Party Sizes

[Laddy]

Do you prefer a party size of 3 or 4 and why?

[Taiga]

I'm fine with either way, but I guess I slightly prefer a party of four. Big fan of even numbers.

Furthermore, I think you have a bit more options and opportunities in a battle with four party members, e.g. you can easily use one party member for healing only while the other three can attack, which is more effective than having only two attackers, of course. But as I said, I don't mind having a party of three, either.

[Shiva95]

I am fine with both, but I still prefer a party of 4 characters.

[Loony BoB]

Four, because it's more variety. Job systems are more important than quantity of characters, though. Also, I'd love to see FF utilise more than four characters per battle someday, outside of the obvious MMO titles of course.

[Karifean]

Three. It seems to be pretty well-balanced, and most of my favorite combat systems in Final Fantasy have three active characters.

[VeloZer0]

It really depends on how flexible the characters are. In a game like FF4 where every character has a narrow scope of abilities 5 works very well. In the later titles where each character can be set up in a multi-purpose role then 3 is enough.

[Ayen]

Four because I like having as many party members as is possible. I never understood why they switched to three. They clearly had the ability to give you four party members in XII, but chose to reserve that slot for guests which annoyed me.

[blackmage_nuke]

Depends on the roster size but generally four is good, especially if dialogue changes depending on who's in your party.

[fat_moogle]

Three. It seems to be pretty well-balanced, and most of my favorite combat systems in Final Fantasy have three active characters.
I'm fine either way but I did enjoy having 4 party members in FFIX. Didn't really matter with X because even though it was a party of three you could switch in and out as and when needed.

[VeloZer0]

Four because I like having as many party members as is possible. I never understood why they switched to three. They clearly had the ability to give you four party members in XII, but chose to reserve that slot for guests which annoyed me.
Yes, but then with a guest you would have had 5. And seeing as the engine couldn't even handle the spell effects from three party members in FF12

[Wolf Kanno]

Four is my preferred number as I feel it gives the best variety and I tend to find the game systems associated with three-party teams to be flawed more than others. With that said, I generally don't really care I just have a preference to four but its not exactly a deal breaker if it is more or less.

As for XII having four people, in early development they actually wanted you to build larger teams by teaming up with numerous Hunter NPCs to take down Mark Hunts but eventually got scrapped most likely because as VeloZer0 mentioned, the game engine couldn't handle it.

[Depression Moon]

Dang, you just left out 5. You know there was a game that had five and I'm go with that one.

[Ayen]

Four because I like having as many party members as is possible. I never understood why they switched to three. They clearly had the ability to give you four party members in XII, but chose to reserve that slot for guests which annoyed me.
Yes, but then with a guest you would have had 5. And seeing as the engine couldn't even handle the spell effects from three party members in FF12

I would have happily done away with guest characters altogether in favor of four controllable party members.

[Tetra Master]

As previously mentioned, it depends on the amount of playable characters and leveling system. If x < 8, three is fine. If x > 8, four is more preferable for quicker leveling, which is also why some games have 3 instead of 4.

Although field > 4 is also nice, like Suikoden and FF4 for example. As long as the amount of characters doesn't botch the battling.

[VeloZer0]

I would have happily done away with guest characters altogether in favor of four controllable party members.
Of course in practice the only difference between party members and guests is the quality of AI they run on. :lol:

[Pumpkin]

Depends on the number of playable characters. Genreally I prefer 4, especially if there are 8+ characters

[Masamunemaster]

I like both, with three I have a healer mage and tank. With four I can be way more creative.

[Dat Matt]

In parties of 3 I have to forgo a designated black mage. So I prefer parties of 4

[Depression Moon]

Most of the games with in battle party sizes of 3 usually have everyone as jack of all trades which makes the battles more boring to me compared to job classes both predetermined and free choice.

VI was the only one with a 4 party jack of all trades crew, but not exactly as everyone had something that made them unique unlike in VII, VIII, and XII. I haven't played XIII yet so I don't know. I have a hunch that they're jack of all trades too.