Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Let's make a strong case for a SIX-SLOTS party.

This is starting to get quite personal so I'll ask that we don't veer into that sort of territory.

There was absolutely nothing "personal" about it, which is precisely why I explained what I meant in the following paragraph.
But sure, let's not make it a cat fight.

Having the OPTION to increase party size is no different than having the option to change the difficulty of the game. How come no one argues for having only one difficulty setting because otherwise you'd have to balance the game for all the other settings? Because it is understood by everyone that games are balanced for the "normal" setting, and when a player deviates from that setting they are accepting that their game will no longer be balanced. So why is this concept so hard for people to grasp in the context of party size? Increasing party size is just another way of changing difficulty level. Maybe I will increase party size and offset it by also increasing the difficulty level. It's personal preference.

It is shocking that anyone would argue against something that has ZERO impact on their own game but which will increase the enjoyment of the game for a whole bunch of other people.

I feel we are on the same track here somewhat, right?
As long as it can be ensured that the quality of the intended version of the game does not suffer, I don't care.
That is not up to me to evaluate.
My understanding is however, that if you tried to please everyone, the quality would indeed suffer. And there I see a reason to be careful and to argue.

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An optional multi-select with mouse and some shortcuts to select team members or all team would be nice to have,
so it is a bit easier to control party members in single player.

DOS2 has mod to increase party size to 6, I think bg3 will have a mod as well and I think with TB, 4 character is better.

It's pretty funny how the same users are begging for the developer to add their "essential" mechanics from the old games as optional features as if the number of characters in your part or RTwP made the games so good. I can tell you, it wasn't those, it was developers who at first stumbled into making rpg games but learned from their mistakes with bg1 and made foxed what didn't work and built upon the foundation they laid for the sequel. This is exactly what Larian is doing for BG3. There's is no sense in them to copy the original game mechanics, none what so ever. It's 29 years later, they never worked with the IE engine and the current d&d rule set us different from the 2nd edition enough to be considered a new game. I'd tell you to stop wasting your time but then again I'm here too doing exactly that, hah.

It's almost like if some old design decisions and mechanics were actually good and some weren't, uh?
Also, you may be inflating things by a whopping ten years.

They replied to this in the Reddit AMA and it’s a matter of combat time. Some fights in DOS2 could really drag and that was with 4 people. You have to account for summons and stuff as well. Their combat philosophy for BG3 seems to be quicker more fluid encounters, which to me personally is essential.

Well, first things first, I read what they said on reddit. This thread exists PRECISELY because they also said that it's still not set in stone and they are considering their options and checking how things go in early access. So I'd like for them to actually consider the BETTER option.

Second, the problem of "combat time" has already been addressed several times across the thread, starting with the very OP I wrote, where I pointed that other games already did a six-slots limit without much of an issue.
It's also worth stressing that just because a designer sometimes starts with notion in mind, it doesn't necessarily mean it's some holy gospel and should never been challenged.

I for one think they are absolutely wrong in worrying about the issue of "combat time" with six characters, but let's be real, what they actuall worry about it making it simpler to map on a controller.

If they could were genuinely worrying abot the overall time:
- they wouldn't implement unskippable animations that can't also be speed up in the options.
- they could try a control scheme that doesn't drive you mad when you want to to anything else than having your party in autofollow.

And this just for a start. Some competent encounter design would do the rest.
I mean, in a lot of cases a six men group would clean an encounter faster than a smaller one, anyway, not taking more time.


Oh, well, you know what? Who the hell I'm kidding, anyway?
I'm just wasting my time arguing for the sake of it. We all know they'll stick to the initial idea no matter what and if anything they'll just shrug and say "We were wrong about it" one year later as they did with their bizarre and ineffective armor system.
Sometimes I swear it feels like they have a knack for over-designing convoluted solutions at "problems" that never really existed.
The chain-unchain system in place of the usual point-and-click is a perfect example of that.

Whoops, I blame my smartphone.

why are people still upset about the armor system, its just a casual filter.

im still in favor of 6 p party

I'm pro 4 man party. It looks like there will be interjections and interactions when interacting with NPCs from what Larian has said, and all the possible combinations would eat away at the writing, VA, and animation budgets. It's one of the advantages of a game with less voice acting, motion capture, and cinematic angles. Still think it's worth it, and also cuts down on lengthy combat.

Not sure what you mean with "casual filter", but itìs because it was a flawed mechanic that introduced way more issues than the ones it tried to solve.
It was a dumb system that:

1. Forced people to focus on one single damage type to not lose effectiveness.
2- Favored damage above anything else-
3- Made the fight completely binary, with a first phase where any form of crowd control was completely useless (until you bypassed an armor) and a second one where it was completely unavoidable since it worked 100% of the times.

It was also a very poor approximation of how an armor is supposed to work at mitigating damage in reality, if we want to take that angle.
XCOM 2, to name one, came with a far simpler, less convoluted and more interesting mechanic to simulate armor.

None of these arguments makes much sense.
The fact that there are supposed to be inerjections between party members if anything should make people desire to have an even bigger party, to not have to miss most of them.
But that's a bogus point anyway, because the numbers of interjections between two companions are NOT going to raise or lower in numbers according to how many other companions are around. What will matter is just if you'll have the two of them.
And for how they worked in DOS 2, anyway, help to shred a single tear for that loss... Companions hardly ever talked to each other. Everyone acknowledged just the existence of your protagonist.

If voice acting and animations were going to be an issue, they would just be mor sparse with their use. It's hard to even follow the logical thread that led you to suggest it's a problem that can be solved with a smaller party.

Dulcis in fundo, as SEVERAL posts already pointed so far, if you actually prefer a four men party it's not clear how the option to ramp up to six for other people would stop you.
It didn't stop anyone playing BG2, for one.

I usually played bg2 with 4 or 5 party members.

I didn't. But yeah, you are just proving my point.

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Dulcis in fundo, as SEVERAL posts already pointed so far, if you actually prefer a four men party it's not clear how the option to ramp up to six for other people would stop you.
It didn't stop anyone playing BG2, for one. [/quote]

Yes, that is why CRPGs are the dominant genre in games today.

I didnt meant to unprove it either. All I've been saying is that the number of characters in a party doesn't really matter if the game is well balanced. 4 or 5 or 6, don't really care. As long as it works. The original games were kinda funny that the less characters you had, the easier the game would be since you would level up faster. Especially in BG2, where after level 12 or something, casters were so powerful that you only really needed a few wizards and a healer. I hope BG3 will be better balanced.

This is obviously a matter you care deeply about, and even if I don’t care about this specific issue I can sympathize with not getting something that really matters to you.

I usually played BG with 1-4 people and will most likely play BG3 with 2-3 people the first time and after that solo. So obviously I care more about XP being a shared lump sum to make this viable.