Suggestion : Heroes system

Suggestion : Heroes system

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Posted by: ThomasC.1056

ThomasC.1056

Hello,

I know it’s been a recurring idea, but recent events put that idea back in my mind, so I think it’s good time to suggest it here.

The idea is to allow a player to build a party out of some iconic NPC’s for instanced content only.

How does it work ?

  • Iconic NPC’s are :
    • The ones that go to your home instance after story including MOX
    • Destiny’s edge and Dragon’s Watch
    • Some others like Zildi or Chrysanthea (the ones on the Islands in Dragon Stand).
  • NPC’s will have to be unlocked for that purpose, through a quest, or event chain, or even a collection. Complexity will depend of the NPC’s power/level (veteran, champion, legend)
  • NPC’s will use their default build.
  • NPC’s with a class (say, Rev Rytlock) will be customizable : the player will need to provide them with weapons, and maybe spend some points of whatever to unlock their skills. It’ll need more IA programming though.
  • NPC’s will gather either in home instance, or in their own home (Destiny’s edge and Dragon’s watch roughly have one), or in some kind of headquarters.
  • When you plan to do something, you go talk to them with a “Please come with me in my next adventure” system.
  • Once your party is setup, entering an instancied content, like a dungeon, would put the NPC’s with you. If you’re going with friends, and the party gets too big, a dialog would ask who is to be removed.

To dwell deeper

Now, things would be crazy if these “instancied contents” also were story episodes. That’d be just cosmetic, and you could enjoy Canach’s witty tongue all the time, or dismiss Braham if you don’t like him.

Then if a sidekick is compulsory, or forbidden (because he’s dead at this time of the story, or you’ll meet him in the instance) a simple dialog would ask you to add or remove him.

Expected benefits

  • Easier access to somehow neglected instancied content, like dungeons.
  • Better replayability of dungeons or story
  • Purpose to run the story to unlock NPC’s
  • More immersion of players : as the commander of the Pact, they at last get to choose whom they fight along with
  • Gold, gear and Hero points sink.

Feel free to comment

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Posted by: castlemanic.3198

castlemanic.3198

Honestly I’m one of those people who’d like to see easy/soloable version for all instanced content (raids, dungeons and fractals) and this is a good step towards solving that issue. The ONLY problem I see is the AI, which this game has a really bad reputation for when it comes to friendly AI (ranger pets, necro minions, guardian spirit weapons, mesmer illusions, engineer turrets, elementalist elementals and thief allies along with any race specific summons and the mistfire wolf elite). I wouldn’t trust the current AI system unless there was a major overhaul. Frankly though, those developer resources could be better spent elsewhere.

Not sure it’s doable, but I’m all for it.

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Posted by: Aza.2105

Aza.2105

AI killed grouping in GW1. So no!!!

Amd Ryzen 1800x – Amd Fury X -64GB of ram
Windows 10

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Posted by: RoseofGilead.8907

RoseofGilead.8907

As a socially shy gamer who only groups up with other players when I absolutely have to, I’d welcome Heroes/Henchmen in GW2. It’d be nice for things such as Migraine, which is hard to find a group for these days, or even less-popular dungeons. I think it should be kept out of raids, though, at least for a good, long while.

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

ANet has actually been slowly nerfing NPCs for story instances — they want us to do the heavy lifting (although there are still plenty of times that I’ve let the NPCs do all the killing, just to test if it’s a work-around for friends who struggle).

So if you really want to see heroes, you’ll have to provide a compelling reason how this improves the game enough for the community that it’s worth the massive effort it would take to make it happen.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”

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Posted by: joneirikb.7506

joneirikb.7506

On the whole, not a giant fan of the idea of adding heroes to the game. But I do have to give credit that the suggestion above would have been a very good way of doing it, if they wanted to add heroes to the game. +1 for well thought out and limiting it to instances etc.

I can understand the wish for many to play through dungeons etc with NPC’s, some people doesn’t like the grouping aspect of the game, and some content is “locked” behind that. Though to be fair, there is very little of that, so I don’t see it as a big problem.

(Saying this as a person that still haven’t gotten around to do all the dungeons, because I largely dislike trusting in pugs. And is considering trying to solo the dungeons for the heck of it)

Elrik Noj (Norn Guardian, Kaineng [SIN][Owls])
“Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.”
“The objective is to win. The goal is to have fun.”

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Posted by: Ashen.2907

Ashen.2907

I did not care for the addition of heroes in gw1. Not really sure that I would like them any more here.

(edited by Ashen.2907)

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Posted by: Mea.5491

Mea.5491

Meh. Heroes were one of the things I didn’t like about GW1. It was boring running around with a bunch of NPCs. I play MMORPGs mostly because of the MMO part.

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Posted by: Orion Templar.4589

Orion Templar.4589

For the instanced content, yes I’d agree. The LFG tool is definitely useful, but sometimes if I want to run a dungeon, there’s simply no one else in LFG doing that dungeon. I don’t want to wait around for lengthy periods of time trying to wait for others so I can enjoy the content I’d like to enjoy.

I’d love to have an option to start a dungeon with henchmen, but advertise on LFG while I get started. If people join, I could kick out a henchman and replace it with the real person. If we were lucky, more people would join and one by one the henchmen would be kicked out as we progressed.

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Posted by: phys.7689

phys.7689

ANet has actually been slowly nerfing NPCs for story instances — they want us to do the heavy lifting (although there are still plenty of times that I’ve let the NPCs do all the killing, just to test if it’s a work-around for friends who struggle).

So if you really want to see heroes, you’ll have to provide a compelling reason how this improves the game enough for the community that it’s worth the massive effort it would take to make it happen.

the main benefit would be making instances more accessible.
but this assumes they can make npcs good enough not to be trash in instanced content.

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Posted by: Tom.6478

Tom.6478

I would love to have hero’s.

When GW1 implemented hero’s, that was my favorite time. So much was opened up to me without having to find a friendly group. Things like The Fissure of Woe were suddenly doable with no group finding….. Go there anytime you want.

But that is only a small part of the enjoyment. Getting the Hero’s, equipping the hero’s, and adjusting their build as well as what ones to use……all that was fun and interesting.

I refined my hero’s so well, I would rent them out. ( I didn’t charge a fee, just did it for fun ) I would invite someone, go to wherever, then I would leave, leaving my invite with my tricked out hero’s.

I love those times.

Having said that, I’m not sure it would be practical, or even doable with GW2. I would love to see it, but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

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Posted by: KilluaDarkReaper.3684

KilluaDarkReaper.3684

For the instanced content, yes I’d agree. The LFG tool is definitely useful, but sometimes if I want to run a dungeon, there’s simply no one else in LFG doing that dungeon. I don’t want to wait around for lengthy periods of time trying to wait for others so I can enjoy the content I’d like to enjoy.

I’d love to have an option to start a dungeon with henchmen, but advertise on LFG while I get started. If people join, I could kick out a henchman and replace it with the real person. If we were lucky, more people would join and one by one the henchmen would be kicked out as we progressed.

I wonder why that is though, content such as dungeons should always have players forming groups to run. In GW1, you could always always always see players forming groups for dungeons, Fissue of Woe, Underworld, speedclear farms, outpost running, hardmode clearing, etc. It’s so odd GW2 is having this type of problem when GW1 never had it.

Server – Darkhaven US
Guild – Darkhaven Elite
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Posted by: Linken.6345

Linken.6345

For the instanced content, yes I’d agree. The LFG tool is definitely useful, but sometimes if I want to run a dungeon, there’s simply no one else in LFG doing that dungeon. I don’t want to wait around for lengthy periods of time trying to wait for others so I can enjoy the content I’d like to enjoy.

I’d love to have an option to start a dungeon with henchmen, but advertise on LFG while I get started. If people join, I could kick out a henchman and replace it with the real person. If we were lucky, more people would join and one by one the henchmen would be kicked out as we progressed.

I wonder why that is though, content such as dungeons should always have players forming groups to run. In GW1, you could always always always see players forming groups for dungeons, Fissue of Woe, Underworld, speedclear farms, outpost running, hardmode clearing, etc. It’s so odd GW2 is having this type of problem when GW1 never had it.

Not really that odd its unsupported content, alot of people got all they wanted from the dungeons since anet havent added any new rewards for them.

Or they just spvp/wvwvw to get to weapon & armor skins.

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Posted by: Henry.5713

Henry.5713

This feature just wouldn’t appeal to me. I can see some fun in setting up a group of bots to synergize together and be more efficent, but even that would be getting old quickly.
Too much of a group PvE player for them to replace real people, friends, guild mates and the random pug encounters for me. Kind of why I also never got into soloing dungeons apart from doing most of them once or twice. It just feels boring to me.

Some technical difficulties come to mind, though. Or more like balancing issues.
This is an action combat game after all. It wouldn’t be that special for AI or bots to perform tasks like breaking bars, casting buffs, avoiding red circles, bursting when needed and other tasks almost perfectly. This would mean a lot of work for ArenaNet of course. They could give us a deeply customizable framework which would allow us to set up every individual hero around any given encounter. That being the best scenario.
It is more likely that they’d take the easy approach. High HP and high toughness AI, able to tank and spank not just all of the enemies but also all of the mechanics players need to avoid. Just doesn’t feel right to me.

I am not completely opposed to heroes, however. Seems to be a feature some people would like to see for various reasons. Involving a lot of nostalgia perhaps.
However, the addition of heroes will most likely lead to everyone just cheesing their through all of the instances by copying some guide or script they find online.

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Posted by: Rauderi.8706

Rauderi.8706

I’d be all for it if it used characters from my own created pool. I’d.. have a lot of options. >.>

Though if it did work that way, I could have my own warband rampaging through raids. }]:3

Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632

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Posted by: Nick Lentz.6982

Nick Lentz.6982

Maybe if you remake this thread every week for 5 years, we could get them on an expansion. Since now we have the possibility of mounts in the next one.
#wouldtakeheroesovermounts

Guardian of Maguuma
Grand Warden of I Crit Under Pressure.
message me for an invite ^_^

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Posted by: TheGrimm.5624

TheGrimm.5624

I do appreciate options to be able to do content with groups and solo at times.

Focusing in on who the NPCs would be, that is a good idea. I know a lot of times players get the feeling that they have little relationship to the their story line guild and this would go a way towards connecting them more. Having more interaction with both DE and DW is a good idea and would lend more weight when we have off interactions with the NPCs in living story episodes.

On being able to complete the content with added NPCs, not sure where I stand on that. I appreciate that at times you may want to run solo or may not have people on. But for NPCs to able to keep up they at times will be able to bypass some game rules to stay with the player and things like that make me question the concept. I do a lot of falling and going splat in some of the jumping fractals but that’s part of the challenge and fun. A programmed AI is going to be up there with me where as in a group environment some players may be holding the line while others are trans-versing the environment to get to that point. Those are not the same fights at all.

As far as effort, I could see this being a larger coding project. Not a bad idea to put out there but I think this would be a large undertaking. If I was to weigh this coding effort versus a match-maker style of system for group content I think I would lean towards a match maker.

GW/PoTBS/WAR/Rift/WAR/GW2/CU

De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum.

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Posted by: Faaris.8013

Faaris.8013

And is considering trying to solo the dungeons for the heck of it

Hey, we have that in common, I tried to solo Twilight Arbor in story mode (because I thought that “story” means you can solo it, why the heck do you even let people in when they come alone??) but stopped after dying a few times at the Spider Queen.

Let’s do it together then! :P

Herleve – Ruins of Surmia

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Posted by: fluidmonolith.3584

fluidmonolith.3584

As a socially shy gamer who only groups up with other players when I absolutely have to, I’d welcome Heroes/Henchmen in GW2. It’d be nice for things such as Migraine, which is hard to find a group for these days, or even less-popular dungeons. I think it should be kept out of raids, though, at least for a good, long while.

This is also the reason that I don’t like doing content like raids, fractals, and dungeons, which are admittedly cool content. I generally only do open world PvE and pug / solo WvW, where communication is not a big requirement.

I certainly think that ‘challenging content’ should not be limited to 5-man or 10-man parties, and should include soloable content. The application of heroes would permit challenging soloable content that could be completed by any profession, whereas without the heroes / NPCs, some professions may outperform others drastically.

I think heroes could be great if added as an option for certain content, such as dungeons and maybe fractals. However, the most challenging of group content (e.g. raids, maybe high level fractals) should still, IMO, be available only for groups. If it becomes possible to do the most prestigious / rewarding of challenges either solo or in a group, most people would probably choose solo. Alternatively, the most challenging content could have reduced rewards if played solo.

Maguuma
Astaxanthas (Revenant), Hepaticus (Engineer), Eosinophus (Thief)

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Posted by: SlippyCheeze.5483

SlippyCheeze.5483

And is considering trying to solo the dungeons for the heck of it

Hey, we have that in common, I tried to solo Twilight Arbor in story mode (because I thought that “story” means you can solo it, why the heck do you even let people in when they come alone??) but stopped after dying a few times at the Spider Queen.

Let’s do it together then! :P

FWIW, I did almost every dungeon story mode solo, just for the challenge. Couldn’t get past the wretched bird ability at the end of HoTW yet, but … otherwise, it was possible.

Not saying this to run you down or anything, just a reason why going into story mode alone is something some players would like.

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Posted by: Sombrero.9204

Sombrero.9204

I would like for such feature but I don’t think it will happen for AI reasons. Though they are becoming a tad more interesting to be truly effective it would require too much work I’m afraid.

Plus it was supposed to be a feature when the game was first announced (well you were supposed to choose between a dual class just like in GW1 or having at all time a mercenary to help you out but only one class to specialize in (just like GW1 mercenaries).

The fact that they cut the idea I think indicate that they won’t go into that. Buuuuut, I think in a distant future it could be a thing and I would definetly love it, though if they don’t add dungeons with the next expansion but only continue fractals you can be sure it won’t happen. I mean, AI wouldn’t be able to deal with fractals (unless they make some weird adjustments, and still) and who cares about the first dungeons if we start to have all expansions not adding any.

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Posted by: Zappix.7928

Zappix.7928

I support a hero system for dungeons/personal story and raids but it would be difficult to implement. There’s a lot of self reliance in this game and positioning/getting out of AOE etc. There was problems in GW1 with heroes positioning and having to manage them, whilst I would love heroes I can see a lot of issues with them in GW2. I am like some other players in this game and prefer to do things by myself.

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Posted by: Knighthonor.4061

Knighthonor.4061

I prefer a Casual system added to make all dungeons and instanced content easier for casual players as a option, instead of NPC party members.

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Posted by: virus.4370

virus.4370

i loved my hero’s in gws 1…and it fixed that annoy problem of self-appointed elitist say either uses these builds or we kick you out of the group..the same problem with raids now. i would love hero’s for dungeons and raids.

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Posted by: Bridget Morrigan.1752

Bridget Morrigan.1752

I think it’s a good idea, though I’d like to customize their builds, skin their weapons, and allow them to interact with objects (on command). Add the flagging system from GW1 and it’d be just about perfect.

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Posted by: Zappix.7928

Zappix.7928

If you were to introduce Heroes/Hench please don’t make them hog drops from mobs like what was done in GW1.

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Posted by: Ashantara.8731

Ashantara.8731

Meh. Heroes were one of the things I didn’t like about GW1. It was boring running around with a bunch of NPCs. I play MMORPGs mostly because of the MMO part.

GW1 wasn’t an MMO. It was an Online Action RPG, unlike GW2. So yes, in GW2 having henchmen would kill the MMO-purpose of the whole game. (I wouldn’t mind the option for some content, though, like dungeons.)

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Posted by: ThomasC.1056

ThomasC.1056

Thanks everyone for the nice feedback.

As most of you said, I don’t want heroes to go in open world, otherwise, it’d be a really big mess. I just want it to be an enjoyable and viable option for socially awkward people, or those who want to play “old” contents like dungeons or main story.

Sadly, I’m also positive it’d take lots of programming to create the whole system, aongside the necessary IA improvements. Anyway, it’s worth asking : it takes a wish to create a miracle.

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Posted by: BunjiKugashira.9754

BunjiKugashira.9754

My take on heros in GW2 is this:
- Some NPCs would make good heros. They could be unlocked via story, achievements, ingame currency, etc.
- It could be possible to sell henchman-upgrades for our player characters in the gemshop. This would make it possible to take an alt as a hero into your group.

Areas where heros make sense:
- Dungeons. Whoever claims that there is no need for heros in dungeons may now open the lfg tool and try to find a group for Sorrow’s Embrace path 2 in less than 30 minutes.
- Empty open world maps. Some areas are just sooo empty, it drives me crazy. Even if he doesn’t do anything useful, I’d like to have an NPC who occasionally chatters about stuff.
- Story instances. Seriously, as the pact commander you’d expect us to have some troops at our disposal whenever we require them.

Areas where heros make no sense:
- Populated open world maps. Just auto-despawn them if a certain number of players is within a certain range. It’s ok if the range is huge. I’d even go as far as setting this range to render distance (eg everything you can see).
- Raids. This will most likely never happen, because NPCs need to be worse than a less-than-mediocre player. And you just can’t raid with such a liability in your group.
- Fractals. This is the go-to group content. It would be bad to reduce the number of available players for groups by adding heros.

Shana Flamewielder
Sylvari Elementalist of [SFF]
Abaddons Maul

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Posted by: Mea.5491

Mea.5491

Meh. Heroes were one of the things I didn’t like about GW1. It was boring running around with a bunch of NPCs. I play MMORPGs mostly because of the MMO part.

GW1 wasn’t an MMO. It was an Online Action RPG, unlike GW2.

No. Technically, GW1 is a CORPG. However, it’s also massively multiplayer and online BUT everything is instanced except for cities and I don’t like that.