I was able to obtain an excerpt from a preliminary VR Dev meeting on group sizing:
Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
We have talked a lot about soloing versus full
group content. I'm wondering how much can be done by pairs of players or
half sized groups? Of course it depends on what they try to fight,
level, gear, skill, and so on. But I mean generally speaking, can we
expect to enjoy some content with smaller teams, even if it is just xp
grinding?
Depends really.
Assuming that Pantheon is mostly like Vanguard:
You can manage any solo content in groups. You'll just kill faster. Thats not dungeons though.
For dungeons you might a more specific group setup, i.e. tank and healer.
However when the level of the dungeon gets higher you might need a cc to manage the extra mobs, otherwise the tank might have a too hard time keeping mobs on him instead of the healer. Unlike Vanguard, tanks and healers and damage classes arent supposed to have much cc.
When you get even higher level, dungeons will start to really require a second healer to split heal aggro, and/or more damage dealers in order to kill quickly enough so you dont have to handle the respawn.
Certain classes could solo really well in Vanguard. For example Dread Knight, assuming you had good gear, Disciple who had much less gear constraints, and Necromancer, who could still be very effective in rags. Those and a couple others could actually attempt to solo dungeons - at least on lower levels.
I start to quickly forgetting names of places in Vanguard now, but there was for example one famous dungeon in the middle of the south of Qalia (the southern african/desert themed continent) which was a castle on the hill. At level 45 I came there on my tank (Dread Knight) and had a really hard time grouping there. At level 55 in raid gear I returned for a certain specific questline and soloed the place easily (albeit I still tried to avoid as many mobs as possible since killing still would take time). I dont think I still got any xp for killing, though.
Comments
Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Assuming that Pantheon is mostly like Vanguard:
You can manage any solo content in groups. You'll just kill faster. Thats not dungeons though.
For dungeons you might a more specific group setup, i.e. tank and healer.
However when the level of the dungeon gets higher you might need a cc to manage the extra mobs, otherwise the tank might have a too hard time keeping mobs on him instead of the healer. Unlike Vanguard, tanks and healers and damage classes arent supposed to have much cc.
When you get even higher level, dungeons will start to really require a second healer to split heal aggro, and/or more damage dealers in order to kill quickly enough so you dont have to handle the respawn.
Certain classes could solo really well in Vanguard. For example Dread Knight, assuming you had good gear, Disciple who had much less gear constraints, and Necromancer, who could still be very effective in rags. Those and a couple others could actually attempt to solo dungeons - at least on lower levels.
I start to quickly forgetting names of places in Vanguard now, but there was for example one famous dungeon in the middle of the south of Qalia (the southern african/desert themed continent) which was a castle on the hill. At level 45 I came there on my tank (Dread Knight) and had a really hard time grouping there. At level 55 in raid gear I returned for a certain specific questline and soloed the place easily (albeit I still tried to avoid as many mobs as possible since killing still would take time). I dont think I still got any xp for killing, though.