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

If I walk into a place I'm not supposed to be alone, I'll arouse some suspicion.
If I walk in with a friend, it's a little more suspicious.
If I walk in with 3 friends, people are wondering why there's a group of people there.
If I walk in with 7 friends following me, what the fuck are people going to think?
Oh yeah, there's these 8 people going in the same direction taking orders from this one person, but we've never seen them before.

I would say this really depends a lot on your experiences and knowledge ...

Skiny wizards in robes may not seem like a threat to someone from our world, who never had to fear magic.
Do you really imply that those Goblins have no idea what Booyahg is?

In my honest opinion, Goblins especialy should know well enough wich travelers is safe to ambush ... and wich would be best to leave alone. Even if they would learn by trial and error method.

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Wich takes me to another point i was originaly saving for later, but now i wonder why actually.

- Lets say our Goblin guard is exactly the type who respects (or understands, strike out what dont apply) raw physical strength only ... okey?
- Now lets say there is group of 5/6/7/8...even 10 if you like ... HUUUUUGE muscular Barbarians with HUUUUUGE two handed bloodied Axes ... their bodies and faces are full of scarry tatoos, and HUUUUUUGE scars ... and they all wear TIIIIINY loincloth. xD (Sry, i had to.)

So ... our Goblin is suspicious ... right?
Such group seems like potential trouble ... right?
So, he is kinda affraid of them, bcs fear is natural reaction to immediate proximity of something that threatens your whole tribe ... right?

And you are trying to tell me that this Goblin ... GOBLIN!!!
Would decide to personally follow this obvious threat in case they decide to make trouble? O_o

Can you please give me some common characteristic of Goblins?
Bcs as far as i know, courage, devotion, or willingness to sacrifice themselves, was never their top 3.

And before someone say it ...
IF you think that this goblin would send someone else with them ... question stays as it is, just move to another Goblin.
OR IF you think that they should go in larger numbers ... how many Goblins, i repeat GOBLINS, would in your (resp. their) eyes outweight huge, i repeat HUUUUUUUUGE Barbarian with HUUUUUUUUUGE bloodied Axe, and Tiiiiiny loincloth?

In my opinion ...
Goblins should outnumber our Barbarians at least 10:1 in order to be brave enough to make any demands.
And do remember that even at Goblin gate, where there is if i remember corectly around 7 Goblins, 2 Worgs, and option to call another 4 Goblins as reinforcements ...
Our Barbaian is threatening enough to force that goblin to litteraly eat shit. :-/
So ... 15:1 is still not enough.

Ok then....whatever you say friend

Somehow i feel like there should be some communication ...
But i fail to find it. :-/

You want communication? How about this: I start to understand why you want more than 4 in your party if you like playing Ranger.

That is unsurprising and surprising at once. Though, of course it depends on whose hands its in. Imagine 8 fireball sorcerers, 32 fireballs on the first turn (muahaha).

Though, without the cheese, the amount of extra times you can cast haste and such... it just turns otherwise "merely" strong tricks into cheese. There's not much difference between a 8 person party and giving yourself infinite hp. You can, but most people won't find it fun

I'd still advocate for a hard mode with buffed enemies and 6 party members, though! More tactics, appropriate opposition.

I gotta say I disagree with this. If they did, I probably wouldn't have killed as many of them in my adventuring days (ahem, always in self defense, I assure you). Just saying they tend to think themselves a MUCH bigger threat than they end up being.

With buffed enemies you mean just more hp? I'm no programmer but that sounds relatively easy to do. Or not? I'm not a friend of a party of 6 because I see a lot of work been put into balancing which should go into a wider and deeper story, more locations, more quests, not "doing it with 4" and "doing it with 6" efforts. Balancing with the normal difficulty sliders, as often pointed at by the 6-fans, would not work on the hardest difficulty, so that's no option. But if the party of 6 could be achieved with just an hour of work changing hp, why not.

There can be no discussion, the goblin fights were a lot more difficult shortly after release when they had a lot more hp than they have now. After I lost my first fight against Gutt I even stopped playing for a long time because I had no clue (except barrel use or similar cheesy crap) how to go throught the fights with normal use of the chars. A party of 6 could have been a remedy. But who knows (except Larian) wether it is soo easy?

Only buffing HP wouldn't do it. By adding 2 more members in your party of 4, you also multiply the potential of your party by a lot of factors. You have more CC potential, AoE targeting allies become way more powerful, you can get more people into melee range making spellcasters more safe, you can further abuse synergies like surfaces, you can cover a wider range of damage types... All those factors makes it impossible to just add a flat multiplier and be done with it.

Goblins on the road are just like spiders behind your cabinet ...
It doesnt matter how many of them you capture (or kill, if you are that kind of person) ... they are still there, and you only catched stupid ones.

//Edit:
All those factors also made it so people around here allready agreed (and stated several times) that they dont necesarily need any ballancing ... and are more than willing to "withstand" unballanced and possibly easier experience than expected.

You know, fun part is that if someone mind to have easier game ...
All they need to do is simply dont turn this option on, aka ... leave it as it is ... or in even other words, do nothing.

You could say that about BA shove and sneak abuse too, yet we have countless complains on how cheesy and unbalanced these things are on this very same forum.

The problem here is that people want a bigger party for reasons beyond just difficulty. Some people to be able to interact with more characters at a time, they want to see more companions' reactions to things, etc while at the same time having a satisfying difficulty experience for them. I'm not one of those people, I like my rpgs easy so I can focus on the story, butI know I'm in the minority on that matter, so it's not as much of an open and shut solution as you suggest.

But that problem might be acceptable if it's an option you take at your own risk. I'm not a fan of the bigger party because a) in my opinion a professional approach needed a lot of balancing and additional design of the fights (aka Larian's time) and b) I'm lazy and normally don't want to play even more classes. B) is personal bias and of no interest if it's an option between 4 and 6, A) wouldn't be a concern if it would be a very easy change for Larian. If it's not entirely balanced, ok. I also have to admit that lately sometimes I wouldn't mind to have 5 in the party, to have room for Lae'zel (or a Fighter mercenary) in addition to my boring normal team.

Perhaps however my thought that players would accept a not perfectly balanced gameplay without flooding the forums with complaints about the life destroying effects of such an approach might be rather naive.

People who keep bringing up "balancing" seem to be intent on creating a strawman as their way of justifying denying people who want a bigger party. Not a single person on this thread who wants a party of six has ever asked for the game to be balanced for the bigger party size.

I mean, anyone can ask for an objectively flawed product, it wont change the fact that everyone and Larian will laugh at the suggestion.

Felt the exact same thing.4 felt a bit "restricting" while 5 feels just right.Mainly because I want to experience more companion story.

It's only so flawe like Larian limits the gameplay possibilities or their framework conditions for improvements. Assuming Larian doesn't want to customize it for a bigger party size, that's their right. But they could also be clever and say party size of four is the highest difficulty, whoever plays with bigger party decreases the difficulty. Two issues solved with once. Of course, it's not quite that simple and a few adjustments will have to make it happen.

Examples:
- change Shove to a full action 5e compliant (regulating inflationary use becomes more important when we have a larger party)

- improve pathing and usage with elevators, boats etc. pp.

- no hardcore limitation of selectable story paths (three routes to Moonrise Towers)
--> Even if we are forced to choose one path for the story, let us explore the other two afterwards (bcs it reminds me slightly of the three paths in the third level of Durlags Tower or the two tunnels in Sendai's Enclave back at that time). more XP etc. pp. In the DnD-universe you should not go the limiting way, but the expanding way... Not in vain Big World mods for Baldur's Gate were created. But there have to be a compatible framework for this and Larian should stay modding friendly in advance without leaving elementary basics to the modders... That would not be fair and appreciative to the volunteer modding scene, if that is outsourced to them in advance, so to speak...

I consider a party size of at least five to be a core element of the basic game.

balancing in a single player experience (or even coop) like the BG games is largely an effort in futility. Given the number of variables, party composition, choice of classes, spells, feats, etc... skill at using those spells and abilities, even the penchant for farming, mean that any meaningful balancing exercise is very unlikely to be successful. The best the game designers can hope for is to make sure it isn't overly broken one way or the other.

And with it being single player (or coop), balancing isn't largely needed. Yes, you want to make it challenging enough that the average player isn't bored or frustrate. But beyond that, it is just an exercise. PLAYERS will compare their 'skill and prowess' against each other. But the developers are mainly hoping to make a fun and interesting product, not something that is used as a benchmark for skill.

I am not saying that balance isn't a factor when considering party size. Just that what has been seen thus far in the beta, the current game composition (vis a vis balancing) nothing precludes them increasing the size of the party. Simply that it hasn't been seen in the current build. Anyone waving their hands saying "It hasn't been tested, means it isn't being considered" is simply speaking their preference in the hopes it is fact.

I know ...

Except there is very good argument for Shove, that even if you ignore it as hard as you can, NPCs are still using it against you.

But for Sneaking, i totally do.

Those are people who just want everything ... you cant just have everything.

Morpheus would say:
Take red pill and have satisfying difficiulty experience ...
Or
Take blue pill and have party of 6 ...

Sure, you can try to snatch both pills, cursh them to dust and snort them (seen that meme?) ... but then you will die, bcs drugs are bad and have neither. :P

We just have to pick ...
I mean, Larian dont really need to do anything (and quite honestly, there is no signal that they would, so ... nothing is probably whats going to happen).
Its we who want something beyond what we were offered ... and we therefore should also be willing to take step back and accept compromise. To me, compromise that i (and i know im not alone on this forum) am totally willing to accept, is that game ballance would be thrown out of window, just so Larian have as little extra work with this extra feature as possible.

And before someone (again) repeat that argument about people who were not on this forum, yes this was also talked about in the past ... warning sign, is all we need ... simple text that will show when you change this option saying:
"WARNING! This game was ballanced for party of 4, if you change this setting, your game will be unballanced and probably a lot easier than you expected ... are you willing to accept this?"
And voila!
Everyone has ben warned ... and yes, i know, even then there will be idiots who will be complaining ... but i just refuse to even concider such ... "people" (for lack of better therm).

Quite bold statement isnt it?

I mean ... it would make sense in game, where developers would actively try to ballance things out, keep close to ground and dont try to make anything too insane.
But we are talking about Larian here.
And i dont really mean it in any bad way, but do you honestly feel like the company that after two years of constant critic ... still let you, lets just say "do everything we can do in this game" to keep this short ... would laugh to suggestion that would make this game "more fun even tho it may be less ballanced"?
Srsly?

Please ...
Go read some topics about Resting, about Sneak Attack, about switching prepared spells any time in between combat, about absurd amount of consumables (Food, potions, and scrolls), about Barrels of smokepowder, about ... i dunno, i said i want to keep this short, and yet i digress again. xD
And after you read them ... ask yourself "do i really feel like ballance is Larian main focus here?" ... and if your answer will be yes, then go read them again.

You are equating wanting a specific function/feature with wanting "everything". what is being asked for is not 'Everything'. It is in fact quite a small request in comparison to the totality of what even just the people on this forum have requested.

Larian doesn't need to do anything. However, they are marketing a product. As such, they are subject to some pressure based on the wishes and desires of the consumers, us. That gives the community some leverage. And given that this has been an open beta for quite a long time, it is clear that they are indeed looking for feedback from the community at large on what works, what doesn't, and what we would like to see.

I am always confused by this line of argument. Balance in single player games like BG are fairly non-existent. Yes, they want to provide a challenge, but given the vast number of variables in game ranging from player skill to party composition, to items collected to experience gathered, balance is little more than a shot in the dark. More accurately, it is a general set of guardrails the outside of which are impossibly tough on one side and a cakewalk on the other.

But the gap between those two is VAST. You take any game today and you will find players for whom some sections are difficult in the extreme, yet those same sections are quite easy for others. I think that some players wave the flag of "Balance" around without understanding what it means, merely because they see it as a barrier to entry for something that they personally are against.

I suspect that that, assuming Larian doesn't increase party size (which I suspect that they won't, more is the shame) it will be more a function of internal business decision rather than any complexity driven by 'difficulty' or 'balance' issues. Just my opinion.