Guild Wars Mini-Interview #55
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Q: Will the limit of a PvP team be extended into 10, or more? The recent bonus for the PvP winners seems to be a little. Is there any plan to increase the bonus again later on?
A: Right now we don't see a compelling reason to increase party size. The reasons that we chose 8 per party in the beginning are still legitimate now. You see, we wanted teams to be small enough to use complex and flexible strategies and to communicate well within the group. Large teams are pretty good for things like castle sieges, where the strategy is no more complex than ordering everyone to attack a wall. Smaller parties allow layered strategies. For instance, you might have the Elementalist casting a ranged attack while the Necromancer summons minions, the Mesmer debuffs the enemy, and the Warrior moves in for direct attack. When party sizes are large, it's just not possible to do that sort of elegant team member interaction.
The PvP reward system is definitely under analysis now. The early Faction system was put in place in response to player requests for different PvP rewards. We knew at the time of its incorporation into Guild Wars that we eventually would want to fine-tune the system to bring it more into line with our vision of the game and to better fulfill player expectations and desires. We're currently looking at the PvP system in many ways: skill balance, types of combat, rewards, time required for leveling, and more. It's a sure thing that Faction and other PvP rewards will be modified in a future update.
And for those who want a larger party size, there are other things that could be offered that I think would be as or more exciting. Consider things like alliances! If your party can ally with another, or with several others, you maintain the advantage of small-team strategy within the large-team system. Alliance would offer a "best of both worlds" situation.
