Decline Why 4 party members?

[Nifft Batuff]

I have noticed this trend in most new RPGs, even RPGs that are spiritual successors to old titles(like BG3) that they are abandoning the traditional party size of 6 in favor 4. I wonder what could be the reason for that? Will we witness RPGs with 3 or even 2 party members limit in the future?

Someone told me that while SNES JRPG have 4 party members, the 3 party members was a meme back in the PS1 era. I have to check to be sure.

 

[Wyatt_Derp]

One would think 3 would make a good fit, but generally people are weirded out by any series or combination of odd numbers. That's why they call them ODD.

 

[CryptRat]

But really it's about the 4 complementary roles or classes: fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard.

Or in other words: tank, explorer, healer / support, adaptable toolkit / wildcard. 4 gameplays.

Every extra member you add in the party is going to overlap with the others in some ways.

I assume it’s to allow the player to fill in the four traditional roles:
1 Warrior/Tank/Brawler
2 Thief/Specialist/Skill-Whore
3 Cleric/Healer/Medic
4 Wizard/Sorcerer/Tech-Specialist

Because good role-playing systems have 4 classes: fighter, cleric, magic-user and thief. And while sometimes you can see crpgs which are good but have more classes, this is mostly because their creators were still consciously or subconsciously designing the game around good roleplaying system in mind.

But then isn't 4 is the worst number? By your rules both 3 and 5 allows for more choices, typically number of classes = number of slots is the worst you can do in my opinion because not simply taking each class is just choosing less options on purpose while choosing between a mage or a warrior or between two warriors or two mages is actually a choice which leads to each player coming with his own party, which is part of the interest of this kind of games.

Based on experience 7 or 8 are good numbers. Blackguards, KOTC, Dungeon Rats or D:OS are fun but when it comes to every player crafting his own unique party as well as when it comes to large scale battles and feeling of taking full size and fully inhabited fortresses, they're really not coming any close to Pool of Radiance, ToEE, Disciples of Steel, Natuk or Helherron.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[rusty_shackleford]

2 is crowd already.
All that party members add is way of cheesing enemy AI by forcing it to target wrong guy.
If your char building/progression is weak - slap few party members to hide it.
If your char building/progression is strong - slap few party members so that players get headache, develop split personalities and ultimately - build their party around auto attacks

RPGs are about adventuring with friends.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Three is the best. One girl sits on your face, one is blowing you and one makes you a prostate massage.

Wait, we are talking about RPGs here!?

 

[turkishronin]

I have noticed this trend in most new RPGs, even RPGs that are spiritual successors to old titles(like BG3) that they are abandoning the traditional party size of 6 in favor 4. I wonder what could be the reason for that? Will we witness RPGs with 3 or even 2 party members limit in the future?

Someone told me that while SNES JRPG have 4 party members, the 3 party members was a meme back in the PS1 era. I have to check to be sure.

I'm talking about Western RPGs here

 

[turkishronin]

2 is crowd already.
All that party members add is way of cheesing enemy AI by forcing it to target wrong guy.
If your char building/progression is weak - slap few party members to hide it.
If your char building/progression is strong - slap few party members so that players get headache, develop split personalities and ultimately - build their party around auto attacks

RPGs are about adventuring with friends.

 

[NJClaw]

In turn-based, it makes the combat drag on too long, assuming you are also adding more enemies to balance the increase in party size. In real-time it becomes too much of a chaotic clusterfuck.

Also, the more party members you have, the longer is takes to go through the level up process and do equipment/inventory management on those party members.

In Knights of the Chalice 2 party size goes from 6 to 9 (with additional summoned creatures) and nobody is complaining about combat taking too long.

In Pillars of Eternity 1 you have 6 characters but it's still easy to follow everything that's going on on the screen because visual effects are extremely clean and immediate. You have to pause every five seconds, but that's inherent to RTwP.

 

[Ismaul]

Three is the best. One girl sits on your face, one is blowing you and one makes you a prostate massage.

Wait, we are talking about RPGs here!?

Ain't no party without yourself. That's 4.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

In turn-based, it makes the combat drag on too long, assuming you are also adding more enemies to balance the increase in party size. In real-time it becomes too much of a chaotic clusterfuck.

Also, the more party members you have, the longer is takes to go through the level up process and do equipment/inventory management on those party members.

In Knights of the Chalice 2 party size goes from 6 to 9 (with additional summoned creatures) and nobody is complaining about combat taking too long.

In Pillars of Eternity 1 you have 6 characters but it's still easy to follow everything that's going on on the screen because visual effects are extremely clean and immediate. You have to pause every five seconds, but that's inherent to RTwP.

They scaled to 5 party members in PoE2, since they felt that 6 was too much for RTwP.

 

[NJClaw]

In turn-based, it makes the combat drag on too long, assuming you are also adding more enemies to balance the increase in party size. In real-time it becomes too much of a chaotic clusterfuck.

Also, the more party members you have, the longer is takes to go through the level up process and do equipment/inventory management on those party members.

In Knights of the Chalice 2 party size goes from 6 to 9 (with additional summoned creatures) and nobody is complaining about combat taking too long.

In Pillars of Eternity 1 you have 6 characters but it's still easy to follow everything that's going on on the screen because visual effects are extremely clean and immediate. You have to pause every five seconds, but that's inherent to RTwP.

They scaled to 5 party members in PoE2, since they felt that 6 was too much for RTwP.

And they were wrong.

In his Deadfire retrospective, Josh says that they went with 5 party members because they did some sort of poll on party size and the majority of results were ">= 4" and "<= 6".

 

[ERYFKRAD]

In turn-based, it makes the combat drag on too long, assuming you are also adding more enemies to balance the increase in party size. In real-time it becomes too much of a chaotic clusterfuck.

Also, the more party members you have, the longer is takes to go through the level up process and do equipment/inventory management on those party members.

In Knights of the Chalice 2 party size goes from 6 to 9 (with additional summoned creatures) and nobody is complaining about combat taking too long.

In Pillars of Eternity 1 you have 6 characters but it's still easy to follow everything that's going on on the screen because visual effects are extremely clean and immediate. You have to pause every five seconds, but that's inherent to RTwP.

They scaled to 5 party members in PoE2, since they felt that 6 was too much for RTwP.

Yeah, and then they tossed in a turn based mode.

 

[DeepOcean]

I think they do this to limit the turn time on TB and the number of pauses with RTwP, 6 characters is potentially a increase of 50% on the number of decisions a player must make (more if the two extra characters are casters as they tend to be), depending on the player, there are players that are more attracted to the tactical combat and the strategy part of RPGs that want to maximize their decision making while others are more interested into world interaction and very lenghty battles slows the pace of the combat down, more decisions, slower the combat gets.

While I like exploring the world and world interaction, the main reason I like to play traditional RPGs is to maximize my choices, so anything less than 06 is decline for me, 04 isnt unplayable but anyone that claims a 04 man party has the same complexity of choices of a 06 or more party is just lying or dont know what he is talking about. If you are a game designer, and you want to limit player choice for pacing reasons or any other reason, admit so than come up with bullshit like that and pretend that a party of 4 is something super optimal for everything, it is optimal depending of what you want to achieve, not for tactical depth.

Also, depends of the feel the game is trying to pass, Fallout wanted that feeling of you being alone, a fish out of the water exploring a strange land so the designers had to make a choice, sacrifice that feeling for more tactical choice? It is a question of trade offs.

 

[Ol' Willy]

Just a remainder, Silent Storm is full TB and has party of six.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Just a remainder, Silent Storm is full TB and has party of six.

It also only had six classes anyway, and the roles aren't exactly watertight per se.

 

[Elex]

Imagine a 4-member party attempting to clear out the Tomb of Horrors.

Acererak would get so bored with no one ever actually reaching his room.

Well too many people is a problem when 5ft corridors allow only one person to fit.

 

[JarlFrank]

I like some games with 4 char parties (the later M&Ms are good games despite the smaller party size compared to previous entries, and Dark Sun is also fun despite only having 4), but overall I think 5-6 is the perfect party size, and it can go up to 8 and still be manageable and fun.

The majority of classic RPGs have 6 chars, some go up to 8 with NPC companions (Wizardry 8 allowing you to recruit 2 NPCs in addition to your core party). And generally, in RPGs with complex class and combat systems, having more characters is cool. You can experiment more with unusual classes and have more tactical flexibility. ToEE with 5-6 characters is great, KotC2 with 6 characters is amazing, Gold Box games, Jagged Alliance 2, Silent Storm, Infinity Engine games, etc etc. You just have so much more tactical possibilities with 6 characters instead of just 4.

The argument that 4 characters are better suited to story-focused RPGs with complex companions is bullshit, no RPG has more complex companions than PST and that gives you 6 slots.
The argument about balance is also bullshit since most modern RPGs don't bother with encounter balance, they just plop a bunch of trash mobs on the map and call it a day.
6 characters are always better.

Imagine playing something like Wizardry 8 with only 4 characters. Since you pretty much need at least one wizard, one cleric and one fighter, you won't have much room to play with other classes. But it's classes like the gadgeteer and the bard and the ninja that really bring fun into the character system.

 

[Erebus]

The majority of classic RPGs have 6 chars, some go up to 8 with NPC companions (Wizardry 8 allowing you to recruit 2 NPCs in addition to your core party). And generally, in RPGs with complex class and combat systems, having more characters is cool. You can experiment more with unusual classes and have more tactical flexibility.

Exactly. Four characters is too few to give you much choice when it comes to creating your party, and the strategies it allows in combat are much more limited than with six characters.

Deadfire has five characters and that was okay. Not quite as good as six, but considerably better than four.

Some games (such as Shattered Lands and Betrayal at Krondor) are good in spite of the limited number of characters. But they're the exception rather than the rule.

 

[Mark Richard]

Maybe this is all those classic Disney animations talking, but I always felt a journey wasn't complete without a comrade dying in your arms or something equally horrible. There should be a cost to the lifestyle, a loss that provides a dose of tangibility to cement the adventure in memory for all time. Having recruitable companions die is one way to achieve that. The issue with a party of 4 is that one death would be 25% of your team. Everyone is far too valuable, with each character playing an essential role that can't be substituted for by other means.

 

[JarlFrank]

Maybe this is all those classic Disney animations talking, but I always felt a journey wasn't complete without a comrade dying in your arms or something equally horrible. There should be a cost to the lifestyle, a loss that provides a dose of tangibility to cement the adventure in memory for all time. Having recruitable companions die is one way to achieve that. The issue with a party of 4 is that one death would be 25% of your team. Everyone is far too valuable, with each character playing an essential role that can't be substituted for by other means.

Imagine the Yoshimo betrayal and death if BG2 only had a party of 4 LMAO

 

[DraQ]

I like 5-6 party size the most (in cRPG; in PnP 3-4 is optimal because of "screen time" necessary for every party member and his unique story).

8 and more in most systems means that you could have almost any class in your group what I do not like. Composing our party should be a matter of hard choices (paladin or warrior? bard or druid?). Building a party with all essential skills, a party capable of passing every test and check shouldn’t be possible. Because of that cRPGs with more simplified systems than D&D (ex. with only 5 or 6 classes) should limit themself to 4 party size (but it is, of course, better to design richer mechanics).

The meaningfulness of party composition sags for small parties.

For a single character you can't cover everything and since you don't drag around a bunch of folks that might be incompatible with, say, stealth, you can support large variety of playstyles.
With large party you can cover all the essentials, then spend extra slots for individual touches which yields diverse parties.
But with a small party you cover the essentials and that's it.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[mondblut]

I have noticed this trend in most new RPGs, even RPGs that are spiritual successors to old titles(like BG3) that they are abandoning the traditional party size of 6 in favor 4. I wonder what could be the reason for that?

The reason is filthy casuals.

Will we witness RPGs with 3 or even 2 party members limit in the future?

Remember that company that used to develop games for Interplay before turning into shit? Yeah, me neither.