters not the mediocre 3.5E translation.
I will love BG3 but it is all based on the characters and their interactions, combat can such an egg as long as the companions are deep and interesting. The more interactions they have the happier I will be with the game, so sign me up for 6 party.
Because even with 6 party members O will replay the shit out of this game and I will play it with Minsc every single time, just like BG2, (as long as the rumours are true).

we will probably never have a consensus, those of us that want this will argue for it until we are blue in the face despite the futility of it. And most who like it how it is will argue against it as they only see ways it will take away from their experience or just believe that a studio the size of Larian with a large budget and one of the biggest IPs out there dont have the resources to spear and should just let modders do it

Yeah, it's hard to tell what people actually like at times, and even talking about it can only offer so much data.
If only there was some situation where we could have a temporary, incomplete state of the game in the hands of its audience and take this peculiar chance to experiment with features and options to see how the user base interacted with it.

We could call it "anticipated introduction" or "premature entrance" or something of that sort.

I see what you did there.

They should have included an option in character creation to choose between a 4 and 6 party limit (for EA only of course), that would have been great at launch and would have supplied feedback from hundred's of thousands of people which cant be ignored what ever the results would have been, unfortunately that ship has sailed, now you have what 20k people playing?? that might not be enough to change their minds if they believe these 20k dont represent the majority

To be fair, that would have required having at-launch encounters balanced for both 4- and 6-character parties. Otherwise the balance and gameplay data, including player experiences, would be way off. Either players using 4-man parties would feel the game is impossibly difficult, or players using parties of 6 would find it way too easy. Given that (I assume) Larian is using EA to test encounter balance, having two party limits seems like it'd just make everything more difficult.

This sounds like something to try once they've gotten a handle on how to balance 5e encounters, around when they're testing different difficulty levels and have decided more about the various acts' level caps.

No, it wouldn't.
First, because a system of scaled exp would address the problem implictly.
Second, because no one is asking to keep the "double choice" at release (not yet, at least).
Third, because no one is asking to offer the encounters in two versions now. If anything it would be a great chance to just see what people pick and how they manage with the current balance, precise to decide what types of fight work better, what could use improvements and retuning, etc.

Last but not least, let's concede that would be the case. They already had different encounters tied to different difficulty levels in their previous games. This would be a big problem now... Why, exactly?

Well... you know.. because of "the game engine" presumably (What has worked before is not relevant, its always "the engine"). And of course it would take years and years plus millions of money and resources to implement. (or not)

I agree with you that scaled exp is the best way to have encounters balanced for both 4- and 6-character parties. But I don't think the start of EA would be the best time for Larian to try their hand at implementing it (DOS games were party exp, right?) as this adds another variable for Larian to consider. Simply dividing exp between party members probably isn't sufficient for balance; likely there will have to be additional adjustments to encounters (possibly fewer encounters with an extreme # of enemies to prevent overwhelming action economy imbalance)

I assume difficulty levels are implemented nearly last in EA, after the "normal" mode is balanced, the story is fixed, the level caps are determined, etc. Doing it this way prevents needlessly creating higher/lower difficulties multiple times after changing mechanics/etc. Variable party size testing should come later in EA after Larian has determined the exact combat mechanics/surfaces presence/etc.

I think this thread is really important and the 6man party, or even 8 would be nice