Besides, you can still play with three friends at the same time. And now trading will be made easier, you'll still be able to share your loot with other friends. Gee, the player cap has just been halved, it's not like they removed co-op all together. As far as real cooperative play goes, there will be a lot more of it in D3 than in D2.
1) In D2 the only thing I (and many others) did actually together with more than 2 people was cow runs (where still most would wander off alone) and sometimes things like baal runs etc. Basically endgame stuff. I have never ever played through the entire game with more than two friends.
So what about people like myself who actually got a group of people together or logged online at the same time so we could have a co-operative experience? Just because you never did something like that doesn't mean that people never did it. Yes, if you were playing a random multiplayer game chances are you were not going to get any sort of cohesive co-operative play, but you can't force people to play through the game with you. Just because you might not use it, why would you want to restrict others from having the option? In fact, if people run away and do there own thing most of the time anyway, that would mean that there would be less strain with the multitude of spell effects and "lag".
2) Now I also play some online games regularly together with around 6 real life friends. The thing is though, that they are never online at the same time, so the party size varies. Hence, a cap of 4 will often be enough for me. There will be some occasions when more people are online though, but then you'll just have to split up in groups (depending on character level/quest progression). The new battle.net will allow for more flexibility in joining each others' adventures, so it should be easy to cope for that. I think my online experience will be a lot nicer than with the usually useless 8 player cap from d2, which only served a purpose in relatively dull endgame activities.
I don't want to split up into groups. Is that too much to ask? Okay, relatively speaking 5-6 player cap is good enough for me and I feel there would be a lot less complaints if it was 5-6 players (I don't think people would use the 7-8 players cap much, like you said) It actually makes the split loot system in D3 better for this co-op style because of the "fastest clicker wins" system in D2 that just made it unfair (and yet sometimes funny) for people to get the lion's share of the loot.
Oh yeah, and a lot of people do like the story of Diablo. Me, personally, I gave up with after those forced runs you are basically required to do to level up. Could not be bothered with them, I just liked playing through the game. A lot of others feel the same way, I think. You also can't say for certain right now if there will even be more co-op play in D3 than in D2. We haven't really seen anything to encourage it more. In fact, followers being only in single-player might encourage people to experience single player Normal just to see a feature they are never going to get in multiplayer.
In fact, followers being only in single-player might encourage people to experience single player Normal just to see a feature they are never going to get in multiplayer.
I must admit I have also considered this. It doesn't have to be too bad though.. It will give you something extra when none of your usual friends are online or when they are doing something else (e.g. some quests you've done already). I just mean, if you play a lot, there will be some occasions when you're alone, and then it might be nice to have the follower system to compensate for the lack of team mates.
As for how they encourage people to cooperate, I remember several quotes that the difficulty level will increase a lot when someone joins, so you will be forced to actually work together. I won't belive this until I see it, but I really hope it will be true. This is also one of the reasons why I'm okay with the 4 player cap: with more players the chance increases that some people don't cooperate and then your team is (should be) screwed because you won't be able to defeat the monsters easily.
So basically I hope the 4 player cap will lead to perfectly balanced gameplay, which will force people to play cooperatively.
With Battle.net I don't see a reason why they should have kept 8 player parties.
Break your group in two and create a part chat.
You can't honestly try and make me believe seeing absolutely nothing in a fight with 8 players spamming skills is more enjoyable than 4 players spamming skills and you knowing what is going on....
I don't think people are understanding our point. We aren't saying raise the party cap to 8 like all of you are consistently talking about, we are saying raising it at most a couple. Many of us have more than 3 friends we would like to play with at any point in time, and I feel like we should have the choice to do so. Blizzard has stated that the optimal group number is 4, and that's good to know. They can recommend that we play at this number, but I think it's rather unfair to enforce it especially since adding one or two more players would also create an enjoyable experience (which is what their ultimate goal is for gaming!) I think people are simplifying the problem to this:
This formulation is not correct, and I would guess that the level of fun and balance follows more of a normal distribution.
And, for those of you who insist on playing with 4 players total only, there should be a function where you can just cap your game at 4 instead of at a potential max of 5 or 6.
One thing I haven't thought about until just now.. I think the player cap of 4 will help cut down on autojoin spambots and leeches, who just join games to solo with +players. Since games are small, they will fill up quickly.
Also, you have to admit.. Any more than 4 people in a game and it gets really hard to organize and play together without wow-like strategics. Me + 3 feels about right. Any more than that and things would be tedious cause you'll always have that one kid.. Unless you have 4 other close friends, then I feel you, 5 would be great, but sorry, you're a real corner case.
As for graphical lag, that argument is straight bunk. Quite clearly, the system requirements of this game are extremely low by today's standards. If Blizzard can't have more than 4 ppl on screen casting without gameplay biting it, that's just optimization failure in their 3d engine, nothing more. I mean, I just finished my first playthrough of The Witcher 2, and that's the bar for today's graphics. That game is freaking gorgeous, and sent my Ati 4870 to 75 degrees in 10 seconds. D3 isn't even in the same decade, graphics wise.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
And, for those of you who insist on playing with 4 players total only, there should be a function where you can just cap your game at 4 instead of at a potential max of 5 or 6.
Yes. Please give us an argument for why they couldn't do this. I don't understand why they couldn't, please someone explain to us.
It just seems lazy. As Dolaiim said, graphical lag is irrelevant because of low system requirements or bad development (which I will say that Blizzard would definitely not do).
And, for those of you who insist on playing with 4 players total only, there should be a function where you can just cap your game at 4 instead of at a potential max of 5 or 6.
Yes. Please give us an argument for why they couldn't do this. I don't understand why they couldn't, please someone explain to us.
So I definitely feel your pain here. Luckily for me I only have 3 friends.
Their reasoning is that it's a slippery slope. They are designing the game to be optimal with 4 people. So if they bow to pressure and say, "ok, we'll do 5" then people we say "what the hell, just one more! I has 5 friends!" then it's up to 6, then 7.... where does it end? They have to draw the line somewhere and they drew it at 4 because Blizzard thinks they know what we want better than we do, and we have to afford the possibility that perhaps they do.
I happen to agree with 4 ppl. And I gotta say, the people who REALLY want to play with 5+ are vocal, but ultimately a small minority of the overall population.
Edit: My reasoning behind the "small minority" statement is this: They are targeting this game for a wide audience, and their design choices have put the casual gamer, who's new to the franchise, in front of the hardcore Diablo veteran. They have to make this game fun for everyone, and let's face it.. veterans are a minority when compared with the full scope of Blizzard's target audience.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
Their reasoning is that it's a slippery slope. They are designing the game to be optimal with 4 people. So if they bow to pressure and say, "ok, we'll do 5" then people we say "what the hell, just one more! I has 5 friends!" then it's up to 6, then 7.... where does it end? They have to draw the line somewhere and they drew it at 4 because Blizzard thinks they know what we want better than we do, and we have to afford the possibility that perhaps they do.
It ends, when the game doesn't mathematically make sense anymore. That is, you have the number of players, their actions, the rate of their actions, the monsters and their actions, rate of actions (also health, quantity, DPS, etc.), and when you compile everything to the point where the gameplay falls apart, then you have found the end. Take this also in conjunction with gameplay visual limits such as people saying that it looks to confusing after a while, and together you should be able to come up with a hard cut-off number of players. Within this hard cut-off number, you will have an optimal number of players, and that number is four. Since the maximum contains the optimal, the optimal cannot be the maximum.
So I definitely feel your pain here. Luckily for me I only have 3 friends.
Their reasoning is that it's a slippery slope. They are designing the game to be optimal with 4 people. So if they bow to pressure and say, "ok, we'll do 5" then people we say "what the hell, just one more! I has 5 friends!" then it's up to 6, then 7.... where does it end? They have to draw the line somewhere and they drew it at 4 because Blizzard thinks they know what we want better than we do, and we have to afford the possibility that perhaps they do.
I happen to agree with 4 ppl. And I gotta say, the people who REALLY want to play with 5+ are vocal, but ultimately a small minority of the overall population.
Edit: My reasoning behind the "small minority" statement is this: They are targeting this game for a wide audience, and their design choices have put the casual gamer, who's new to the franchise, in front of the hardcore Diablo veteran. They have to make this game fun for everyone, and let's face it.. veterans are a minority when compared with the full scope of Blizzard's target audience.
It's not really because I personally have a desire to have 5 or 6 people in a game - I would feel the same way if I was most of the time playing in 3 or 4 player games (which honestly I do most of the time, but I do occasionally play with more) but it is just not possible from what we've heard so far.
I'm not sure about your 'small minority' - look at the amount of people in this thread, and just generally around who have a problem with this player cap.
It's not like I'm not going to buy the game, I am going to and enjoy it, but this is sort a disappointment to me and others.
Kelsper, if they do this someone could play for the first time and think hey more is better, so he joins a 6 player game. He plays for 20 minutes, the first 10 not being able to see a thing and the other players killed everything for him, the next 10 minutes is spent with one other guy (which is really difficult because it's set to 6 players, so he dies many times) all because the other guys got sick of straining their eyes so they went off to do their own thing.
So the new guy has a terrible experience and never plays multiplayer again.
Kelsper, if they do this someone could play for the first time and think hey more is better, so he joins a 6 player game. He plays for 20 minutes, the first 10 not being able to see a thing and the other players killed everything for him, the next 10 minutes is spent with one other guy (which is really difficult because it's set to 6 players, so he dies many times) all because the other guys got sick of straining their eyes so they went off to do their own thing.
So the new guy has a terrible experience and never plays multiplayer again.
1. If they join a game already in progress they will always have that problem of other players killing stuff. No way around this.
2. This could happen in a 4 player game just as much as a 6 player game. In a four player game, all four go off to do their own thing in basically solo, just as much as you could have parties of 2s in a 6 player game.
3. They could have easily got around this "difficulty" thing by... for example, instead of increasing difficulty for the entire world when another person enters, increase the difficulty for the area when a person enters an area of the map. Wouldn't that solve the issue? (for example, 3 people in Alcarnus or whatever, 2 off doing their own thing, but Alcarnus is still set a 3-player difficulty therefore manageable!)
It ends, when the game doesn't mathematically make sense anymore. That is, you have the number of players, their actions, the rate of their actions, the monsters and their actions, rate of actions (also health, quantity, DPS, etc.), and when you compile everything to the point where the gameplay falls apart, then you have found the end.
Take this also in conjunction with gameplay visual limits such as people saying that it looks to confusing after a while, and together you should be able to come up with a hard cut-off number of players. Within this hard cut-off number, you will have an optimal number of players, and that number is four. Since the maximum contains the optimal, the optimal cannot be the maximum.
THUS, the maximum should be five or six
I think you're making a big assumption here. This "funfactor" plot ("Fun" on the y-axis, "Player Count" on x-axis) is not necessarily a Gaussian curve. It very well may be that 4 is super fun, and 5 is a fustercluck mess. You can't explain Van Gogh with differential equations.
I'm not sure about your 'small minority' - look at the amount of people in this thread, and just generally around who have a problem with this player cap.
So from what I can tell, there's a subset of hardcore fans on a fansite who want more than 4 players.
Do you realize that the hardcore fanbase who follows the development of this game is a VERY small subset of the total target customer demographic? Now it may be that 4 players will generally be rejected by all people who buy the game. But you can't cite a tiny sample size of players, who do not necessarily represent the more broad user base, and say your opinion is canon.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
So from what I can tell, there's a subset of hardcore fans on a fansite who want more than 4 players.
Do you realize that the hardcore fanbase who follows the development of this game is a VERY small subset of the total target customer demographic? Now it may be that 4 players will generally be rejected by all people who buy the game. But you can't cite a tiny sample size of players, who do not necessarily represent the more broad user base, and say your opinion is canon.
I'm honestly not. I think it's cool that people like to keep their groups small at 3-4 players. But even in the broad scheme for the whole customer market, some people who are not "in-the-loop" for the games development are still going to be questioning this design choice and indeed have even less of a clue since they don't know why or what the developers have stated for this decision.
It comes down to players don't realize whats for their own good.
There is a major balance issue with having say 8 players, the game would not be fun any more if your group is flailing on a monster for 10 minutes to kill it because it has 1000% more HP, ( yes ive said that before, but apparently people like to ignore me)
Its no longer a hack and slash rpg, its a spam spells until this tank of a monster dies, because it has hp increase because there are so many players in the game, and if they didn't have major increase in monster HP then it would be way too easy, your group would chew through monsters like mushy bread and they wouldn't even stand a chance, and again wouldn't be a hack and slash rpg anymore.
That being said, I see no reason not to increase it to 5 XD nothing wrong with odd number of people, especially since there are 5 character classes, were going to be missing out on the whole 1 of each character in the group experience, rare as it may be.
It comes down to players don't realize whats for their own good.
There is a major balance issue with having say 8 players, the game would not be fun any more if your group is flailing on a monster for 10 minutes to kill it because it has 1000% more HP, ( yes ive said that before, but apparently people like to ignore me)
Its no longer a hack and slash rpg, its a spam spells until this tank of a monster dies, because it has hp increase because there are so many players in the game, and if they didn't have major increase in monster HP then it would be way too easy, your group would chew through monsters like mushy bread and they wouldn't even stand a chance, and again wouldn't be a hack and slash rpg anymore.
I know you don't. But Blizzard does, and they've actually played the game.
And that's why anyone who has a problem with the player cap doesn't have a leg to stand on. Now, if you get into Beta and get a chance to play through, and still have a gripe, then (and only then) will I hear you out. I'm not saying Bliz is God and knows all, I'm saying they are holding all the cards, so they're the only one that can have a truly informed opinion.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
It's like people said before, they have to draw the line somewhere. If it was 3, people would ask for 4, and if it was 5, they would ask for 6. Apparently they went for 4, and apparently that works.
Besides, and this is just subjective, I think 4 players 'feels good'. 5 is a crowd...
Just so you know, I would not ask for 6 if we got 5. I think 6 would be manageable, but I think it would be fine if they kept it at five. The people you described are just people who are never satisfied.
And I (hopefully) will play the beta, yet I foresee that I will probably be saying the same things, which you seem to just find "you're not Blizzard, so you don't understand."
To be honest Blizzard are losing my faith in them, specifically by the way they're treating the Diablo franchise as the alienated one at this point and time, and with some disappointments like the followers system only in singleplayer, the talisman taken out, lack of information and the facebook last reward being so pathetic.
I think the problem may be that it's not that Blizzard can't technically allow more than 4 players, but that the game is balanced for up to 4 players. From what I'm aware, Diablo II had a kind of zerg effect when 8 players were present, and they want to avoid that. To prevent that they need to balance the game for a 5, 6, 7, 8 player scenario and they may have found that it's too cumbersome to balance beyond that point due to redundancy and the like. The amount of permutations in an 8-player situation is huge, + add any new classes from expansions. And providing options for subpar gameplay isn't really Blizzard's thing. It may give some more freedom but it may also constrict freedom where people would prefer larger groups because certain combinations become OP with large groups.
Overall, I like the 4 character limit if that is what it needs to be for good balance. Zerg fests are not my thing and there will always be friends who do not fit in the group. You could have 8 friends for a 4 player Diablo III game or 11 friends for a 10 player LoL game...
4-5 is not an arbitrary difference. It's a permutations multiplier.
And I (hopefully) will play the beta, yet I foresee that I will probably be saying the same things, which you seem to just find "you're not Blizzard, so you don't understand."
What I meant here was that I will believe people who have actually experienced the gameplay. It so happens that only Blizzard has experienced the gamete of gameplay so they're our only empirical source at the moment. The exception is people who've played at Blizcon. You could raise the point that it's hard to be objective about a project from the inside, and I would definitely agree with you, so their opinion is not canon either.. it's just backed up by evidence through experience.
Overall I've been pretty vocal in my theoretical disapproval of certain Bliz design choices, thus my theoretical opinions are open to the same criticism I'm giving here.
But basically what Equinox said. You're dealing with exponential variance here, so going from 4 to 5 players is not at all the same as going from 1 to 2.
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"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions."
-Thomas Jefferson
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Besides, you can still play with three friends at the same time. And now trading will be made easier, you'll still be able to share your loot with other friends. Gee, the player cap has just been halved, it's not like they removed co-op all together. As far as real cooperative play goes, there will be a lot more of it in D3 than in D2.
So what about people like myself who actually got a group of people together or logged online at the same time so we could have a co-operative experience? Just because you never did something like that doesn't mean that people never did it. Yes, if you were playing a random multiplayer game chances are you were not going to get any sort of cohesive co-operative play, but you can't force people to play through the game with you. Just because you might not use it, why would you want to restrict others from having the option? In fact, if people run away and do there own thing most of the time anyway, that would mean that there would be less strain with the multitude of spell effects and "lag".
I don't want to split up into groups. Is that too much to ask? Okay, relatively speaking 5-6 player cap is good enough for me and I feel there would be a lot less complaints if it was 5-6 players (I don't think people would use the 7-8 players cap much, like you said) It actually makes the split loot system in D3 better for this co-op style because of the "fastest clicker wins" system in D2 that just made it unfair (and yet sometimes funny) for people to get the lion's share of the loot.
Oh yeah, and a lot of people do like the story of Diablo. Me, personally, I gave up with after those forced runs you are basically required to do to level up. Could not be bothered with them, I just liked playing through the game. A lot of others feel the same way, I think. You also can't say for certain right now if there will even be more co-op play in D3 than in D2. We haven't really seen anything to encourage it more. In fact, followers being only in single-player might encourage people to experience single player Normal just to see a feature they are never going to get in multiplayer.
As for how they encourage people to cooperate, I remember several quotes that the difficulty level will increase a lot when someone joins, so you will be forced to actually work together. I won't belive this until I see it, but I really hope it will be true. This is also one of the reasons why I'm okay with the 4 player cap: with more players the chance increases that some people don't cooperate and then your team is (should be) screwed because you won't be able to defeat the monsters easily.
So basically I hope the 4 player cap will lead to perfectly balanced gameplay, which will force people to play cooperatively.
Break your group in two and create a part chat.
You can't honestly try and make me believe seeing absolutely nothing in a fight with 8 players spamming skills is more enjoyable than 4 players spamming skills and you knowing what is going on....
1 Player = lame
2 Players = alright
3 Players = good
4 Players = optimal
5 Players = CRAP
6 Players = CRAP
7 Players = CRAP
8 Players = CRAP
.....
This formulation is not correct, and I would guess that the level of fun and balance follows more of a normal distribution.
And, for those of you who insist on playing with 4 players total only, there should be a function where you can just cap your game at 4 instead of at a potential max of 5 or 6.
This way, everyone is happy!
AK47's for everyone, HORAAYYY!
Also, you have to admit.. Any more than 4 people in a game and it gets really hard to organize and play together without wow-like strategics. Me + 3 feels about right. Any more than that and things would be tedious cause you'll always have that one kid.. Unless you have 4 other close friends, then I feel you, 5 would be great, but sorry, you're a real corner case.
As for graphical lag, that argument is straight bunk. Quite clearly, the system requirements of this game are extremely low by today's standards. If Blizzard can't have more than 4 ppl on screen casting without gameplay biting it, that's just optimization failure in their 3d engine, nothing more. I mean, I just finished my first playthrough of The Witcher 2, and that's the bar for today's graphics. That game is freaking gorgeous, and sent my Ati 4870 to 75 degrees in 10 seconds. D3 isn't even in the same decade, graphics wise.
-Thomas Jefferson
Yes. Please give us an argument for why they couldn't do this. I don't understand why they couldn't, please someone explain to us.
It just seems lazy. As Dolaiim said, graphical lag is irrelevant because of low system requirements or bad development (which I will say that Blizzard would definitely not do).
So I definitely feel your pain here. Luckily for me I only have 3 friends.
Their reasoning is that it's a slippery slope. They are designing the game to be optimal with 4 people. So if they bow to pressure and say, "ok, we'll do 5" then people we say "what the hell, just one more! I has 5 friends!" then it's up to 6, then 7.... where does it end? They have to draw the line somewhere and they drew it at 4 because Blizzard thinks they know what we want better than we do, and we have to afford the possibility that perhaps they do.
I happen to agree with 4 ppl. And I gotta say, the people who REALLY want to play with 5+ are vocal, but ultimately a small minority of the overall population.
Edit: My reasoning behind the "small minority" statement is this: They are targeting this game for a wide audience, and their design choices have put the casual gamer, who's new to the franchise, in front of the hardcore Diablo veteran. They have to make this game fun for everyone, and let's face it.. veterans are a minority when compared with the full scope of Blizzard's target audience.
-Thomas Jefferson
It ends, when the game doesn't mathematically make sense anymore. That is, you have the number of players, their actions, the rate of their actions, the monsters and their actions, rate of actions (also health, quantity, DPS, etc.), and when you compile everything to the point where the gameplay falls apart, then you have found the end. Take this also in conjunction with gameplay visual limits such as people saying that it looks to confusing after a while, and together you should be able to come up with a hard cut-off number of players. Within this hard cut-off number, you will have an optimal number of players, and that number is four. Since the maximum contains the optimal, the optimal cannot be the maximum.
THUS, the maximum should be five or six
It's not really because I personally have a desire to have 5 or 6 people in a game - I would feel the same way if I was most of the time playing in 3 or 4 player games (which honestly I do most of the time, but I do occasionally play with more) but it is just not possible from what we've heard so far.
I'm not sure about your 'small minority' - look at the amount of people in this thread, and just generally around who have a problem with this player cap.
It's not like I'm not going to buy the game, I am going to and enjoy it, but this is sort a disappointment to me and others.
So the new guy has a terrible experience and never plays multiplayer again.
1. If they join a game already in progress they will always have that problem of other players killing stuff. No way around this.
2. This could happen in a 4 player game just as much as a 6 player game. In a four player game, all four go off to do their own thing in basically solo, just as much as you could have parties of 2s in a 6 player game.
3. They could have easily got around this "difficulty" thing by... for example, instead of increasing difficulty for the entire world when another person enters, increase the difficulty for the area when a person enters an area of the map. Wouldn't that solve the issue? (for example, 3 people in Alcarnus or whatever, 2 off doing their own thing, but Alcarnus is still set a 3-player difficulty therefore manageable!)
I think you're making a big assumption here. This "funfactor" plot ("Fun" on the y-axis, "Player Count" on x-axis) is not necessarily a Gaussian curve. It very well may be that 4 is super fun, and 5 is a fustercluck mess. You can't explain Van Gogh with differential equations.
So from what I can tell, there's a subset of hardcore fans on a fansite who want more than 4 players.
Do you realize that the hardcore fanbase who follows the development of this game is a VERY small subset of the total target customer demographic? Now it may be that 4 players will generally be rejected by all people who buy the game. But you can't cite a tiny sample size of players, who do not necessarily represent the more broad user base, and say your opinion is canon.
-Thomas Jefferson
I'm honestly not. I think it's cool that people like to keep their groups small at 3-4 players. But even in the broad scheme for the whole customer market, some people who are not "in-the-loop" for the games development are still going to be questioning this design choice and indeed have even less of a clue since they don't know why or what the developers have stated for this decision.
But I feel we should have the option to choose.
There is a major balance issue with having say 8 players, the game would not be fun any more if your group is flailing on a monster for 10 minutes to kill it because it has 1000% more HP, ( yes ive said that before, but apparently people like to ignore me)
Its no longer a hack and slash rpg, its a spam spells until this tank of a monster dies, because it has hp increase because there are so many players in the game, and if they didn't have major increase in monster HP then it would be way too easy, your group would chew through monsters like mushy bread and they wouldn't even stand a chance, and again wouldn't be a hack and slash rpg anymore.
That being said, I see no reason not to increase it to 5 XD nothing wrong with odd number of people, especially since there are 5 character classes, were going to be missing out on the whole 1 of each character in the group experience, rare as it may be.
100% agree, this is a great point.
I know you don't. But Blizzard does, and they've actually played the game.
And that's why anyone who has a problem with the player cap doesn't have a leg to stand on. Now, if you get into Beta and get a chance to play through, and still have a gripe, then (and only then) will I hear you out. I'm not saying Bliz is God and knows all, I'm saying they are holding all the cards, so they're the only one that can have a truly informed opinion.
-Thomas Jefferson
Besides, and this is just subjective, I think 4 players 'feels good'. 5 is a crowd...
And I (hopefully) will play the beta, yet I foresee that I will probably be saying the same things, which you seem to just find "you're not Blizzard, so you don't understand."
To be honest Blizzard are losing my faith in them, specifically by the way they're treating the Diablo franchise as the alienated one at this point and time, and with some disappointments like the followers system only in singleplayer, the talisman taken out, lack of information and the facebook last reward being so pathetic.
It's just me, I guess.
Overall, I like the 4 character limit if that is what it needs to be for good balance. Zerg fests are not my thing and there will always be friends who do not fit in the group. You could have 8 friends for a 4 player Diablo III game or 11 friends for a 10 player LoL game...
4-5 is not an arbitrary difference. It's a permutations multiplier.
What I meant here was that I will believe people who have actually experienced the gameplay. It so happens that only Blizzard has experienced the gamete of gameplay so they're our only empirical source at the moment. The exception is people who've played at Blizcon. You could raise the point that it's hard to be objective about a project from the inside, and I would definitely agree with you, so their opinion is not canon either.. it's just backed up by evidence through experience.
Overall I've been pretty vocal in my theoretical disapproval of certain Bliz design choices, thus my theoretical opinions are open to the same criticism I'm giving here.
But basically what Equinox said. You're dealing with exponential variance here, so going from 4 to 5 players is not at all the same as going from 1 to 2.
-Thomas Jefferson