The usual 4 or a zelda type?

[Dredge]

What option is more popular? 

a) using 4 guys
using 1 guy 
 

 

[GraveBusta]

Both game styles had their perks but I am gona have to go with solo link, reason why the gba 4 swords was a money sucking fiasco one of nintendo's greed schemes

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

How about going with 2?

Anyway, using 1 is easier from a dev perspective as it will make balancing easier since there will be limited possibilities compared to using 4

as a player, I don't really care how many characters there are. As long as it works with your game and your story.

 

[GraveBusta]

How about going with 2?

Anyway, using 1 is easier from a dev perspective as it will make balancing easier since there will be limited possibilities compared to using 4

as a player, I don't really care how many characters there are. As long as it works with your game and your story.

That is true AI is very time consuming.

 

[Wavelength]

1 tends to suck in the standard battle system.  There are ways to make it not suck, but in general it takes more design chops than making a party battle not suck.

I consider 3 the sweet spot for most RPGs.  2 is not bad either.  If you take care to make the system (e.g. selecting skills) very quick, you can get away with 4-6.

 

[Kes]

My limited experience of single player is that it is very limiting when it comes to strategy, and working out the strategic choices in battle is one of the things I enjoy.  Therefore I would go for a larger party.  It also does open up more possibilities of story; and as for dialogue - there is only so much talking to oneself that one can do.  Though, of course, if there is no story because of the genre, then that is not a problem.

 

[Tarsus]

The number of player characters should be determined by the battle system you use.

Action type, you are best with 1, unless you want to build a full AI system.

Default or similar you should go with 3-5, I prefer 3

Tactics you can go 3-8 but some tactics games go as high as 10 or 12.

The biggest thing is balancing your story with the battle system, if you only have 2 or 3 major plot characters you will struggle with systems that use 4 battlers or more.

 

[Matseb2611]

1 works fine for an action battle system that has on-map combat.

For anything turn-based, it's 4 all the way (or any number greater than 1!). As Ksjp17 said, you limit the battle strategy way too much if it's just 1 person in the party. Even worse if you have to fight multiple enemies. It is not fun to only be able to attack one enemy at a time (or waste the turn healing), whilst enemies hit you 2 or 3 times per turn.

Edit: Ninja'd.