Guild Wars 2

For us people who are useless at the game….. for example, me. The help from heros and henchmen in guild wars 1 was so useful…

I know people have requested this before but I believe it is now the only thing missing from making GW2 a great game for everyone, even us casual players.

Will you at all seriously consider these requests?

The difficulty of the game is the only thing that stops me playing.

For instances that would be great, but for open world, it would look as silly as trails of bots running around.

Personally, I’d prefer everything to just scale down to one player.

Raire.7983:

For instances that would be great, but for open world, it would look as silly as trails of bots running around.

Personally, I’d prefer everything to just scale down to one player.

Agreed actually, I cant complete the game by myself

Sanquin.8396:

Agreed actually, I cant complete the game by myself

It is a MMO though, you are not supposed to “complete the game” by yourself.

What are your top difficulties within the game? What class are you playing and what benefits would the henchman bring to you?

/Cheers

Sanquin.8396:

Raire.7983:

For instances that would be great, but for open world, it would look as silly as trails of bots running around.

Personally, I’d prefer everything to just scale down to one player.

Agreed actually, I cant complete the game by myself

For dungeons, I cant help but feel this would be a godsend, I hate having to depend on other people so much in dungeons, as long as they have similar hero mechinics from g1, ie you can order them to certain spots etc tell them to attack or support and stuff.

Had a wee think and jumping would probably break any potential hero/henchmen AI

I can’t see how anyone that can micromanage 4 heroes is unable to manage their own character.

What’s the issue, maybe we can help. For one always rebind your keys to be close to your hands so even if you’re slower to react you should still be able to get to dodge or heal etc faster than reaching across to 6 or double tapping.

make henchmen / heroes available for hire for gems.

anet profits

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

make henchmen / heroes available for hire for gems.

anet profits

That would be a great stupidity…
I’t s like having a visual disability and still have to pay for visual aids (as if having the disability is not enough) everywhere you need to go…

Do for free or don’t do it!

I agree wih this but only upto a certain point. That point being story mode dungeons.

IMO, lore should be enjoyed solo with the option to do it with a group. The incentive to play explorable mode is already good. What needs more attention is the story mode. The Destiny’s Edge members could be the default henchmen during story mode dungeons, scaling down in usefulness when more players are present.

As of now, I am under the impression that Anet is testing scaling in dungeons. Specifically, the Super Adventure Box.

That being said, this thread will probably be mo ed to the suggestion forums.

How about summoning stones? They stack in your inventory and summon some sort of NPC. Could be a fire elemental or a warrior with a greatsword. They have their own set of skills and live for 30 minutes or until killed. Each person could summon one at a time.

This could be used whenever you are in a difficult spot and could use a “warm body” to draw aggro and help out with a fight. Since they are disposable, it wouldn’t be expected that they would avoid AOE or dodge.

I can understand the desire to be able to do dungeons with just NPCs, however, I hope everyone understands that Anet intentionally made dungeons for party people. They want things for all styles of play, and dungeons are meant to fill a specific goal: be an event that only well organized players could complete.

I sympathize with wanting to be able to enjoy the lore solo, because that’s what I like to do when exploring. I think adjusting the story mode to fill this goal for people who find dungeons too difficult would be a great way to to allow them to still experience a little taste of them. The way story mode is now, parties don’t want to do them anyways.

The reason why i see the point in using henchmen in the open world is that:

1.) it is not needed in the open world.
You can solo everything in the open world except group events which are designed for groups. Meaning groups of players.

2.) Balance Issues
Elementalists, Necros, Rangers, Warrior, and Thieves have a skill that summons NPC’s to help them in a fight. Putting in henchman summoning stone will create issues.

+1 for OP.
It’s a pain to find a group for story mode so why not add henchmens ?
And it’s also a pain to find a group without using a specific external website…
You do realize that newcomers don’t really know it right ?

I support this idea, henchmen/heros but only for dungeons/instances…

You can develop heros to become stronger over time…

Also both henchmen/heros are stronger than the current ingame npcs who drop like flies atm…

I can play at some odd hours and in the day during the week, finding other people to play with can be difficult at those times…so henchmen/heros would help…

Also, players could practice dungeons/instances before running with other people, thus avoid kittening other players off or suffering grief far being rubbish (people are only usually not good because of lack of practice)…

People running instances/dungeons are always going to be preferred/faster so I don’t see a problem with henchmen/heros…

LHound.8964:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

make henchmen / heroes available for hire for gems.

anet profits

That would be a great stupidity…
I’t s like having a visual disability and still have to pay for visual aids (as if having the disability is not enough) everywhere you need to go…

Do for free or don’t do it!

They could do both. Maybe there is a henchman token people can buy with gems that let them hire a specific henchman (warrior/ranger/ele/whatever) for X time. Then maybe when you complete a daily or monthly or complete a map or use a black lion chest there’s a chance at getting a henchman token.

Edit: I like the idea of being able to get a henchman, but it shouldn’t be something that you can just get willy nilly so that everyone in the game has one at all times.

I dont agree. Henchmen in dungeons?! Why?! There’s no need for them, if you cant get the game mechanics under, what makes you think a henchmen following you will do?

I understand the reasons though and for some PvE cases i agree, just not with Dungeons. Even if henchmen were to come into gw2 i would suggest they be banned from dungeons. Its the one place where you Have to find a grp and play together.

IMO, henchmen should not be limited to a pay-to-win mechanic, i.e. the Gem Store. They should be rentable with in-game gold and restricted to dungeons and instanced areas only.

I would love to have heros for dungeons.
I hate doing the dungeons with elitists or kick happy ppl.

lordkrall.7241:

Sanquin.8396:

Agreed actually, I cant complete the game by myself

It is a MMO though, you are not supposed to “complete the game” by yourself.

^^ This, MMO (massively multiplayer…)

I wish people would stop taking multiplayer games and try to mold them all into single-player games. They aren’t by nature, so either adapt to play with random groups/guilds or just face that challenging content designed for groups will not be tailored to suit every individual.

I wish people would stop taking MMO to mean forced multiplayer as well. It doesn’t. It means a persistent world with lots of players.

It would be quite a good idea to have hirelings that could fill a spot in a dungeon for you. It would remove downtime when trying to get 5 people together. However, and it is a big however, the hirelings will always die too fast. We know that all the story characters in dungeons die very quickly. Ranger pets die quickly in dungeons. So the top priority issue is giving longevity to ranger pets. The second priority issue is giving longevity to storyline NPCs without them doing the instance for you. An even lower priority issue would be adding hirelings to the game with enough longevity that players are not wasting their gold/gems by getting them.

I do not want henchmen as then all mobs will have to be increased in toughness. If you really need henchmen, most classes have some type of pet (minions, animals, spirit weapons, turrets).

Is Massively Multi-player not Massively Single-player

Riss.1536:

+1 for OP.
It’s a pain to find a group for story mode so why not add henchmens ?
And it’s also a pain to find a group without using a specific external website…
You do realize that newcomers don’t really know it right ?

Adding henchmen to address that problem would be an extremely bad sign. It would mean ANet has completely failed to see real problem(this hypothetical, they are aware of what the problem is and will probably get around to addressing it at some point). Henchmen would be a bandaid solution.

Baeyne.9584:

I agree wih this but only upto a certain point. That point being story mode dungeons.

IMO, lore should be enjoyed solo with the option to do it with a group. The incentive to play explorable mode is already good. What needs more attention is the story mode. The Destiny’s Edge members could be the default henchmen during story mode dungeons, scaling down in usefulness when more players are present.

As of now, I am under the impression that Anet is testing scaling in dungeons. Specifically, the Super Adventure Box.

That being said, this thread will probably be mo ed to the suggestion forums.

I agree. I’m a player who really likes to enjoy the story part of the game… and doing the story-mode in dungeons with other players makes this pretty much impossible, as I’m more focused on doing everything correctly then taking a look and observing what’s actually happening. I would love to have henchmen for story-mode in dungeons. I want to say that I would like henchmen for instances, as well, but I’m not really sure. So far, I have been able to do all of my personal story by myself (around level 60 now). For added relationships, I would support it. But I think henchies would make the personal stories a little too easy.

No, we can’t, sorry. I have to reply to every post like this because “I’ve been there, done that” (GW1). They’ll kill Guild Wars 2 if they do. Nothing personal, but I beg every time that ANet don’t read to these posts.

How about you figure out why you suck? Seriously. Go over the basics and you won’t need any more NPCs.

uknortherner.2670:

I wish people would stop taking MMO to mean forced multiplayer as well. It doesn’t. It means a persistent world with lots of players.

This. Totally this. Completely this.

And ironically, it is usually the people who insist that others should have to group with them that are the last people I would want to group with.

Zeivu.3615:

How about you figure out why you suck? Seriously. Go over the basics and you won’t need any more NPCs.

Wow. Rude. Great contribution.

minbariguy.7504:

This. Totally this. Completely this.

And ironically, it is usually the people who insist that others should have to group with them that are the last people I would want to group with.

But assuming that you should be able to do EVERYTHING in a game that is part of a genre that is called Massive MULTIPLAYER Online is rather weird, isn’t it?
If you refuse/can’t play with others, maybe a MMO is not the type of game you should play? At least not if you want to be able to experience 100% of it.

lordkrall.7241:

But assuming that you should be able to do EVERYTHING in a game that is part of a genre that is called Massive MULTIPLAYER Online is rather weird, isn’t it?
If you refuse/can’t play with others, maybe a MMO is not the type of game you should play? At least not if you want to be able to experience 100% of it.

Neither I nor the OP suggested that we should be able to solo “everything” in the game. I’m not sure where that statement is coming from. I actually don’t think it’s a good idea to have henchman and/or heroes available to use out in open-world content; I think any feature of that sort should be restricted to instances, and possibly even restricted only to personal story instances.

For the record, I do sometimes enjoy grouping with others, but the people I group with are friends I know in real life. But honestly — and I mean no offense — it gets really tiring having other people proclaim what kind of game I should or shouldn’t play. I have no problem with you (or anyone, for that matter) disagreeing with me, but the old “maybe this game isn’t for you” argument is pretty thin.

But that is just the thing.
Everything outside of Dungeons are completely possible to solo in this game. So adding henchmen to that would make everything completely solo-able.

lordkrall.7241:

Everything outside of Dungeons are completely possible to solo in this game.

Obviously not for everyone, hence the OP’s post. And a lot of other posts in, say, the Personal Story forum.

Look, I get it; you don’t have a problem soloing everything. That’s great. But your experience does not equal everyone else’s experience. Surely you can understand that? If not, perhaps these forums just aren’t for you.

minbariguy.7504:

Obviously not for everyone, hence the OP’s post. And a lot of other posts in, say, the Personal Story forum.

Look, I get it; you don’t have a problem soloing everything. That’s great. But your experience ?everyone else’s experience. Surely you can understand that? If not, perhaps these forums just aren’t for you.

Yet it is still fully possible, for everyone, to solo it. Maybe not at once. Maybe not with their current skill. But it is still possible.

lordkrall.7241:

Yet it is still fully possible, for everyone, to solo it. Maybe not at once. Maybe not with their current skill. But it is still possible.

Sigh…

Agreed. Never said it was not possible. Doesn’t mean heroes and henchies can’t make the game more enjoyable for those who would choose to use them.

Story mode dungeon would be nice if it was possible to solo it with some npcs helping since all the other personal story stuff is soloable.

But other than that I would not want to see henchmen or heroes. Game is not designed for that. Most of the enemies are already easy to kill and you level fast.

Maybe Guild Wars 1 was different… I don’t know, never played it that much but I don’t think open world in Guild Wars 2 needs stuff like that.

minbariguy.7504:

But honestly — and I mean no offense — it gets really tiring having other people proclaim what kind of game I should or shouldn’t play. I have no problem with you (or anyone, for that matter) disagreeing with me, but the old “maybe this game isn’t for you” argument is pretty thin.

Sorry, no offense but this is my turn. These guys are right. This is a massive MULTIPLAYER online game, you are supposed to play with other players (people). I am not saying you should play other games. But I am saying you SHOULD NOT try to modify a well established game genre to your needs. There are other games, not online, not multiplayer, where you can call any amount of NPCs to play with you. Guild Wars 2 is just not one of these.

As far as the personal stories go, these NPCs are already there. You don’t control them, but they are there playing with you, when needed. The personal story instances were designed to be completed solo, so if you can’t, then you might be doing something wrong. Yes, games can be hard too! Now, it is not because in this game you can party up with other players that you should be asking for henchmen on personal stories. Can you imagine how ridiculous it would be if you went to Sony’s forum ask for henchmen on God of War, for example?

They were very important in GW1 due to abilities like interrupts, Death Nova, etc. You could completely shut down a mob pack with the right builds.

Here, there’s so much emphasis on properly placed AoE, timed dodges, LoSing, and so little on reactive abilities like healing, that I’m not sure what you could do with AI (and if this game had good AI, more people would be playing Rangers). Perhaps you could take four longbow Rangers with ranged pets to pelt your target with sustained damage, but I don’t think you could solo a dungeon with those.

I did +1 the OP, however, as anything that might let you solo Arah is worth considering.

Rash.6514:

Sorry, no offense but this is my turn. These guys are right. This is a massive MULTIPLAYER online game, you are supposed to play with other players (people). I am not saying you should play other games. But I am saying you SHOULD NOT try to modify a well established game genre to your needs. There are other games, not online, not multiplayer, where you can call any amount of NPCs to play with you. Guild Wars 2 is just not one of these.

Sorry, but you don’t get to decide how other people are “supposed” to play the game. I refer you once again to uknortherner’s post:

uknortherner.2670:

I wish people would stop taking MMO to mean forced multiplayer as well. It doesn’t. It means a persistent world with lots of players.

That’s what the genre is about. No one is seeking to “modify” anything. In GW1, people were available to play the game with if you so chose, and heroes and henchies were available for those times when you:

A) Didn’t want to deal with people who seem to think it their privilege to tell you how you should play

B) Could not find any of your real life friends to group with

OR

C) Simply felt like immersing yourself in the world of the game without grouping up.

Seriously, what is with all the “U MUST GROOP WITH ME!!11!” mentality of some people in MMOs? The fact is, some people just don’t want to group with you. I know it’s hard to fathom, but I suggest you try to sort it out. The pain will ease with time.

I’m so torn on this idea… On the one hand, I would love to have a Hero or two available so that I could duo dungeons with my husband (he hates PuGs). On the other hand, Heroes in GW1 meant that anyone could literally complete content without taking any skills on their character with no/minimal Hero management. AFK farming Glint’s Challenge comes to mind.

I would honestly rather see Dungeons and Story better scale to the number of players completing the content. Done right, ANet could allow players to complete dungeons with 2-8 players instead of locking us at 5. They would have to incentivize taking the time to put together a group of 8, though. Otherwise everyone would simply choose to speed run it on a stealthy, dps Thief or Mesmer.

In short, I don’t think Heroes/Henchies is the right answer to unbarring group content to solo players.

I’m going to have to say “no.” The addition of Heroes was a necessary evil to make Guild Wars 1 playable when its population dropped, but it also served as the final death blow to any semblance of non-guild socialization in the game.

The “open world” of Guild Wars 1 was built for teams, mind you.

The open world of Guild Wars 2 is meant to be difficult, but possible to solo. Solo pve is an experience. The feeling of striking out on your own journey, exploring these gorgeous landscapes and fighting countless things that want nothing more than to kill you and eat your liver. Of reaching vistas high and oceans low.

Heroes and henchmen would take away from that. The game would no longer be about your character’s adventures alone or with a group of his close friends. It would be you and some mindless bots. Furthermore, the game would either become so ridiculously easy that it would be unplayable or would need to be rebalanced around the AI henchman, thus rendering solo play impossible.

I have henchmen in my personal story.

I am content

I hope they never add them to this game, ever, under any circumstance. It’s one of the main reasons I loathed GW1 & SWTOR. They, in my opinion, have no place in an MMO. In an MMO you’re supposed to work together with other people. So find other people to play with.

For the record, even ANet says, GW1 was not an MMO.

I’m finding it hard to believe this post. It’s an MMO. If you are struggling you have some options:

1. Learn to play
2. Join a guild or make some in-game friends to help make things easier
3. Leave the game and buy an Xbox

Please let there never, ever be henchmen.

It is also quite fun that people keep bringing up GW1.
GW1 was NOT a MMO.

Well maybe I do “suck” at this game, But i’m not a hardcore gamer, I play maybe 2 – 3 hours a week if i’m lucky.

I don’t believe all areas of the game are solo-able. if this is the case please tell me how I can defeat a mob of 9 (and a veteran) standing around the Lyssa Statue as a single player.

I don’t have enough time dedicated to guild wars to make friends of play with guilds. I know its an MMO but why should being a single player stop me playing the game? or at least give me great difficulty?

As previously said Summoning Stones would be ideal for when people get stuck in a similar situation.

I am pretty sure there are a lot of other players in my situation as well.

Sanquin.8396:

Well maybe I do “suck” at this game, But i’m not a hardcore gamer, I play maybe 2 – 3 hours a week if i’m lucky.

I don’t believe all areas of the game are solo-able. if this is the case please tell me how I can defeat a mob of 9 (and a veteran) standing around the Lyssa Statue as a single player.

Use AoE and try to stay alive as long as possible… until the 9 other mobs are dead. Then focus on the veteran and maybe use crowd control skills.

I’m also a noob… never played any other MMORPGs to max level cause they got boring very fast. Guild Wars 2 with it’s fast leveling is the first MMORPG where I got one max level char(and others are following) and full world completion.

I had problems in the beginning with my engineer in Orr… always used that rifle and it took too long. Did not want to use kits and I always read about grenades and did not want them because of ground targeting… too much trouble to aim every time and click.

Tried a bit around and bombs are nice for me. Now I’m killing faster… I’d bomb that 9 mobs then switch to rifle and knockback and net shot the veteran almost leaving him every option to do damave to me(only can range me if he has ranged attacks but knockback shot or Big old Bomb will stop him often). Don’t know how other classes are doing it but every class has their skills and different ways to do stuff.

Maybe ask in your class forums and tell what traits and skills you are using and how you are playing and they can help?

While you do get various members of Destiny’s Edge with you in dungeons, you do still need other players to complete it. Having henchmen 100% of the time would make it a very different game. Maybe better, maybe worse, there’s no way to know without seeing how it would play.

It is indirectly a good point in that open world does seem scaled for the player base that was around during release and, outside of the events in starting zones and world bosses, most people aren’t going to hang around for events that can’t be solo’d with relative ease nor try to scrape up a 5-10 man group for the larger group events in mid to high level zones for a couple hundred karma and some loot that vendors for more than it sells on TP.

At the end of the day, it’s a game. If the difficulty is too high, it’s not fun. If it’s not fun, no one’s going to want to play. Why do you think CoF1 is the most run dungeon path? It’s one of the easiest and there’s loot. Fun. Why is Super Adventure Box so popular right now? It’s easy and rewarding. Fun.

Both Rift and Cataclysm lost large portions of their player base when casual players realized how challenging their raids had become, and how little reward there was for doing it. I’m afraid if Anet doesn’t lose this mentality of accomidating the competitive crowd the same is going to happen, or at the very least those players will just ignore the content, get bored of everything else and leave.

Making content easier also offers more incentive for players to level alts which will increase circulation of items in the Trading Post, repopulate dungeons, and increase the amount of players participating in the open world. It’s a synergetic benefit across the board. What better time sink is there than people enjoying content MULTIPLE times in a row? Not so long ago we called it “replay value.”

Bishop.5938:

LMFAO

dear anet i am kitten at this game and have no skill. I am a casual gamer and cant complete anything. can u pls make content easier so i can finnish it. I only play 1hr a week and want to beat all of the end game content.

seriously mabie instead of trying to lower the difficulty you could practice and dedicate a bit more time to get better. Gaming is like anything you cant just play 1 hr a week and expect to get anywhere.

LMFAO?

Maybe some people have to work for a living

Coopziana.1802:

I disagree,
You need to look at building your character better. The dynamics of the game allow anyone to complete pretty much anything and I myself have been known to go into Orr and complete Group events on my own, as a squishy Ele. It’s all about getting the right trait’s and stats to suit your profession. All of this naturally costs gold for exotic armour.

Think about going to “gw2codex” and looking up a good build or speak to some players in the game to help suggest a good build hat suits you. Failing that Join a good guild who will help you run your personal story missions.

Just FYI, If anyone is on Ring of Fire Server and ever needs help, just throw me a whisper, I’ll be glad to help, or if I’m busy I’ll send one of my guildies to help you out.

Hope that helps

Thank you for your suggestions