Guild Wars 2

Anyone who played the original Guild Wars will no doubt know what I’m talking about. For those who didn’t, or didn’t play much of it, I’ll try to explain.

In the original Guild Wars, you could fill your party with a number of NPCs who’d fight alongside you. In later expansions, you could get, ‘Heroes,’ which were more customizable and powerful than the, ‘Mercenaries,’ you started with. This gave you a nice, wide selection of NPCs with which you could make a diverse party and go anywhere with.

To the point of this topic, I think this could work well with GW2 in the case of Living Story, and Personal Story. Imagine, for example, being able to add Rytlock, or Logan to your party while you’re doing your Living Story. Better yet, imagine adding characters like, say, Hobo-Tron (I would put him in my party -every- time), or Lord Faren, or any of the Charr player’s warband members. Just seems to me like it’d be a nice way to diversify the gameplay element for players. Granted I understand you can’t replace the main five NPCs in the Living Story due to their necessity in it (Marjory, Kasmeer, Taimi, Rox, and Braham), but even then there were some episodes in the recent Living Story where some characters sat on the sidelines.

So, there’s my suggestion. Allow players to bring along maybe 1-3 NPCs they’ve gained access to from previous interactions. Heck, recruiting NPCs like this could even be a way to help players revisit other Maps and such for a while.

I’ve made this exact suggestion before. It would have a lot of perks if they did it right – not the least of which would be increased familiarity with NPCs leading to increased immersion.

Einlanzer.1627:

I’ve made this exact suggestion before. It would have a lot of perks if they did it right – not the least of which would be increased familiarity with NPCs leading to increased immersion.

Ah, I didn’t see the suggestion before, sorry for making another thread. Still, it’s a great one! There are no doubt fan-favorites out there.

I’d love a Hero system for dungeons.

They could add them for dungeons too (as long as the dungeon doesn’t have a bit where you need to go to separate spots like CoF). Then they could sell mercenary slots in the gem store that let you bring your alts It will always be less efficient than going as a team, but it would be cool to be able to fill spots with NPCs.

Alternatively, as I’ve suggested before, give everyone an elite skill that is on par with racials but on a longer cooldown that summons one or two random mercenaries from a pool for a short time. That way you could unlock mercenaries like Destiny’s Edge by completing story mode, and have your Alts turn up as an elite.

Either way, love the idea.

It’d be great to have the system back, yes. I’d add you could still have story with pertinent characters, but they’d appear for the cutscene, but not the fight (think Final Fantasy).

Vexander.9850:

Einlanzer.1627:

I’ve made this exact suggestion before. It would have a lot of perks if they did it right – not the least of which would be increased familiarity with NPCs leading to increased immersion.

Ah, I didn’t see the suggestion before, sorry for making another thread. Still, it’s a great one! There are no doubt fan-favorites out there.

Oh no worries, it wasn’t recent, I was just commending you!

Make it like in GW1 where you could take your alts as heroes (or at least the skin of your alt with their equipment). That would be a real incentive to equip fancy gear on all your alt, and could maybe rise even more gemshop sales…..

I agree 100%; there could be so many uses for the old GW1 Merc/Hero system in GW2.

Like someone else said, I can see a rise in gem store purchases for more slots, armor skins, etc. for the Mercs/Heros. Or a gem store purchase to make your alt. a Hero. 1000 gems for a slot? Take my money!

In GW1 as we progressed through the story those random NPC’s became your Hero that tagged along with you; they had their own background as well – I felt very much connected to some of them. I felt like I needed to take my favorite ones with me in my group and leave the few I didn’t connect with behind. In GW2, I see the more popular NPC’s and I enjoy them… but there’s no connection to my character.

I can see doing a moderately difficult short quest lines to obtain Hero’s from your home city or other racial cities, especially like OP mentioned, warband members.

this is already implemented within living story season 2 episode 1.

the non customizable mercs we get are:
- braham
- rox and frostbite
- taimi
- kasmeer
- majory

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

this is already implemented within living story season 2 episode 1.

the non customizable mercs we get are:
- braham
- rox and frostbite
- taimi
- kasmeer
- majory

And still even Alesia would put them to shame. Those are scripted dumbfire NPCs. Obviously you’ve had no experience with mercs.

Adding Heroes and Henchmen would turn GW2 into a CoRPG and not a MMORPG anymore. You’ll have no one grouping just like we ended up having after Nightfall was released(things got even worse when EotN dropped).

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

this is already implemented within living story season 2 episode 1.

the non customizable mercs we get are:
- braham
- rox and frostbite
- taimi
- kasmeer
- majory

And I’m very grateful we have some NPC like those fine fellows in our story, but compared to the mercs/hero’s from GW1, unfortunately, it’s not even comparable – it’s also far from the OP’s idea of customizable, fully controlled NPC’s.

Domino.1359:

And I’m very grateful we have some NPC like those fine fellows in our story, but compared to the mercs/hero’s from GW1, unfortunately, it’s not even comparable – it’s also far from the OP’s idea of customizable, fully controlled NPC’s.

I seem to remember being able to choose the traits and skills for each heroes in my group as well as positioning them where I wanted in a battle in GW. These we have in this LS chapter are more along the lines of the henchman from GW:Prophecies without the ability to tell them where to stand. And these “Heroes” are much smarter than the henchmen we had in Prophecies.

With mercenaries you could gear them up, chose which professions you wanted out of the ones you had, select their skills, tell them when to use a skill if you wanted and direct them to go to places you chose. A much more flexible system than the NPCs we get in this game.

Kind of like a mass effect system?

Galphar.3901:

Adding Heroes and Henchmen would turn GW2 into a CoRPG and not a MMORPG anymore. You’ll have no one grouping just like we ended up having after Nightfall was released(things got even worse when EotN dropped).

Good.

Most people tend to be dumb as bricks anyways. Henchmen/Heroes/Mercs mean you could play and enjoy the full game without being tied back by its (ironically) one big weakness: people. It’ll also please the strange group of people who play MMOs but don’t want to actually group with others or non-guildies. And it’ll let people RP in dungeons and stuff without the shame of bringing in 3 complete strangers who aren’t in the loop. And it’ll let people coordinate runs much more smoothly instead of relying on human error and EVERYTHING that comes with it:
-Players with dog-kitten -tier Internet cough south americans cough
-The inability to easily communicate with allies (again, this favors either playing solo w/ AIs or playing with guildies who have Teamspeak/Ventrilo/Mumble/etc.)
-The difficulty of finding people to play with: you either use LFG and end up with nobody you actually want or you play with guilds and have to deal with whatever negatives come out of THAT: players on the other side of the world, guild drama, and long periods of straight-up inactivity.

They could at least bring back the system where you buy Mercenary Slots, letting your DPS Warrior be a hired sword for your dungeon runs and stuff (complete with lines to pick for their personality!). That kitten would move gems so fast. So very fast. I know for sure my husband would buy it (so would I) so we could have his Thief and Mesmer as well as my Warrior in every one of our parties, never worrying about what stupid kitten they are or aren’t running and never worrying about whether or not they’re even contributing to the fight or if they’re in the party just to be carried by us. Stacking would be so much easier as every single button press is under our control and command. If one of us takes a break, the whole party can reasonably stop, rather than things like having a party member drop due to “brb smoke break” or “gotta go to bed gnight guys”.

Seriously. Removing the human factor out of dungeon runs would be the best thing GW2 could ever do to improve their PvE. Now you don’t NEED to adhere to the meta, as you can have a team that WILL follow and do whatever you want them to do. You can do dungeon runs of long, frustrating paths without needing to bother anyone! Things like Sorrow’s Embrace Path 2, Twilight Arbor Aetherblade Path, and even the other paths of Arah that I’ve never heard about!

tl;dr, you talk about Henchmen/Heroes/Mercs like it’s a bad thing. It’s not. It’s really not.

I think it would be neat if we could bring in our other characters as AI guests, during Living Story missions.

Still, any AI ally is going to be a mess of problems. Do they dodge everything perfectly? Do they know which direction to move out of AoE fields? Do they know to stand in my heal range? Do they stack?

The AI ally can’t be so powerful that they make the battle too easy, but on the other hand they can’t be so weak that they instantly die in every fight. Basically, you need someone who is just there, with lots of armor and toughness but negligible power. And ANet certainly isn’t going to design fights that require you to depend on an AI. Best case scenario, they will simply not get in the way.

Galphar.3901:

Adding Heroes and Henchmen would turn GW2 into a CoRPG and not a MMORPG anymore. You’ll have no one grouping just like we ended up having after Nightfall was released(things got even worse when EotN dropped).

Both Everquests now have mercenary followers and the CoRPG fairy didn’t transform them. Still MMOs. /shrug.

Grouping “dies” because pugging is like chimpanzee wrangling. Mercs are better than Pugs. They don’t replace guild groups or dedicated hard content groups.

Mega might even manage to put you and your Merc on the same map. Maybe.

Fyrebrand.4859:

I think it would be neat if we could bring in our other characters as AI guests, during Living Story missions.

Still, any AI ally is going to be a mess of problems. Do they dodge everything perfectly? Do they know which direction to move out of AoE fields? Do they know to stand in my heal range? Do they stack?

The AI ally can’t be so powerful that they make the battle too easy, but on the other hand they can’t be so weak that they instantly die in every fight. Basically, you need someone who is just there, with lots of armor and toughness but negligible power. And ANet certainly isn’t going to design fights that require you to depend on an AI. Best case scenario, they will simply not get in the way.

They could have the old system from GW1 ported here. You control precisely where your AI allies stand and can even, with bound macros, control what they do or don’t do. Just give us the ability to bind a button to an ally’s dodge and there you go. Now dungeons have a modicum more challenge!

They could easily port the old GW Heroes/Henchman system over . They could even make it so we unlock certain ones through doing Living Story or by doing certain achievements in Personal Story or Living Story(they already have the other achievements for Traits).

ipan.4356:

I’d love a Hero system for dungeons.

This…. so much this.

Please Anet!

To be honest, dungeons weren’t the first thing on my mind, mostly just Personal Story and Living Story. That said, I don’t see why Mercs/Heroes couldn’t work for Storymode Dungeons. I mean, getting people to run Storymode Dungeons is hard to near-impossible these days. Being able to unlock Explorer Mode by doing the Storymode alone, with Heroes/Mercs, feels like a good way to resolve that issue, and open up dungeons to more players.

Maybe if you outfitted Heroes in Ascended gear and bought them tons of upgrades through the Gem Store (+Power or +Toughness to Heroes, etc… to a cap), then you could just barely manage to do Explorer Mode stuff, but I think players should still do dungeons together. Maybe even reduce the rewards for doing dungeons with Heroes/Mercs to make player-dungeon runs more lucrative.