Guild Wars 2

Forgive me if this has been brought up before, but I’m just curious if there has been any consideration for adding NPCs as heroes/henchmen for incomplete dungeon groups. Given that the Destiny’s Edge NPCs are already able to at least accompany normal groups, it doesn’t seem like too far of a stretch that more could be added in place of absent player characters. Instead of just Logan Thackeray, a party of three human players might also be joined by Caithe & Eir. Or if soloing, add in Rytlock & Zojja as well. If adding unique dialogue is an issue, I’d gladly take mute henchmen or the silent ghost of Kilroy Stonekin instead!

I’ve had difficulty in PUGs exploring dungeons at my own pace; I won’t inconvenience a group just so I can enjoy the scenery, but I do miss spending hours in the catacombs of GW1 trying to find all the hidden details and artwork. The two main deterrents that I can see to adding allied NPCs are farming abuse and discouraging group play, but so long as the NPCs aren’t overpowered and the rest of the game is already enormously social I don’t see those points as realistic problems. I’d even be fine with limited rewards for smaller or even solo groups if that’s really a big concern. Beyond that, if adding NPCs is too much trouble, just scale the difficulty and rewards to the party size.

Not only would this benefit small groups and solo players, it would help to bridge the gap when a player in an otherwise full group is kicked or disconnected and an allied NPC appears to take their place. Full groups still receive the same rewards and loot as they always have, retaining an incentive to stick with a normal full party, but now smaller groups can at least participate with their own unique agendas.

Even if you personally enjoy the dungeon system as-is, please don’t discount that there is at least a portion of the player-base that has been turned-off from dungeons due to having to form a full group. Of course you can probably solo most of the dungeons already no problem, but for the rest of us feeling excluded, all I really want to know is if it’s been considered so that even more people can enjoy the full breadth of content GW2 has on offer.

I like the idea, and if Anet put a mercenary system (to play with your alts) like in GW1, definitly I will buy it.

PD: Prepare for answers like “Go to skyrim noob”, “this is a mmorpg”, " the heroes killed Gw1" etc etc…..

The main issue would be how to balance them.

Quite a few of the dungeons require dodging and such to survive.
So either the henchmen would be OP and manage every dodge, or they would be useless and die to every single AoE.

No, Layka is right. Heroes killed the MMO in GW1. I think most of your issues are being adressed with the in game dungeon finder they are a developping. I think that arenanet is doing a great job to promote teamplay over soloplay. The beauty bout GW2 is how it really rewards your for playing with others.

You are not alone in thinking this way! Honestly, I find your idea awesome and I think it should absolutely be added to the game.
It would help players like us, who like to explore and enjoy every inch of the content, gahwd after months of running CoE I still did not manage to watch a cinematic! I find it horrible how you can not even be free to know what’s going on in the path you chose. Not to mentio how every team turns everything into a speed run, skipping everything and to me, make the dungeon nothing but a farm. no adventure nor fun, only business. And if they did these changes, it would also make sure it does not take hours to fill a team for certain rather dead dungeons! Lfg site whatever, in weeks I never have seen a person asking for HotW story for example, but it is only one of them. Many explorable dungeons are dead as well and sometimes filling a team is a true pain, since if you even find a couple of people they will eventually leave, losing patience for not finding the last ones to enter…
Know that you are not alone in wishing changes like these to be made to dungeons, I would personally prefer dungeon to scale on team size as you suggested…
And if farming dungeons was really a bother, CoF path 1 would have been erased from game months ago.. ._.
Though +1 and really wish they will consider this!

I think that it would at LEAST be helpful if Arenanet implemented henchmen in dungeon storymode. As more and more players complete storymode it becomes harder for new players or more experienced players who haven’t done many dungeons before to find groups. The rewards for storymode aren’t worth the time for more experienced players, so unless you have a larger guild or group of friends it can be difficult to find enough people to do storymodes with you. Having this prerequisite creates a divide among players that goes against Arenanet’s efforts to make this a cooperative game.

I would really like a henchmen system for the dungeons in their entirety, as I enjoyed being able to do dungeons by myself in GW1. I really don’t think it would kill the cooperative nature of the game as long as it was also easy for players to find other player groups- so they should definitely implement the LFG finder first. If players right now are willing to do extra work to find groups without a LFG system I think that shows that there is a large playerbase that would still be playing in groups if henchmen/heroes were implemented. And since you would not be able to take these heroes/henchmen into the larger game world, people playing with henchmen in dungeons would still be meeting new players and forming parties with other people outside of dungeons. It wouldn’t be like GW1 where everyone is in their own instanced area with their hero/hench party 90% of the time. There is MUCH more player interaction in GW2 than GW1 so I don’t really think we can use GW1 as a prediction as to what will happen to GW2 if henchmen are added.

I dont like henchies in this gw2. but i think henchies wont help gw2 anyhow to make it more fun. Make cool hard to beat worlddragons with loot we go see.. this is what i got from the dragon more people will do it. same goes for dungeons. and more loot drops.
not anytime soon i recon.

attonita.6327:

I think that it would at LEAST be helpful if Arenanet implemented henchmen in dungeon storymode. As more and more players complete storymode it becomes harder for new players or more experienced players who haven’t done many dungeons before to find groups. The rewards for storymode aren’t worth the time for more experienced players, so unless you have a larger guild or group of friends it can be difficult to find enough people to do storymodes with you. Having this prerequisite creates a divide among players that goes against Arenanet’s efforts to make this a cooperative game.

I would really like a henchmen system for the dungeons in their entirety, as I enjoyed being able to do dungeons by myself in GW1. I really don’t think it would kill the cooperative nature of the game as long as it was also easy for players to find other player groups- so they should definitely implement the LFG finder first. If players right now are willing to do extra work to find groups without a LFG system I think that shows that there is a large playerbase that would still be playing in groups if henchmen/heroes were implemented. And since you would not be able to take these heroes/henchmen into the larger game world, people playing with henchmen in dungeons would still be meeting new players and forming parties with other people outside of dungeons. It wouldn’t be like GW1 where everyone is in their own instanced area with their hero/hench party 90% of the time. There is MUCH more player interaction in GW2 than GW1 so I don’t really think we can use GW1 as a prediction as to what will happen to GW2 if henchmen are added.

I totally agree with you with all this! Well said, really, Gw1 is a totally different game. Besides, even there most of the time my very heroes were not enough for me to do some things and still now (I still play from time to time) there is plenty of people there looking for other people for ZM’s in HM and all of the dungeons, so, I doubt adding this would ruin in any way, the social side of the game.

Heroes made GW1 for me. I LOVED them. I would easily pay $50-$100 for an expansion that added them to this game. I blew 200+ hours alone just making and playing with the new Heroes changes they added last year (or was it the year before last?) to GW1.

When I go back to GW1 to play, its because of the heroes since no other game out there has that sort of system in place.

Would <3 this.

Given that traditional groups are optional for all other content in GW2, it doesn’t seem to fit that dungeons require a full human group. If the design goal with this game is to let people play how they want to and be relatively “solo-able,” there should at least be some option for solo players and small groups to enjoy this otherwise isolated content. Adding “henchmen” seemed like the most logical choice since the AI (however imperfect) is technically in place already, the characters already exist, and the mechanics of an NPC party is already known in the Guild Wars universe. I don’t think this will deter people from playing in groups (especially if the reward percentages are scaled down with party size), but will instead make people more comfortable joining random PUGs once they’ve gotten their exploration and cutscene fixes out of the way and feel confident in their ability to run that dungeon effectively.

The closest in-game analogy outside of dungeons is personal story missions where you’re already escorting one or several NPCs. It really isn’t that far of a stretch to imagine these types of AI-controlled allies being available in dungeons as well, fighting alongside you like a normal party. In fact, the NPC friends you make along the way in your personal story (eg. Demmi Beetlestone, Almorra Soulkeeper, etc.) could even be the henchmen, further integrating dungeon play with your personal story. Completing certain story events could even effectively “unlock” these types of additional allies for dungeon use. Lots of potential!

mdoucet.8735:

Given that traditional groups are optional for all other content in GW2, it doesn’t seem to fit that dungeons require a full human group. If the design goal with this game is to let people play how they want to and be relatively “solo-able,” there should at least be some option for solo players and small groups to enjoy this otherwise isolated content. Adding “henchmen” seemed like the most logical choice since the AI (however imperfect) is technically in place already, the characters already exist, and the mechanics of an NPC party is already known in the Guild Wars universe. I don’t think this will deter people from playing in groups (especially if the reward percentages are scaled down with party size), but will instead make people more comfortable joining random PUGs once they’ve gotten their exploration and cutscene fixes out of the way and feel confident in their ability to run that dungeon effectively.

The closest in-game analogy outside of dungeons is personal story missions where you’re already escorting one or several NPCs. It really isn’t that far of a stretch to imagine these types of AI-controlled allies being available in dungeons as well, fighting alongside you like a normal party. In fact, the NPC friends you make along the way in your personal story (eg. Demmi Beetlestone, Almorra Soulkeeper, etc.) could even be the henchmen, further integrating dungeon play with your personal story. Completing certain story events could even effectively “unlock” these types of additional allies for dungeon use. Lots of potential!

I actually really like this idea. As it is right now I don’t find myself caring a lot about the NPCs you meet in your personal story missions- some of them stand out more than others but the personal story progresses very quickly and many of the characters present in it do not appear for extended periods of time. I would be much more invested in the characters if they were people I could unlock who would then assist me in dungeons or similar situations- this worked really well in GW1, where your heroes were not only random npcs but also some of the main characters you encountered in the world. Not only that, but it was fun to unlock extra heroes that were only available outside of the primary missions- I would definitely run around and try to unlock as many hero/hench npcs as possible if they were available in GW2, even though they would only be available for dungeons.

And I think it is also true that honestly, GW2 doesn’t really encourage traditional group play right now. Even though you are constantly around other people and do interact with them you aren’t always in a group, and you really don’t need to be outside of instanced areas. GW2 has a good balance of encouraging community interaction while making sure people who prefer to play solo can still do that and not be at a disadvantage. It would be nice to see them carry this forward into dungeons.

mdoucet.8735:

Given that traditional groups are optional for all other content in GW2, it doesn’t seem to fit that dungeons require a full human group. If the design goal with this game is to let people play how they want to and be relatively “solo-able,” there should at least be some option for solo players and small groups to enjoy this otherwise isolated content. Adding “henchmen” seemed like the most logical choice since the AI (however imperfect) is technically in place already, the characters already exist, and the mechanics of an NPC party is already known in the Guild Wars universe. I don’t think this will deter people from playing in groups (especially if the reward percentages are scaled down with party size), but will instead make people more comfortable joining random PUGs once they’ve gotten their exploration and cutscene fixes out of the way and feel confident in their ability to run that dungeon effectively.

The closest in-game analogy outside of dungeons is personal story missions where you’re already escorting one or several NPCs. It really isn’t that far of a stretch to imagine these types of AI-controlled allies being available in dungeons as well, fighting alongside you like a normal party. In fact, the NPC friends you make along the way in your personal story (eg. Demmi Beetlestone, Almorra Soulkeeper, etc.) could even be the henchmen, further integrating dungeon play with your personal story. Completing certain story events could even effectively “unlock” these types of additional allies for dungeon use. Lots of potential!

I think you are totally right, and I love what you said about joining Pugs. Getting some experience with dungeons on your own, failing a few times, doing it slowly, at your pace, learning how to face such challenges in the proper way, without a bunch of people raging and screaming at you at the very first false step, would definitely help people to be more confident and to join team of unknown people! Also, would reduce the problem of more experienced players to have phobia of pugging, always fearing they might be unexperienced players that won’t say that, for fear to be kicked…

Sadly Anet never responds in the suggestion forum, but I would be fantastic if only respond if a heroes/henchmen/mercenary system is possible in the future, only with a “Yes” or “No”, only.

Frostfang.5109:

NO! I dont want it! Then ppl want play together any more!

Suuuuure with the greed and half players of this game being hardcore farming, with increased rewards for teaming up with other players, certainly “no one” would play with others. /Sarcasm off.