I still don't understand the resistance to a 6 person party. It doesn't hurt players who just want 4. If you like only 4 because you don't want to have the hassle of managing the items and equipment of 6, then only have 4 in your party. And by the way, I don't understand this anyway because you still have to manage all the items of your entire group at camp.
Larian hinted that we are going to lose companions after Act I, the party will probably shrink like in OS2. Chances are that your entire group will become four people.
Originally Posted by GM4Him
And if your concern is difficulty of gameplay, because they might build challenges based on 6 characters so that they are too hard for 4 characters, they can tweak the system to make that not an issue. Either they can build into encounters some sort of system that increases or decreases enemy stats based on the number of characters you have in your party at the time, or they can do what we've been suggesting and implement a split XP system where experience is split between the people you have in your party. So 4 characters would level up faster than 6, making challenges just as difficult for 4 as they would be for 6 because the 4 person party would be naturally at a higher level than the 6 person party.
XP split isn't working. Early game becomes much harder, than it becomes much easier when you outscale content too much, then it becomes much harder again when you hit content for max lvl. Balancing encounters via stats and amount of enemies will work, but it will require extensive playtesting of every encounter for 5 and 6 people too. Why waste QA's time on testing combat encounters when they can be looking for bugs or testing quests and other stuff that actually matters for every player? Mods will allow a party of 6, it's not a deal breaker for people, unlike unbalanced gameplay for people who will buy the game only if they can play solo or duo.
