Why not let us use 7 Heroes; the reasons?

Ya, Some other heroes aren't able to use skills properly. For Example: Blood is Power. I think it has to do with the situation, and how it's suppose to trigger them to activate it, off topic btw

That is actually NOT true. If you have a full human group, the same thing can happen when you zone into a outpost that doesn't allow that size of party.

Better moral of the story:

Learn how to play that quest with only 4 people (seriously, it isn't that hard), and if you can't, because of crappy PuGs and whatnot, then just don't rezone into an outpost that is too "small" for your party. Also, don't always rely on the wiki for accurate information. It has a TON of info and not all of it gets updated/changed as fast as the game changes.

Back on topic-

You are serioulsy deluding yourself if you think henchies are not strong enough for a particular mission/quest (I did ALL the SF quests, including FA, with henchies and it worked just fine), and you are lying to yourself if you think that PuGs are more powerful/just as powerful as heroes.

Look at it this way: Why is it that you want to use a full team of henchies?

You can't get a full PuG, the henchies aren't good enough, PuGs aren't good enough, whatever...I would say that the real reason is that you want control of the skills of the entire party. Why is that? Probably because you don't think that the other "members" of your parties have had less than optimal skillbars or less than normal intelligence.

My point is that you REALLY want a full team of heroes because you want the control of the who team so that you can make it exactly how you want it (definition, see "more powerful"). And, if what you really want is a more powerful team, how is that not going to throw off the balance/team orientation of the game?

BTW I totally agree that it can be difficult to find a team for many missions and quests, but that doesn't mean it is impossible (especially since you can fill out a group with heroes). An example that happened to me - I was trying to complete DNKP on my monk a while back and we were having trouble filling the team, so we went to ToA, got a full team of 8, ran to bergen, zoned in and lost the entire team (not just one or two, but everyone was lost). When we started again not everyone wanted to do it so we grabbed someone's lvl 17 Tahlkora and beat it easily (we also had a warrior and an ele ragequit because some of the players had never done the quest before and wanted to go all the way to LA and then back up to the Ascalon Settlement).

I absolutely do not think that players should have the option of bringing 7 heroes.

Maybe, we don't need 7 Heroes... maybe we do... If this whole thing is about control and the ability to customize... rather than using henchman. Whynot do somthing about the henchman. Like allow players to command henchman better but not allow the player the option to customize there gear and skill. That may solve this whole 7 Hero ordeal

P.S. Who likes to have a Bunch of Henchman mobbed together? Thats like asking the enemy mob "Please Mr. Nuker Sir WILL you NUKE me and my fellow henchmen? We are to "Slow Minded" to realize we gotta run."

Is there really any debate over the quality of the average player in GW? Honestly. I have had so much trouble with people behaving worse than henchies ever were that it really doesn't matter what you think of me. Yes, I would like 7 heroes. Yes, I think the average PuG player, particularly for lower end areas, are absolutely horrible. Stating things that are true doesn't mean I am evil. It simply means that I'm tired of having to deal with the kind of person that just doesn't know how to play. I don't play GW to teach other people how to do every little thing (even if they actually listened, which they don't). I play it to have fun.

I'm sorry, you seem to think that a competent team is overpowered?
Isn't that something that should be a goal for teams? Actually having the chance to be truly effective? Forced mediocrity is lame, particularly when the so-called "balance" depends on player stupidity. If that's actually true, then the balance is completely broken already.

Give us the heroes, but make it harder to compensate for the vast increase in ability.

Im reconsidering my opinion, stop laughing, it happens.
What I said about not having seven heroes due to the lag it may induce, while it may introduce a bit more lag for the average player, I dont really believe it would be much worse than it is now. Towns are allready full of people with 8 people in their party.
Just something I wanted to get off my chest.
Still think 7 heroes would make the game ridiculously easy.

I already posted a lengthier post in this topic with my extended views, but I just wanted to add this: 7 heroes for PvE parties and more general storage space are currently my two biggest 'wants' right now. I understand that PvP changes & skill balances are next on the list of upgrades to come, but I hope ANet at least saw this topic and is considering a change to the hero total. As for more storage space, well I don't think that is ever coming, but that still won't make it leave my 'want' list.


Let's pretend for a second that this game is anything but a standstill spellcaster where you can not only see the enemy mobs on your radar but can auto-target them with a touch of a button, and that already no area in PvE (save for DoA or something like that) is 'ridiculously easy' when you 1) know what you are going up against, and 2) know how to counter it. Then maybe this comment of yours would mean something. As of now, it just seems like you are doing exactly like I feared in my previous post (#158), and that is arguing against the possibility of ANet adding variety to a game that could use it. Why do people do this?

I want the game to be as fun as possible. Having the option to fill out my party with just my own heroes would contribute to added fun and variety.

This will not be overpowered. Why? Because a team of one human and seven heroes will never be better than a team of eight humans (eve below-average humans, although not the standard of some of the real dire PUGs, which to be honest a monkey mashing the keys could outfight). There are just some things Heroes can't do. And seven heroes shouldn't (as far as I can see) be any more laggy than three heroes and four henchies.

I get a little trill of fear running up my spine whenever I read this argument, because ANet has an unfortunate history of believing it if it's shouted at them often enough. That's why they threw out a lot of what was great about Factions in Nightfall, and it's why they killed the PuG with their implementation of the hero system.

...Do you genuinely believe there'll be no knock-on effect on the community if a fundamental game principle is revised? Do you really think halving the game's difficulty won't change the play experience even for people who refuse to make use of the option?

Making seven heroes playable would have an inflationary effect on the game's economy as more people spend more time in high-level areas.

Making seven heroes playable would retire even more undecided players from the PuG pool (why bother when you can assemble a full Barrage team?).

Making seven heroes playable would guarantee that there'll be missions where seven heroes are required in Chapter Four.

These are all things that would detrimentally affect the play of people who didn't want to play with 7 heroes. We're not just being killjoys trying to stop your fun!
Three heroes, one human and four henchmen are already better than any human team but a hand-picked farming setup comprised exclusively of experienced players you know well and trust.

...Seriously, already the only reason to play with other people is social. If you just want to beat an area as quickly and easily as possible you'd be a fool not to take heroes.

Thats one hell of a speculation u just made about my reasons for wanting a 7 heroe team. It has nothing to do with wanting to control the rest of the PUG.

You cant have read my other responces if you think that is the case. I made a very bold statement earlier in the thread stating that one reason I and others dislike PUGs is because most are started by arrogant prats who want to control you.

If I have ever joined a PUG, I have never asked or forced anyone to use skills of any kind. I let people use what they want because I trust most people know their own builds.

I have explained countless times now why I want a 7 heroe team, so i dont understand why you had to go and make such a claim.

I appreciated the update on the FR thing and how it wont accept 6 players as I read.

And I appreciate that you agree some missions/quests are hard to complete due to lack of players.

But Im not suggesting any quests or missions are impossible. Ive only ever stated they are hard or near impossible to start due to a lack of players and availability of equilivant henches of the same lvl.

I may have stated their almost impossible if you have to resort to using resident henches who are too low level to use, but Ive never said impossible.

I came very close to complete the titan quest LDD last week, but it fell apart when the NPC arrived and got himself killed. We only had two titans left.

By that you imply that your comment does mean something ? And why would that be ?
Because it is your opinion.
Hardly.
Your comment means just as much as mine, and that is exactly nothing.
None of this means anything, its a, "basically" pointless discussion on a forum, nothing more nothing less.
The topic of the post does not influence the posts therein, that means anyone can post whatever they want(pending admin approval of course). Its pretty well all hear say and speculation and opinion. To think otherwise is folly, but hey its your headspace.

I'm not going to go farming with them?

Almost everything is dirt cheap as it is, any effect this would have would hardly matter.

I would still PuG on high end areas, particularly FoW, because there at least people generally know how to do the first part. Btw, last time I checked there weren't 7 ranger henchies.

Personally I would HATE that. I already am angry about having required henchies in some of the NF missions, and I think they should eliminate the concept entirely. Being forced to take henchmen is stupid.

Yeah, they're better than complete lack of team play. We know. Amazing.

And when that happens, yes I do take heroes. So far it hasn't affected my playing with PuGs too much. I still try to get in them, but only for fairly high level areas where people at least know what they're doing.

The hero system has nothing to do with the lack of PUGs. PUG killed by the terrible PUG players. Before Nightfall PUG was not an option for me, i henchwayed everything or waited for guildie help.
I can live with only 3 heroes, but using a fully customized team would be cool.

Making seven heroes playable would have an inflationary effect on the game's economy as more people spend more time in high-level areas.


People don't already? Oh wait - I had forgotten all about the Level 10 Zehlon Reach farming builds that were running rampant in Nightfall. My bad.

You aren't getting any more drops with a full-hero party just because the henchmen aren't there, you know. Inflationary effect, my ass. Yeah, maybe more will be possible with heroes, but isn't that the whole damn point of wanting this implemented? If henchmen were completely issue-free, we wouldn't need heroes at all. I want to try some 7-hero party builds and go nuts in places. This isn't about farming even. (Imagine that.) I want to make builds for missions and quests as well.

Besides, for the big-money drops I bring guildies with me instead of AI members at all. That way, we can be assured that if something good drops one of us is getting it, not some role-player NPC.



Why bother when you can assemble a full Barrage team?

Isn't that the whole point of what GW is supposed to be about??? The skill should be knowing what to take and knowing how to construct/run a build of your choice, not finding some half-assed hench/hero combo to workaround our inability to construct a build we'd like to. Guild Wars at its core is built around build flexibility. Tell me how letting us bring henchmen - with their preset unchangeable builds - instead of more heroes contributes to that?



Making seven heroes playable would guarantee that there'll be missions where seven heroes are required in Chapter Four.

Baseless speculation. How do you even know ANet is going to use the Hero element IN Chapter 4? Sure it will be supported, but heroes are Chapter 3's selling point. (It's on the freakin' box about 10 times in large letters.) ANet is most likely going to go with some other type of gimmick for Chapter 4, while adding in maybe a few heroes (new class heroes and maybe a couple extras, perhaps) but that's probably about it.

I wonder if perhaps you're not forgetting that the kinds of players you find on these boards are not representative of the GW player population.

With my own friends, a group I suspect is more representative, with most of them I'm impressed if they put together a half decent build for their own class after having played it for a year and a half. Put together decent hero builds? As if. Most don't have enough skills unlocked for most classes, and for those they do have skills for they wouldn't have, or want, a clue as to how to make a build from them. I tell them what runes/insignias to get, get collector weapons for them, and cobble together basic hero builds from what they've got available and a few guided capping runs, most are perfectly happy to leave it at that. The chances they're going to learn the ins and outs of all the heroes and set up optimal builds and equipment for them on their own are exactly zero. They don't know or care about all that stuff, they just want to go out and, to paraphrase my sister, beat the holy livin' bejeesus out of baddies. They do that with the help of myself and others in our sphere quite handily, they have neither the skill required nor interest needed to go out with a few heroes on their own.

The introduction of heroes definitely tipped the balance for many, many who would have pugged rather than henched it will heroway rather than pug. But that Rubicon has been crossed, three heroes are more than sufficient to make hench+heroway a breeze -- most of the time you don't even need henchies, three heroes are enough to plow through most areas. Making it four heroes or seven won't, I think, change much of diddly at this point.

I have to strongly beg to differ here, as well. PUGs were DOA in this game from the very beginning, thanks to fundamental design decisions and limitations inherent in Anet's business model.

The lack of any requirement to party with others (the two optional pre-searing quests aside), the lack of any inherent advantage to partying with others, the lack of any easy way to party with others (the recent addition of a pseudo-LFG cum cross district spam system notwithstanding), a drop system that encourages solo play as optimal, and the utter lack of any policing, of any real risk of consequence no matter how nasty to your fellow players you might wish to be, all of those things have combined to push those players capable of surviving on their own, whether by friends, henching, and/or with heroes, out of the PUG pool. The easier it becomes to survive on your own, the lower the level of player left in the PUG pool and the more those who are at least marginally capable of going their own way do so -- ironically, perfection is reached when the PUG pool dries up wholly.

To oversimplify a tad, the moment the first person discovered that solo play gave them better drops and the second person discovered that leeching missions was easy and carried no risk, PUGing became terminal. It has been downhill, predictably so, ever since. Heroes were just another, perhaps the final, nail in that coffin.

Is there anything wrong with that? Should our experience in the community be primarily through PUGs? I don't know about you but the only people I've really gotten to know and enjoy playing with are those in the guilds/alliances I've been with and connections to people through them. I've never had to look for a guild because I've found good players to play with and been versatile in my play style. I enjoy PvE a great deal, but if I'm in the mood to play with people it's almost always in PvP. I will occasionally PUG missions if I'm in the mood for it and over all it's not as bad as most people would tell you. Just don't rely on it to get you through the game. If you're expecting a PUG to do things for you that you couldn't do for yourself then you're gonna have a problem.

On the subject of Heroes: I think that being able to have 7 Heroes in your group would be wonderful. As it is Henchmen allow for very little creativity in your build decisions. I enjoy trying out new build ideas in PvE but it's very hard to do so with the current setup and impossible with a PUG. Have you ever seen a PUG run a good team build that wasn't FotM? All PUG groups are just several random individual builds with perhaps a certain theme. They tend to try to be as balanced as possible, but usually it's take what you can get. I would like to see us able to have 7 Heroes but only be able to control 3 of them seperately. This would still make it plenty controllable. I don't really see this hurting the PUG community much at all because is there really anyone out there who PUGs only because they cant run 7 Heroes. It seems that we've gotten a taste of Heroes and now that we're hooked we want some more. ANet, please give us our fix, please.

as a person that doesn't pug most of the times, I still think that 7 heroes shouldn't be allowed, with 3 heroes you can still "steamroll" most of the places

IMHO PUG didn't died because of bad players... actually they did, but not directly, the thing is that while there are some players that have been around since prophecies, there are still lots of players that are new to the game, and some veteran players are not willing to deal with newbies and their lack of knowledge of the game mechanics, heck, i still remember when i used to play E/R and used troll unguent and a pet with 0 pts in BM

so yes, PUG are dead, some because there are lots of noobs and some other because there are newbies, but it's still up to people to decide if they are willing to deal with some troubles or just "GOGOGOGO! THIS MISH IS TIMED, AND I WANT MASTERS+BONUS+ECTO+GWENS AVATAR"

I must admit controling seven heroes at a time would be a blast to me. Like someone else wrote earlier, I wanne go nuts too in some areas. I already do this with my best friend. We come up with some builds and player setups and take 6 heroes with us, everything is decked out and works together and we have a great time. The difference would be I could play with these setups even if he's not online.

We notice that things are way easier then before the introduction of heroes. He's more of a casual player and if I wanne have a hard time I go to DoA.

It is fun though to equip them and test stuff out. It also made me a better player.

This discussion is getting pretty heated it seems...

Looks like I touched a couple of nerves. Cool, time for some extended reply action - I apologise in advance if who-I'm-replying-to gets a bit confusing!
...Er, what? Reducing the difficulty of the game changes how you experience missions. Farming is irrelevant to that particular point (and only incidental to my later comment about inflationary effects). I don't farm; it bores me to tears.
Hardly. The oft-cited figure is that ANet estimates most players have less than 20K in the bank at any time (remember - we're hardcore forum goers by comparison!). That's not enough to buy a +30 Sword fortitude mod!
FoW's a bit of an exception because it's relatively open. Compare it to high-end Nightfall areas, which are densely packed with mobs with erratic movement patterns. Under those circumstances the tight movement control you get from heroes is a huge benefit - whereas if you're taking human players they tend to spread out and risk aggro.

...And no, there aren't four ranger henchies (plus orders, MM and monk); but throw in a Command Paragon and a Critical Barrager 'sin on top of the two rangers and you're close enough for government work.
So we're both into hyperbole, what's your point?

But seriously, I think you're understating the case. A modular PuG with a decent attribute/skill spread is inferior to a well-crafted hero team because you still can't control those synergies that put a set build over the top power-wise (I'll use an Orders necro as an example again because it's a good, obvious one. There's others).
...So, in short, you never used to play in PuGs and are therefore know exactly why they're harder to assemble since Nightfall came out.

...What?
Er, no - my point was that heroes are more powerful than henchmen, therefore people will play casually in difficult areas more often.

Consequently, the quality of individual drops will be higher. Or are you seriously claiming that if you spend an hour of normal play in Shing Jea you'll end up with the same amount of gold in your pocket as an hour spent skill-capping in the Desolation?

I'm not talking about farming here. I'm talking about the amount of gold (and gear) that enters the economy from an increased mass of people playing high-level areas normally.
The consequence of the introduction of heroes (even if only three at a time) was the increased difficulty of Nightfall to compensate for the fact. I don't see how that's even debatable.
Guild Wars is an RTS now? The "whole point of what GW is supposed to be about" is each individual player fitting into a crafted role in a human team. Henchmen have always been a (necessary) compromise in that regard. Why do you think they didn't have 8-skill bars in the first place?

Having said that, Guild Wars isn't a single unified vision of how it must be played - in spite of what the more hardcore PvP base might have you believe ( ). ANet wants a broad market, so they'll cater to the soloists, to the casuals, to the extremists, to the experimenters, and yes, even to the people who want to play a Baldur's Gate-style party.
Ha! There have to be heroes in chapter four because otherwise it's going to be too easy for Nightfall owners. And we're guaranteed more mandatory-hero quests because, in spite of my occasional cynicism about their blind spots, ANet are both competent game designers and adequate marketers.

...In other words, if they up the hero allowance they're going to market the crap out of it as a feature. And marketing 101 is to integrate that awareness into the product at every possible opportunity.
Myria, I think you're somewhat falling into your own trap here - assuming that the player base is more hardcore than it really is.

Take a finger poll in Thunderhead Keep. Even today, the majority of players there will tell you that it's "not henchable", and that they need their modular PuG to stand a chance.

The key difference Nightfall makes is that it throws additional barriers in the way for people forming these groups - mandatory heroes in missions is just the tip of the iceberg there.

Cheers all.

i havent read this thread but:

I want 7 heros, not 3, 7. ok?

I'd welcome seven heroes. For build variety and because I dislike henchmen.

My peeve with henchmen: Look at Aidan for example, he has been a marksman for most of his life and is thirty-two years of age. Yet us Rangers who have only been in GW for not even three years create and run builds that pummel any of his into the ground. Are the players that enter the GW world the only ones with any intellect? Now we have heroes that will learn from the player. Henchmen are just too stubborn to learn anything from those they group with. Just food for thought, no need to reply to it. Don't derail the thread.

When you add multiple levels of extrapolation and speculative reasoning to what I post, it hardly counts as me "contradicting myself"!

Let's have a look, shall we?
...You are kidding, right? Or perhaps you play some other game, one in which you can enter into a text field exactly what sort of drop you'd prefer, complete with a drop-down menu for skin, mods and req?

The reality, however - in which most of us play - is that cash plus drops that get merched (which effectively amount to gold drops), accumulate faster than perfect drops of a type that we would chose to use or even to sell at a premium*. That's why players use the monies to buy the precious shinies!
Normal play, as I've stated above, increases cash funds disproportionately to genuinely-rare items. The introduction of heroes in Nightfall could have been an absolute disaster in that regard ... except that the Inscriptions system knocked the bottom out of Nightfall's rare items market in what may or may not have been an act of genius on ANet's part (I'm not willing to dismiss the possibility of serendipity, so I'm not giving them full credit for it yet!). The introduction of additional heroes would come with no such balancing effect - hence inflation as people have more gold and less to spend it on.

To put it another way, the new "free" treasure chests have caused relatively little inflation because they come with a free gold item in addition to the 1.5-2K gold drop. In normal play, however, you're very unlikely to see one gold drop for every 2K in crap you pick up off the ground.


*We're excluding power-trader types, since they're obviously too 'hardcore' for the argument in question. In fact, the noobier you are, the more the argument applies!

carnt see the problem you can do anything to you heroes just like real players. i mean you pick skills fo hero. you can for a real person whats the problem.

I don't know how I feel about 7 heroes. Having read the majority of the thread, I see both arguments as very valid. Seven heroes gives you a ton of flexibility, which you ought to expect from a tactical strategy game. (Maybe not "Tactical Strategy", but definitely involving healthy helpings of both strategy and tactics.)

Especially in NF, some players were loathe to fight the incredibly powered enemies in RoT and DoA (whole teams of lvl 28s were introduced quite fast in NF, and they self-replicate O_O), while other players breezed through the campaign.

Basically, there are a number of reasons for this:
* Heros can be built to interact with your character. This synergy makes them vastly more powerful than any human ally (who has his own build) and extemely better than a henchmen (who has his own crappy build).
* Heros have all the advantages of henchmen, and none of the negatives. They think faster, interrupt quicker, and have no lag (like henchmen vs. players). However, they also have access to your high-level skills (especially if you've beaten other campaigns before) unlike henchmen.

So basically, it was your competence with building heroes that determined your success in NF, IMO.

I've noticed that my MM Olias is far more efficient than my PC MM, simply because he can keep tabs on all the minions, and select between them vastly easier than I can with my mouse. Also, Mesmer Norgu can interrupt far more effectively, since he can trigger interrupts the second he sees enemies using skills, not sending a message to the server. Who knows, he may even be able to keep tabs on all the enemies' actions at once? In this sense, heroes have some AI advantages that humans can never match.

If I could choose to indirectly control 8 heroes, I would do that rather than directly control my one character and 3 heroes. It's far more effective for combat.

I think the question we should ask is not "whether I need 7 heroes?", but, "why do your 7 heroes need you?"

Those of us who like PUGs have to do something to stop the "heroism" that has taken hold of GW Nightfall. But what is there to do? We have to make ourselves better than heroes. We have to come up with multiple builds that we can switch out to match the party. We have to be courteous enough to forfeit our eigth skill slot for a rez skill. We have to take orders and give orders like responsible leaders and teammates. Until we do this, PUGs will continue to die.

On a second note, I think, rather than adding more heroes in the new expansion, it would be cool if the next GW would give us the option to make our existing PCs into heroes. That way I could adventure with all of my player characters at once, rather than some heroes I don't really like too much.

Also, earlier in the thread, someone commented that they couldn't get Dunkoro to use spell breaker unless they manually gave it to him. Note that heroes will spam the skills on the left hand of their skill bar, and only use those on the right as a last resort. Thus, important spells like spell breaker should go on the left, and your emergency skills (such as rez signet), should go on the right.

Try fitting that on your UI. Not all of us play in 1600+ with small interface. Or want to try and micro that. Or need to fill our compass with 8 buttons.

You're really not very good. Well I'll admit DNKP can be quite rough with only 4, although it is doable.

It's much easier with an 8-player full lvl 20 team. Which you can't have in beacons. Just start from war camp, snake dance is a breeze with searing flames.

You aren't beating DoA with that many AIs. Though I'd have alot of respect for a 2-man team that pulled this off with insane micro, I have yet to hear of such, and rarer still the person that could do it with 7. I just laugh at the people that beg for henchies there, they obviously haven't stepped outside once.

IMO, I don't care to have to grind through fights. If the team is better than the opposition, it should show that. Having a specific build for a mission is not reducing the numbers/skills/ai used by the enemy; it's making yours more effective. I don't see how the ability to do that should be disallowed in any way.

I have never bought a +30. For anything. If I want a fortitude, I'll pick up something like a +27 or thereabouts. It hardly matters in PvE. If I want a perfect weap I can get it from a collector. Most of my cash is locked up in shard and ecto drops which I've been saving since I bought the game at release. I haven't sold a single ecto, and I haven't bought one either.

Compared with a competent group that knows what they're doing, I agree that PuGs are a bad way to go. I have no idea what people in PuGs think when they aggro the whole map. Of course, I've had groups that were very careful and never overaggroed anything. They were competent. I still fail to see what the difference is between an experienced group and heroes controlled by an experienced person that makes one overpowered and not the other.

So I guess it's not possible to be as good as a experienced human team, making those even more unbalanced! They should be nerfed.

Well, it's actually fairly easy to put together an orders team, so long as your necro has the skills. I did one with a bunch of warriors in Nahpui quarter when I was on my necro. I just had all the warriors ping their weapons to make sure they weren't using elemental and off we went. Orders is not really a team build insofar as it really requires only one person to change their build to make it work acceptably.

Personally, I would join a fairly decent PuG regardless of what heroes I have if I don't mind about the time it takes. As long as the people know what they're doing, even the much-maligned FotM builds will clear through an area quickly. None of them even need maxed weapons, items, heck, even less than max armor may not be a problem if they're casters and know how to kite. My problems with PuGs only arise when the people don't know what they're doing and have no idea how to create a fairly reasonable skillset.

I agree with you, a complete team build put together by one (experienced) person is much, much better than the normal PuG you can get into. However, I think that says more about player experience than that the ability to do so is overpowered.

I've read through most of the thread. Some of the arguments seem valid but a bit hyperbole at times. Personally I enjoy doing both; joining a group for missions and taking out my heroes for other things I want to do (mapping, quests, etc...).

I'm sure we all have bad experiences with pugs (I have wasted a whole day once trying to cap one skill with pugs in three different locations). Giving us more heroes, maybe even just one more, would aleviate some of this frustration. Also, customizing heroes and testing out builds/synergy is fun and a great way to learn more about other classes.

To Anet (if anyone's reading), it would be great for the consumer to have more options, not less. For those who choose to pug, which I still do for missions and elite areas, the option is there. But, I would love the opportunity to take out more heroes and test/build them, it's part of the fun. I will most definitely buy chpt. 4 if more heroes (even just one more) becomes an option.

Samuel, you seem to be a little obsessed with the specifics of my examples and aren't really adressing the arguments behind them at all.
So you're saying we should all have infinite health? Because that wouldn't reduce "the numbers/skills/ai used by the enemy". And it would certainly make your build more effective!

Making your team more powerful amounts to reducing the difficulty of the game. Is that really a hard concept to grasp?
...I'm failing to see what relevance this paragraph has to anything in the known universe ("Including the black holes!" - Eric Bana). What does the way you manage your ecto stack have to do with the average gold reserves of the casual player?
Heh, this is the one occasion where you might want to take into account the specifics of my example. Forget PuGs, fewer than one Vent-enabled guild team in a hundred could clear out the Rain of Terror groups from the Domain of Fear just outside the Gate of Secrets entrance without aggroing more than one mob at any time. There's some serious wandering AI going on there, and even with heroes it takes some good reflexes on the flags.
Easy - the latter are available at five minute's notice to everyone, at all times.
Oh noes, you have me caught in the crushing grasp of your reason! I die in agony!

...Wait, what? This discussion was about how allowing the use of additional heroes in a group was a "choice", and the inevitable "choice is always good!" argument cropped up. I brought up several ways in which all players would be affected, whether they made use of this "choice" or not, and several of those ways hinged on a hypothetical increased power level becoming available to everyone. So what are you talking about, again?
"Overpowered" is a weird term to measure in PvE. A skill, for instance, would only be "overpowered" in PvE if it seriously distorted the gameplay of multiple areas and/or obsoleted dozens of other previously viable tactics. And even then it would only need to be nerfed if the popularity got out of control. A suitable example would be the old infinite-minions MMs.

There's a second hidden alternative here, though - is something ruining the play experience for people? Taking into account the fact that (obviously) you can't please everyone all the time.

...That's why I've been addressing the issue raised in this thread in terms of gameplay consequences to everyone. This is not a minor change that would give people some fun cosmetic extra options, it is a fundamental move in a certain direction with regards to the game's core design.

And personally, I think further promoting something that compromised the core gameplay in the first place would be a horribly bad move.
Heh, welcome to the internet. We're all so jaded that things have to be expressed in earth-destroying-versus-ultimate-bliss terms to make any sort of impact. I still stand by my call (in another thread) for whoever wrote the Attack at the Kodash Bazaar quest to be sacked, though.
...GAH! Oh, why do I even bother.

That isn't legitimately allowed by the game as it is. Having an effective team is.
The ability to do so has always existed. There's no change in difficulty.

The casual player doesn't need weapons with +30. The casual player doesn't need weapons that are max. The causal player - any player - doesn't need perfect anything in PvE. And things that are not perfect are, for the most part, dirt cheap and easily within the grasp of anyone.

Being annhiliated nearly every time you go outside is fun? Okay. Whatever. I don't think it is, though.

So you object to people being able to choose, being able to play with builds etc. Okay. If you like it "harder" take henchies or cripple your own builds. Myself, I'll likely play as I do regardless of the number of heroes. I spam lfp a few times and then I go when no one bothers to invite and I get tired of waiting.

Ye gods! What have I done!

I think they nerfed that because of the minion factory groups in pvp, not because of pve. I agree, there's few changes that would seriously unbalance PvE. I don't think heroes will do that, mainly because PvE was built with a team in mind. Relative effectiveness seems to me irrelevant because PvE is already balanced to a reasonably competent group.

Yes. Bad players. That's a definite game-ruiner.

Like I said, if having heroes is a game-ruining experience for some...just don't take the heroes or cripple their builds. I don't care what you do.

Define the game's "core design," and tell me why giving people ability to make competent teams when none are available violates it. There are already henchmen since day one; heroes (the idea has been requested for a loong time) since NF; this clearly indicates that people want that kind of control over their builds, particularly in PvE.

Okay, define "core gameplay," and tell how it's being/been compromised.


Because you are incurably masochistic.

The reason that there are only 3 heroes per person is that heroes make the whole team better than just henchies.

Example:
Lvl 15 A (me)
Lvl 12 Ne (Olias)
Lvl 12 Mo (Talkhora)
Lvl 12 Mo (Dunkoro)

Do you think you could kill all the bugs outside Yohlon Haven without separating the mobs with Henchies at level 12 instead of heroes? I doubt it.

The reason it works: You can set heroes to play to the bugs' weaknesses and use builds that can overcome the amount of monsters there are.

Olias as MM for minion tanks, both Monks with Shield of Absorption for concentrated damage = gg bugs.

I doubt they will make it 7 heroes, but it wouldn't hurt for those in need.

(Quick aside: )
(Actually, no. This is easily my least favourite area of the game. I feel it's horribly implemented, arbitrary, and simply unfun. However, I strongly feel that this area's existence is due entirely to the implementation of the Hero system - it's yet another example of a part of Nightfall designed in such a way as to make human players a liability. That's slightly off topic, though.)

Back on topic, and I'll stick to core arguments this time ( ):
Well, let's look past the fact that the introduction (and specific implementation) of heroes made finding PuGs harder in the first place, creating a downward spiral to where we are today.

...You might want to go back to my original post, lo these many pages before. The only reason I'm talking about differing power levels is that it's contingent on some of my arguments there.

And what's important about those arguments is that they show that an increase in the number of available heroes would affect even those people who choose not to use them. My point is that the "it's CHOICE, and CHOICE is always strictly better than not having that CHOICE!" argument comes straight from a bull's digestive system! There are knock-on effects. There are always knock-on effects, as anyone who's followed game design for any length of time will tell you.
I honestly don't think it is. I honestly think Nightfall was optimised for hero groups, and that human play was considered only secondarily.

...Note that I'm not claiming that it's too difficult for human groups, simply that it wasn't designed for them. Consequently, the experience is less fun for humans than it could be.

To put it another way, Nightfall seems to have been designed as a single-player RPG with crappier dialogue and MMOG economics. And I'm going to come right out, again, and blame the hero system.

I actually agree with that, to a degree. With the ability to make an MM and tell your henchmen where to go, the missions that previously were extremely hard to do with henchmen became quite easy, making it much easier to choose henchies over people. Just the ability to tell henchies where to go might have been the dealbreaker, regardless of heroes being added or not.

Why do you think that anyone who PuGs now will stop doing it with the addition of more heroes? As many people have pointed out, 3 heroes is plenty enough to be better than almost all random PuGs. Ergo, all who would want to go solo are already doing so, because there is no reason not to. It seems reasonable, then, to conclude that the players who want to PuG will still do so regardless of the amount of heroes because they are clearly still wanting to get into groups right now.

There's little difference between an experienced group and a hero group in the right hands. TBH, most of the places in Prophecies and Factions were pretty easy with a good group. I guess Anet decided to make some a bit harder this time around, to the detriment of the usually bad PuGs.

I've got to agree with the crappy dialogue. Hey, we even had that in Factions too! I just shut sound off when there were cutscenes there - it was just to painful to hear Shiro talk.

I still don't think that heroes are the true problem with PuGs, however. The true problem is that many people are simply not good enough to compete with the AI, and that's something that Anet can't fix. And so, when actually good players run blast down missions that are optimized for okay teams, they get annoyed because it is so easy. When Anet makes it harder for the good teams, the crappy ones are stuck with an impossible situation; they just can't win because they apparently aren't skilled enough to. Who honestly wants to depend on a clueless player - and so heroes get used.

I actually play on around 1024 x 780 or what ever it is, which is the standard resolution now. My computer would die at a higher resolution.

Im really not very good? I only have 5 quest left out of the entire game and all 3 campaigns, which includes 2 titan quests, the DOA quests and some ROT quests.

All quests which either I dont like because I dont like DOA, or I cant do because NOOOOOO one does them. Its not a question of being good or bad, and its out of line to suggest im a bad player as ive constantly stated that it was due to the number of players not ability.

As for exploring from beacons perch. I have KOABD with 100% on all 3, so I know how to explore all the maps. At the time, it took me months of going north from the war camp to get the area between north and south shiverpeaks.

But there comes a point when you cant go north and you have to go south to connect them, because your at -60dp otherwise and you dont last 2 seconds. And considering my main is an elemental I dont have the benefit of huge armor and health or running.

So you DO have to move south from beacons to explore that section, and you can very rarely get a team together who is willing to explore because most people want run to Droks. They dont care about exploration from there.

So my statement about there not always being a full team of lvl20s available when you need them is completely true and valid.

As for saying to need henches or more heroes in DOA. I agree that was daft, its an elite area and we should use PUGs.

...I think that because people have been making your exact same argument since before Nightfall came out. Let's face it, henchies were already all the genuinely good players ever needed.

However, I think the release of Nightfall has shown that the "intermediate" player base - the group who could finish the game but genuinely believed they needed two human monks at all times - was much larger than expected. I've been very sensitive to the PuG market over the last few months, and I feel confident in stating that a lot of that demographic has shifted to heroes.

I've also noticed that in what's left of the PuG market there's a lot of people who still feel like they're underpowered, and I strongly suspect that many of them will move to all-heroes if given the option.

(and I'm not sure why the PvE preview weekend didn't ring a zillion alarm bells in ANet's mind in that regard!)

...Fewer than moved out initially, mind - the big hurdle was getting the two hero monks, after all. That's why it's only one of my several objections to the OP.

(There's also a thread up now debating why PuG's are shrinking, but I'm staying out of that one. First, because it's too many pages in now for me to make much of an impression, and secondly because the thread starts with "well, I think PuGs suck and have totally made up my mind" and I doubt I could add anything productive to that particular mix.)

Why are you complaining about "elite quests" after you've mastered them then? For the sake of people who aren't very good? You know, the not-elite? (Not that those quests are very elite... but that is what Anet calls them, like DoA)

Maguuma titan quest has been easily henchable or soloed since before factions, Last Day Dawns and Titan Source are "supposed" to be 4-player and are very doable that way, DNKP I admit is difficult and the one that might be worth arguing for, but 4-man teams have done it. The only trouble parts in sorrow's furnace were defending Alkar (maybe) and the rage binders, which can now be pwned fairly easily with hero/hench flagging. I have a guildy who henched all of tombs as a water ele with the zaishen idiots way before NF came out, after I encouraged him how to get past the second map when playing there myself... dreadnaught's drift is nothing compared to that if you are careful with your aggro and have a good hero build plus flagging.

Also so far factions and NF haven't really set any challenging quests in lowbie places that allow more than 4 characters, so this doesn't seem like it will be an issue in future chapters. I'm not sure I find the addition of 7 heros *that* appalling, just the argument that PvE is too difficult without it.

omg this thread is still open,and active we get three for now live with it.i think everyone can make 1 friend and between the 2 of you have 6 heroes and two people.LIVE WITH WHAT YOU'VE BEEN GIVEN.

shame some of you guys are so hard on the pugs and new players,..we were all newbies at some point right?

Anyway, back to the point, i have to agree with the majority of overpowered parties, and it would take the "r" out of "party" ok that made no sense, but anyway ya i think it is something anet saw beforehand and so designed the game differently ,..

but thank you for at least coming up with a new idea for us to work with even if people tossed it around i am sure they all appreciate the effort, right guys?

So you think the thread should be closed just because you dont agree with having 7 heroes?

Thats one up for freedom of opinion isnt it. Instead of having a nice debate and an arguement, we'll just cloed all threads shortly after or before they start because escoffier doesnt agree with them.

That'l be the new moderating method from now on.

Yes its still open and its a worth while subject to discuss.

no i'm not saying it should be closed because of that freekoutfish im saying heroes was a gift given to us to help alleviate the PUG problems.however i believe it's well known that 7 heroes would be overpowering in almost all areas besides DoA. now yes a beginner with 7 heroes is not much of a force but, an experienced player with slight foreknowledge of what is ahead of them can easily set there 7 heroes to where it would simply be overpowering.not to mention the fact that it does somewhat remove from the fact that this is a Cooperative Online Role Playing Game.hence the corpg.i apologize for believeing that arenanet has reasons for the things they do such as having a three hero per person limit.oh and please i agree please give me 7 heroes so i can never PUG again(just kidding i like to PUG)

a party of 1 human player and 7 heroes is overpowering? how can a party of 1 player and 7 heroes can be overpowering and any different than a party of 8 skillful experienced real players with the same skill set? oh and escoffier we always had the option of playing with real people or not. just because they labeled it as a co-op rpg doesn't mean we have to play with others to enjoy it even in other mmo's. talking about the pve side anyways.