Henchmen as Heroes

Greetings.

My apologies if this has already been suggested, my search didn't return any results. The suggestion is to enable us to recruit the currently available henchmen as heroes.

I - Reasons

a. Some of the current henchmen are very powerful fighters (lore-wise), and have done heroic feats through the Guild Wars storyline, yet, they have become overshadowed by the power of the heroes included in Nightfall.

b. To add more variety to the hero system.

c. Possibly serve as an added incentive for players to buy all three chapters.

II - Implementation

a. For PvE, the henchmen would still be in their usual places, however, when you talk to them, a new option that says: "I'd like to recruit you as my Hero" would be available. By clicking on this new option, the selected henchmen would be unlocked as a hero to your character. A symbolical fee could be required.

b. For PvP, they'd be unlocked using Balthazar Faction.

III - Restrictions

a. Level restriction - If it's undesirable to have these new heroes available from level 1, make it so they can only be recruited at level 20.

b. Campaign restriction - If it's undesirable to have these new heroes available without the purchase of Nightfall, make it so the character has to be a Sunspear General to be able recruit them.

c. Class restriction - If it's undesirable to have more than the currently available number of heroes per character class, make it so whenever you have one of these new heroes in your party, you cannot add more than the previously available number of heroes of the same class. For example, if you add Devona to your party, you will only be able to add Koss or Goren, but not both at the same time.

IV - Possible problems

a. The current henchmen already have a weapon associated to them. I don't know if their models can support a weapon change, or if they'd have to be tweaked for it.

b. A Ritualist hero would be easily available. If this is undesirable, a quick solution would be to implement the class restriction based on the heroes you have unlocked, rather than on the total of heroes available. This means you can only add a Ritualist "henchmen-hero" to your party if you have Razah unlocked.

c. The instances where the henchmen appear in an explorable area or mission, and are outside of your party (as allies or quest givers). Depending on how Guild Wars is coded, it could take a few lines of code to change your heroes name to a "generic name", or it could take a complete re-doing of these specific instances. Alternatively, they could just leave it as it is, providing it doesn't cause any problems to the client or server to have two NPCs with the same name.

V - Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to read this far. I believe with the restrictions described above, this feature wouldn't have much, if any, impact on actual game play, and be merely a fun, cosmetic change that I believe many would enjoy.

Here's to hoping Cynn's fighting skill would actually be able to match her mouth. ;-)

Regards,

Elewyn.

Edit: Added a new item to sections I and IV.

I have read through what you have wrote here, I support your proposed ideas.

/signed

Elewyn, this thread sounds familiar but the concept is worth a /sign.

II. Instead of plain recruitment, I'd rather seen it done via quests or missions.

Also for Factions, you could only get some heroes based on which side you choose (meaning you'd have to play both sides to get all).

III. I'd agree with the level 20 heroes only if when you recruited them, they were level 20. If it were possible to recruit them earlier (like say being able to recruit devona when you first get to postsearing, then they should be lower). Also the sunspear general restriction isn't needed because the game knows if you have a certain campaign or not. I don't like C because as it is, you can have to heroes of the same class and sometimes you might want two monks or two warriors.

VI. Save for Talon I would think most are close enough to the existing PC models that they'd need minimal tweaking when it comes to weapons. Alt armors would require extra work though... and if there was a thong bikini armor for Cynn, I heartly ask Anet make it so. A rit hero would be pretty easy to get with this suggestion because there are several floating around newbie island in cantha. As for C, if the hero is already scripted to be there, just make him required for that mission.


I do have one question: would you be limited to 3 heroes with this suggestion or not?

I like both ideas. I'd love to have some new quests related to each henchmen you'd want to recruit. I can see Cynn's quest being something related to stalking Mhenlo... or worse.

The hero wouldn't be able to be higher level than the player recruiting. Say, if a level 1 got run to Droknar's and tried to recruit a level 20 Devona, she'd start as a level 1 hero.

I think it'd be alright if you could recruit a level 20 Alesia right from Ascalon, providing of course, that you yourself are level 20, but I don't particularly mind if we were limited to having the heroes come the same level as the henchmen level they are in the place they were recruited.

That's nice that the game can detect it. We can then safely change the restriction to simply having purchased Nightfall.

You'd still be able to have two Warriors, for example, Devona and Koss together, just not, say, Devona, Little Thom and Koss together at the same time, since previously the maximum number of Warrior heroes was 2. Although, personally, I'd love to be able to use them freely, and have as many of the same class as I wanted to, I just added that possible restriction in case ArenaNet feels they want to keep the number of heroes per class the same.

Thumbs up for alternative armors. Would be a nice touch, and something to look forward to. Maybe obtainable through some fun quest lines, or perhaps new challenge missions in Tyria and Cantha?

I believe there's another suggestion thread with the idea of allowing more than 3 heroes. I think it'd be great if that happened, and I believe this suggestion would bring even more variety to it, especially if they don't limit they amount of heroes per class you can have.

Thanks for the comments Winterclaw.

Regards,

Elewyn.

I've wanted something like this since Heroes came out; one point is that the henchmen in Nightfall are pretty much second-class citizens, and the Heroes are the movers and shakers of the story (much like the high-end band of henchmen were the movers and shakers in Prophecies and Nightfall). I'd actually expected that Mhenlo would be a hero, since he's the core monk - he's even in the chapter, but as a tagalong role.

However, I think that it should be as a defined Hero, not as a henchman that you can tweak - that would be messy. Instead, the method I'd been thinking of was that you would have to 1) own Nightfall and 2) have completed the other chapter (Prophecies or Factions). That's combining both the ability to get the missing Hero (for the three pairs that are either/or) and requiring the chapters to get Olias and Zenmai). At that point, they could have some set of the core heroes available through Gain X quests. You'd go do that, and you would add them to your hero list.

I'd started thinking about this because I'd love it if there was some quest available where, if you went down into the Underworld, you could return Rurik's spirit back, he'd get human form again and join your group as a Hero. I'm sure that'd be met with some scorn in some circles, but come on! I need my Rurik!

Yes, they'd be just like any other Hero: once you gain them, you'd see the window pop-up with their background story saying they were unlocked, and they'd show up in your hero list like any other hero.

I agree with you about the Nightfall henchmen, as well as some of Prophecies and Factions as well, they just don't have any back story or relations to the storyline whatsoever. It wouldn't break my heart if these guys were left as it is, in favor of creating more elaborate quests for the characters that do matter.

Rurik as a hero... Kinda creepy!

Undead Rurik.

/sign It'd give me a chance to see some other heros. I get tired of Mow/Olias, Acoleyte/Zhed, and Koss.

Naah, not undead - the one, the only, the original pompous Rurik!

It wouldn't be too hard to do for Factions heroes (Argo, Talon, Danika, etc) as they could choose a few from each side and have them available in the end-game zone to pick up quests if you have both Factions and Nightfall. As for Prophecies, there's no such area. One thought would be to do something akin to the Chantry of Secrets:
in Droknar's Forge, there is the old arena zone which is locked off with a guard in front of it telling you to buzz off and use the Battle Isle. They could change it so that if you've completed Prophecies and have Nightfall, he lets you go inside. There you have the selection of NPCs you can add as heroes, who give you their quests.