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

[Aramil]

Since the third producer letter, the reduction of the maximum party size have been include in the planned modifications. While initially I wasn't pleased with the reduction since 15 players party are great when it come to NMs or linshell events like guildleves run, I do understand that 8 people is a correct number for most of the stuff. Also, up to now I was hoping for 8 to be the normal size and for the possible inclusion of an alliance system for specific events like NMs or maybe dungeon or instances if those are added. That was until I read the ffxivcore interview today.

Once parties are limited to a max of 8 players, any thoughts on an alliance system that will allow multiple parties to join up together as one large party to take on really big mobs?

In the past the communities that were playing each game were a lot bigger, and so you could have a lot of people there. And now that the community sizes are smaller, we want to concentrate a little bit more on smaller party sizes, and so starting off with regular content that you can do with 4 players--making that our base. Then making bigger type of battles that you need to think about, "Ok how are we going to defeat this," and make that the 8-player party.

The 8-player party is currently what you would think of as an 'Alliance' with normal parties being 4. Then once we have enough content to support that, we'll start considering adding content that requires more players. Right now it's 4 and 8, that's what we're aiming for.

After reading this it seem clear that you're intending 4 member party to be the normal size and 8 to be the size when a bigger group is needed. I really hope this will be reconsidered since honestly 8 people max seem a bit small to be consider an alliance. Maybe it's just because I'm used to the 15 players party but I'd prefer 8 as normal size and 15 as alliance to 4 and 8. In the interview it's mentioned that the community size are smaller but with linkshell maximum size being 128 and if the party search feature would be improve, I have no doubt that reaching 8 people for normal parties wouldn't be too hard.

So that's my opinion on the subject and I hope others will share it.

[linafanboy]

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

[Nephera]

I will miss 15 person parties, I'm hoping they'll add some content where 15 people get a decent challenge, but i'll admit they're kind of overpowered atm.

[viion]

I find 8 to be stupid as well, whoever thinks its hard finding people for events clearly has no clue. In my LS we are sometimes way over packed for events by far so by reducing it down to 8 will make like 15+ people are sitting around not being able to join and have to go do something else.

[Kurokikaze]

Cant design encounters where you need 15+ people to attend with the state of the game. There just aren't that many of us left to do that content. 4 and 8 man content for now then after the game is up to par with current MMO standards they will have their welcome back campaign and release some bigger alliance stuffs.

Right now it's just not feasible.

My LS had 64 people from FFXI (old LSmates and their friends) 2 weeks after release. Now we're lucky to see even 10 online at any given time.

[Gracious]

I have no problem with a 4 member party but an alliance should be able to have 18.

[Nephera]

Cant design encounters where you need 15+ people to attend with the state of the game. There just aren't that many of us left to do that content. 4 and 8 man content for now then after the game is up to par with current MMO standards they will have their welcome back campaign and release some bigger alliance stuffs.

Right now it's just not feasible.

My LS had 64 people from FFXI (old LSmates and their friends) 2 weeks after release. Now we're lucky to see even 10 online at any given time.

Yeah

sadface

[Amsai]

I agree with Kuroki. However, I will also say that I love low-man content and find it to not only be more fun but more challenging as well. Think CoP missions before they were nerfed. It is my opinion that Large endgame events only seems more epic due to the chaos. In my experience, it ends up being either a zerg fest or people endlessly throwing bodies at the mob til it dies. There is nothing epic or even remotely challenging about that. Sometimes Large-Scale content can be good, but the only examples I can think of are Besieged and Campaign. Now I will say that I would not want LSs to have a limit to members. Think of it more as different teams under the same flag. You could still have leadership, LS banks, strategy sessions, and call for back up in the event of an absence.
Here is my list of things that would be better: less drama, less being 40th in line for a sought after drop, less chaos, more challenge (especially with lower numbers which would decrease the margin of error), less ninja looting, less fair-weather LS mates that leave the min they get that uber drop, less canceling events because not enough show up, closer bonds due to smaller size, more synergy and coordination from working together, no more trying to get a large group of people to listen to a strategy session only to have it blow up in your face because someone was afk/not paying attention/wanted to play hero.

[Zaris]

Like Yoshi-P, I think optimizing parties as a group of four is pretty swell -- a tribute to the maximum party size of Final Fantasy IX. Doubling that size for tougher, larger scale events seem all right to me (in this game). Other than behest, much of the content that I have seen look well built and accomplish-able on groups of eight or less.

Of course, finding that optimum ideal number for party and alliance play will depend largely on the subjective variables of the individual gamer.

[Kurokikaze]

I think the best part of all this is Yoshi-P coming out and telling everyone that the accepted "party" sizes are going to be 4 and 8. We've been going through so much crap testing trying to see how many people we can in parties before we get drastically reduced SP bonus/gains.

Him telling us its going to be 4 is just like FFXI force-feeding us 6 man PTs. Sometimes the players need to be told that way they can design encounters and balance regular mobs around the many class combinations that will be available in the 4 man groups.

It's a good step forward. Personally I would've liked 5 or 6 but 4 is good too.