Back to the topic. Can we keep bringing up a party of 6 and not 4?
Answer: Yes! Til the day they finally shoot it down forever and say they aren't doing it, I will bring up a 6 party game.
Why?: So MANY reasons why.
Why not?: Can't think of any reasons why not. What reasons have others given? It's too hard to manage 6 characters. 4 is even a bit too many and takes too long.
Response to that?: If they implemented a good Inventory Management system that wasn't clunky, managing 6 characters wouldn't be a big deal. The issue isn't that it is too hard to manage a 6 character party or too boring or slow. The issue is Inventory Management right now needs a total overhaul. As one person said it, let's get some sort of inventory management that is Windows-like. Drag a box, highlight what you want to move, drag and drop. OR, hold down Cntl and click on what you want to select, drag and drop. Boom. Done. We don't need tons of images and such. Lists are fine for item management. If I want to look at the image of an item, then I can right click, select Examine, and then I can see the image I want to look at. Otherwise, lists are fine. We don't need all this pictures that slow down and lag computers. Even if you add icons, that's still a Windows thing too, so it's not like having item icons is a bad thing, but we don't need to see a full model of my character and a merchant model as well which slow down the management of buying/selling, etc. Also, if the world stops when you access inventory and/or merchants, then we wouldn't get all the lag from that either. Thus, managing 6 characters wouldn't be a big deal. You could have all six fit on a single screen, have a section for Equipped Items and a section for other inventory items. Drag, drop, highlight, drag, drop. KISS IT! Keep It Simple Stupid! Otherwise, seriously, get rid of all the clutter items and only allow players to pick up items they can really use in the game.
Why not?: Larian would have to rebalance the game.
Response to that?: Big deal! They need to rebalance the game anyway because they aren't using appropriate stats for the monsters they are using and as a result the monsters aren't really themselves anyway. Besides, rebalancing would be a matter of adding a monster or two per battle. We're not talking an entire change in the game design. Traveling with 6 party members? Battle at the Druid's Grove Gate might require an additional 4 goblins. Done. Battle against Phase Spiders? Add another Phase Spider or 2. Battle against Hag? Add some Redcaps to help defend her, or some other Hag minions. Battle against Githyanki? Don't change that at all. It's hard enough as it is. Battle against gnolls? Add a couple more.
I mean, honestly, there aren't really any downsides to doing a 6 party game. If you only create 1 Custom Character, you can take ALL the origin characters in EA with you in every fight after you meet them. If you play a 4 player multiplayer game, you can create 4 Custom Characters and still take 2 origin with you, thus still being able to trigger various cutscenes that you CAN'T trigger if you have 4 Custom Characters. So, if you play multiplayer with friends for the first time to experience the game together, you will miss out on tons of chances for character development because you can't even take origin characters with you at all.
All the negatives to a 6 party game are things they can fix that shouldn't influence whether or not the game is 6 party members or 4 and the benefits of 6 are SO much more.
