And still, no one who wants 4 party members only has addressed the following:
For me, the bottom line is, what makes the most sense for this game? It all goes back to these things:
1. With a party of 6, you can have more characters in your party so you don't have to constantly switch characters out in order to trigger origin character story elements. I can have all the current origin characters in my single player party and not have to switch out one in order to get Shadowheart's full story, or switch out another to get Wyll's or switch out another to get Lae'zel's. All of them can just be in my party at once and we can trigger many more cutscenes without annoyingly having to switch characters out.
2. (And this is the BIG one) For 4-player multiplayer, I can still trigger origin story content by having at least 2 origin characters in the party. Thus, multiplayer is more enjoyable, and you can still experience the whole game the way D&D was meant to be played, with others. Right now, that's not possible. You cannot even have Lae'zel interrogate Zorru to find the githyanki patrol because your party is full up with 4. You can't complete Wyll's questline either. You can't complete ANY of their questlines.
3. A party of 6 allows players more variety for strategy and combat.
And the point about combat encounters needing revamping is that you all keep arguing that you don't want them to rebalance the game and they'd have to with a party of 6. Then the game wouldn't be balanced for a party of 4.
My point is that they have to rebalance everything anyway once they lift the level cap. It's not a valid argument because no matter what, they have to rebalance, and it's also not valid because they're going to implement difficulty settings - at least that's what they said - so if they balance the game for a party of 6 on Normal, you can set the game to Easy (or whatever they call it) if it is too hard for a party of 4. You'd then have your choice to play at 4 party members but it'd allow those who want 6 to play with 6.
OR, as we've said before, they could rebalance it using XP split, which they may do anyway so you aren't level 6 by the time you complete EA.
Seriously, these encounters should take you to level 6 by the end of EA easy. I played it out via tabletop WITH XP split and the party still leveled up to 6 after defeating all the EA missions BEFORE the Underdark because they're throwing high level XP enemies at you but nerfing them so you can still beat them capped at level 4.
