I like the 4-man team, mostly because it's a neat and tidy way to represent all 4 elements.

I think they should do what ever is best for game design. Though I do like having more dudes with me as well as the support. I guess they could give the support more lines to say. Really what makes the game the most fun, interesting and challenging is nice. Though at the same time I don't think other characters should be punished for not being used.

Also maybe don't give me a cool but sort of useless character to the player the third to last dungeon.

Also I'd like to see two other characters that are dating in a relationship. I know it's off topic, but I think that would be interesting to have in the party. I don't know, perhaps their abilities and persona could be based around that.

I like the idea of having one support character, but if they could expand the role, that'd be great. As it stands, they don't really do much.

3 man team, but you can swap out playable characters mid-battle. Your whole crew rolls with you when you enter a dungeon, but only 3 can be used in a battle during a round. You can swap a character with another but you lose that characters turn to do so.

@PenguinDust said:

3 man team, but you can swap out playable characters mid-battle. Your whole crew rolls with you when you enter a dungeon, but only 3 can be used in a battle during a round. You can swap a character with another but you lose that characters turn to do so.

Basically, Final Fantasy X's combat system with one less character?

@FluxWaveZ: Perhaps, I just hate having to warp back to hub-zones to switch out party members for leveling. I don't like the idea of characters you don't play getting experience points equal to the ones you do. I do think you need to play a character for them to earn XP. Anything that allows me to keep going without having to backtrack works for me. Keep the game moving forward, that's all I ask.

American Constitution

I'd like them to, and am pretty confident they will, change things up for the new game. I don't want them to just remake persona 4 with a new story. Some more strategy in party composition would be nice, other than having them all be one of each of the elements.

@PenguinDust said:

3 man team, but you can swap out playable characters mid-battle. Your whole crew rolls with you when you enter a dungeon, but only 3 can be used in a battle during a round. You can swap a character with another but you lose that characters turn to do so.

Basically, Final Fantasy X's combat system with one less character?

If Persona 5 is narratively anything like Catherine, I'll play it. So uh, E.

Without talking about the tone (because of that is a completely different topic, along with story elements from the entire series) the way that each of the games did party size was also aligned with how they could use Personas. Although one thing to note about the story style is, as someone else mentioned, that P1 and the P2 Duology were stories where the characters didn't have the luxury of going through events over a year, but they had to go and take care of business during that instant, usually within the span of a week. Everything hit the floor and they had to go, which made for a different type of story.

In the first two you had a five man band set for the entire game, but each character could use multiple Persona, which let them choose skillsets and cover weaknesses/strengths. There was a lot of customization in that aspect, but their stats were predetermined. The games were also a lot harder, with this being one of the reasons why. (They also were grindy as hell too).

In P3/P4 you had a diverse pool of characters and each had a very different set of skills, but you could chose between them to suit your playstyle. It also allowed for more personalities and interaction between them. I think that because there were only 4 characters, and 3 had set Personas they made it a bit easier.

A way to fix the fact that your out of battle members weren't leveling is to use the system that Chrono Trigger did. I believe in Chrono Trigger, out of battle members gained xp at 70% of the rate that in battle members did, so they at least were in the same ranges, when you picked them back up for a spell.

To be frank, I also have a problem with how people perceive that P2 has the same battle system as P1. P2 is basically the gateway to P3. It removes the grid system and allows everyone to target any enemy. It still doesn't have all out attacks or make weaknesses knock back (though I would argue that weakness is more important in P2 than in P1), but it does have fusion attacks (which were OP). I think it only is really "annoying" because of the random battles.

I was torn between 4 and 5 member parties, but ultimately leaned towards the 5. Personally, I think it would be cool if they pulled a Chrono Cross (or Suikoden) and had an enormous list of characters that you could pack into your party. Some would obviously be essential, but I'd like it if the majority were optional. Maybe have that be the way social links play into the game. After they reach a certain tier, you can just recruit that character outright. Just a rough idea really, but I think it could be fun if done well.

I don't know, I'm at a crossroads. It's an RPG, so there's supposed to be a lot of characters, and Persona has good characters, but I've always hated in an RPG how the whole cast is standing there, then as soon as a battle occurs, all but 3 or 4 people disappear into the ether.

The problem with P4's style IMO is that when I played even though I kind of wantwed to sub in Teddie, Kanji, or Naoto I wouldn't because first 4 were just to high level wise that it would hamper my play.

@LikeaSsur said:

I don't know, I'm at a crossroads. It's an RPG, so there's supposed to be a lot of characters, and Persona has good characters, but I've always hated in an RPG how the whole cast is standing there, then as soon as a battle occurs, all but 3 or 4 people disappear into the ether.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I think it would be interesting if an RPG changed your party limit based on the mission you're on and adjusted the gameplay balance and narrative stuff like cutscenes accordingly. A lot of SRPGs do that already.

The amount of good ideas here suggests that there is definitely room for improvement with the core system. I do, however, lean in the direction of supporting a 4 man team.

Why?

• Having 4 people in the team covers the 4 basic elements, allowing for casual players to stick with a core group and not worry about covering all the bases.
• Having fewer people in your party invites opportunity costs, which is a core element of good game design. You want more slots and that's a good thing. You have to make choices to be successful (in P4 you're essentially given the choice of generalists vs specialists when choosing between the base party and your alternatives - which is a good thing).
• Fewer people means the game has a more easily managed economy. Getting ultimate weapons and godly robes for my core group on my first playthrough of P4:G was all the time I was willing to spend.

As to whether we need a support character or not, *shrug*. I liked Teddy a lot but hated Rise - it depends on the writing, the voice acting and the mechanics of said support character. To me, at least, having Rise's final persona ability was pretty useful in P4:G.

Anyway, if you were to ask me on what I'd like to see changed it'd be a development of the hotsprings system in P4:G and the improved s-link skill progression system as well. When you rank up, you can choose their next skill or the s-link skill - with meaningful choices along the way (for example, do you want Heat Riser OR Mind Charge? Masukukaja OR Masukunda? etc)

Aside from that, having a single persona per party member (which evolves) makes sense to me from a storytelling perspective, and should stay.