Make heroes account based

The other day I was thinking about how expensive and/or time consuming it would be to keep your heroes equipped. I'm not talking top end crafter stuff or greens, unless you get a crummy green drop or a collector weapon. Then on top of that, you might want to provide one minor rune for every hero you have. If you are only getting or using heroes for one character or only in PvP, that'd be fine. However, if you are getting them for more than one character, that might become a problem. Unless you are farming troll tusks, you aren't exactly getting a lot of collector drops to support multiple heroes across multiple characters without a good bit of farming.

So why not give us a little break and make heroes (and their equipment) account based instead of character based... at least in terms of max level and equipment.

How this helps:
1. If you bring in one non-nf character and get 2-3 heroes to 20, you won't have to worry about leveling them again if you bring in another non-nf character.
2. Reduces costs in case you have to buy a crafter weapon or two (or collectable drops), but doesn't eliminate them.
3. Reduces need to farm collector drops, but doesn't eliminate them.
4. Since you need to equip every hero once, you still have some money/time sink built into the game and if you aren't keeping your warriors to one weapon skill, you'll need to get them several weapons still.
5. It lets the players focus on playing the game instead of having to keep everyone equipped.
6. It makes it easier for people with mainly/only RP characters to pvp. If you want to HB with your tyrian monk, you aren't forced to run around and level and get some weapons for every hero. Sure you can stick to just 3, but if you get tired of going duel monk, duel el you can rotate your heroes without worrying too much that your heroes will be gimped because this Koss only has an 10-17 sword.
7. You don't have to go back and check to see if you forgot to equip every hero for that character because you've done it 4 times already and it's starting to blurr together.
8. "Equiping" heroes you don't use with items you want to keep is equivilant to free storage space to people that have unlocked the extra heroes or have NF (and everyone doesn't). This goes ditto if you save runes and inscriptions for good prices and heroes have a 100% salvage rate.

Its been said before - heros are not meant to be "leet", theya re meant to be Customizable henchman to which you give them collector items or whatever drops.

Somebody Close this.

Items, even collector or whatever ones, is only one issue I mentioned. Please don't lock this.

Just incase you want to edit anything.

I have many Characters with heros, I share items accross Characters.

1- No - It will disbalance. If you bring your lvl 15 Ele to L.A., then unlock Elona, To which you gain instantly your heros, which are then lvl 20, then go back to Tyria.. It will unbalance the game the same way as a lvl 20 going Ascalon, they are not meant to be there.

2- Um, no. Why reduce Cost because you have heros? That is not fair to the others who do not have Nightfalls, it also rewards the people who decid to grind to get their heros to lvl 20, which is what GW is against, rewards for grinding.

3- As I said, heros are Customizable henchman, if YOU are nto going to use the collector drops on your avatar while going threw a mission, use it for your hero, how many times did you just leave those Mursaat Tokens or jade bracelts lying around? And what about al those whites that drop? Give them to your heros.

4- Share items accross Characters, I give my main's Zodiac bow to Jin while I am on my Dervish, Then i found a White bow or I can go to a collector or crafter using the money i took from the drops I found while in a mission or totherwise.

5- Same thing as above. No, it doesn't once you have your hero equipped its done, thats it, sure you may tweak, But Heroos are infact, Apart of the game, And if it is taking that much effort to "keep everybody equipped" Then you need to review what you are doing. then take a break, because IT DOESN'T take that much effort to keep everybody equipped. There must be seomthing wrong with you.

6- What? Its called a PvP character, just create weapons be pressing J then equipe them to your hero.

7- So what? You have 3 heros on Per Character, last i herd you can only play one Character at a time, how hard is it to Press I then click 3 different boxes to see if your hero is equipped or not? Thats a retorical question, it takes no effort.

Or if you are shareing items like I am, before leaving just stash your items in your storage.

8- What? Alright, you just included that as bullshit to help your argument. DO NOT go telling me that you have every single slot filled up and that you have 16 Right ahnd items and 16 offhand items that you want to keep and that you are not using.

Why would you want to keep a Weapon or offhand that you are not using? Sell it. Saving it for another character? Give it to him.

Wait a Second? Did you just say it was hard to equipe all your heros? Now you are using an Argumant saying that You can equipe heros and use them as storage and that problem is so huge it effects the people that do not have NF?

Then Why the hell are you compleaining that its hard to equipe your heros?

Oh with "Proper" items? they are Customizable henchman, not "leet" players.

DO NOT go telling me that BS.

Somebody Close this thread.

/signed
just make hero lvl= character lvl for the non lvl 20 chars
after lvling and equipping all 15 heroes to lvl 20 on my main, I don't even want to bring a new char to Elona, because I have to start all over :/

Agreed. Account based would be the bomb! Also add in an easier way to form grps would be nice. Especially for quests.

Jup... heroes should be given with the same level as your character, instead with a fixed starting level.

If you take Jin with level 5, you get a level 5 Jin instead of 11.

But NOT account based. Most of them are part of the history plot. That would be like running your characters with your other characters... that's... well... that should not be done.

Mithran. I'm thinking account based in terms of starting level (if you bring someone over to nightfall) and equipment. You should still have to unlock them all for each character.

Nope. You make character in Prophecies, you get him at level 15 to elona, and get Heroes at level 20?

Nope. I would agree with the same level as you, but never more than you.

So let me get this straight, you're for people having to lvl new heroes for every character, but you're anti grind?

If you are 15, then you should have the heroes at their closest level too you. In the case of some, they start out at level 15-18 or so, so if you rush ahead with a lower level PC and get to them, you'd still get them at 18 anyways. But they wouldn't be max for that character. If you bring a 20 over, they'll be max if they hit 20 with another PC of yours before.

/not signed

Keep the Heroes character based.

My characters have different professions, therefore I want their associated Heroes to hjave different skills, attributes and equipment.

They'll all progress to where I want them in the regular course of gameplay.

/not signed

So I unlock all the heros with my level 20 char and get them all maxed out. Then I start a new character and get max heros which imbalance the start of the game?

The only way you could counter that would be to have the levels character specific and armour/weapons account based. But then I might have a level 20 Koss with lots of superior runes on, log onto a newbie char where Koss is level 2 and the runes means he has no heath.

Character based is better in terms of the above scenario and in terms of the story. Anet probably did think about this y'know.

Been through this before and i bet u can guess what the answer was.....

Wow another thread on this.

I vote for making hero level and weapon/offhand stats based on your own level. That way your level 20 character has a level 20 hero with max armour and max dmg weapon, and your level 5 character has a level 5 hero with something like 30 armour and non-max weapon.

This way you don't have to mess around with the tedious and frustrating micro-management of heroes that is stopping me from playing Nightfall.

I also vote to make their skills account based. I hate having to set up all the heroes for all my characters separately. Yes I can load and save builds, but that means my build list is cluttered with things like "Koss" and "Dunkoro". Damn, I wish they were just henchmen so I didn't have to care.

I'm not bothered at all about the costs of setting up all your heroes, it's the effort. Suddenly maintaining 1 PvE character becomes maintaining 10 PvE characters. I only have 4 PvE characters, and this turns into 40. No wonder I don't want to play PvE any more.

Don't say "oh but your heroes don't have to have the best stuff", I know that. I don't give them the best stuff, I give them whatever crap I find on the ground, but it still means making the effort to sort their skills, sort their attributes, sort their runes, sort their weapons. And level them up! Argh!

IMO....this is totally unnessisary... you sound more like you're going off on this poor guy just because he thinks one thing and it's not the same as what you think. Perhaps you are right....however....there are other ways of saying things and that does not seem like the right way.

On another note, I think it would be cool if your heros all started out the same lvl as whatever lvl you are when you get the hero......but as far as account based...I am not interested in that, (even though I....like everyone else....am tired of lvling new heros with every new char and other char brought from other chapters).

That would be acceptable as well, but you'd need an extra feature to 'make' or 'select' which weapon your hero is using.



For some it's one, for others it's the second, for others still it's both.

Aye.

I really think you should have thought more about this.

Saying that is like complaigning that there are no lvl 20 henchies on the noob island

/not signed

You're imposing the "grind" and "cost" on yourself. You don't have to bring all your characters to Elona just because you can. I did fine without heroes up to now.

I have 7 characters - two of them from Elona - only one other has gone to Elona so far and she is my warrior who as the oldest gets to do everything first. Maybe someday the other four will get there, maybe they won't. It depends on what the next chapter brings.

I say remove heroes entirely.

They have caused more complaining and discussions than anything before, even the AI change. It would apear, that just about everyone hates them.

Just remove them already. Then everyone will be hapily stuck with Sister Tai, Alesia and the wonderful PUGs.

* The above is a joke

Heroes are good the way they are for many balance reasons. This includes the way they are equipped, leveled and unlocked. But they are still new, and they overwhealm the actual work needed to keep them up.

Nobody is forcing anyone to level up their heroes, you don't even need to use them. They don't need good or perfect equipment. Just like no player needs those.

But if you choose to obtain them, these are the rules. Just like you have to equip every character, each character gets individual heroes. For example: On my Necro, I won't equip both Whispers and Olias, since I never need two additional necros. But on an elementalist, I'll equip both of hero elementalists, for a very nice triple SF nuking. On a monk, I'll equip all damage dealing heroes, since I need less healing. And so on.

Heros are tools. Use them as such. But they really are fine. Just wait at least another two months till things settle down.

I have two Tyrian characters that I have completed Nightfall with and am currently underway with my third. With none of them did I find it to be that much work to level up the heroes. I would simply add them to the party and their level would increase. Every now and then I would see that I had not allocated their new attribute points and would then take care of that. Before I knew it, they were all at 20.

As far as build management for heroes is concerned, I find that to be no work at all. The new template feature is a wonderful thing. Some heroes use my builds, some use builds I have made for them. One way or another, it is all quite simplified with templates.

Equipment I can see as a little bit of a problem for some, but not insurmountable. I am a pack rat, so my heroes all started out with some pretty good items. For those that do not have a large amount of weapons sitting in storage collecting dust, I should think that after the first couple of walk throughs in an area you should have enough drops to have your heroes fairly well set up.

The mains reason to have individual heroes is this:

You have an elementalists, most of the time, you use Axe Koss, Healing Tahlkora and MM Olias.

You also have a warrior, mainly axe. When you use two warrior heroes, you make them use sword and hammer.

You also have a monk, mainly healing. When you use two monk heroes, you make them use Protection and Smitting.

You also have a necromancer, mainly MM. When you use two necromancer heroes, you make them use curses and blood.

Now... are you going to store all those different weapon and armor sets for all of your characters in one single hero?

The current system is better. Each characters need different supporting heroes.

I still say: Unlocking them with your same level would be enough.

Hows that grind? Hell, why bother leveling heros at all? Why not have it so that when you start a NF character, youre given level 20 heros who already have all skills?
/wonders why some people say GWs become "too easy"...

One reason for getting non-maxed heroes is also storyline.

Let's say that the time when Tyrian/Canthan characters arrive into Elone is day 0.

1 year before then, the Searing occured. Then that character trained, travelled through the Shiverpeaks and established Lion's Arch.
During same year, Canthan character visited the temple, and helped clear the plague, and traveled to Kaineng.
Both of these now arrive into Kamadahn.

At the same time, a new Elonian recruit joins Sunspears (new Elonian character).

They all meet in same place and at same point in story. They all meet the very same heros in very same place. Jin, for example.

So it's not really the issue of getting heros that are too low for you, it's more that foreign characters are too high for that moment in storyline.

Timeline for this is something like that:

Tyria ----------+--------------- Ring of Fire
Cantha --------+--------------- Defeated Shiro
Elona ---------+--------------- Abaddon

With + marking the point in storyline where all 3 chapters intersect.

This may seem like role-playing nonsense to some, but GW did always put a lot of emphasys on consistency of canon.

And since you meet heroes at '+', it doesn't matter where you come from or what level you are. They exist regardless of other events. Even though you are at a certain level, they are the same characters, from the same part of storyline.

-If you unlock the heros you should be able to use them on any char.
-Paying runes and weapons for every hero gets aggravating.
-Your hero should keep the weapons and runes you assign them for every char you have.
-Honestly, which one of you havent been a lvl 1 with a maxed out green weapon?
-The hero should never surpass your existing level on your char. In this case, creating a new char, it would be a lvl 1 dunkoro with his runes and a yakslapper for example. To prevent death, heros should not be able to wear superior runes (just like henchmen dont).

I personally feel if heroes become account based it would become Way way too easy... Its already made the other chapters so easy its almost a joke now. I can do titan quests with heroes like they are nothing... If all the sudden I made a character and went out and had all my lev 20 heroes ready to use, I would FLY through the game on other characters.

I mean really... I would be like lev 3 and heroes of lev 20 with uber end game armor and green weapons. Common. that's way too easy, All I would have to do is hang out while the heroes did everything for me like a lousy runner customer or account buyer... Naw. leave it the way it is... The only other fair thing to do would be to eliminate them from the game, but that is not going to happen unfortunately...

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, its just by allowing heroes into the fold its almost entirely became a single player game instead of a more MMO style. and thats a shame...

actually the storyline doesnt go like this
when u are at cantha cynn makes references to the ring of fire, she says something like "this reminds me fo that time on the ring of fire", not excatly like that, but the this is the idea...meaning that they were at the ring of fire before chapter 2.
All three chaper cant be happening at the same time because Mehnlo, Devona, Cynn, Aidan and Eve are the main characters of all stories, and you are the 6th.

BACK TO THE HERO ISSUE.

Im pretty sure the designers will think on something...
Like giveing you the option to choose between your heroes equipment. Exemple: you have 2 characters, and both have koss (one with a hammer, and another with an axe), you will choose wich Koss is going to be YOUR koss, the other one will have his itens removed and bla bla bla (or you remove them by yourself). Of course, with pvp characters, u wont be able to choose, or else everyone would make awsome equipments and use them, they will just have to create their heores for these pvp characters.

Its just like the insignea and inscription thing, they HAVE to do something about it. I dont feel motivated at all on getting new itens, or buying new armors. I like my armors, i have a 15k dragon wth an ascalon healm, the problem is that i dont use the heal too much because it has +1 tatics and i cant change to sword, hammer, or axe... AND WHY THE F* IT DOESNT HAVE +1 ENERGY LIKE THE REST OF THE HELMS?
So, basically these are somethings they HAVE to change... most of the ppl just dont like it, or would be much happier with these changes

Imagine how would you feel if you could get that Eternal Shield and give it +30hp and -5 dmg (20% chance) ?

Because if you actually paid attention to the stats of the +1 attribute helms, they didn't have anything equivalent to an insignia (Knight's helm has Knight's insignia, +1 Tactics; Dreadnaught's helm has Dreadnaught's insignia, +1 Strength) so all of the +1 attribute helms were given stats equivalent to Radiant insignias, which means +1 energy.

Vanity isn't a good reason as to why anything should be changed.

The hardest part about the other chapters was finding a group of people that didn't ragequit, ping repeatedly, draw penises on the minimap, and use builds that are craptacular. Prophecies and Factions were only hard when you didn't have a group of friends online and henchies were ill-suited for the area (of which there were few areas).

Heroes don't need to be 100% perfect to perform their jobs. Even without full runes, fully upgraded equipment, or even level 20, they'll get you through most missions and quests.

Exactly how i went. I wouldnt even care about levels i mean really who does care? The part i hate is the armor and weapons. Only thing that bothers me.

Well... see all those trophies that fall from enemies and you leave on the gound or sell?

Well. Now mission maps have new icons that show were collectors are. Those new icons are not there for nothing, they are there to make it easier to find collector and know what will the require before aproaching them.

Want a req9 +30hp -5dmg(%20) for Koss?
In Cantha:
- 1 Amulet of the Mists
- 5 Naga skins.
In Nightfall:
- 5 Sandblasted Lodestones

You can't throw away all those trophies and then complain about items.

Rather than make them account based, allow the Hero's be the equivalent level of your character that you bring from a previous chapter.

I agree with hero's being account based. Mainly because nightfall really sucks the second time through. I don't know how you guys bring yourself to play this game over and over.

I was thinkin of bringing my ranger through but after finishing consulate docks mission I was just like... yea screw that I'm not doin all this shit again. Nightfall killed all my characters basically. It was fun while it lasted but they sure weren't going for replayability with this chapter.

I agree about this, I cleared the game equipping my heroes with unused green or purple weapons sitting in my storage, free collectors for others, no runes or inscriptions at all.

Nevertheless, I see a big incoherence in the hero system.

As far as skills are regarded, they are like PvP chars, so once you have unlocked whatever skill on your account, you can use on your hero, lvl 1 Koss can use Eviscerate or Hundred Blades, lvl 1 Dunkoro can use WoH and so on.

But when it comes to runes and other stuff, you can't use a rune you have unlocked on your account, but you have to actually purchase it at trader.

In my opinion, the sudden spike of most runes after Nightfall (superior DM at 7k, major vigor 6k and so on) is not due to the massive influx of new players.
Let's face reality, a new player can hardly get the gold to buy a max AL armor, he can't immediately be aware of the necessity to buy a superior DM or fire for those prices, and will stick to a minor or major for a while.
Old players have already bought their ones, and just a little minority feels the urge to buy a new facial scar for another armor set.

So the spike comes from players of previous chapters, who now want to put a superior DM or major vigor on all their Olias and Dunkoros and whatever. Thus the request of runes has been multiplied for 3-4 or more, depending on how many chars are in the account.


If heroes are PvP-like chars for skills, they should be PvP-like also in other basic equipment like runes and also weapons, so everything you have unlocked on your account should be usable on them.

I repeat, this is not necessary at all to use heroes effectively, but would be a more coherent game design, and would also reduce the negative effects on the economy, which are negative especially on new players.

Or...

At least have the Hero gear (weapons and used runes, etc) account based.

It would work like customizing, neither you or anyone else would be able to use the gear once it was officially "given" to a hero. This could be done either via a command (/bind weapon /bind offhand...etc.) or an NPC like we do for our armor.

Then every same Hero type on that account would have access to that gear.

OK, now shoot this full of holes.

I don't like that.

With my Ele My N heroes are MM and Blood.

With my Necro they are Blood and curses.

The current system lets you choose better.

Nobody would bother unlocking every single skill at least twice for each hero on each character. And given you get multiples, you'd have to buy every single skill at least twice.

Heroes are money-sink. Since skills in PvE require xp and money, they can't apply to heroes. Power-leveling them?

And adding free runes to them removes the equipment process. The current system is a good balance between customizability and flexibility. Rune prices did spike, and they'll stay up there for a while. This, in itself, isn't such a bad thing. It forced many to consider major runes, and with insignias, the market did liven up a bit.

Heroes are decoration, and should be treated as such. They come in handy, but don't even remotely need to be perfectly equipped.

They also allowed veterans to offload much of their inventory on them, putting those unsellable greens and golds to good use. And with time, everyone will get their heroes better equipped and closer to that perfect build.

An important thing here is also, that runes can always be removed from heroes and swapped with no penalty. Unlike players, which risk losing armor on each such attempt.

Current hero system is a very decent compromise, which is mostly distorted due to novelty. Game hasn't been out even a month.

No, a better alternative:

- make heroes level up whenever you level up..not at their own rate

- make a hero inventory in a storage tab. you put the weapon in the storage, and heroes have a menu where they can use any of the weapons in there. When the hero equips it, it will remain in that tab so that when using another character's heroes, you wont have to constantly move the item through the storage, etc.

That's about the same logic as saying "If we unlocked these skills on one pve character, they should be unlocked for use on every pve character."

I partially agree, yes.

The main problem is not for PvE in my mind. The fact I can't buy a sup vigor rune for the 12 heroes of all my 11 chars is not that a handicap in PvE. However, so far everybody was able to PvP with PvE chars, with simillar stats (green weapons contributed to that). Now, a PvE char can't play in Heroes Battles for example, nor go heroway in other PvP areas (I'm not saying I wanna go heroway, but many enjoy that). And many of us don't have a PvP slot, nor want to have one. So far I didn't need one - now I do.

Several good reasons not to make heroes account-wide have been posted here. But why not to make them partially account-wide? Heroes = 4 things:

- Skills: already account-wide.
- Level: leveling his heroes for a PvE char is not a big deal, especially since they get XP for quests - I can see no reason to change that.
- Equipement: For mages, collector equip is fair enough. And you can buy green wand/staffs for a couple of plats. It's more expensive for fighters, so I don't know, but I think even cheap greens could do the job.
- Armor and runes: AL is automatically upgraded so it's ok. But for runes, it's impossible to have the best runes for all his heores (in my case 132 sup vigor, 500 or 600 radient insignias, etc). So why not make that account-based?

/Notsigned

1) Heros already get 5x XP gain if they are lower level than you are, so it's not really that hard to level all of them up.

2) Henchmen don't get ANY items/runes/equipment, Heros are already an upgrade over this, I have no quelms with paying extra money to equip each and one of them with runes. Since most of us have ALREADY paided our $$$ to equip them are you going to refund me the $$$ that I already paid for my runes?

3) Heros serve as EXTRA storage space, since I can put my customized weapons on them and free up space. EXTRA SPACE = GOOD. Account based would limit my extra space and what are they going to do, delete my existing items already on my heros?

NEVER going to happen. Let's face it, most people are complaining due to the cost of runes + insignia on the armor, you are better off asking for an "unlocked" system for they might improve the entire hero rune/insignia system instead of asking for account based hero.