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

[Leonesaurus]

I'm glad they are changing it to 4 man to 8 man parties. Traditional FF games have used 3-4 party members, which is great for real live people in a FF MMO game, and increasing it to a max of 8 is easier to build up to than 16. I hate waiting for 16 parties, since keeping track of that many people to get anything done is stressful, a waste of time, and boring. The news they released for changing parties was some of the best news I've heard in months. I will never miss 16 man parties. It's too hard to keep track of anyone who care for anyone with that many random people to keep track of.

[Reika]

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

That Thm wasnt just a R50 THm, but a R50 almost everything else too. If I had every defense skill, the highest heals debuffs and dots, I would go get myself some Dodore wings >.>.

[Xenor]

I like content designed for many people. As others have mentioned, people already have to be excluded from content such as NMs with a 15 cap. Of course that's always going to happen with any cap, but lowering it just means more people excluded. Then again my linkshell could easily form two strong 8 man groups. Problem then is there's only five NMs and only one that always spawns at night.

Still, for upcoming instances I don't want to miss out if we have for example 10 people turn up. I don't see why an instance can't be designed for a dynamic number of people, yet still limit the individual fights within it to only being claimed by one party. That way you don't get 30 people slaughtering a mob, but 30 people can still come and play.

[Aldarin]

Whenever considering a party and tactics, party size matters a great deal. Similarly to a military command, an army is broken up into regiments, which are then further broken up into units, and then the units are sometimes broken up even further. The reason for this is that as more people need to coordinate actions, the more everything goes wrong. This can be seem in the current 15 member party free-for-alls. By reducing the party size it allows for greater ease of tactics. A single person can only coordinate at max between 6-8 people. Thus I agree with the idea of reducing party size to 8 people. I do think that there needs to be some sort of alliance feature to be added however, as that is a fun factor for large battles. Support for my reasoning can be found in the normal running of NM events in FFXI, where if all command decisions were left to a single person, there would be chaos.

[Rowyne]

I like it. Finally, some structure, something this game has been severely lacking.

I think smaller more intimate parties are the way to go. Managing larger groups is too chaotic.

It makes perfect sense to me. 4 man groups, 8 man raids.

Thumbs up, Yoshi-P!

[Kazimir]

I like the idea of making normal groups smaller and having things for 4 and 8 person groups but I am completely against getting rid of 15 person battles entirely. It sounds to me like they want to make endgame content for a max of 8 people parties as well. This may improve ranking up and grouping for SP, but it would seriously ruin endgame.

The reason why I play XIV is because I thought it would have a similar endgame to XI in that the fights would be difficult, and would be large battles against strong foes. Reducing the party size to an 8 player max would make doing the endgame content boring, and would pretty much ruin the endgame LS community. With an 8 player max there will be a lot of people left out of the fights. I loved the fact that in XI we could take 12-18 people and go kill Tiamat or do Einherjar, Or get 2 groups of 30 members in sky or sea. Do you see any other MMO's with a max party size so low? I haven't played one, probably because those that play an MMO for years and actually do endgame prefer doing things in larger groups.

I have absolutely no issue with reducing party size to 8 people for leveling/questing reasons, or even smaller endgame content. But please for the love of all that is FF do not get rid of 15 man endgame content. A huge portion of your player base prefers to have large-man battles like we had in XI, WoW, Aion, or any other number of MMO's out there. I understand the population is low, but a good endgame LS has no issue getting 15 people together for NM's. My LS does it all the time and so do the other endgame LS's on my server. The one's that can't are just bad at recruiting players.

[Xeno]

I think they're doing this because it was extremely easy to find 4 people on ffxi but when you had to get 6 it always took a while.

[Xeno]

I like the idea of making normal groups smaller and having things for 4 and 8 person groups but I am completely against getting rid of 15 person battles entirely. It sounds to me like they want to make endgame content for a max of 8 people parties as well. This may improve ranking up and grouping for SP, but it would seriously ruin endgame.

The reason why I play XIV is because I thought it would have a similar endgame to XI in that the fights would be difficult, and would be large battles against strong foes. Reducing the party size to an 8 player max would make doing the endgame content boring, and would pretty much ruin the endgame LS community. With an 8 player max there will be a lot of people left out of the fights. I loved the fact that in XI we could take 12-18 people and go kill Tiamat or do Einherjar, Or get 2 groups of 30 members in sky or sea. Do you see any other MMO's with a max party size so low? I haven't played one, probably because those that play an MMO for years and actually do endgame prefer doing things in larger groups.

I have absolutely no issue with reducing party size to 8 people for leveling/questing reasons, or even smaller endgame content. But please for the love of all that is FF do not get rid of 15 man endgame content. A huge portion of your player base prefers to have large-man battles like we had in XI, WoW, Aion, or any other number of MMO's out there. I understand the population is low, but a good endgame LS has no issue getting 15 people together for NM's. My LS does it all the time and so do the other endgame LS's on my server. The one's that can't are just bad at recruiting players.

Skill and experience going to all parties, and loot going to only the first party to deal damage to an enemy.

This is the way they are going to follow. Something tells me that they aren't trying to do away with fun endgame content. They are just trying to make it easier to party.

[JakeRoon]

Yeah , it's just to make getting a viable party easier.....which I am all for.....though I do like those big squads, they were fun!

But I am excited to see a change to a smaller more intimate party......with Rowyne......{Meow!}

[Ava]

I like the idea of making normal groups smaller and having things for 4 and 8 person groups but I am completely against getting rid of 15 person battles entirely. It sounds to me like they want to make endgame content for a max of 8 people parties as well. This may improve ranking up and grouping for SP, but it would seriously ruin endgame.

The reason why I play XIV is because I thought it would have a similar endgame to XI in that the fights would be difficult, and would be large battles against strong foes. Reducing the party size to an 8 player max would make doing the endgame content boring, and would pretty much ruin the endgame LS community. With an 8 player max there will be a lot of people left out of the fights. I loved the fact that in XI we could take 12-18 people and go kill Tiamat or do Einherjar, Or get 2 groups of 30 members in sky or sea. Do you see any other MMO's with a max party size so low? I haven't played one, probably because those that play an MMO for years and actually do endgame prefer doing things in larger groups.

I have absolutely no issue with reducing party size to 8 people for leveling/questing reasons, or even smaller endgame content. But please for the love of all that is FF do not get rid of 15 man endgame content. A huge portion of your player base prefers to have large-man battles like we had in XI, WoW, Aion, or any other number of MMO's out there. I understand the population is low, but a good endgame LS has no issue getting 15 people together for NM's. My LS does it all the time and so do the other endgame LS's on my server. The one's that can't are just bad at recruiting players.

I hope Square reconsiders because of this. I have a good friend who I played FFXI with, she didn't buy FFXIV because of how bare the beta was. I've been talking to her about the future of the game and after linking her the interview about reduced party size she pretty much said she won't play at all anymore. It made me kind of sad.

A lot of people that play the game, and people that don't do enjoy large scale content. You don't see game developers closing their games off to just one audience because both groups make up a large portion of subscriptions. I hope Square and Yoshi-P realize this and decide on some sort of middle ground.