Why not let us use 7 Heroes; the reasons?

Anet advertices a choice on the game box: play with henchies/heroes or with friends. The PvE experience is not ruined by people using heroes, as you donot have to counter them. The PvP experience is affected by heroes and henches. If you do not want to play with them, then you just look for PUGS or friends that want to join.

Your logic doesnt really pan out. An experienced player is going to be overpowered in any an area regardless of whether they use 7 heroes or 7 humans.

If an experienced player is anel enough and wants the perfect team, then they can quite easily form the perfect PUG and ask the other players to use certain skills just as easily as they can form a 7 hero team and set their heroes skills.

This is why I believe its wrong to say 7 heroes are anymore overpowered then a 7 human lvl20 team.

Lets assume all your heroes are lvl20. Its no different to you asking guildies, friends or a PUG of lvl20 humans to help you and then asking them to use specific skills. You can set up a PUG the way you want to, just as you can a set of heroes.

And you can also just let your Heroes use their bog standard skills and NOT give them runes or 15^50 weapons and let them use anything, just as you can a PUG.

I know alot of players who dont bother to level their heroes, or give them good weapons or runes. Even if we had 7 heroes, there would still be alot who didnt use them.

As I said in my OP. You cant blame Heroes for being the main reason why PUGs are falling. Their just an effective alternative. If PUG numbers are falling its due to attitudes of the players.

Easily? You can easily form a perfect PuG in which everyone is not only competent (and fully equipped) enough to perfectly play specific builds, but also spineless enough not to object to your total control?

...You must only play during peak hour!

I was just thinking today before i saw this post about how i wished you could have seven heroes and started wondering why we couldn't. I couldn't think of a single reason other than that it would make pve easier for us, and i couldn't decide whether that was a good or bad thing. I did feel though that the huge difference in the capability of henchies compared to heroes should not be what makes guild wars challenging.

So yes i would quite like to have 7 heroes enabled.

If you are a member of a decent guild, with maxed out players and decent players and the guild members are willing to use set skills and builds in a PUG which you run, then how is that any different to using 7 heroes who's builds you can set?

Saying "easy" was a slight exageration, but that is exactly what people try to do anyway in PUGs.

You enter a PUG in an elite area or a high end area and 9/10 times, you will be asked to use a set skill or build. Example Necros are asked to be MMs, or Monks healers and Rangers interupt or trappers, etc etc etc.

This may happen mostly in high end areas, but it also happens in low end areas too.

You cant deny it happens.

In which case using 7 heroes and setting their skills to whatever you want, is no different to running a PUG and haveing the choice to ask the other members to use set skills.

Whether those other team players are competant or not, makes no difference. Heroes are just as competant as how you make and use them.

Firstly I woulkd like to say that perhaps it might be a programming problem for now. I'm probably wrong cause the guys and gals at ANet are geniusses. But my reasoning goes along the the lines of Party size in noob areas being 4 and zoning to such areas with 7 heroes might pose a programming problem. I don't think ANet is trying to force players to play with other humans because then there wouldn't have been Henchman in the first place or heroes for that matter.
And speaking of experience Heroes is more powerful than most human especially Dunkoro and Tahlkora. With the proper build and runes equipped their reaction times are way faster than any human. Just try and fight the the Mursaat uninfused and take them along.

Whether your in an area with 4 or 8 slots available wouldnt cause problems if we had 7 heroe slots available.

You would just be limited to using the max number of slots for that area. I know because when myself, 2 heroes and 3 other players walked from Yanks bend (6 players) to fort ranik (4 players) in Tyria. When we died and returned to Fort ranik two heroes vanished.

I doubt it would cause any issues.

ok well you have made some good points but it looks like we will have to agree to disagree=)

This is not true. My housemate and his brother have both been playing GW since christmas, and they both prefer and love playing with heroes rather then henchies. One of them is playin prophecies as well, and has a very hard time finding groups for all of the quests, so heroes are very good in this respect. The reason why he cant find pugs isnt because everyone is using heroes, but because there arent enough people doing all of the quests.

I have recently been trying to farm unwalking waters for kunvies air staff. Harvest temple is virtually a dead district and there is never more then 2 - 4 people there, and no one thats ever LFG. All I require to be able to farm the entire area with as few hero/hench as possible is one or 2 more heroes. However, with hench using rubbish skills, I currently need a full party of 8, or 7 at least which really doesnt help green farming in high end areas. Also, before heroes, this region was completely immposible to farm with 8 henchmen.

Ive not read furthur after the quoted post yet, but am doing so now.

The Aidan info just hit me on the thinking cap. The most useless henchman ever, believe it or not. Yes, he used practiced stance elite just for kindle arrows....

I use Jin + Zenmai and a monk most of the time for my hero team. Jin and Zenmai run critical barrage way, I use SF, and the monk is usually healers boon. I would love to be able to add one more monk and either an SF or another barrage to get through the higher end areas like unwalking waters [explorable] (not misson).

I have 20+ people on my friends list, mostly for PVP, Im in a farming guild with 90+ members and a full alliance. No one wants to help me with unwalking waters so I use heroes/hench. Except all the hench completely suck in that region (same logic for tyria and NF end game quests).

I went to DWC with my elly becasuse I wanted to play sorrows for fun. It was quite empty and no one there wanted an elly in their group, and again heroes here suck and I would like to be able to use 2 more heroes.

I joined a group for a mission in Nightfall, and the last person that joined was a ranger. Not just any ranger, this one had Reversal of fortune, orison of healing, Smite, Banish, bane signet, troll ungent. He didnt get kicked so I rage quit the group and did the mission with heroes and hench instead.

Please give me 7 heroes.

If you newly start playing a game where your only option is to play on your own, with heroes, because no-one will ever group with unknowns, how exactly are you going to get to know these people in this uber-guild of Stepford Wives in the first place??

Case in point: bhavv's post.

I made that statement in reply to a poster who was saying that using 7 lvl20 heroes, was more over-powered then using 7 lvl20 humans in a PUG.

That was the basis for my arguement.

If your a completely new player with no guild and (presumably) no other characters to share skills with your heroes; then your heroes are going to have very few skills to play with.

In which case any builds you can try to make for your heroes are going to be extremely limited or impossible to make. It will be a case of giving them what ever you can find.

You also have to presume that NEW player has no experience of the character their playing, or the professions of those heroes. They wouldnt know what builds to give them.

So regardless of whether you have 3 or 7 heroes to play with when your new, that rules out the arguement about 7 heroes being overpowered. Which was the basic for that statement.

How-ever once that player gains experience and levels up their heroes and then goes on to make more characters, by which time you assume they join a guild...

....THEN using Heroes would be no different to using guild friends and asking them to set skills too.

But as I said. Unless a player has a character of each profession, then their heroes are NOT 100% usefull. They wont have a huge selection of skills to choose from. It is only experienced players, with gold to spend and a wide selection of characters, who would be able to use heroes 100% effectively.

How effective a hero is relys on how experienced the players is. Since alot of players are new players, or dont have alot of alternative characters to play with. It renders their heroes less usefull.

And you cant just rely on hero-skill-points to buy skills for them, as those are limited.

Give the people what they want. They want more heroes! (just a summary cap for Anet to bring up at their next meeting)

Oh, I completely agree with you. I'm just not sure how we're coming to opposite conclusions from the same data, though - why exactly do you see a further breach between experienced and novice players as a good thing for the Guild Wars community?

Freek I see your point about new players who have no-one to play with. But as they progress throughout the game they will be able to learn more with only henchies/heroes and take their time then they would be able to do otherwise. You seem to forget- there are players who prefer to be guildless and play solo. If they want to make friends then I'm sure they can find someone who will help them and let them join a guild.

And In general, I just use henchies and heroes all the time- unless it's a difficult mission such as Nap quarter, where I may only take one hench monk and the rest human. I don't see why you would want to use all heroes. Apart from taking the sense of fun from it all.

I agree that if your a new user and you see that you can use 7 heroes, you might never feel the need to user PUGs ever.

But since Heroes wouldnt be truly effective until your a higher level, and your more experienced as I explained, then I dont see how they would pull new players away from using PUGs anymore then henches already do.

Ill admit its not a perfect idea.

Perhaps we should give a person access to 7 heroes once they reach lvl20, or they reach a certain NPC inside the game. For instance after killing abaddon.

That would fix the temptation for new players and keep it aimed at experienced players.

...Well, I was actually approaching the problem from the opposite direction. The issue I see here is that even more experienced players will stop playing with newer players entirely.

It's already an endemic problem in the community, and it's a big part of the reason why PuGs have such a bad rep - they "inbreed" with only the less competent players participating, so they just get worse.

/signed


I just started PvE, and Anet, I don't like your Mhenlo healing breeze trash leetsauce build.

3 heroes is overpowered as it is. i can use 3 heroes and me in areas i would usually need 6-8 henchies, which means slightly better drops. though i would like 7 heroes for things like going back and doing Ring of Fire with my mesmer simply because there are barely any people there and half of them are leechers. but as a person who has played every char except the 4 new ones still, i can do extremely well with only 3 heroes and no henchies. just being able to use Olias as a MM makes a huge difference. keep it at 3 for normal places and mabye change it to seven for end-game areas.

Try your three heroes in Urgoz's Warren. Come back and tell us then how overpowering they are there.

look at the end of my post.

"keep it at 3 for normal places and mabye change it to seven for end-game areas."

that pretty much includes all elite missions and FoW, and UW, and SF, and DoA, and every other elite or endgame area

Urgoz may not have been a great example because it's an elite area. How about just some of the regular missions in Factions where you have to fight mobs after mobs? The point is, while you can get by some areas with three heroes (FOW, UW), they are not overpowering.

/signed

Give me 7 heros please!

/NOT signed

The system now is perfectly fine. Just enough so that the pro solo players can do what they want, but cannot get by the hard areas without at least knowing some skill synergy and good aggro control/flagging, and the understanding of how to protect the 4 weaker henchmen, and what skills the henchmen use. I could just imagine with 7 heroes....Aggro, afk, pick up loot -.-....

OMG can you imagine the amount of hero windows! Granted you dont have to have them open but its nice to keep an eye on em all.

Anyways... heroes should die!

Yes they are handy... they are cool... they can use your builds and weapons but my GOD has it killed the party element of Guild Wars!

Im all up for heroes but they are too useful... people would rather buddy up with an A.I. than a poor little helpless nerdette! (or nerd for u guys on here).

lots of real peeps go as a pair and then take 3 heroes each to fill the party... what about the mass amount of other people wanting to do the same damn missions and quests as you?

granted you get so-called 'noobs' and the occasional idiot who loves to shout "noob" and spam their skills and weapons in party chat... but its all part of the fun!

were all heading for the end eventually its just id rather take someone along with me than be a recluse and go it alone with my trusty heroes...

i dunno ( -.-)... heroes for me just makes things too simple and easy. So having 7 heroes... there wouldnt even be a point in playing!

Go forth people... party and make friends!!! do it for Gwen!

p.s. im sick of seeing the little blue man number 4 above peoples heads in towns "WE KNOW YOU HAVE HEROES!"


/Not Signed


HAHAHAHAHAHA

Kai

instead of giving us 4 extra hero slots right off the bat. they could do one of two things....

1. since NF has 3 char slots, have chapter 4 have 4, chapter 5 have 5 etc or....

2. make hero slots buyable in the store for the same price as character slot.

I dunno about 7 heros. That would mean 4 more characters I have to buy runes and insignia for and probably get to level 20. I've heaped a great deal of attention on Dunkuro, Koss, and Acolyte Sosuke and have developed a nicely functioning unit. With 4 more heroes I'll have to spend a great deal of time capping elites for them and buying necessary skills.

If they allowed us to use 7 heroes it would probably be conditional. Like for each hero beyond the 3rd the level of the foes in the area increases by 2. *lol* I can barely get the 3 heroes I use now to obey me. Koss and Sokuke simply run headlong into battle and so I usually have to use a flag to get them to come back. Dunkuro runs around like a maniac, shoots off a few staff blasts, and then resumes running. I have them all on Guard but that doesn't do any good. I used to have Dunkuro on Passive but he died too much and so I put him on Guard so he'd defend himself when attacked. 7 insane AI would be almost as bad as a PUG in Elona Reach.

Personally i think having 7 heroes would be awesome for people like myself who hafta work most of the week and 10+ hours a day and dont have much time to sit around and look for PUG's in mission areas. Even with 7 hereos or 3 pugs are next to dead as is and there would still be people who will get groups for missions. even though a hero team with yourself could steamroll majority of GW there are still some missions where using heroes would be damn-near impossible. Doing dzagonur bastion would still be somewhat difficult since youde hafta individually flag heroes over to one side while you and 3 others stay on your side just to get bonus and same with THK. My suggestion would be to actually upgrade henchies to have builds that you an choose when selecting them with a matching weapon set. so now you dont have very tight nit synergy builds but now you have builds that may work better with yourself and your heroes or teams. Aaaand as it was mentioned before certain professions such as assassins and mesmers and others with a lil less use will find this very useful thanks to class descrimination. if anything make it 5 heroes not 3 but also not 7. They originally made it 3 because you could have 2 human players each use 3 heroes for a full team. If they were to ever make 7 hero teams odds are it would be for elite missions areas that require 12-16 player team size. this will for the most part be a neverending cycle. what ide really lke to see which would benefiet a lotta people due to increasing price of runes is make heroes obtain weapons, runes, insignias, etc through the pvp armor/weapon selection screen. Runes of major vigor aleady go from 4.5k - 5k and minor vigor is 2k where it used to only be 100g or so. Superior fire runes or healing runes will run you up 5-7k and a set of insignias can go for about 2-3k so for one hero your looking at easilly 7-15k for fully runed and insigniad armor THEEEN you have the weapons that you hafta buy which after a whle becomes rediculously epensive when you have more than 3 or 4 characters (which personally i have 10) itll prolly never ever ever ever ever happen but its just speculation.

I would imagine the reasoning is simple; Anet doesn't want to totally kill the PuG.

Heros>Henchies>Pug

Of all the pugs I play.....

75% chance of lone wolf who aggros
50% chance of leavers the first time our team gets mobbed
40% chance of ignorant player
15% chance of 007
10% chance of person who forgot to set skills

-Heros and Henchies-
Follow commands with no questions asked
.1 second reflex
Don't complain or leave
Dance with you

I dont see why it would have to stop in general with the 7 heroes...I got so outraged when anet nerfed halls to be 4 man minimum i just quit playing- it's a push in a negative direction, just like the majority of their updates.

Nerfing Hero-way in halls was another huge step in the wrong direction. Heroes (effectively smarter hench) brought so many positive things to the game. Limiting the amount (maximum 2) in HA is rediculous. They gave us something sweet and put a limit on that sweetness. If you think for a minute heroes are better than you, you must be completely new to the game or just pve 24/7 (you are so used to henchmen bars, can't imagine fighting anything more powerful than monster ai, and anything doing more damage than your healing breezes and mendings can handle... are OVERPOWERED!). Heroes made it possible to pvp without the hassle of hearing yelling on vent, waiting in ID1 for god knows HOW LONG, hearing OMG LAG LOL IM NOT MOVING, ect. What was the point of nerfing the maximum? Are they really that overpowered? They have their serious drawbacks. If one were to lose to a hero team on a relic run, they need to consider going back to the pve they came from. heroes in ha WERE a quick alternative that ALLOWED people to make a group in an instant and get into action just as quickly as they made it. What some people believed is that heroes were all of a sudden entirely replacing people forever. They allowed people to have some fun until enough people in their guild logged on to form a group, or until a slot in a group already made opened. For me it felt like heroes were replacing all the people that left guild wars due to these updates.

Ironically, you state "pvp" in that post, where it stands for "Player vs. Player."

If you need 7 Heroes, then just learn to play better. Mhenlo and Lina are pretty good Monks. Devona is a good Thumper. Don't just scapegoat the henchmen.

I'll take henchmen, but thats capped too. I think you are missing my point. We (friends) used to henchway or heroway to fill time gaps between guild groups being full and a slot open. This is Ha im talking about. I dont expect to achieve much with 7 heroes besides a little fun... so making statements like "if you need 7 heroes L2play better" are absurd.

What may be fun for you may be detrimental to others.

If you played Heroway, it would be unfun for an opposing, all human team, if they expected a geniune match.

If you allow 7 Heroes, you devalue all accomplishments that PvE offers.

There's a difference between "fun" and "integrity." I strongly favor the latter.

Who then could i send to lure Mobs, Koss? No! Devona is my one and only Lurer

I guess i may be ill informed as to what the majority of people believe. If they (majority) believe that heroes are detrimental and ruin their fun because their expectations were higher, i would then agree. I think this is all overly exaggerated. It isn't like you fight only heroes, a match is 3min or so with heroes then its on to the next. During that time period where the limit was higher, there were many non-hero groups. I can't say anything about how it affects pve, maybe it makes more sense there. For now i believe the HA hero max update was a mistake.

Hench are terrible, in skill usage and the skillbar provided, as well as in their moving around and positioning. However, the same gimped skillbars and 'intelligence' are provided to the mobs you face, so the effects do not show quite as much.

The biggest power of the heroes is their skillbar, if anything.

No, players do not need 7 heroes. At this point though, who cares? The PvE game is in no way a challenge, so if people want to play with 8 customized skillbars, there's little reason to restrict them. This is for PvE however - fighting heroes in PvP areas like HA is mindnumbing, as they are designed with the simplest brute-force setups rather than anything interesting.

Such as...?

I would love to see all 7 be heroes, and I think I may have replied quite a while back. I still agree that it is isn't as "unbalanced" as a party of humans. For me, I would adore playing with more varied team builds than what I can currently do. That's been the best part of the hero system, expanding it will only make the game better for a large part of the player base. Besides, "balance" in PvE doesn't make a lot of sense anyway - there is little meta-game to play. If you want harder take few characters, otherwise PvE will always be easy (DoA has already been hero-way'd).

7 heroes will benefit long term players mostly. Long term players should either be in an active guild, have an extensive friends list, or play AI. I can not see how one could be a "long term player" and *not* be in one of those three places. If you are you really have no one to complain to but yourself. Even those of us who AI the game usually have a few friends in their list.

As such, it shouldn't effect PUG's. New players or unexperienced players are still going to pug, long term players shouldn't be doing so unless they really want too (so that available AI doesn't matter). I'm currently playing an assassin through the game and there are people "LFG" in nearly all missions, the ones they are not didn't before the addition of heroes.

However, for PvP areas I'm not even sure the current compromise is decent. If we want to hero-way the area we have hero arenas (I would, however, support expanding the options for hero-way PvP). I suppose that to flesh out a character or two is maybe OK, but other than that no. If I wanted to play against AI I would play PvE (and is why I spend 99% of my time there. the little PvP I do is hero stuff). Us AI battlers already have our areas, let the *player* vs *player* people have theirs.

It's funny when people say heroes killed (is killing) pugs. There is only one thing responsible for the decline of pugs. It's the fact that the PvE player base is now spread out (very thinly) over the three campaigns. It's only going to get worse when Chapter 4 is released so get ready.

Heroes for PvE in my opinion are the best thing introduced to the game. Most of the time I go to a mission area and look for groups, I get no replies. If, and in late Factions missions is a huge IF, people are there, they are just standing around. Although there are the solo A/E and E/A farmers. If or when I do finally get a group that doesn't consist of 5 w/mos, 1 dervish, and a paragon...well you know what happens then. Even if by some miracle I get a group that looks god on paper, you guessed it, the warrior is running all over the place, the monk is spamming heal party and the necro and ele are afk for a bathroom break or mom is calling.

Two man, hero-ing is the new PUG. Find yourself a person who has nice hero builds that compliment yours and has a decent grasp on controlling them and you have a yourself one awesome pug. I too would like to see 7 heroes, just for the simple fact that I see no reason to not have the option. However, 2 man hero-ing is a nice compromise for me.