[dev1020] Party system changes. The maximum party size.

I dont mind this change, however they need to keep 15 man parties doable, unless they plan to adjust the current Field NM strength. Haughtpox Bloatbelly would not be doable with just 8 people unless they change the encounter (less adds and/or HP and defense.

I really like duo and 4-man parties. Larger groups tend to be messy, because i only see just a few monsters you have to kill before you move on to the next group. Do you really need 15 men to do that? It's also a matter of content, there has not really been a reason to go play with 50 guys. When i started i imagined the limit was endless, but when i started paying attention there really isn't a reason to do 128. I hope it will come though because i want to see some of the massive in mmo's, and besides doing a mission or event with all of the linkshell sound pretty good to me.

The problem with less people in parties means LESS leve links which takes a huge hit on everyone SP which I imaging is exactly why SE implemented this.

8 Party limit will screw a lot of LS's. We already have to cut like 5 players when we start our NM events due to the 15 cap. Dropping that to 8 just leaves more people excluded. Not all NM's are so easy with only 8 people.

There was NEVER anything stopping any group from inviting a whole 15 for those whiners. Don't like the 15 man parties turn your damn recruit off and go with 4-6-8 or whatever.

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Originally Posted by linafanboy

As long as we never see those 15 man rape squad SP party again I will be more than happy.

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Personally in my opinion i liked the bigger - the better parties and when people still used party search feature etc. i was very often making parties around 10~15. And i even though they would in short time expand the limit to parties of 25 and more but i guess they are going the other way. Well I will see how it will play and will it come to my liking.

And btw. i forgot, tbh it was quiet rare when i was in small party... one time or two i experienced 2~4 man party (including myself) but usually i was in parties of 7~12 and i liked when another player joined and we ware having 13,14,15 :3

I prefer quality over quantity. 8/8 party is nice idea in my opinion and fair enough.

I believe the party systems should be changed to an alliance system with 6 member parties. I do not believe 4 man parties will be efficient once new content/jobs are released because we are going to want certain classes in certain parties in the alliance and if the party size is only 4 people.

One idea would be to lower the party size and implement an alliance system, this would be friendly for people who would like to solo and people that would like to do more large scale events.

Seeking Party System Rather Than Recruitment Party System

The bigger issue in my mind is to change the Party Seek Function. The current party seek function is not very effective and is rarely used.

Ideas on how to change:
1) Implement /sea all functions
2) Do away with the current party seek function
3) Allow players to put flags up who are searching for Exp/Sp/Missions and allow them to designate interest
4) Implement a message box when seeking to state classes/interests

This in my mind is a more effective system. Players will be able to see where everyone that is looking for a party is and players will be able to see peoples interests. This might be more difficult because of the constant changing of job and classes and might be heavy on the servers, but if they were to come up with a system that allowed people to write in their class/job into a message box, then that could help with the load on the server.

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Originally Posted by Reika

I dont mind this change, however they need to keep 15 man parties doable, unless they plan to adjust the current Field NM strength. Haughtpox Bloatbelly would not be doable with just 8 people unless they change the encounter (less adds and/or HP and defense.

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A THM soloed that... I think you guys can manage.

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I believe the party systems should be changed to an alliance system with 6 member parties. I do not believe 4 man parties will be efficient once new content/jobs are released because we are going to want certain classes in certain parties in the alliance and if the party size is only 4 people.

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And you think that 4 man groups wont be balanced for FUTURE content... If that even happens it'll be a big sign of failure for Yoshi-P.

One of the major reasons for this is because the community's so small now. Making a base of 4 and 8 people means that they can balance content that's relevant for the players right now and then expand upon it in the future if (when!) the game becomes more popular as it's improved.

I'd expect to see alliance content make a come-back eventually once 4 and 8-man is fleshed out. Personally I quite like the idea of 4-manning things, it'll make it easier to just get friends together to do things and feel like a real adventuring squad like FF's of old!

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Originally Posted by Reika

I dont mind this change, however they need to keep 15 man parties doable, unless they plan to adjust the current Field NM strength. Haughtpox Bloatbelly would not be doable with just 8 people unless they change the encounter (less adds and/or HP and defense.

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Uhm its been 4 man'd and even solo'd. Just goes to show probably half the population right now just zergs NMs and can't do anything if it wasn;t 15 manned.

Thing is if they introduce instanced dungeons or whatever limiting the party to 8 would be fine You have a big LS you can still get everyone to do the endgame stuff just break up into say 2 or 3 grps and everyone can experience the content and not be limited to just 1 group

I think that designing a majority of the content around low man groups is great, I feel that they should also do -something- for those that want large scale chaos as well. I'm all for low man stuff and probably the only thing that would make me play WoW again would be them doing away with 10 and 25 mans and just focusing on 5. So, in my opinion, good for you SE, I'm totally with you!

However, I also loved Campaign and Dynamis. I didn't really care for Salvage or Limbus but if it weren't for Campaign I would have shaved about 2 years off my FFXI subscription. Abyssea was alright, but I think would be a lot more difficult to implement in an HD game like XIV.

So what I, personally, would like to see Square do is focus on 4/8 but down the line maybe after PS3 release, enable players to create an alliance of either 2 (16), or 3 (24) parties to take on things like Dynamis and Campaign. Not so much for Campaign since you can go solo just fine, but you get my point!

I'd like to see this down the line, though. Right now SE needs to focus on new players and keeping the few they have. I think low man content is the way to go with that. It's not very good for linkshells since you end up with a bunch of cliques that eventually want to break off, but at least people will have something to do.