Guild Wars 2

Does anyone remember the Heroes of GW1? How you picked them up individually throughout Nightfall and EotN?

I’ve been thinking about how the story is going with Destinys Edge 2.0
Wouldn’t it be cool if you could alter their builds and equipment and have them function similarly to how heroes did in GW1? They’d still only be there for your persona/living story missions, which they’d be there for anyway regardless, only you’d have the option to customize.

Not permanent unlocks, so in case any character needed to leave the story for whatever reason they could do so and you’d just get any of your equipment back.

I think that’s a cool idea.
Thoughts?

No. I hated the heroes system in GW1. It absolutely destroyed the playerbase.

“Oh guys, who wants to go for an elite mission? DoA? Urgoz?”
“Just use your heroes and solo it.”

“Hey guys, can I get some help with this mission? Its really hard.”
“Just use your heroes and solo it.”

The heroes system reduced the GW1 playerbase to a bunch of lazy, anti-social wrecks. It made everybody start shying away from group play and completely destroyed the 1 purpose a massively muliplayer game is meant to fufill: Playing with other people.

The heroes system is actually the reason I quit GW1, because nobody wanted to play with me any more. When ever I asked for help, or invited anyone to any content, I got rejected, being told to just use my heroes.

Heroes were cool when you were limited to 3 of them. You still had to make one friend.

They shouldn’t have made the move to full hero parties until GW2 release, when they were ready to effectively sign off on the game and wanted to make it playable with a drastically reduced player base.

GW2, on the other hand, does not need heroes. All of the story content is designed around solo play, and the group content is designed to make players find and play in groups

GW1 henchies/heroes were a design compromise that enabled them to build a game that was nothing but a series of group dungeons and still have that game be somewhat playable solo. Henchies were better at this as they had a drawback compared to real people. Heroes were cool from a narrative standpoint, but from a design standpoint they totally wrecked grouping and the social elements of the game.

Argon.1563:

No. I hated the heroes system in GW1. It absolutely destroyed the playerbase.

“Oh guys, who wants to go for an elite mission? DoA? Urgoz?”
“Just use your heroes and solo it.”

“Hey guys, can I get some help with this mission? Its really hard.”
“Just use your heroes and solo it.”

The heroes system reduced the GW1 playerbase to a bunch of lazy, anti-social wrecks. It made everybody start shying away from group play and completely destroyed the 1 purpose a massively muliplayer game is meant to fufill: Playing with other people.

The heroes system is actually the reason I quit GW1, because nobody wanted to play with me any more. When ever I asked for help, or invited anyone to any content, I got rejected, being told to just use my heroes.

But the DE 2.0 characters are only there for story missions, which you solo anyway?

PopeUrban.2578:

Heroes were cool when you were limited to 3 of them. You still had to make one friend.

They shouldn’t have made the move to full hero parties until GW2 release, when they were ready to effectively sign off on the game and wanted to make it playable with a drastically reduced player base.

GW2, on the other hand, does not need heroes. All of the story content is designed around solo play, and the group content is designed to make players find and play in groups

GW1 henchies/heroes were a design compromise that enabled them to build a game that was nothing but a series of group dungeons and still have that game be somewhat playable solo. Henchies were better at this as they had a drawback compared to real people. Heroes were cool from a narrative standpoint, but from a design standpoint they totally wrecked grouping and the social elements of the game.

I’m talking about through the duration of your personal/living story, where the characters are there anyway.
They’re gonna be there, why not implement the option to customize them?

Canakun.8031:

PopeUrban.2578:

Heroes were cool when you were limited to 3 of them. You still had to make one friend.

They shouldn’t have made the move to full hero parties until GW2 release, when they were ready to effectively sign off on the game and wanted to make it playable with a drastically reduced player base.

GW2, on the other hand, does not need heroes. All of the story content is designed around solo play, and the group content is designed to make players find and play in groups

GW1 henchies/heroes were a design compromise that enabled them to build a game that was nothing but a series of group dungeons and still have that game be somewhat playable solo. Henchies were better at this as they had a drawback compared to real people. Heroes were cool from a narrative standpoint, but from a design standpoint they totally wrecked grouping and the social elements of the game.

I’m talking about through the duration of your personal/living story, where the characters are there anyway.
They’re gonna be there, why not implement the option to customize them?

Customizing them would serve no purpose, as they’re purposely undertuned so that they aren’t a significant portion of your combat ability and only ever exist as glorified meat shields in the first place.

Not only that, but their presence or absence in those instances is dictated by the plot rather than the player. Look at LS2. It’s important for the story for Kas/Jory to be present in some instances and absent in others. Making them customizable would be an effectively zero sum change that wouldn’t really be worth the effort.

GW1’s story instances were still a game about group compositions, and what the heroes or hencfhies did was replace players, thus it was important that you could build them like players. They don’t replace players in GW2, so there’s no real point in customizing them when they’ll only ever be horrible DPS HP sponges and occasional res bots.

In addition to that, those NPCs have a selection of unique skills that are often plot points. Marjory moving from scepter/dagger to greatsword is a plot point for instance. Kasmeer using time warp in the LS2 or braham using his shield are important design elements of the fight, and so on.

Oh my god, okay.