Tuning Flashpoints and Heroic missions based on the number of people in the group rather than making the mission a static difficulty (so instead of seeing a Heroic2, Heroic2+ or Heroic4, you just see a "Heroic" mission, where there are more/harder mobs if you have more players or higher level players) is something that has been suggested a few times - it would even allow for solo players or players on low-pop servers to get involved, if the Heroic content for a solo player is slightly harder (say 30-50%) than the normal Storyline missions.

However, it introduces its own balance issues, so I guess Bioware has steered away from the idea.

However, as OP was looking specifically at Flashpoints (which could accomodate that scaling idea) and HM content (which cannot, because HM content is for lvl 50's only), the idea only solves half of his problem.

I don't care for the 4 player limit myself. I was a long time CoH player and I really miss 8 man teams.

 

The 4 man team is unnaturally constricting. There's only 1 correct format for a flashpoint and that is 1 tank, 2dps and 1 healer. This is especially true for HM flashpoints with their enrage timers (another lazy design choice in my opinion). The problem is, on most servers, 50% of the population is not DPS and I can almost guarantee that 1 in 4 people are not healers on any server. I'm on a medium pop server and I've tried to run tonnes of HMs which never get off the ground because we can't find a healer or (more rarely but still often) that 1 last damage dealer.

 

I can imagine some people are asking "why don't you just join a guild?" Well the 4 man team is also harmful to guilds run FP as well. Look at a list of 8 random guild members. Can you put 2 FP teams together out of them? I'm not going to say it'll never happen but the odds are against it. So even though you could make 2 FP teams, you'll only have the right combination of players to make 1 viable even in a guild unless it's a particularly large guild. Even then, it's likely some people are going to get left out which is kind of contrary to the whole point of joining a guild. Or playing an MMO in the first place.

 

I also find it makes FP's kind of stale. There's only 1 strategy involved, tank holds agro, Damage dealers damage deal, healer keeps tank alive. Sure there are different tactics for each boss battle, but they're just a variation on this theme. Larger teams let you play with different strategies. What about 4 damage dealers and 2 healers desperately trying to keep the alive? Or 2 tanks trading agro while 3 damage dealers race to take the boss down before he kills one of the tanks? Or a team of 8 shadows and scoundrels, carefully using hit and run tactics knowing if they stealth too soon the boss resets, but i they're too slow their team mate dies? Would any of these be viable? I'm not sure. But they could be fun to try. And at least it'd be different.

 

TL:DR? Go back and read it! If you had time to scroll to the end you have time to read it.

I've done stuff with none optimal group. Player skill trumps all.

Tuning Flashpoints and Heroic missions based on the number of people in the group rather than making the mission a static difficulty (so instead of seeing a Heroic2, Heroic2+ or Heroic4, you just see a "Heroic" mission, where there are more/harder mobs if you have more players or higher level players) is something that has been suggested a few times - it would even allow for solo players or players on low-pop servers to get involved, if the Heroic content for a solo player is slightly harder (say 30-50%) than the normal Storyline missions.

However, it introduces its own balance issues, so I guess Bioware has steered away from the idea.

 

However, as OP was looking specifically at Flashpoints (which could accomodate that scaling idea) and HM content (which cannot, because HM content is for lvl 50's only), the idea only solves half of his problem.

I remember seeing this option in LOTRO. You can scale down some instances that fall into their Skirmish Category(1, 2, 3, 6, 12, and 24 i think). It is possible and to my knowledge not that difficult to implement, only problem is that many heroics here aren't instanced, so scaling it may be a problem, but for the heroics that are in a phase, it shouldn't be that difficult to implement. And the same will go for FP's (both HM and NM), as long as they are instanced, I do not see why they cannot be balanced according to the group size. Since we have seen in other games that this is possible, I see no reason why they steered away from it.

For a game that embraces the Holy Trinity - I'd like to see 3-man groups myself.

1 tank

1 healer

1 dps

Now if we are actually going to get away from the Trinity system of roles - I'm far more open to larger group sizes. Until then, I'm perfectly fine with weighting the roles as close to possible in responsibility.

I've seen people complain that it's so easy to carry DPS, yet they want to make group sizes so large that they are mostly made up of DPS slots. Well - how about we just make a group with less DPS, so there is no way to carry them. They either know how to DPS or well, it's blatantly obvious.