Originally Posted by Disquette
So, while you could make a 40 man encounter feel like a 5 man (as described above), you can't make a 5 man feel like a 40 man if they were both pushed to their limits.
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Again: not even if there
are 40 people in the 5-man encounter -- just with 35 (or more!) of them being NPCs that are largely under the control of or influenced by the actual players?
Imagine this: you're at the head of a small army. You're a warrior (but not the MT). A task force is fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with you. Whenever you enter Defensive stance, they form a (literal) shield wall and hold their ground; when you're doing this, the NPC healers can reasonably top most of them off. Whenever you enter Battle stance, they use a mixed fighting style, doing more damage on average but also taking more, and moving forward slowly. Whenever you enter Berzerker stance, shield gets slung across their back and both hands go on the axe, and they rush forward in a mad zerg.
You're not controlling them
exactly, but they're reacting to what you do. And in any event, you actually
are in the thick of
mass combat. There's tons of allies around you, doing stuff -- just as many performing "based on" your 4 teammates as are based on you.
(Like, we've all seen metrics from WWS regarding how much a healer spreads their heals out rather than focusing on individual heal targets; imagine if the behavior of the NPC healers roughly tracked your real healer with regard to that behavior. And imagine a squad of bowmen focusing their fire as well as your actual ranged DPS do, on average, or maybe approxiamately copying shot rotation.)
Does the mere fact that, for example, the extras don't engage in banter on Vent, does that actually prevent the epic feel that you claim you got by seeing more people?