I would just like to remind you about Hero's

It's still early. Lots of people, like myself, are taking our heroes as much as possible because they need to be levelled up.

There aren't many PUGs in the endgame because the people who wanted to finish the game quickly are not willing to wait around for PUGs to form and take heroes, henchies, and guildies on their own accelerated pace. People who take their time and are willing to take the extra time to form PUGs simply haven't had enough time to get to the end yet. In time, more people will be in the endgame outposts to form more PUGs. The people who enjoy PUGs will continue to enjoy PUGs, even after heroes. Heroes are better than henches, but they can still be just as boring if you enjoy that human interaction aspect of the game.

Personally, I enjoy playing with others, whether it be guildies or PUGs. But, more important to me right now is levelling my heroes and getting the endgame greens to sell so I can afford to buy skills and signets of capture. I suspect soon, when i no longer need to build up my heroes and don't feel rushed by the high value of endgame greens, I will likely return to PUGs for going back through for any bonuses or helping guildies or whatever. Heroes will be used like henches - to fill in a specific when a decent human player can't be found.

Thank you ANet for the heroes. To those predicting the demise of PUGs - have faith - people will continue to play in PUGs. Once enough people get through enough of the game to provide a pool of people to group from.

I also feel the hero henchies are going to make pugs a less desirable group, I have
only completed five missions so far, and am very glad they are not "timed" missions,
a reason I did not bother getting protector of Cantha title, had two more to go and
after a dozen failures with pugs, I gave up and farmed the last month before the
NF release.

That's as may be, but why does it matter if Guild Wars moves toward single player? Wouldn't that be what players want? No one is FORCED to use Heroes, so I fail to see how ANet is encouraging Single player. Ok, so they have added features to make Solo play easier, so what?

The fact still stands that with the addition of Heroes, the status of Guild Wars is defined by the players, and the availible tools. Guild Wars didn't have to have guilds (an obvious group-making feature), but they did. Guild Wars didn't have to be instanced, but it is. The fact of the matter is that if people want the game to be multi-player, it will be. If they don't, it won't.

I think it's a bit pompous to say that, because it's online it MUST be multi-player. That severly limits ANet's marketing ability. Adding features that allow more players to decide how they have fun is a good thing. Without those options the same players would have less fun (why else implement the Heroes?). It all boils down to choice, you don't want players to have a choice between PuGs and better henchmen. I argue that most players want that choice, think it is a good thing, and GW would come to an end sooner if Heroes had not been implemented.

lol

To OP:

In my opinion: Guildies > heroes > henchies > pugs.

Granted there are good pugs out there, however with my luck I seem to get about 80% of them being: brb food, just plain afk, people that agree on a strategy (not neccessarily my strategy, I've learned a few things from pugs) and then switching strategies in mission. My all time favorite, cappers leaving after getting their skills when specifically asked if they were doing mission/bonus. I don't have to deal with this while using heroes/henchies.

QFT!!!! Heroes never rage quit either. They also don't have a bed time or have to take out the trash or get grounded from the comp mid mission because their parents caught them playing instead of doing homwwork. They always bring the skills that are needed and they don't whine or lag out.

I thought of thinking something up myself, but since your post said everything i could've written myself, i simply quoted it and "agree". The only good PUG i've ever been to was Thunderhead Keep where the PUG acted very similarily to a fully organised guild PvE team. And that's saying very much. Most of the other times, in Factions especially, i have experienced much more intelligence on henches than on player characters. Well...i suppose i just have bad luck.
And well...if henches before the AI upgrade were already good, i best not even talk about heroes, on whom one is able to change the skills.

I successfully completed the THK mission with my ranger and henchies even before NF and heroes. I haven't tried it with heroes but can only imagine that it would be a piece of cake. The one time I did that mish with a PUG I was monking and it also went fairly easy and enjoyable aside from one Leeroy wammo.

Fwiw, I love heroes and find PUGs to be quite frustrating in general. But when PUGs are good, the experience is better than doing it with heroes and/or henchies, imo. You get to experience fun and new stuff, like lucking into a very successful Nahpui Quarter mission with a team of almost all assassins. And even the occasional disaster that turns out to be quite amusing. But my overall preference is to play with guildies and ventrilo.

I agree with you, my girlfriend and I played through the Nightfall campaign with just heroes to see how well they work. Now it may be possible but its not even close to playing with real people. Guild >Pugs > Heroes > henchies anytime.

Heros might also work to quell disruptive players. Players who demand they get the Green or they will quit, or who spam out 'leet-speak', or demand this or that...

You no longer need to put up with them, even in a PUG.

Player acts up, kick them at an outpost as add a Hero to fill the gap.

The position for Monks now flips. Before Monks could dictate terms, now a monk, like every other character, must justify being added to a PUG. Why should I let in your monk when I could go with a Hero monk who has my unlocked elite skill and a build I know will be run the way I need it run?

A well run player monk is now in the same position as any other well run character of a given profession - what they can contribute is no longer assumed merely by their profession, PUGs no longer need to make excuses for them.

Heroes could have the long term effect of either killing off PUGs or improving them. At the least, they will result in more polite PUGs. Most players will take a mediocre Hero Monk over a rude but well run player Monk - and the same is true of any other profession.

Actually for some missions you are...

Ironically, that's part of the problem. It has always been easy enough to hench pretty much everything in the game, but learning how to effectively use the henchies has always taken a bit of time, patience, and effort. Time, patience, and effort most players never bothered with, easier to just assume henchies suck -- which, let's face it, is true enough -- and leave it at that. But now not only are there better henchies, but you have to use them for some missions.

A lot of people who wouldn't have otherwise bothered with henchies are going to discover the joys of henching it

It's simply a matter of incentives. If you make one thing easy to do while another thing remains difficult to do, most people will chose the easy path -- especially when the easy path offers a higher overall success rate.

The guild recruiting system -- if there can even be said to be one -- is even more inane than the grouping system.

Two problems there... First, as a single-player game GW bites, a list of better single-player RPGs would fill pages. Second, the more it becomes single-player the more people are going to be wondering why they have to put up with updates and skill changes they don't want -- already a sore spot with many PVEers.

Frankly I'd love it if they released a standalone version of GW that could connect with 1 - 8 friends via some form of CTCP or other, but I just can't see Anet going that route. Short of that, I see no way that GW could or would survive as a single-player game.

I don't? Hmmm... I don't recall saying that.

What I do think is that introducing heroes without concurrently making it easier and/or better to group with humans will turn out to have been a bad move in the long run.

Just my opinion:

Friends > Good PUG > Heroes > Average PUG > Henchies > Bad PUG

Personally, the #1 reason I tend to avoid PUGs on missions is that people get too annoyed when I watch the cutscenes (even if it's my first time through the game). I started playing Prophecies well after the game had been out, and most groups got extremely impatient with me for wanting to actually (gasp) see the story. I wasn't able to beat all the missions with just henchies (I'm not an uber player apparently). This culiminated with me skipping the cutscene in which Rurick died because I felt bad for making other people wait for me (7/8 users want to skip). Doh!

The same thing happened in Factions (I'm still not all the way through the game, since I don't play very many hours a week). In the first mission, I watched the cutscene, and everyone complained after. A lvl 20 said "I didn't help you guys out just to sit around and watch a cutscene!" Seriously, I don't need that kind of grief when I'm just trying to follow the story. Maybe with NF people won't complain so much (the cutscenes are so much better), but I'm not sure I want to even find out.

There's another reason as well: If I'm playing a mission a month after most others have already finished the game, it tends to ruin the joy of discovery to have an experienced player lead you through the mission. While it's very efficient to play the game this way, it's not very entertaining to me. Essentially, it's the difference between taking a guided tour of a new city versus walking around and discovering new places on your own. Different things will appeal to different people, and even at different times. I'm more apt to use PUGs after I've already played through missions once, because I don't mind helping someone else then, and I enjoy the dynamics of human players. But frankly, when you trying to enjoy a story and an immersive roleplaying experience - other human players are the absolute worst.

Now, with NF's heroes, I have a viable choice for playing the game my own way, at my own pace. And I have a choice as to whether I want to play with others or not. To me, that's the best of both worlds in an online game.

BTW, it wouldn't surprise me if ArenaNet releases better group-finding tools in the future, because people are correct that the population will become a bit more spread out as the world expands. At the moment, I've never really had too much of an issue finding groups when I need/want them (sometimes finding a monk is tough though). But I can see this being more of a problem later. For those that are worried about heroes making the game unviable for PUGs, I wouldn't worry. Most people are social by nature, and when the novelty of the heroes wears off, and they're all leveled up and decked out, you'll probably see more PUGs again. At the moment, the heroes are the shiny new toys, and everyone wants to play with them.

The point of Guild Wars is to enjoy playing Guild Wars. If some people find playing with heroes more enjoyable, cool beans. If some people find playing with PUGs more enjoyable, all the power to them.

What's not to understand here?

I edited your post to make it crystal clear what's to understand.

True

Training Hench is IMO is easier than dealing with PuGs.

You assume that everyone is taking the path of least resistance, which goes counter to the whole 'I like PuGs for the challenge' argument. Again, this is a game where I come to have fun. I believe the overall frustration level will be less with Heroes than without them. Unless you like frustration, this translates to more fun.

Agreed.

First point, opinion. Second point, good. Skill changes indicate that this is intended to be a multiplayer game. But my point is so what if people want to play it as single player?

I agree with the first part, but dissagree on the second point.

Stating that Heroes are bad or should not have been added implies that you feel that way.

I disagree. While I would love to see a better grouping system, Heroes will not be a bad long-term feature. It's just my opinion and the impression I have gotten from Guildies and Friends, but everyone seems to love them and our Guild is more active than ever. As our experience differs, so will our points of view on this issue.

Hmm... Let me think....

Deal with all the bickering and name calling with a sub-par PuG (in hopes that this group might actually be able to beat the mission without your monks raging at the beginning)

Or...

Assemble your perfect team that obeys your every command and takes less than 5 minutes to put together. (And succeeds more than 90% of the time on missions and quests)

Tough decision.

PuG's arent friends and/or guildies.

Anyway, I pugged a few times, I was in the Realm of Torment pretty quick after release and when your there so fast after release, the other people there *should* also be experienced, else they wouldnt be there. Damn, that was the best PuG ever <3.

Have you tried starting your own group? Take the initiative and spam LFM instead of LFG?

I've never had a problem with starting a pug group, even in the ring of fire islands, where there are only a few guys standing around.

Umm....

Deep wound does work on the last mission.

Once more we see Zinger314 arogance.

I PuGed from Gayla Hatchery through the end of Factions with a PuG in about 2 hours. Of course it was within the first week of Factions release. Ah, if only they all could be that way.

What players say they want, and what are good for the game are two separate things. Players love to have overpowered skills that turn the game into a boring snoozefest -- remember back last year when mobs didn't move out of aoes, at all? There was so much outrage when that change went in, but it was good for the game. The game was just stupid when mobs would sit in fire storms.

Players just don't think ahead about the longevity of the game, and instead think only about their immediate and personal wants. Yes your 1 man firestorm farming operation got nerfed, but it just wasn't good for the health of the game. People get bored and move on.

Luckily ArenaNet *does* think about the overall health about the game when making these sorts of changes, even knowing in advance the sheer amount of crying that is going to come from certain player groups.

I feel comfortable that they already completely thought through the implications of heroes and its effect on the player community, in the earliest design stages of Nightfall. Now it's well known that for mmorpgs (whether you consider GW to be one is another question), a community makes it "sticky" (that is, it's harder to leave if you have a lot of friends you like to play with in the game). So when introducing heroes, that has to be traded off against attracting the people who don't have a big group of friends/guildies to play with. Presumably their research concluded that the people with a group of in-game friends are at the very least not negatively affected by heroes, and those who aren't in that situation are positively affected.

I feel GW still needs some more work to give it more of a sense of community in game, hopefully ArenaNet feels the same way. Players in GW feel fairly anonymous, due in part to the entire playerbase being in a single world (rather than subdivided into lots of smaller server-communities) so you are less likely to recognize names, people having multiple characters they switch between (as it's quick to level), and so many guilds that it's hard to get a feel which have a low or high quality membership.