132 replies to this topic

[Daesu]

Da-Noob, on 06 August 2012 - 04:29 AM, said:

I don't know if I will miss the heroes / henchman but as an homage to Mhenlo they should have a bald, womanizing healer/monk type somewhere in either LA or Divinity's Reach

I'll second that.  I could have sworn he actually became more muscular as we progress through the campaigns and when Cynn wasn't around he prefers to stick around Nika.

Edited by Daesu, 06 August 2012 - 04:32 AM.

[Wookie4726]

Perhaps an NPC or various NPCs could be made available near random locations in zones who would "group" with you as long as you didn't bring them too far from home, maybe out of the zone or maybe even a certain distance from their spawn point? This would give some companionship and assistance to players without a party but would not become the single-player solo game GW1 became. Maybe the NPCs could be quite shy and wouldn't join you if you were already in a party of more than two players? Thoughts?

[SuLor]

No I won't miss them. Honestly I got sick of having an entourage following me around everywhere right at my heals. Man they are an overprotective bunch

[Daesu]

Wookie4726, on 06 August 2012 - 04:32 AM, said:

Perhaps an NPC or various NPCs could be made available near random locations in zones who would "group" with you as long as you didn't bring them too far from home, maybe out of the zone or maybe even a certain distance from their spawn point? This would give some companionship and assistance to players without a party but would not become the single-player solo game GW1 became. Maybe the NPCs could be quite shy and wouldn't join you if you were already in a party of more than two players? Thoughts?

I will be for it.  I was sad when they cancelled the companion feature.

[Ashanor]

Won't miss them at all.

[I'm Squirrel]

I will most definitely miss my heroes. The majority of GW1 players will disagree with me, but I feel as if the hero system was the greatest "mechanic" in Guild Wars 1.

Just thinking of all the different strategies and skills that I could customize my heroes to utilize exceptionally well was just too much fun.

EDIT: I'm actually hoping that in a future expansion the mercenary system will be introduced but you would only be able to use mercenaries in specific zones rather than all of Tyria.

Edited by I'm Squirrel, 06 August 2012 - 04:46 AM.

[Desert_Runner2]

Wookie4726, on 06 August 2012 - 01:56 AM, said:

I recently popped back into GW1 to help a random person in game work on some HOM points. He needed to take his prepared egg into Sorrows Furnace so he could get his moa chick.  I loaded up six heroes and we were off. Granted, my heroes are pretty decked out and enjoy lots of runes and good weapons. Plus, the bars I give them make (especially Prophecies) progress pretty easy. It was a good time and my new friend got his moa chick as well as his SF statue. And I got to dust off my heroes and spend a little time in the game I loved for seven years.

The experience got me thinking about playing GW2 in BWE1-3 and the various periods in which I found my self playing solo. I realized I did miss my heroes. As stated in another thread I think the feeling could be called "lonely". Sure, there were occasional players zerging by here and there. But they run off eventually. Heroes never ran off. Heroes never had to go eat dinner. Heroes never suffered from "mom-aggro" or "wife-aggro". Heroes were great companions! It seems a shame that my npc companions received pink slips at the end of GW1. After all, in GW1 there was a lot of work required to get your heroes fully decked out with skills and cool looking armor. Did anyone else miss their cyborg playmates?

I know lots of people are going to spout off that heroes were the single worst thing that ever happened to GW1. "They totally destroyed the entire PvE aspect". "Heroes made it nearly impossible to find a party". "Heroes made the game way too easy".

The fact is that heroes kept players in the game. Heroes made it possible for players to title-grind and otherwise play in areas that would have long previously become the ghost towns they are today.

Anyway... your thoughts?

I agree with the OP;  GW2 has fractured the guild and alliance and people are scattered over several servers so it is a solo PvE game (and don't say join a guild from the thread here, there are way too many elitist groups); so I do wish I had the heros around.  Since I have no use for PvP, and have yet to find friendly/reliable PvE players, so will play solo til I am so bored of single digit levels, then probably leave for another MMO.  So much for a complete HOM - wow did that turn out to be a monumental waste of time.

[Manzana]

I absolutely hated henchmen to begin with.  I would scream at my screen when Alesia decided in the middle of a fight that her top priority was to resurrect Stephan instead of keeping the rest of the team alive.  Can't say I fancied the heroes more; they really were the nail on the coffin that shut the door on PUGs in GW.  Wow, that was quite an idiom loaded sentence.

[Trilola]

I never played GW1, though coming from SW:TOR I will dearly miss my "Companions", which I believe are similar to GW1 Heroes (but each player can only use one at a time, they count as a party member when grouping, and can only be used in small parties). When I was first researching GW2, I got all excited when I saw something about Heroes/Henchmen, but then I realized I was reading a very old article. xD

[FSnake]

Desert_Runner2, on 06 August 2012 - 04:51 AM, said:

I agree with the OP;  GW2 has fractured the guild and alliance and people are scattered over several servers so it is a solo PvE game (and don't say join a guild from the thread here, there are way too many elitist groups); so I do wish I had the heros around.  Since I have no use for PvP, and have yet to find friendly/reliable PvE players, so will play solo til I am so bored of single digit levels, then probably leave for another MMO.  So much for a complete HOM - wow did that turn out to be a monumental waste of time.

While I also will miss my heroes and all, I think there will be enough PvEers playing GW2 that you should have no problem playing most of the contents.  Now, the higher level contents(after lvl 30) might be a whole different story.  By the way, not all guilds are elitist group of dirtybags.  I belong to a mature, adult, and no-pressure guild of various ages, we cover everything from PvE to WvW.  If you are looking for PvE player, let me know so we could party together since my main goal is to hit all the PvE contents.

[Wookie4726]

SuLor, on 06 August 2012 - 04:35 AM, said:

No I won't miss them. Honestly I got sick of having an entourage following me around everywhere right at my heals. Man they are an overprotective bunch

lol... don't even know how many times I had to flag them off somewhere so I could see something close to me.

Desert_Runner2, on 06 August 2012 - 04:51 AM, said:

I agree with the OP;  GW2 has fractured the guild and alliance and people are scattered over several servers so it is a solo PvE game (and don't say join a guild from the thread here, there are way too many elitist groups); so I do wish I had the heros around.  Since I have no use for PvP, and have yet to find friendly/reliable PvE players, so will play solo til I am so bored of single digit levels, then probably leave for another MMO.  So much for a complete HOM - wow did that turn out to be a monumental waste of time.

Don't give up on us human players. I'm sure there are lots of guilds available who would fit your play style. And yes, you could probably garner a few invites from this thread along. You're always welcome to visit my guild... Public Display of Aggression.

I for one have been a member, officer, leader of several higher end PvE guilds. Even with that we always expected members to manage lower level content (pretty much anything that wasn't considered endgame) on their own (heroes/henchmen). They could always ask for help in guild chat but those who repeatedly begged for help on what we thought was basic level content usually didn't last long in the guild.

What I mean is that there will be times even in active guilds that players will find themselves running solo. While all content in GW2 is supposedly scaled to the group (or player) present I really don't think that the devs planned for players to experience all or most of the personal storyline solo. Just my opinion.

[Gordok]

Before I first played beta my answer was yes.  No my answer is no, I will not miss them.

[FireDancer]

I have mixed feelings, I never played gw1 but I've seen how it was done and while having a full party of heroes made the players own character seem awfully weak, It was still neat that you could get "help" and your own personal entourage,
But I kind of like having a character feel somewhat heroic and epic on her own rather then relying on a team for all the content rather then just dungeons.
On the other hand I like companion systems too because I have always been someone who likes 'pet' classes and thats basically what it is like.
I wonder what people would think about one day being able to get maybe one hero per person, to come along a dungeon run if you are short a person or if someone leaves early you could fill it with the NPC, now I know dungeons will be super hard so it probably wouldn't be possible unless you had real people, but to fill a space or 2?

[Rod Adams]

In GW1, I once had a suspicion that the hero/hench (this was in the 3 hero days) were doing all the work, and I could just stand there and do nothing. So I rolled a new character, who then proceeded to beat all the missions to masters, and do *all* of the side quests. Only, there were a few rules:
1) no other humans allowed
2) my character couldn't bring any skills except a rez.
3) my character could only use weapons w/ reqs she didn't meet.
4) whenever possible, don't even use flagging.
It was interesting for a while, and then it got pretty boring.
I fell into odd playing patterns. I'd do things like aggro several groups at once, and then go make a snack, come back, aggro some more, etc.

In the end, what it told me was that the game was meant to be played.
GW2 not having this AI blanket wrapped around you forces you to play. Except for a few select cases, you can't just sit back and pluck a flatbow. And the concept of afk'ing a battle is complete nonsense.

So yes, I'll miss them some.... but it's a good thing they are gone.

[FSnake]

FireDancer, on 06 August 2012 - 05:57 AM, said:

I have mixed feelings, I never played gw1 but I've seen how it was done and while having a full party of heroes made the players own character seem awfully weak, It was still neat that you could get "help" and your own personal entourage,
But I kind of like having a character feel somewhat heroic and epic on her own rather then relying on a team for all the content rather then just dungeons.
On the other hand I like companion systems too because I have always been someone who likes 'pet' classes and thats basically what it is like.
I wonder what people would think about one day being able to get maybe one hero per person, to come along a dungeon run if you are short a person or if someone leaves early you could fill it with the NPC, now I know dungeons will be super hard so it probably wouldn't be possible unless you had real people, but to fill a space or 2?

I am thinking more along the line of acquireing a follower to join your 5 man party dungeon with set skills and abilities.  Ofc, if every player is allow a follower, it will become a 10 man group but I don't see why not on higher level dungeons since it is suppose to be very hard anyway in explore mode.

[Katreyn]

While I initially liked the concept, and enjoyed it.  I won't be missing it.

I did like the freedom it gave me and ability to take on a lot of content a player probably wouldn't be able to do solo; but overall I found the system a little dated(?) for a lack of a better word.  The freedom to practically build them to any build was nice though.

The biggest gripe I had with GW1 was that it was instanced to all the players.  Though sure its great cause you get all the bosses and loot and everything on a map to yourself (but as we see in GW2 as far as loot/crafting materials it won't be a issue that everyone shares the map), I just found it to be annoying after a while.  Especially if I got pretty far and then started having loot management issues and had to go back to town and stop my clearthrough of a map and...then it resets.

Edit: Having ONE hero/companion/follower would be fine really. I liked it in SWTOR a bit better, and they seemed less stupid.  Since the content isn't catered around large groups of people and seems to scale a bit better, it won't force you to use them but you can have one if needed for that hard quest.  Initially I thought it would occur in like, your personal story, but in beta all I experienced when your friend, etc, helped you in a quest was a really gimped NPC that struggled to stay alive. :/

Edited by Katreyn, 06 August 2012 - 07:50 AM.

[Babizokahh]

I will ;/

I liked the companions a lot. Tho playing with real people is always more fun, i always get attached to AI companions in games. I know, i'm weird.

[Jormag]

Not at all. I hated how GW1 was designed to be only playable for full parties. Sure, with a farming build you can take on mobs, but this was not the intention of anet. The fact that mobs don't scale with party size, so it just becomes easier with more party members really annoyed me. I'm happy that I can go out on my own in GW2.

[AngryTom]

Heck no.
Heroes are one of the reasons I stopped playing GW.

Best part of that game was grouping up with humans. When you could have eight heroes in your party = major nosedive of fun.

[Nightfall Crescent]

I'll miss them a lot.
I played Guild Wars 1 more as a single player RPG anyway, even when we only had henchmen. (which is fine. It woked and it was fun) This time around the game is a bit different.
Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[dondarrion]

Coming from other MMOs to GW1 (for HoMs before GW2), it was really strange to get this H-H team option and I'm really glad they won't make it into GW2. Instead there's this open world and you'll see real players you can team up with on the fly in almost all places. If heroes get introduced, I hope they'll just be some innocent NPCs standing around in the cities/home instances to catch up on old times... ofc, none of the original heroes live anymore, so instead of Zhed, it might be Zack Shadowhoof now (following on from Keiran to Logan)

[Isarien]

Content scaling deals a well deserved deathblow to heroes and henchmen.

[Hanzo]

Haven't missed them as of yet, but I'm sure that will change once I've gotten defeated one time too many for standing around afk. Now I just keep asking my significant other if my character is still alive when I'm doing laundry ect

[hauntmachine]

Fatalis, on 06 August 2012 - 01:59 AM, said:

Heroes were necessary in GW1 because of how the content was structured.

You never left to go adventure without a full party.

However with that no longer being the case, they are no longer needed.

Anet originally had a system in place where each player had a partner NPC follow them around, but just think about that. If they used that system, then the amount of people that appear in the game would essentially double, add anymore and who knows how many people you would be seeing on the screen.

exactly as he said, i actually liked that system with a partner NPC... i've played through all 3 of the betas and it was fun but whenever my friends aren't on because of time zone.. it felt kind of "lonely" as the thread creator had mentioned. Only when i go to specific events do i see some people. After 5 minutes everyone disband and i was off by myself again. Like you said multiple heroes would make the population too large so the idea of 1 partner was a good one if you ask me. And Anet did mention the part where if you don't bring along an NPC you get a buff so the population wouldn't be as bad i guess.

[Mugen]

I won't miss dunkoro letting me dgen to death, or Koss pulling everything in a 5mile radius, or Olias lagging behind with minions, or Zhed meteor showering right when the last mob dies. Microing heroes is too much of a hassle and it only got in your way of your enjoyment. The only reason I took heroes with me was because I had to, not because I wanted to. After the 7hero /merc update, the heroes basically do everything. Me and my friends do the deep with heroes and I go on my mes without any armor on and pull mobs. Unlike in the past we don't even pull kanaxai to the side and kd him twice, we just rush straight to him and kill everything that spawns with him. So no I will not miss heroes. ^^

Edited by Mugen, 06 August 2012 - 07:36 AM.

[Cebbar]

I'll be looking out for their gravestones as I travel around the world.

If I find Koss' grave I'll celebrate.

There are some I liked for their skins and the stuff they would say; Xandra and Sousuke to name 2, but never been so attached I'll actively miss them in GW2.

[Ritualist]

AbaCam, on 06 August 2012 - 03:34 AM, said:

No.
I dont want a faceroll game like Guildwars 1 is now, with 7 hero partys.
Plus I already sent Zhed to the glue factory so........

You should see how obscenely easy GW1 is with an actual human party.

On-topic:
I'd love to see AI helpers back for any sort of instanced content that demands mandatory grouping. I'd rather have AI with me than be locked out of content.

Edited by Protoss, 06 August 2012 - 09:47 AM.

[absolute]

It's better to be able to do PvE content solo, than to need heroes for it. I remember how much bother it would be everytime I wanted to change to an alt... you gotta do the quests to get just the heroes you want, you gotta lvl them up, you gotta find them gear,runes and insignias.. you gotta customize their skill bar.. you gotta rely on their AI(granted it was programmed very good but still it's AI).
Plus it feels less clunky that way, when i'm only carrying around myself and not a full party of bots around with me.

[Daesu]

Protoss, on 06 August 2012 - 07:38 AM, said:

You should see how obscenely easy GW1 is with an actual human party.

That's true.  Even in GW1, human players are insanely more powerful than heroes.  Such an efficient all-human team is called a "Speed Clear" team where they can speed clear end-game content in 15mins or even less.  So I don't think heroes make the game easier, it is things like consumables, vent, skill power creep, and overpowered PvE skills that made the game much easier than any heroes team could (heroes can't equip PvE skills, unlike human players).

But...it is easier to blame it all on the automatons, since they can't argue back.  

Edited by Daesu, 06 August 2012 - 08:25 AM.

[Kaukomieli]

I must have been playing a different game if the sever-hero party made it into a face roll. xD Or I just sucked big time, which probably is true anyway, and didn't pay enough attention to runes and insignias and stuff. I was never able to let the heroes do everything for me, no sir.

I won't miss henchmen and heroes. They were a lot of fun and I personally played GW1 as a single-player game (joining guilds caused insanely fast hear beat and shaky fingers, yay for social anxieties over the Internet!) so I spent a lot of time with henchmen and heroes. Half the time I was screaming at Alesia to heal, Gwen to stay out of melee-range, Stefan to stop aggroing everything and their grandmothers, and everyone to DO SOMETHING THE MOBS ARE RIGHT THERE RUNNING AT US YOU DUMB THINGS WHY WON'T YOU DO ANYTHING, and so on. Half the time I laughed at their comments.

But. I like adventuring on my own, so getting rid of the companions is a relief. Now I don't have to worry about them, I only have to worry about me, and if I'm playing with someone else, them as well. I am a fan of the fluid grouping/co-operating system in GW2 where you don't have to party with people if you don't feel like it, and join in an event with others without repercussions - and then go my own way. It doesn't force you into a group where you get light-headed because of your heart rate and your hands shake so bad that typing gets difficult. 8) I like this because I often would see other players as enemies in many other games where you competed for content, and this doesn't happen in GW2. Peaceful coexistence! Playing and co-operating alone alongside other people, who may or may not play alone! If this wasn't the case, the game would probably not be for me, or I would play through it missing my henchies and heroes.