Party SIze

[Sinhealer]

6 man groups are fine,I just hope that many different set-ups can be used for every encounter so there isnt a need to wait on the "perfect" 6 classes too join.

[Firestar_Jes]

I think that 6 man groups are just fine. As long as you don't have to have the "best" 6 classes to be effective.

[BahamutKaiser]

Fine isn't sufficient, if 8 is better, than there shouldn't be any deliberation. Fine is another failed WoW clone, so unless your aiming for that, I suggest we all aim for excellent into the supreme on every aspect.

[Eriol]

8 means that EVERY group will need a PERFECT distribution of classes. And what do you think the odds are of having a PERFECT distribution of people that want to group, let alone the entire population of the game? Near-zero I'd say. Hell, I'll bet it's going to be hard enough to find tanks and healers, can you imagine if you absolutely NEEDED one of every class to successfully run a dungeon. /barf


Edit: and btw, the linking to the FAQ is a little bad IMO as that FAQ is 6 months out of date!

[Sinhealer]

If It was 8 man groups I think I may end either,
1.Playing this game very casually till something else came along
2.Giving it a miss altogether.
I really dont want to spend my on-line time searching for that "perfect" group,I want to play the game,that is why I said before a 6 man group is fair enough as long as different set-up's of the groups can do every encounter.
Lets be honest here not many want to be healers or indeed maybe even tanks,so if an instance of some sort required the group leader to say"sorry we have enough cc,dps what we need are 2xtanks and 2x healers for this instance"it gets a bit tiresome,not just for the dps guys but for the other classes also having to hope the right guys will join the group so they can play the game.

[Juggy]

thats why organised clans will have the advantage when it comes to raiding. afaik raids were not meant for the solo player as much as for the organised groups. id hate to see that every random 6 man setup can easely kill any raid...

[BahamutKaiser]

An 8 man party doesn't have to have to have the perfect setup anymore than a 6 man setup, but if each class has a unique advantage to bring to the table, and there is enough room for everyone, than it would be best to have each. Just because you limit it to a 6 man party doesn't mean your going to have all different classes anyway, there are 2 healers and 5 damage dealers, there's a very good chance one or two of the damage dealers are going to outperform the rest, making it real easy to stack up on those, whether it's 6 or 8.

[Sarielle]

Originally Posted by Mark

That's just a poor way to set up a party. No party should be full of one class. :l

In some games it DOES make sense to have mostly one type (not necessarily specific class) in a group.

Bear with me thru this example:

In AoC, where heals are cone HoTs, party only HoTs (does not include the whole raid) and each of the three priest classes gets one big heal that only affects a target once per minute...you set up the main tanking group like so for a raid.

Main tank, 3 healers (one of each type to rotate the big heal), a specific class of offtank that has a battle rez (only class that does), usually another offtank just in case. While a couple of the priest classes do decent damage, they're still not on par with the true DPS classes. That's three healers and three soldiers (groups are 6 as in Aion).

Then due to spacing playing a large role in that game, on some raids you will have a need for all your ranged classes to stay in a particular spot (and need to be grouped so the group heal affects them all) and guess what, all but one of the ranged classes is high DPS.

So while you may be playing Aion and have raided there? those who haven't may have a reasonable expectation that this is NOT necessarily going to be a fair distribution of XP.

No, most people don't raid for XP, but if you're there, it might as well be fair.

[Battles]

Is this game really party oriented? Or is it just mainly a solo game.

[BahamutKaiser]

Well, they made it soloable, so usually it ends up being a solo game if you can solo. No matter how fast party exping is, soloing requires less setup, and even if your partying when available, you'll be soloing wile you can't because you can.

Needless to say, if you can solo for exp, it stands to say that it's likely you can group with just about anyone you want to and take on several solo type foes.

[Sabre]

Originally Posted by Battles

Is this game really party oriented? Or is it just mainly a solo game.

Naturally a well-made party is more efficient and levels you faster, but it is nice when you don't have friends on or want to farm to be able to solo as well.

[Rocky]

it looks like you CAN solo, but it's fairly dangerous to do so, There's always the potential of ganking.