Unlimited Hero's In Hard Mode?

What is the chance that Anet would make a change and let us use unlimited hero's in hard mode. Anyone else tired of slogging through these mish's and clearing areas with henchies and their horrible skills bars?

With more hero's to come in GW:EN, it only seems logical to let us use as many heros as we want to in hard mode.

If not unlimited hero's, how about letting us use 1 or 2 more heros in HM. If you read this Gaile, please let us know if the devs have been considering this.

Ironically, no. Dunkoro and Talkhora have worse AI than Mhenlo, Lina, or Alesia.

Monk Heroes think Searing Heat is just a vacation.

I think the chance is slim, and I don't like the idea.

It doesn't make sense, why don't you just suggest a party size to be 10 instead of 8?

Like many others have said, HARD MODE is suppose to be hard! If you can't beat it with henchmens or heros, then try human players or don't try it at all. Get better, that's all I can say

Whether it was an intended result or not, but Hard Mode is actually making people group up with *gasp* real people. Now we are back to PUG days.

So... no, I'd rather not have more Hero's available to me. Three is fine.

Lets please not turn this into a flame on the OP. I for one like the idea, but do realize i'm dreaming. I don't want more heroes because I think hard mode is "too hard", but because I've spent so much time and money on all of my heroes I'd just like to use them over henchmen. Since henchmen are buffed in HM, I don't see how it would make HM any easier by allowing a full hero party.

With Eye of the North adding alot of new heroes, I would like to be able to use a party with just myself and nothing but heroes.

Couldn't agree more...

I play with mostly heroes and henchmen...if I can't complete areas the way it's currently designed...then I need to get better...the game does not need to get easier. Hard Mode is called Hard Mode for a reason.

I'd like if, instead of this, they just made henchmen better and improved the AI of both henchmen AND heroes.

I agree with Esprit. By (intentionally?) making HM heroes/henchies dumber than normal mode Alesia with 60DP, it forces you to go PuG.

HM PuGs aren't that bad actually, since 90% of all the bums in PuGs would never be able to access HM (they all get stuck on THK and stuff). It also brings back the nostalgic feeling of the old days, and gives you a way to socialize with new people.

When I hero'd/henched through NF I took a very balanced group of henchies (2 monks, mes and paragon) that allowed me to use my 3 heros very stratigically. But with no para's in Prophs and Factions, and no rits in Prophs and NF, I'm sorta handcuffed in some of the missions. Sure I'd like to be able to find actually people to do these missions with but it's not always possible. Have you been to some of the missions in Factions? Sometimes it's totally void of human players which leaves me with no choice but to hero/hench it. In that case, and extra hero or 2 would allow me to customize my party and give me the best chance of completing a mission or clearing an area.

I understand that hard mode is supposed to be hard. I want it to be a challenge and I also want to have fun too. An extra hero or 2 would add to the creativity I can use when playing the game. It's what I like so much about playing GW.

Unlimited Heroes Works? Sorry, couldn't help it.

I doubt Anet would let us have a full party of heroes any time soon. Anet supposedly wants us, the players, to work in teams more than with NPCs.

I actually requires a bit more skill to use a full hero party than it would to take your 3 heros and rest henchies. The henchies already have their skill bars made up. You have to make up the skill bar for your heros. And that is if you even have the skills you would like to use for your heros to utilize. Either way full hero party or not, it's definitely NOT going to make HM any easier. Perhaps just to those that know how to micromanage more than just their character. I for one am neutral on the idea. I can work with NPC, PUG, or Guild groups.

how about fixing some of the aggro (mobs) in some areas.

I"m fine with heroes/henchman but when two or three groups get mixed together..... game over...

I'm fine with the 3-limit of heroes as it is. But I would just like to be able to bring more. It would feel more personal, I guess, to have a party all your own.

yeah monk heroes in HM is just brutal. In parties of 8, they kind of get lost in the shuffle and aren't in so much danger, but in the earlier parts of Ascalon where it's 4 or 6, they just stand right on the front line and let themselves get hammered, and this is them set as guard.

Over the past few days I've been amazed at how dumb their AI is. No kiting. Something is bugged.

If the AI of heroes could be customized and improved, I'd be all for parties of 7 heroes in HM, if only as an option.

If they haven't done it already, its not going to happen for a LONG time. Keep that in mind about everything... (coughauctionhousecough).

Normal Mode should be for solo/hero teams
Hard Mode should be for players/guild teams

Hard mode was designed with full peole parties. They make it so that you use people instead of heroes/hench.
While it may be possible to hench/hero HM...it's easier with a full team of live people.

Ok.

People complained for months that some areas in Prophecies and Factions were empty.

Than Nightfall came and you got heroes, so you could do all those areas without fear of having to wait hours to find a pug.

Now we have 3 chapters. That means the populations is even more dispersed.

Add to that a new mode, that pretty much doubles the locations, even if they share the same physical hubs.

On top of that, farming is less profitable. You would think people would quit it, right? No, people are dumb, so instead of quiting it, they will spend even a larger fraction of their game time doing it.

Ah, and I would say this game is losing population as time goes and not increasing it.

And the fact they needed to make heroes dumber, as in dumb as rock, to make people need real pugs, is a nice insult to the human players, so dont be happy that the only way people are trading their heroes for humans (as in you and me) is because heroes seem to have no AI.

I dont care what you all say, i want full party heros!

/signed

I don't like playing withh real players. Purely becuase of the fact that I have to go afk for about 5 minutes very regularly during my gameplay. Finding a solid half hour is hard. Therefore I'd like to take 7 heroes all the time, not just hard mode.

This is very true. I have kids. So when I sit down to play, I am often not sitting very long. I am up and down, back and away and I know how frustrating that is for the players with no lives and can sit undisturbed for minutes and hours at a time. Even though I have a really good guild/alliance, I rarely party with them because it's just not fair to them that I might get up at any minute for however long I might be gone.

That said, I don't have any problems with the henchies. They aren't as smart as they could be, but I've gotten up to D'Allesio Seaboard with 3 areas vanquished with nothing but them and my three heroes. Still, I would like to be able to add more heroes, and be able to go in with a nice group build.

EVen if the feature would be available I personally wouldn't use it in hard mode. Micromanaging 7 heroes is actually blooming hard. I had missions where I was flagging people more then using my own skills. I cant speak for people with little time on their hands, but I liked to play with humans again a lot and most people I teamed up with were good players too .

This has been discussed to death and in the end there are three classes of players.

One wants to PUG, heroes were the death of them. Were it up to them then you probably wouldn't even be able to play with a full party of hench. You will hear wonderful things like the game is "multi-player" therefore you have to play with other people and AI ruins the game. Of course, that ignores a whole large element that plays the game - they aren't going to get the whole teeming masses wanting to PUG no matter what.

You have the second class that dislikes PUG's. They may have a variety of reasons - usually time commitments and are generally in the "casual" category. For them 8 heroes would really make the game one of the all time greats, you could pop on and play any area at any time for any amount of time (even if you have 15 minutes to play). They are going to have some missions that are near impossible to get masters/bonus or some titles that are near impossible and having 8 heroes isn't going to solve that.

Third group is mainly guild play and they do not care at all. They already have it all - AI for short strange periods of play, organized human groups when needed. True for both PvE and PvP and the only group that gets to truly play the whole game.

I fall into the second group, 8 heroes would make this rank as my all time favorite game. IMO if you want a constant group of humans to play with - join a guild. It's not hard, there are many. I like being able to choose, and I normally choose heroes/hench - always have and always will. But, Anet tries to balance between them and we get what we have today. It doesn't make either side *too* angry nor does it make either one happy. I'll accept it and understand it even though I do not like it. I just wish we had a few more choices in the hench - a few missions in Factions hit about the right balance to me. While I still could not get the whole team build I wanted I wasn't *that* far off. I was never in the position of thinking "crap, I have one other slot - who isn't going to screw me over" which is the normal thought on the last member for most of the three chapters.

I suspect that when the player base shrinks to some point then it will happen - until then Anet is going to push at least a two human party. Personally I think they would have more happy players than unhappy with 5, 6, 7, or 8 heroes allowed, but I do not think it will happen no matter the number of threads created.

/not signed.

I'm obviously not seeing the bad AI you guys are. Hero's are 50 times better than Menhlo, Lina, etc. in my opinion. And as much as I don't care if we were allowed to have 7 hero's instead of 3, I just realize that hard mode will have lost alot of it's challenge if it happens.

Hard mode isn't hard because of the monsters, it's because of the horrible hero-ai. Especially the monks who will just be standing afk-like, letting the party bleed to death during a fight. Just grab the hench-monks, you'll be fine.

/notsigned

Party size to ten and let me use all of my heros.

Hench ftl...they're too doey..

/signed

The reason people tend to find heroes worse than henchies is mainly because the heroes just don't like the build you're giving them. The key is to realize what skills, and sometimes what combination of skills the AI has a hard time with. You can't just slap a great build, no matter how awesome it is, onto a hero and then bitch at it because it's not doing this, or not doing that.

The henchies are generally better only because they are specifically coded to use that build they are using. They've been tweaked many times since release, and each time was small fixes in how they use this skill, or that skill in conjuction with that other skill, etc. The heroes have access to so many, it would take ages to make them work right with every combination. You're going to have bugs with the heroes, and we need to learn to accept that.

So, each time you go in with Dunky, and you think to yourself "Damn him! He's just standing there doing nothing, and I'm sitting at 25% life, and he's got full energy!" Chances are, he's confused, for some reason. Tweak the skillbar, find out what skill or combination of skills are causing the brain fart. Most people will just give up, kick Dunky, and add Alesia saying "At least she doesn't just sit there!". Of course, Alesia has 2 years of experience with her skills...


Regardless, I'm on the fence on this. I can see the argument about "This is hard mode, it's supposed to be hard!" despite how redundant that is. I can also see how having 4 more heroes is not that much different than 4 henchies for the average player. Now, the more hardcore player who has near or at UAS, and many ideas for that exploiting build for that one particular area where they will simply tear through it with their 7 uber-heroes... yeah, don't really see that as an issue, honestly. So maybe I'm more pro-7 heroes...

What's the point of hard mode if you have advantages over normal mode?

Hey here's a cool idea for hard mode - Let us have the same fast casting, attack speed boost and level increase as the creatures.

If most other players would know what they're doing maybe pugging wouldn't be so hated.

I don't have nightfall so I don't have access to heros and all of the nightfall skills, yet I'm still perfectly capable of using henchmen to vanquish areas - you just have to manually remember to move them out of AoE spells with the flag (Perdition rock + all those damn meteor showers hitting for 100dmg each = annoyingly fun )

So yeh, max party size is fine, I don't really see much difference with heros to henchmen (I have partied with my friends heros) except you can customise their skills and what not so for me

/notsigned

I really don't see why you guys are so critical to the idea.

All-hero teams means that you can create real team builds, rather than four-player-build-plus-two-hench-monks-and-Sogolon.

And to those who say Henches are as good or better than Heros... Get real.
Henches have skills from one profession, most of them have 6, not 8, skills, and many of them don't have an elite (or if they have one it's a silly one, e.g. the warriors have Charge!). And they have the same AI.
7 heroes *would* make hard-mode much, much, easier. Arguing otherwise is just plain silly.

And before someone say I don't know how to use henches: I hench-wayed all of prophecies and factions, and got the Defender title, before there were any heroes.


I can see two main reasons to not allow the use of unlimited heroes:
1) it'd make the standard campaign too easy.
2) it'd kill the PUGs.

Not really. While there are some skills the heroes cant handle, like energy drain, people are complaining mostly, although they make some different skill usage options in NM an in HM, is that heroes woht move in hard mode.

In NM, if you set an hero to offensive, he will attack and stay in line with you or in front of you. A defensive hero will stay in line or slighty back. A passive will stay clearly back.

In hard mode, all will stay in front of you. If you want them to fall back, you have to order them too.

In normal mode, caster heroes or heroes in passive behaviour will try to flee a melee chaser, and all will try to scatter from AoE.

In Hardmode they just wont move. The ones that actually move are those set to offensive, and if you are a caster and move slightly back, the hero immediatly stop attacking and drop back a bit.

Thats why people complain about. Not only the enemy got stronger, your allies got dumber.

And many people enjoy playing in pairs. Brothers, cousins, friends, husband and wife. They could play all the game ony the 2/3 of them plus their heroes.

Apparently, Anet decided that solo play is a downside of this game, while some people (dunno if a majority or a minority) find it an Ace of GW.

Well, I have noticed that. That is true. However, I haven't noticed much of a difference between heores and henchies as far as that behaviour goes.

I got to a point where I as a warrior would just flag my heroes to just outside of battle, then rush in. They did a lot better when they had a specific point to converge on. Maybe they made hardmode AI in a way that they won't perform right unless you flag them? I dunno.

That's just not true. Caster heroes and caster henches do not get out of AoE spells. Go to any enemy that casts Maelstrom or Chaos Storm or Meteor Shower and see your henches/heroes walk slowly back and forth inside the AoE. The hero/hench ai is buggy wrt AoE spells, and equally so in both normal and hard mode.

Also, while they do kite, I'm wondering if you guys aren't mistaking the change in MONSTER ai for a change in HENCH/HERO ai.
The monster ai for normal mode was _downgraded_ with the introduction of hard mode: in normal mode mobs now wont scatter as much from AoE, wont chase kiting party members, and will concentrate on one team member instead of attacking several at once.
This was made to make NORMAL mode easier.

In Hard mode the AI of both henches/heroes and monsters are the same as before.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10145685

Usually I would be the first person to defend heroes and agree to let us use a full party of them.

However, thats only in normal mode because heroes are required and important.

In normal mode its harder to find PUGs, and because completing the game in NM is a necessity, then we need alternatives. Heroes are that alternative and it would be better to have a full team of them in normal mode to help complete the game.

In Hard Mode I think PUGs are better, and heroes are less important.

Hard mode isnt a necessity because youve already completed the game. Its just something else to do. Heroes arent a necessity because you can take longer finding PUGs and doing the missions.

Plus the difficulty of Hard Mode requires human intuition and reactions. I think Hard Mode should be more PUG orientated and stay that way.

You can almost be assured someone in hardmode is going to have some idea what their doing, so you can be more confident about using humans.

/signed at letting them use full heroe parties in normal mode.
/not signed at letting them use full heroes in Hard Mode.

Its hard for a reason, and I think Hard Mode is helping to re-introduce PUGing.

(Anyone whos read my views on PUGs will be gasping at that fact I just wrote that.)

1) Whether or not it would be easier depends on your ability to analyze hero AI and get the most out of it, so why not reward the players that dedicate their time into buying equipment and finding the right build for their heroes. People who don't want to do that can still use henches, PuGs or guild teams.
2) Even though a lot of people come up with this argument to vote against the use of 7 heroes, I completely disagree that it would kill PUGs. People aren't going to invite random players because they can't use 7 heroes, they'll just complete the group with henches. What does happen is that people start a PUG and can't find enough players so they use heroes to complete the group instead, and that won't change.

And the hench AI really was bugged in HM, they just stood there when they were being attacked. I just tested this again and it seems they do kite now but I have no idea when this was changed or if the bug is just random. Odd.

I dunno, man... I think you have that backwards. What if I decide "Hey, think I'm gonna try Hard Mode Sanctum Cay today."? Guess what, it's going to take me hours to get a group to do that particular mission. I'm at the mercy of what anyone else wanting to do hard mode wants to do, or taking heroes/finding at least one person and take heroes.

So you're suggesting a full team of heroes, where it's not needed, and half team where it is needed? Yeah, let's complicate things even more.

Meh.
I'll make this short.

#1. Fix Hero AI in Hard Mode. It should be at least as smart as in Normal Mode if not moreso....

#2. Full team of 7 heroes should be allowed in BOTH Normal Mode and Hard Mode... Picking between the two, given the way it is implemented, would just add unnecessary complication to the coding. If we're allowed to fill the entire party with heroes irrespective of location or difficulty then party structure and tactics become far more manageable... Afterall... certain areas / situations have certain effects that every party-member is subject to and ideally needs to compensate for. If my Sousuke is spamming Greater Conflagration then I want the option of giving my entire party fire resistance... for instance.

v_v;

O'course I don't fool myself into thinking for an instant that either will actually get sorted as I'd like.