What I mean is that I wish the game was designed primarily with the large party challenge in mind, rather than the small party or single character. I'm not opposed to solo'ing these games at all, since summons and abilities at the higher levels usually make that enjoyable. Its entertaining to find ways to run through it with a single character, especially in the afterlife of a game of this sort. Level quickly through the meta knowledge of replay, and then slash the material that is targeted at lower level characters till you can crush whatever. Experience cap also plays into it. Right now the cap is pretty low. Since a single well equipped lvl 4 PC, is better than having say 2-4 level 1-2 PCs for handling many situations, and you cap out anyway well before the material is through, there is an incentive to roll light and see if you can beat it that way just for kicks. Everything or at least most of the stuff we can access now is targeted at the entry level scale and easier. There are fights that feel challenging on the first run, but then you learn the cutty moves and how to trash the encounters and skirt to the finish line. Then eventually its trying to play out the game with no reloads or perma death and things of that sort. But from what I've seen so far I still think it would be better if they jump it to 6 and increase the scale or difficulty of the encounters to account for that. I think it would benefit the single character or small party run through in the end, if they aim higher at 6 PCs.
It should also be expected that the new player is not going to be very good. So yes, having a larger party also helps with that too, and to engage the new player with more combinations of classes so they can discover what they like while not getting totally murdered. But if we can coast through with 4, the solution should be to pump up the challenge of the game for targeted at 6. So when you roll with 4 or fewer its more entertaining with a longer shelf life.
Anyway, I wish for this game to have the feel of the large party lineage like BG and the old Gold Boxes, whereas focus on the single character feels more like Everquest or NWN or DoA type lineage to me, like games with AI henchmen rather than full party control. I understand why they have to make a game that scales for the single MC. But I want there to be a game that is actually tough for the large group of PCs to handle too. And I'd rather have 6 PCs than AI controlled friendlies on my team during large engagements.
