Guild Wars 2

I don’t usually have trouble finding groups, but it is hard for me to ensure that I have a solid 1-2 hours of non-stop game time. With kids in the house, even after bed time, I get interrupted often and I hate making the rest of the group wait for me again and again. Or worse yet, have to quit before the end leaving the group short. Soloing it is too hard. So, my question is, has there been any thought of using NPC to bring the group up to 5 players? Like the henchmen from GW1 or like the NPCs that come with on some events in the world. Thanks for your consideration.

Nope. I believe they stated during developement that they were thinking of a henchie system, but decided against it after much thought.

Ursan.7846:

Nope. I believe they stated during developement that they were thinking of a henchie system, but decided against it after much though.

Thank god.

GW1 was more single player game, GW2 is more MMO. We have to deal with it and enjoy it. I know it will sound harsh, but… make some friends guys.

Heroes are the thing I miss most about GW1. They added another playstyle that I really enjoyed, designing team builds and microing the heroes. Instead of playing as a single character, you were some super-entity consisting of 8 avatars, it was great fun.

As for playing with friends, that’s nice sometimes, but so is playing alone without being constrained by other peoples’ schedules, competence, and desires.

The thing with Heroes/Henchies is, they simply do not belong in GW2’s combat system.

The core of GW2’s combat is damage mitigation through dodging and positioning, things NPCs will have a difficult time doing.

Can you imagine doing a dungeon with 5 Ranger pets? Because that’s what it’s gonna be like. Can you imagine doing a dungeon with these NPCs? Doing Kholer? Colossus Rumblus? Subject Alpha? Lupicus? What are you going to do, when these bosses pull their moves which normal people can avoid with ease but NPCs will have a difficult time avoiding.

It sounds nice at first. But think about GW2’s combat, and think a bit more about if heroes/henchies are a good idea. They’re not, both in theory and practice.

I remember running a group of 8 hero’s. I loved it when they added the option that you could use your own alt characters as hero’s. You could also control their skills… it was amazing, you were playing all 8 characters, spamming the skills you wanted. awesome…

…awesome for a single player game of course. Reminded me of the KOTOR series, where you controlled everyone (except in KOTOR of course you could switch point of view onto those alt characters). I agree, it took away from the “mmo” experience. It got to the point where the only time I ever partied with other real people was on dungeon runs or pvp/gvg.

I’m with you in that some of us aren’t in college anymore and have real world responsibilities that limit our play time to an hour or two at most at a time, so it’d be nice to do some of the end-game’esque stuff solo, but part of me wonders if it would do more damage than good. Since every GW2 player thinks they’re better then everyone else, I think you’d start seeing more and more people running hero groups than grouping with live people. I’m not saying that’s a good or bad thing, but it’s probably something anet is trying to avoid.

Ursan.7846:

The thing with Heroes/Henchies is, they simply do not belong in GW2’s combat system.

The core of GW2’s combat is damage mitigation through dodging and positioning, things NPCs will have a difficult time doing.

Can you imagine doing a dungeon with 5 Ranger pets? Because that’s what it’s gonna be like. Can you imagine doing a dungeon with these NPCs? Doing Kholer? Colossus Rumblus? Subject Alpha? Lupicus? What are you going to do, when these bosses pull their moves which normal people can avoid with ease but NPCs will have a difficult time avoiding.

It sounds nice at first. But think about GW2’s combat, and think a bit more about if heroes/henchies are a good idea. They’re not, both in theory and practice.

Your points about combat tactics are correct, but that doesn’t say whether heroes are a good or bad idea, it just says that good hero AI/control is not trivial to implement. You can have bad ideas that are easy to implement, good ideas that are hard to implement, the concepts are separate.

If you wanted to discuss good or bad, you would discuss issues like distribution of solo players vs. group players, impact on community, etc.

Suppose they were able to write good hero AI that understands dodging and positioning. Then they could build upon that and make all the monsters in the game more intelligent in combat. Wouldn’t that be nice?

voidwater.2064:

Your points about combat tactics are correct, but that doesn’t say whether heroes are a good or bad idea, it just says that good hero AI is not trivial to implement. You can have bad ideas that are easy to implement, good ideas that are hard to implement, the concepts are separate.

If you wanted to discuss good or bad, you would discuss issues like distribution of solo players vs. group players, impact on community, etc.

Suppose they were able to write good hero AI that understands dodging and positioning. Then they could build upon that and make all the monsters in the game more intelligent in combat. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Combat in this game requires a certain degree two components. Knowledge/experience and skill/execution. How do you implement an AI that simulates all that?

I’m going to use Kholer as an example of this discussion. Kholer can be pretty challenging for new players. But once players realize that when he raises his arms to charges up, they can dodge the attack. Then the fight becomes simple and comes down to just executing what you know over and over again.

So the AI has to 1. know the attack animation and 2. execute the dodge. How do you balance this? It would be trivial to make an AI that simply dodges Kholer every single time. Then you’d have absolutely no reason to pug the dungeons, because why rely on pubs, when your heroes can dodge bosses with 100% efficiency?

Do you make it so you control your heroes individual dodgerolls/position? How would you control this? Do you need to position your heroes individually? This adds a whole new level of micromanagement which will disproportinately favor players with higher levels of dexterity/multi-tasking ability. “Sure you can solo dungeons, but only if you have 200 APM!”

How would you write “good hero AI that understands dodging?” You trivialize the difficulty in coming up with a design of a good AI, much less implementing it.

TL;DR Heroes won’t be a good idea in this game because of the nature of high-level combat in GW2. And yes, this is a very good reason why Anet shouldn’t implement heroes.

Ursan.7846:

But once players realize that when he raises his arms to charges up, they can dodge the attack. Then the fight becomes simple and comes down to just executing what you know over and over again.

So, for experienced players, the fight becomes very trivial and robotic, and there wouldn’t be much of a difference between using a good bot and using an experienced player?

Ursan.7846:

So the AI has to 1. know the attack animation and 2. execute the dodge. How do you balance this? It would be trivial to make an AI that simply dodges Kholer every single time. Then you’d have absolutely no reason to pug the dungeons, because why rely on pubs, when your heroes can dodge bosses with 100% efficiency?

If you go with a design that includes automatic dodging of key attacks, you don’t have to make it 100% dodge chance, the AI doesn’t need to be perfect. You would try to balance it with lots of testing, trial and error.

I would pug the dungeons whenever I felt like playing dungeons with some level of social interaction with random people.

Ursan.7846:

Do you make it so you control your heroes individual dodgerolls/position? How would you control this? Do you need to position your heroes individually? This adds a whole new level of micromanagement which will disproportinately favor players with higher levels of dexterity/multi-tasking ability. “Sure you can solo dungeons, but only if you have 200 APM!”

This sounds perfectly fair to me, I honestly don’t see a problem with this at all.

Ursan.7846:

How would you write “good hero AI that understands dodging?” You trivialize the difficulty in coming up with a design of a good AI, much less implementing it.

Well, I understand implementing the heroes would be far from easy or quick. I’m not trivializing the task, I’m just fine with the potential implications/consequences that you object to.

It’s one thing to say that “perfect heroes would ruin social play” or “heroes reward high APM players too much”, but your original post only suggested that “heroes will not be able to dodge, thus heroes are a bad idea” which I didn’t agree with.

voidwater.2064:

It’s one thing to say that “perfect heroes would ruin social play” or “heroes reward high APM players too much”, but your original post only suggested that “heroes will not be able to dodge, thus heroes are a bad idea” which I didn’t agree with.

Hmm. I guess in my mind, the logic goes thus.

1. GW2 combat requires dodging to be efficient.
2. It would be incredibly difficult to design/implement AI
3. Impractical to implement heroes/henchies.

So yea, the fact that GW2’s combat requires dodging, makes heroes a bad idea. Forgive me if I didn’t come across clearly.

Obviously this isn’t an issue in GW1, where you can face tank everything with prot spirit and heal off everything. In that situation, Hero AI is not a problem at all because they don’t need to be complex to be useful. Not the case in GW2.

GW 1 was able to implement the Hero/Mercenaries system to allow players to create hybrid teams. Teams with both human and mercenary parties. The dynamic allowed players to explore more game content without the need to wait for parties to form and “farm”. It was also neat to access and play with the characters that you built over time.

Games with AI support are more appealing to future generations. Some times there is just too much going on to enjoy the game correctly. Bringing back the Hero/Merc system with updated functionality (dodge mechanics easy to program for the developers) with options for both full and semi-automation will keep the franchise relevant and appealing to all the loyal fans who grew up with this game and have less time to play.

The current alternatives for older players (beyond college, with or without jobs and children) are:

1.) Get more friends to play the game – not relevant if at similar age as they are busy too)
2.) Decrease work productivity and stop interacting with your real friends & family"Twitter/FB Time it")
3.) Stop playing the game, which is mostly what happens to veteran gamers)

Without this modernization the franchise is willingly dropping a loyal and well funded tier of players that enjoyed the game from the beginning.

Perhaps it is for the better…need those older players to play in real life and not fantasy.

holy necro mr bond.

If you don’t feel like playing with other people just solo stuff. Almost everything in this game is soloable if you put the effort into it.

can i get my 4 brahams pls

Please bear with me.
I know it’s an old thread but I’m a new GW2 player but a seasoned GW player and wanted to add my 2c considering the overwhelming opinion here is that Heroes/henchmen are something that is missing in GW2 and would be welcomed.

I’m very surprise and disappointed ArenaNet didn’t include Heroes or some facsimile.
I played GW every day for many years with more than 10,500 hours accumulated and still play occasionally today because I have Heroes.

From my observations GW2 is getting to the stage where many areas (particularly for low level new players such as myself) are empty.
Even when I play my boosted level 80 and try to kill a bounty NPC I fail every time and there is no one to help me. It’s extremely frustrating!

Yes, I could ask a guild member to help but they are busy doing high level stuff and to be frank I can’t put in the time required to arrange a team format.
I play an hour or two, take a break and come back later. It’s a feature of this type of game I like. Slow paced.

I’ve only been playing a couple of months but can see myself growing tired of dying all the time.

Perhaps an alternative could be to alter the reduction of level to something a little easier when playing without a team.

At least I have GW to fall back on. I can go into areas like Tombs and play with Heroes/henchies in hard mode and not die. Even if I do I can be resurrected and continue.

If you got this far, I’m sorry for the long post but I really want to stick with the game but it’s frustrating to say the least.

Keksmuffin.1450:

If you don’t feel like playing with other people just solo stuff. Almost everything in this game is soloable if you put the effort into it.

For some players this may be the case.
For me it probably means spending real money to get the gear required. That’s not an option for me. I’ve spent close to $200 already. That’s more than any game is worth IMHO.

Iman Oldie.6457:

For some players this may be the case.
For me it probably means spending real money to get the gear required. That’s not an option for me. I’ve spent close to $200 already. That’s more than any game is worth IMHO.

Nah, money won’t bring you an advantage in terms of gear. You can solo things in whites/greens/rares and of course in exotics. You don’t need to have asc gear. Besides exotic gear is very easy to get. There are almost infinite sources you can get it from.
Effort was his word, not money!

Iman Oldie.6457:

considering the overwhelming opinion here is that Heroes/henchmen are something that is missing in GW2 and would be welcomed.

It’s not the overwhelming opinion, here or elsewhere.

I’m very surprise and disappointed ArenaNet didn’t include Heroes or some facsimile.

Whereas others thing it’s fantastic that they chose a different way for this game.

Iman Oldie.6457:

I played GW every day for many years with more than 10,500 hours accumulated and still play occasionally today because I have Heroes.

Yes, that’s a fine feature for a game in which all of the combat takes place in small-group instances of 4, 6, 8, or 12 characters. It’s impractical for this game.

Iman Oldie.6457:

From my observations GW2 is getting to the stage where many areas (particularly for low level new players such as myself) are empty.

You must be playing in different areas and at different times than anyone I know. I can’t find any area without people. Even when I go out of my way to do obscure events I see other folks.

Iman oldie have you tried pressing y then lfg and post that you want to kill that bandit champion bounty + that its spawned on your map?

Wouldn’t be a fan of such a system. Don’t want to see old content get nerfed to a degree where anyone can solo it without any effort (not that it takes that much effort to begin with) or the implementation of NPCs which would have the same result.

In any case, we have to remember how vastly different the combat systems are. The only way to make henchmen work without putting in thousands of hours to program something that comes even remotely close to what a real player can do would be to give them crazy stats, to allow them to tank and spank everything for you or to increase their boons to a level far superior to those of the players. Not a direction I want the game to take.
You can probably tell that I never played the original Guild Wars apart from a very early version for about a day. It might actually be the missing nostalgia goggles, but I don’t see how getting further away from a community driven game would be in any way benifical or desirable. The game is no longer mostly instanced nor does it suffer from a lack of players.
I might even find some enjoyment in managing my own team of bots or to use a better word: henchmen. Yet, I have a feeling that I’d start wondering why I even play an MMORPG to begin with if that is all I did in the game.

Ursan.7846:

The thing with Heroes/Henchies is, they simply do not belong in GW2’s combat system.

The core of GW2’s combat is damage mitigation through dodging and positioning, things NPCs will have a difficult time doing.

Can you imagine doing a dungeon with 5 Ranger pets? Because that’s what it’s gonna be like.

While you’re generally right, you are not entirely correct. There was the time during beta when mobs were brighter and had better AI. They were dumbed down, because it was a literal murder on players. Mobs could dodge, scatter away from AoEs, single out and spike enemies etc. They don’t, because players in general do not want that.
The same with pets. According to devs, their tests with better AI resulted with rangers being OP and totally being able to do dungeons with pets alone.

Positioning might be harder to code, though. Things like avoiding AoE circles would be generally ok (npcs would do it better than players, actually), but anything more complicated (i.e. tanking, or proper positioning for perfect dps rotations on some classes, or many cases of raid encounter-specific positioning) would likely be too hard to pull off. Especially if the goal was to not make real players obsolete.

Edit: doh, again, i need to remind myself to check post dates. Holy kitten, that thread is old. And the topic has been discussed to death long ago. Anet’s unlikely to change their stance on it (especially, since, by now, even most of those players that wanted heroes got used to not having them).

Linken.6345:

Iman oldie have you tried pressing y then lfg and post that you want to kill that bandit champion bounty + that its spawned on your map?

I may have to look into that. I’ve been playing every day for two months and have yet to see anyone looking for a group.
I guess I’ll have to give it a try. I’m used to LFG from a town in GW but not in the field in GW2. I’m not certain how hat works when there is no one around to respond.

I tried LFG but my message disappeared after about 30 seconds

Astralporing.1957:

There was the time during beta when mobs were brighter and had better AI.

They were a tiny bit more intelligent than the final version but not bright enough to take any player’s place. Even those mobs would be terrible in a dungeon environment.