Custom Henchies FTW or FTL?

What ANet will probably do is have 20 "Heros" (2 of each prof) that will be prenamed and have either(or both) premade builds (like PvP Char) or the ability to set up skills from unlocked skills. You might see armor and rune customization a.k.a pvp style, but will probably not be able to create a full team of any prof (IWAY, DervishWAY, or B/P teams etc...) Ppl most likely won't agree with me or not want to agree with me because it sound pretty crappy, but I don't think ANet will give this kind of power players for it would give them more reason not to start PUGs and would hinder the community aspect of the game. I'm more concerned with who (in a PUG) would get to customize these "Heros" and the insueing arguments if its not set up the way anyone or two ppl deem it should be.

8 player party.
---
me
2 godly reflex interrupt henchmen
1 ss necro henchie
1 Stefan
1 woh 1 boon prot henchies
1 Orion

BB pugs?

I hope its 3 instead of 2. I would actually like to see a Smite Monk Hench with Scourge Healing and Smite Hex in addition to my Protection and Healing Monks. Also 3 Rangers would do well together like what you can do on the Luxan side, 1 Damage 1 Interrupt plus 1 Longbow with Favorable Winds.

However I am unsure if henchmen should have secondary class options as this can lead to complex builds that may frustrate the AI. Secondary class options should be for players only. In this way a PUG group might have more appeal for players.

Ive been thinking about the "formation" thing posted above.

Hopefully FTW (ugh..) will be the fact that this will mean that there will be certain improvement on ememy AI...

I know if i was a dev, I would like to be the one who made the area that people think is the most sick and twisted not a chance in hell kind of map that make you totally rethink your schemas of working builds. Look how many more 'monster skills' there were in Factions, and the difference in a lot of the missions.

LOL maybe not as bad as NWN but they can use some serious work.
Sometimes it just trips me out.I seen them getting attacked they will and just stand there.Maybe with all the Events it is disrupting the AI.I know one thing the monsters are not having that problem.I really want to see good skills for the Heroes/Hench.They should be build like you were building a player chr.

Lets face it.. we will not be able to have any secondary profession for our henchies if we follow how henchies have been made in the last 2 chapters. Also due to this and the fact that it is just a dumb AI there will be no real complex builds possiable for henchies.. the most they will probably do is spam all the skills they can on anyone they see.. maybe if they are a nuker they "might" use AoE spells only when there is more then one enemy in the area (not counting bosses), I hope.

Humans will always be more wanted then henchmen but this would at least let us fill in gaps in our parties if need be.. no more waiting for 2 damn monks to join the team for 30+ mins if we can just have 2 well made monks who simply spam woh etc. on all who need it. Sure never as good as people but would at least take some of the frustration out oh "having" to always wait for people for any half way hard mission.

I think this concern is misguided. The primary reason I prefer henchmen to PUGs (and I think many people are with me on this) is that henchmen are better than most GW players. They also follow directions well, don't spam annoying **** over chat, and are generally much less infuriating to play with than real players. So what is the problem here? It's certainly not that the henchmen are too good - no, they're far from that. The problem is that the majority of the GW community is low-quality, immature trash.

If you want to encourage team play, the most appropriate way is to improve the skill of the average player. One way to do this is to make it impossible for bad and/or immature players to find good groups - and if henchmen become good enough (pray. hard, and frequently), that might actually happen. Most of the competent players will stick to guild or henchmen groups, and the trash players will be left on their own.

If it's just one customizable hero, I'm not sure what to think >_>

Have to agree, playing with hanchie usually makes me enjoy playing the game, you dont have rage quitter, you dont have trash talker etc. The reason i pick them isnt because they are better, they are not, Human player are way better than henchie AI if the player know what they are doing, but unfortunately, this is not the norm.

The only problem i have with them is when i play an assasin. Their AI isnt good for the assasin class. Well, if you really want to use henchie group with Assasin, you better use secondary Ranger and act like a ranger.

Yup same here.Too many AFK and quitters.It just happens too often.If you are lucky enought to find a good group it is a blast.Unfortunely that is getting tougher to find.I dont care if someone is "Leet" I just want a team that will work together or at least try.

I think everyone's reading too much into this. What we'll get will be closer to a cosmetic change than an actual improvement.

Technically, Factions already has "henchmen that grow with you," even if without the "customizable" part. The very first time you meet Emi and Chiyo - the assassin and the ritualist - is in Monastery Overlook, as soon as you create a Factions character. After that, both of them advance roughly at the same pace as you do (assuming you don't rush ahead or level yourself on easy stuff). The only thing you can't do is have input over their setups, which is what I think Nightfall will introduce.

The way I see it, each henchie in Nightfall will have a dialogue similar to the current one but with different ways to end it. After clicking on any henchie, you'd be able to choose their setup, most likely limited to skills but possibly also items and armor. What I mean though is not that the player will choose each skill the henchie uses but instead that the player will choose one setup out of the few available ones for the henchie. So - for example - we could have one Mhenlo to choose as a hench, but his dialogue options would let players invite Mhenlo [Protection Henchman] or Mhenlo [Smiting Henchman] into the party instead of the default [Healer Henchman] Mhenlo.

Most likely, gear will be outside player control as well. It's possible that henchmen will have different weapon sets like one set of collector items for each attribute line, but I just don't see player interaction with henchies extending to weapon trades. Granted, Diablo II had henchmen you could equip, but the time and the money a player would have to invest into equipping their multiple henchies as well as their own character would be prohibitive, as some people have mentioned.

The only way I can see customizable henchies with different looks is if ANet finally tries to test out "armor sets" for henchies - something similar to weapon sets that the players have been asking for. Even then, Factions has introduced the "all stats one look" armors, so chances are we won't see any difference even if a hench changes armor sets simply because it's better for game consistency, especially if the hench is also a part of the storyline. Come to think of it, if implemented as I suspect, these "customizable henchies" might be a test of the "skill sets" players have been suggesting as well.

Regardless of what we actually end up with, I just want to point out that pre-release hype hasn't exactly proven itself with Factions. How long did "new and different mission types!" stay exciting? Right, until we figured out we didn't have to do them. How many "party forced to split" missions did we see? One, The Deep, which people wouldn't have even seen if The Crusaders didn't start the "ferrying for free" trend.

In closing, I'd like to point you to this excellent Healbot Blues comic made by Labsenpai. Just replace "chapter two" with "chapter three" when you get to it

Man, all this hate for PUGs. I must have pretty good luck with PUGs, because most people are nice and decent players who know what they are doing. Sure, you run into the occasional jerk, but that's to be expected.

I'm excited about the idea of customizable Henchies, but I expect I'll continue my policy of doing Missions with PUGs and Quests with Henchies.

More time then not, it's fun to meet new people for an hour or so.

I agree with you on the PUG issue. I have had some Great parties with PUG's so I also don't understand the hate that comes from these boards.

However there are times when I don't want to interact with people and work on quests that I need to get done. This is where a custom AI can be so handy. AI henchies that you can customize to suit your needs will be far greater then the picks available. I would like to see a good Illusion Hench or a Smite Monk hench but there currently is not one to use. Hopefully with the new custom Hench options you will be able to make one.

there is something that might make custom henchies more reliable being able to set priorities of skills for each henchie and some drop down boxes for how the ai works with it like,defensive:low,medium,high.aggressiveness(runn ing into battle straight into an enemy;low(almost never),medium(from time to time like with henchies that use close up touch skills),high(spends most the battle at the enemy),very high(always stays int he frontline doesent retreat till the player does.

We'll have to wait for the release and see how it's implemented before we can really judge. I would imagine that you will be able to customize their looks and such more than their professions or their skillsets. This is not to say that you won't be able to pick from a variety of complete skillbars, but the AI might not be able to handle us picking whatever skills we want them to have. I also don't think that you'd be able to make a complete group of one class, because that seems a bit silly.

The hate comes from the fact that the average GW player you find in a PUG seems to have about as many braincells as I have fingers (and before anyone cracks any smart jokes, I have the normal number of fingers).

I don't deny that a good group can be found once in a while, and that they are an absolute pleasure to play with. I have had the good fortune to join some partially-guild groups, or groups of friends, with everyone coordinating over vent, or at least groups of good players that know how to run their builds and know what the mission/quest is about. Those kinds of groups are so far superior to henchmen it isn't even worth comparing the two.

But that's not the kind of group you're going to get in 95~99% of PUGs. Most groups are comprised of some combination of spammers/whiners, assholes, 5 year-olds, and flat-out morons. I used to PUG a lot, before I got frustrated and started my love affair with henchmen, so I'm not just pulling this out of thin air.

I am not, however, talking about newbies, just to be clear. I probably come across as a rabid newbie hater on the boards, but I really don't mind inexperienced players, provided they're willing to use their brain or at least listen to advice and follow directions. I don't care if someone hasn't done the mission before, even for a master's group, provided they listen when someone fills them in on what's up. The problem is that most newbies come with one or all of the other traits I listed in the previous paragraph.

But anyway, on-topic :P

Clearly, all of this is based on speculation. We don't know what the custom options are going to be, whether this is actually talking about henchmen, or some other hero, and how this is going to impact the game.

I actually agree with Shyft, in that I don't think there will be any practical improvements to the henchmen, and that most customization, if any, will be limited to cosmetic changes. To be honest, customization isn't all that necessary. They really could just improve the builds of the existing henchmen, and improve their AI. For instance, no running off and res'ing, no monk res mid-combat, limited or no casting under Backfire, limited or no attacking/skill usage under SS/Empathy/Inept/etc., no massive heals on slightly damaged allies, scattering from aoe damage, etc. In reality, a few AI buffs to existing henchmen could be a heck of a lot more useful than customization.

Here's something to think about - Derv/paragon henchmen could be extremely powerful if given the right skillbar, or if you're allowed to take multiple ones, even without any customization options. And if henchmen selection is closer to Factions than Prophecies (ie. you have lots of henchmen to choose from, with duplicates of certain classes), how will this impact the design/difficulty of the PvE campaign?

FTW of course

What I'm dreaming to see is having the option to make your OWN characters in a single account as henchmen (including pvp created ones). This way the characters are totally customizable since they have already grown with you over several game expansions.

I think advanced henchmen, particularly customized/controllable ones, could radically alter PvE design/difficulty, and very much for the better.

For the game to currently work overall, everyone needs to stand a chance at over coming the challenges presented. That includes people who play with only henchmen. This particularly becomes an issue in older chapters that become less populated. If henchmen become fully customizable, and can take fairly complex orders, then ArenaNet can raise the bar of mission design/difficulty beyond a mostly 'hack and slash'. Need to defend an NPC while assaulting somewhere else? No problem! Order half your henchies to guard and the rest come with you. Currently, something like that can't work because you can't split a henchmen team.

By raising the bar of what AI can do, ArenaNet could safely design all sorts of new mission types and higher difficulties. You could add things like the Titan quests, without worrying they are 'unhenchable' and closed off to anyone who can't find a group. You can have more complex boss battles, like fighting the Iron Forgeman, without having people unable to do them because of henchmen inadequecy. Missions could require you to "think" more, because now henchmen can keep up with a player instead of dragging things down to always being "kill this, heal that, kill something else".

Advanced henchmen could be the greatest thing that ever happened to Guild Wars.

(I might be a little too optimistic... but it's hard not to be over a possibility like this)

make a henchie that will ragequit at 60% dp for something more realistic

I'm going to make 7x dervishes and OOP necro in my party

I agree here as well; imagine the henchies even acting slightly as smart as say those NPCs in the Duel repeatable quests. When pitted against each other, it's a joke.
Each henchie "class" should also act like it's mob counter part to some degree. I've never seen the hechie assassin make any use of itself by attacking the enemy back line, yet the mob assassin's head straight to the back where they can do the most damage.
Even with improved AI, some coordination will be required though, as PvE is not fighting against same level 20's; rather 24 to 31 leveled mobs with a natural regen that's off the charts. So coordinated attacks are sometimes needed.
So simple commands such as:
Engage: henchies will act like the mobs and do thier class roles
Retreat: obvious use
Attack Target: like calling the target, but once that target has dropped, they return to Engage mode.

Customized or not, without the above such things and the ability to take them with you to other chapters, they will still be of limited use and somewhat frustrating when they run about like a chicken with it's head chopped off. Still, I look forward to seeing what mischief I can get into with the "new" henchies as I too, have given up completely on the PuGs.

ROFLMAO!

I totally agree actually..

When I first read about customising skills for henchies my mind went into overdrive trying to imagine the possabilities..

Then I remember Gaile saying that there will be 12vs12 ALLIANCE Battles for Faction, and how excited I got then... and I clearly remember how deceived I felt when I realised that you couldnt actually challenge other alliances, and that they were actually Faction Battles.

So this is what I expect...

You wont be able to name the henchies
You wont be able to change their armor
You wont be able to change their weapons
You wont be able to change the skills on ALL of the henchies
You wont be able to select Elite skills

You WILL only be able to change one or two of the skills, and ONLY from a pre-selected list... even then, you may only be able to chose "skill sets"

And if Im wrong about any of the above... well, It would be an absoloute Bobby dazzler

that would be funny, you have the choice for monks, res sig or ressurect,
warrior,res sig or res sig

Or funnier still, the henchies come with pre-built skill set ups mirroring the PvP prebuilds. You can choose to make the Warrior a standard "paladin" or other useless build. Instant enchant removal anyone?

Scary thing, I can actually see Anet trying this, to once again irritate the player base into more "intros to PvP" and "close the ties". Zaishen challenge anyone?

they say you can control your henchies, what I would like to see is that if you have say 6 PVE characters already, I wounder if you could use them instead of making new henchies, I would love to have a party made up of all my existing characters, that would be fun.

I think one danger of being able to micro your henchmen is something someone pointed out very early in the thread: the flavor of the game itself begins to shift towards RTS. As it is, playing with henchmen is already quite different from playing with a real team (and I don't just mean you actually finish missions, har har). If you add in the element of being able to literally control your henchmen, the gap between these playstyles will increase significantly.

why strangle innovation?

I think you're forgetting we can already do this with players

From the ANet Press Release:


So... for the guy up thread who said this wasn't confirmed... i guess its confirmed.

As to the rest, it depends on how cynical you want to be. Current henchies do "level up" as you advance in the game as someone already said. They also already follow commands in battle, as long as its the command "I'm attacking so and so". Use skills and equipment of the players choosing... this could span an entire spectrum. You get to make their entire skillbar from anything, or you can choose from a quite limited selection. You can give them any equipment to use, or you can choose whether they use an axe/sword/hammer...

Honestly, I'm sad to say I'm not expecting much. We all saw the henchie problems that existed at the beginnings of Factions, and it took quite awhile and several updates before they actually worked like they were supposed to. And those were non-customizable... But we won't know until it comes out, or until ANet decides to be a little less vague,

The issues with trying to get AI right for set skills are aparently pretty big, imagine with skill sets that aren't as easy? I don't know how they'll manage it.

Did you even read This post?Or did you skip from page 2 to 4 Vyral?

I dont think that's a bad thing at all. It would add a lot of variety to the game. Closing the gap between these playstyles won't help anything. If someone is deadset against playing with PUGs he will just refuse to do so....unless he cant finish a mission with henchies. That would just be forcing someone to do something he doesnt want...

And people who actually like PUGs or playing with their friends/guilds won't give up the social interaction to play strictly only with henchies. A variety of playstyles would actually encourage me to try all of them.

I agree with this. I will not PuG anymore. I've had too many afkers; too many fools run off to unlock a section of the map, then drop; too many grab their cap, then drop; just too many who don't understand the basic idea of not grabbing five groups of level 28s is a bad idea, then scream about dying.

For me, it's henchies, guildies, allies or logging. I have no problem explaining what I know or sharing what I am doing or how I did something to someone who asks me, but I'm not about to hold another players hand and tell them how to play the game they bought. They will figure it out and hopefully have fun doing so... however, I will not have my time wasted or to be annoyed by those others that have annoyed me by doing one of the above listed things.

These henchies, if done with some reasonable thought and flexability will keep me playing and purchasing the games in the future... as long as we don't have another Factions (but that's another thread) or PvP heavy game. I just hope, Anet allows these henchies to go with us to other chapters, sort of a perm group tied to the character that can be re-placed by real players as needed.

It might be a case similar to different towns=different henchies.... I dont expect to be able to bring my Custom Hench to Tyria, for example... whether or not its my Elona Character...

Hopefully our old characters (cantha&tyria) will have access to the Custom Henchies- id assume so... but we all know about assumption, eh?

I would expect this to be easier then you realize. Anet is consistently updating the tools they use to develop the game. I am sure the tool they now use for henchmen will be similar to the one the players will use. Plus if they keep henchmen to one single class of skills, as they do now, and keep skills at about 6-7 per henchman, as they do now, you won't (can't) have complex cross class builds players use. Such as Blood is Power Boon Prot Monks, or Bunny Thumpers complicated build structures would not be available because of a lack of secondary skill selections. This makes AI management easy in my mind. Then it’s a matter of priority levels on skills.

Either way I’m not worried about it.

My only question is that with these customizable henchmen and the fact that they level up with you. If you choose to level up the ranger, monk, and mesmer from the begining(assuming the game won't go to 8 man teams automatically) then you would have little option to change to a warrior. If you have 3 level 20 henchmen and 5 level 1 henchmen, as soon as you hit 8 man team territory you're screwed.

Sad and pathetic but the only way to describe this is...dare I say it, Pokemon. Yes that sad card game we all abandoned when we were twelve, but say you have a level 20 Pikachu, and...i think it was six to a party, 5 level 1 (insert pokemon names here). When the Pikachu dies or is not effective against something, you lose.

Also this will change the game from an "MMORPG" to a "Solo w/ NPC". Not saying the game is an MMORPG but if it was, it won't be because people will rely on "teh uber 1337 henchies!!1!shiftone!!"

Here's to hoping ANET gives this feature a second, or third look. Side note...can anyone say Carebear Factory?

~Neon

I just want to be able to stop the henchie ele from using fire storm. I swear sometimes it makes me want to drag Orion into aggro and watch him die hehe.

I think for experience players it wont be to bad. it will however stop high speed exceleration thru the game sense you have to level your henchies.

I see this as 12 men trying to stand in a 3 man circle jerk. ( Cluster &%$* )

You lost me at Pokemon... seriously. Another analogy might work for us old timers.

I did get the MMORPG to Solo w/ NPC though. Anet is looking long term with the improved AI. If Anet didn't do something about the AI, the game very well might die. Why? Population thinning out, not people leaving, but spreading out over more chapters. GW doesn't have the 6 million players so getting a group together will become harder and harder as the chapters come out. Since all chapters are not required, players that are not in on the latest one may find themselves standing around Solo w/ NPC. If the AI were to be left as it is, those players trying to get through, say Eternal grove with a masters might get a bit of a headache, or a non-interupter trying to take on Seabed with henchies. Doable, but difficult if not impossible for some players.
Now, if Anet begins to follow what sells, and begins to make all chapters really good in the PvE dept, we might begin to see an influx of players from games like WoW and EQ2 wanting to come join us and henchies wont be as needed, but could still be around for people like me that refuse PuGs. That way, we wont waste an hour at a time "lfg" or "glf X" every time we want to adventure.

Carebear factory?

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Seems you get henchiehero(es) who will "follow you through campaign and gain levels/xp" so that's like your own personal permanent team of henchies?

If it is, I can foresee hassles as people argue in parties about bringing their own personal hero. e.g. a party of 6 (out of 8) decides to fill the last 2 with Herohench. Whose herohench gets chosen?

AI/control/customising is welcome but I hope this doesn't lead to even more hench teams - it's supposed to be a massive multiplayer game, not a massive henchieplayer game. Factions has, partly due to poorly designed game flow, got a definate increase in the number of people running around in hench teams and I'd hate for that pattern to develop in Nightfall too.

"PUGs suck" fine if that's the line you want to take, but henchies should, in my opinion, be considered as last resort/if you can't find human players overall. At the very least just as options to those minority who play it like a single player game. In no way should they become so great they encourage even more people to use all hench teams, because really if that happens, what is the point of even having it as multiplayer in a PvE context? Just release it as a single player game with online PvP mode and be done with it.

In addition I think skillsets/favourites/loadouts for custom herohenchies would be a really handy addition if it's not already in. It's already at the point people are impatient and won't sit around forever while you try to get a team together, but they'll not magically be more patient while you configure your henchies for the task at hand. Hotkey premade/configured skill sets wanted!

Well, yeah that's your opinion that henchies should only be a last resort. I really dont think forcing people to group up is the way to go. People should have a choice in how they play, even if you think playing it solo goes against the MMO grain. Henchies should always be a viable alternative. BUT yes, henchies should never be more "powerful" than regular players, making it too good an option.

And if you havent noticed, GW isnt quite an MMO in the traditional sense. With instances for almost everything, the sense of "massive multiplayers" just isnt there. It really won't matter if more people take henchies instead of players. If people dont want to be social, you cant force them to be. And if people prefer the company of real people, they will always take real people.

Who said anything about forcing? Just that last time I looked this was most definately a multiplayer game. Several human players either against each other in PvP or co-op in PvE, with henchies making up the numbers. I'm not arguing against henchies being an option for those who prefer to play it like a single player game, but what I'm concerned about is that this might encourage even more people to forsake the multiplayer aspect of it... which could also lead to a snowball effect as has happened in Factions in some way:

You arrive somewhere, hardly anyone's there or the few people who are there all have 7 henchies "because PUGs suck" and also because the ping-pong nature of the missions/storyline has helped encourage it. What happens? Even more in hench teams, even the ones who previously might not have been.

Instanced or not is irrelevent, it's still sold as an online multiplayer game, as opposed to a single player game with AI companions and an online PvP mode.