8 player; co-op or pvp?

[Squamata]

So me and my friends are getting the game, and we were curious about the 8 player. My friend who played the original thinks its part of the pvp, and most of the screenshots are 4 people.

Is this like Red Solstice where having less than 8 people will make the game way harder?

[bassisafish]

It's 8 player co-op, but the game is balanced around 4 player so it's actually a little too easy if you go with a full party.

[VerySaneChi]

8 player is an option for the lobby size, when creating a game you can choose between 4 or 8 players as the lobby size limit, both able to play either the pvp modes or the co-op campaigns. I didn't have too much difficulty with only 2 people on the first few levels on normal, was somewhat hard given lack of playtime but should be expected with only 2 players somewhat new and low level in-game. With a group of 5 we were able to keep up fairly well and do okay on Hard even though about half of us were starting from level one with only 1 or 2 of the group higher from the previous bit of playing the first campaign.

Normal difficulty, and probably atleast hard of the higher level difficulties seem like they're balanced towards a group of 4 as the original played, I haven't played anything higher than hard, nor had enough people for a proper 8 man group yet with my friends, but it's probably something that either will have maybe specific campaigns balanced around or, more likely in my opinion, the higher difficulties balanced towards, if anything is balanced to 8 player.

[Char Dunois]

The chaos that generally ensues in 8 player co-op more than balances out the "easier" difficulty. And considering there's no dedicated server, player latencies are going to be all over the place, and it's a lot more difficult to kick someone if anyone happens to be AFK.