A discussion on 7 heroes

Incorrect. Why? Because there were many people, including myself, who just used henchmen instead of puging before heroes came out, all thats changed since then is that those same people just use 3 heroes and 4 henchmen instead of 7 henchmen. I do not think that many people changed from pure Pugs only to h/h once heroes came out, at least that switched ONLY because of heroes.

I personally say we should have 5 heroes in a party. 7 heroes just seems to overpowering to me, and I know many of you will say that a full party of alliance/guild members would be more overpowering, but I say 7 heroes is more because they don't have to leave at times . Also, 7 heroes would allow you to do UW and the other elite areas *excluding Urgoz and the Deep* with just heroes, which will ruin those areas even more then Ursan does now im my opinion. However, with 5 heroes, you can do most of prophecies *which I think is the best campaign with lvling and party size change* without any henchies and for those areas with a party size of 8, which is too many in my opinion, you will just need 2 henchies, which removes a few more chances of party wipes and whatnot since not many henchies take rez, and those who do usually take the rez sig if not a monk.

Heros did not destroy PuGs. PuGs destroyed PuGs. Before heros were introduced, was everyone who had no desire to random group, joining PuGs to do quests and missions? Absolutely not...they were using all hench teams. If heros had never been introduced, they would still be using all hench teams. I personally gave up on random grouping soon after Factions was released...because the henchies were far more capable than most random groups, and far less arrogent, immature, and stupid. Whether there are three heros, or seven, or none...peoples' choices will remain the same. If they want to random group, they will. If they dont...they won't.

Using 7 heros would change absolutely NOTHING regarding PuGs. Those that want to PuG....will continue to do so. Those that still do not want to....still won't.

Ok, let me tell you something... I am referring to people who PUG primarily.

Heroes are not a problem. When I want to socialize, I go to a town. If heroes did not exist, I would use henchmen. If henchmen did not exist, I would solo as much of the game as I could. And when that failed, I'd uninstall Guild Wars.

The addition of 7 heroes will not hurt the PUG players. Those of us who are not playing in PUGs are not going to play in a PUG either way. We will hardly be causing any sort of imbalance, because the game is instanced and because heroes cannot use PvE skills like Ursan Imbalance.

Refusing to give us 7 heroes is stupid. There is absolutely no reason not to.
- It will not imbalance the game. Ursan has already done that, and besides, saying that a 7 hero team would be stronger than a pickup group is basically ArenaNet's admission that the average pickup group player sucks at Guild Wars.
- It is not going to cause GUI problems. Really, it's not hard to add an extra row of flag buttons. And as for skill bars, for me that won't crowd up my widescreen's GUI and for low-res players, they can toggle off when needed.
- It will not kill pickup groups. PUG players already think that heroes are stupid (you'll often find them preferring to get a human monk over a hero monk, even when 99% of the time the human monk is an absolute idiot); this is caused by the fact that they always load terrible bars on their heroes, and when they go with someone who has good heroes, they say that it was the human part of the team that brought about the victory. Therefor the pickup group players will still play in pickup groups. The ones that begin to understand the game and use good builds on heroes might leave PUGs, but they'd do that anyways.

All we're asking for is a way to make our game more fun. Is that too much to ask? That a game be made more fun when the ability to make it more fun is right there in front of ArenaNet and will not harm anyone by being implemented?

This was very very funny to me, and I would probably be the same.

In short, those who want to pug will, those who want to h/h will. Adding more/removing all heroes will not change a thing with this. The only thing that will change is removing all heroes AND all henchmen, but that will not happen in GW1, because many people who do not want to bother with pugs will probably just leave the game if they cannot solo stuff.

I want to make sure everyone understands this.

7 heroes is not an attempt to change the ratio of H/Hers to PUGers.

7 heroes is an attempt to make the game more fun.

Let me say that again. An attempt to make the game more fun.

More fun.

Fun.

The entire point of a game.

Do you have some sort of twitch problem with all that bolding, do you think I'll not read and miss the things you say so you wish to bold them, or are you just trying to be rude and yell?

Your argument is flawed in lots of places, but I'll simply quote this one as I am short on time:

Its not just your game, the game for those who wish seven heroes, but a game for everyone, some of whom share a dissenting opinion.

Anet's already stated their opinion on the topic too, I might add.

Because they've become full of their own self importance, yours and everybody else's opinion who'd like 7 heroes just does't matter, the ego, arrogance and ignorance of Anet of late is quite typical of somebody who got decent sales of a game franchise and get lulled into the idea they can't do no wrong.

Like others have said, games are for fun, when they stop being that peeps move on, it would help if they stopped nerfing the game to the point where all skills become neutrel and listen to forums like this regarding their player base like this 7 heroes idea.

Don't hold your breath though, history has always showed they've died on their owm sword.

/Signed for 7 heroes.

So what if A-net says no. Things change all the time.

*Looks at tabbed storage box*

But for those that want to use seven heros...it would make it more fun. And for those that don't want to use seven heros and wish to keep PuGing...it would change absolutely nothing... >_>

Yea this thread has returned for yet another debate of we want/you can't have.

While I would like to see it happen, don't really believe it can ever happen.

Maybe after the launch of GW2, but certainly not before.

I've noted for a while that a lot of the issues that surround GW PvE revolve around the entire "you must play with a party of X people" mechanic. While the goal is obviously to encourage sociable play, the problem is that it makes each person's enjoyment of the game dependant on someone else - that's a very dangerous concept from a design standpoint.

Nobody would care if "PuGs" sucked if you didn't actually need parties to play the game. Nobody would care if most players were mud-chewing primitives. Or if everyone had overpowered, win-button builds. Or if everyone was an asshole. It simply wouldn't matter at all, because none of that would affect you unless you wanted it to.

An analogy I like to use is driving. We complain about bad drivers because we're forced to drive on the same roads as they do. If they're slow, reckless, etc., that has real impact on you and your ability to get to where you need to go. But if you could somehow drive on your own private roads, nobody would give a damn how other people drove. GW is the same way.

In short, I think the whole "the game is designed for parties of 8" was a bad idea to begin with. But since that's what we're stuck with, the best way to fix it is to get as close to a true single-player option as possible, which is a full hero party and PvE skills. There are, of course, other ways to do it - make all classes self-sufficient, for example, and scale area difficulty with the number of players.

Finally, a lot of the arguments in this thread have been rehashed many times and are simply not credible. For example:
- Heroes killed PuGing. This is not only impossible to prove, but also not even likely. As pointed out several times, the H/H'ers played with henchmen and friends before heroes came out - they were never PuGers to begin with. There are also a number of other more likely factors - the fact that the player population is spread out between three continents, for instance. Or that there's so many different things to do in so many different places (vanquishing, NM missions, HM missions, dungeons, etc. across four different campaigns).
- Seven heroes are overpowered. Not really - real players with PvE skills are infinitely stronger. Ursan or imbagon are prime examples. And that's ignoring the fact that hero AI is terrible and can only use a very limited subset of skills correctly. The entire 'imbalanced' argument is simply without merit.

Why not?

Those who don't pug, like me, wont pug less because of 7 heros, since I don't pug at all.

Those who defends that pug is something very important and has to be protected don't use H/H themselves, so what would change?

I'm not reading all 30 some odd pages of the topic... I get the gist of it, but here's the deal: Ever since I got to where the Henchmen were level 20(the dragon's lair) I've used them almost exclusively aside from when guildies or allies need a hand, since well before factions came around. It seems like the hench got way smarter and the players got waaaay dumber after that point.

I remember henching in prophecies, you needed to be quick to run up, pull the bad guys with a longbow then run back before the heroes charged the mob(this was before flags). I remember smashing my head against THK and Ring of Fire in pug after pug, watching idiots over extend, disco or afk the team to death and not bring res sigs to ave the party. Then I took the henchmen out and rolled through all the rest of the missons. The only issue is, and I figured this out early, is in proph you had to take your own condition removal and hex removal, only dunham had shatter hex and I think lina had mend ailment but if you took RC or holy veil it wasn't an issue. I Henched most of factions too, even the Sungjang District(I left the urn at the start, just took the spear), and the eternal grove(didn't get masters but I beat it).

Now I'm interested in the elite missions, but I'm having trouble finding groups. Right before they added the FoW/UW reward chests, me and another guy with 6 heroes beat the whole FoW, it was a blast, but about 3/4 of the way through he had a power failure. Miraculously he got back in the game, and we finished the run. I'd like the hero cap limit removed in areas where henchmen cannot go. Like the Realms of the gods, the DoA, and the Urgoz/Deep. I know I could beat these areas if I got in there with the fabled magnificent 7(or 12 in urgoz/deep), I could probably thrash them with 3+4 but they won't let me take the henchmen(I'd rather have the level 15s in the ToA then most other pugs in the FoW). My Norn rank is only about 5-6 on most of my characters, I'm not going to grind it to 10 just so I can get in a pug group....

Hell I'm thinkin on taking just 4 heroes into the FoW, I hear it can be done, I just have to equip them well. Get them some runes and such.

I bold it because the people against 7H seem to be repeatedly ignoring what we say. Hopefully when bold they might start to notice the important points.

No, my argument is flawless, unless you can prove otherwise.

Except it is my game, because it's instanced. If I ran a 7 hero party it would affect no one but me and the other 7 hero players.

Those who don't PuG will be relieved to not play with....ugh, Failmen -- AKA Henchmen.

Those who do PuG won't be affected.

I don't see why this shouldn't be implimented.

Decent PUGs have a tendency to be difficult to form, but with seven heroes we will be able to choose what builds we need instantly.

I doubt it will affect PUGers at all, so why all the bitching and moaning?

Haleluia for the resurection of this thread once more!

I know Anet is aware of this thread and the other one as I asked Gaile about it when she was on in LA. The devs think it's a bad idea for balance reasons she replied. (btw I must admit Gaile is very charming ingame)

But how can 7 heroes be more imbalanced than Ursan way. I'm not bashing Ursan, it's just a good counter argument to what the devs say about 7 heroes.

I quote myself:' If it means more fun, there's a good chance Anet will say 'No'.

But really, this is just too important to the pve comunity to let it slip away. Why are you so stubborn on this one Anet? Don't say balance as it becomes insulting at this point.

Let's hope people like Aera Lure will enlighten us.

So far, Anet hasn't really given a reason NOT to do this. It's already been made obvious that the 3-hero limit has done nothing but annoy and anger a majority of their players.

If they're really against this idea, they need to come in here and give us a good clear reason for not doing this. Ursan was their lazy way of reviving pugs, and it did work abit. If 7 heroes did decrease the amount of people that pug, why take it away from them? They're playing and enjoying the game the way they want.

I have to say the current reasoning against 7 heroes based on it being "overpowered" is pretty obviousely not true.

Considering a decent human player is better than a hero and also has access to PvE skills and can also split off and act on their own and can also use skills the heroes dont know how to use correctly and can think about where they are going to move/stand and can also combo skills and can also set priorities and can also weapon swap when they want etc etc etc


The reasons people want heroes arent for power but for enjoyment and also to allow greater and quicker access to the game.

You dont have to spend 20 mins trying to get a team you can just go and play.
You dont have to ruin the game for others if you go afk or have to leave.
You dont have to try and negotiate with your team to go and cap a skill thats out of their way.
You can run whatever builds you like.


Current h/h allows a good level of freedom, but you are still restricted in team builds, areas of the game you can access and you also end up a lot weaker than even a semi decent team of players.

7 heroes would allow almost complete freedom with only a few areas requiring more than 8 players being closed off, team builds would be completely open allowing a lot more styles of play and you wouldnt be punished with a much weaker team by going h/h.

Because the no whiners and Anet are ignorant fools , which have no clue, what would be good for the gameplay of GW, making it more fun ...


The Pro Side can absolutley crush every Con-arguement into 1000 pieces ... but Anet just ignores it ...

they say simple "no" and don't argue about it. Thats naturally the most simplest way to avoid to correct failed concepts and not to give themself the shame to say, that their 3-hero only party concept was big shit -.-

I have never heard a credible argument against having seven heroes, and I've argued this issue on and off for a long time. Unfortunately, a change at this point wouldn't help me since I've got nothing left to do in GW that would require heroes.

That said, one possibility is that Anet is clinging to their 'social game' concept Given the current state of PuGs I'd consider it a failure, but I don't have the hard data to make this determination with certainty (Anet, want to fill us in?).

The other (and more likely, IMHO) is that they simply don't want to code it, especially with GW2 in the works.

It'd be fun if ArenaNet would run a "Seven-Hero Weekend" sometime, if only just to let players try out the idea--and then check out the feedback on the forums to see how well it was received.

From an interface standpoint, nothing would have to change from what we have now: you'd add your three Heroes and then select your four "Hero-henchmen" in much the way you select Cynn, Devona, et al. now. No individual flags or skill bars for these four.

As I said earlier in this thread, I think GW1 (a game world which is in the process of thinning out and winding down at the moment, since no more substantive content can be expected) would really get a tremendous shot in the arm by introducing a feature like this.

I'll keep it short: I am now all for 7 heroes due to the introduction of Ursan Blessing. Earlier, as many could see from this thread, I was against 7 heroes because it would further kill any incentive to PUG. It used to be that the only thing you stood to gain from a full human party were PvE skills, but only a few of them were really worth a slot.

Things have most certainly changed, however. An Ursanway PUG is probably a hell of a lot more convenient (and probably more efficient as well) than that of a group of well-built heroes. So because of UB, I now see nothing wrong with allowing the use of three additional heroes per party.

Now to be a bit more appropriate for the thread and to stray way from anymore of my Anti-UB rants. A 'technical reason' for not having 7 heroes could be party-size oriented: ANet may've testing allowing to have 7 heroes and found a glitch when you were in an outpost that had a party-size less than 8. But that's about all I can think of in-terms of a technical limitation.

lol sup Isileth.

[QUOTE]again this is year on tear proven market research.

JEFF STRAIN reminds the conference that the self opinionated forum experts are............

QUOTE

you are a tiny minority so deal with it.

This would be true except that a good 90% of intelligent Guild Wars players I've met (read: the non-PUGers) wish we could use 7 heroes or would like the idea. Samples from across the campaigns, across various time zones and servers.

Also, the forums represent most of the elite high-end players, which I believe are what ArenaNet cares most about given their obsession with keeping the high-end economy more important than fun.

the elite high end hard core to be polite have been shafted each and every time Anet made a choice between a tiny elite group and the mass of casual non elite play the game for fun casual player.

name one single time starting with guaranteed rune salvage/rune trader to the 3X drop rate increase in superior absorb/superior vigor/celestial sigels for halls that did not make the elite hard core scream right here on gure while most of the player base got more shineys and more copies were sold.

name one single time Anet did something to exclude the casual player from more access to the game and the shineys in it in favor of the tiny hard core elite.

JEFF STRAIN who says the exact opposite

if they catered to the tiny elite the elite hard core wouldnt scream bloody murder every time now would they?

Oh nooooooesss not another one. One of these threads pops up every 3 to 6 months. They've already said NO hell no and absolutely NO! and people keep bringing it up. It ain't gonna happen people. There's been thousands of reasons but the main one would be the IMBA of the PVE game with 7 heroes that a player could deck out and synergize beyond any balance that is in the game now. I already smoke through Prophecies and Factions with just THREE heroes to give us more we might as well not play at all just bring 7 heroes and watch them slaughter everything. lol

The fact of the matter is that if ANet were to poll "the average GW player" with a simple yes or no vote on the use of seven Heroes, I think the 7-Heroes idea would win in a landslide victory.

You (Loviatar) are correct that the percentage of GW players that actually post to forums like this one is no doubt quite small, but it is also practically the only way ANet is ever going to get any specific feedback and suggestions on what its player base likes and doesn't like, wants and doesn't want, so to that extent player opinions are important (or should be) to them.

I could actually see Anet budging on this idea based on the facts that (i) the fan base for GW1 is winding down -- so what could it hurt, really?; (ii) it would not be *that* difficult to implement from a technical standpoint; and (iii) the simple fact that for many, many players it would substantially improve and breathe new life into the game.

Then again, ANet may *want* GW1 to fade away sooner rather than later.

1) This is one of the original threads not a new one

2) How would it be overpowered?

A team of 8 players can already run any team build + PvE skills.

7 heroes cant touch anything near that. They have a whole host of AI flaws that makes them worse than players as well.

For example they wont run out of AoE.
They wont know to stand in wards.
They cant combo skills.
They cant even use some skills automatically.
They dont use the best skills at the best time.
They will happily waste heals on minions and ignore the team.
They will take bleeding from a midliner while the monk has daze or the warrior is blind.

etc etc etc


A team of 8 good players is so vastly superior to a team of 7 heroes.

It quite obviousely wouldnt be overpowered.

What could be more overpowered and imbalanced than Ursanway?

You just listed another group of reasons NOT to do it, because of all the things they won't or can't do. It would eliminate Henchies and Anet built henchies to be used and played WITH heroes and not become OBSOLETE BECAUSE of Heroes. <grin>

What's this? Players actually learning the importance of teamwork with skills?? This is blasphemy, this is madness!

While it may be true that Anet isn't doing this because they're worried about 7 hero teams being imba in PvE (big lol), that just goes to show how lazy Anet is, and how badly designed PvE is - the only way they can make it challenging is by purposely giving you 4 henches with horrible builds.

Still though, if Anet cared about keeping the challenge in PvE, why does Ursan exist? Why do Consumables exist? .....O right, cause it's another one of their lazy ways to encourage pugs.

Ursanway is a skill already built into the game, adding more heroes is not something built into the game and would take up a lot more DATA space (all those runes and equipment etc we'd put on them) Henchies have already been built into the game as well. Anet intends Heroes and Henchies to be used together not to obsolete henchies as I said above. It's not so much about being overpower (you still have to have skill to press buttons and use even ursanway it doesn't work by itself) and as I said earlier I can already run most all the chapters with just myself and 3 heroes and when it does get a bit harder the henchies are sufficient without needing or adding more heroes to the game. If they added 3 or 4 more heroes it would obsolete the henchies and they are not going to do that so why even argue it? <grin>

Just a point here. You still have to "organize" an ursan group it's not like you just logon and there you are in an ursan group so while it does have its overpowered effects it still takes TIME to organize them. And not everyone uses Ursans btw. Whereas with 7 heroes you could log on and be using an overpowered ability immediately and constantly and all the time. Thus, still a big difference in the abilities of Ursans and teaming and 7 Heroes and teaming.

Yeah your right, we didnt think of the henchies. What would happen to them and their kids if we didnt take them with us?

They would still be there and used by people without heroes anyways. But having henchies obsolete is hardly a worrying prospect and not something thats really a concern or a negative to 7 heroes.



Seriousely. Your actually basing your argument on henchies being obsolete? Tell me your joking.

As for it taking up more space, so does the extra storage but we got that. After a long time of Anet saying "No" I might add.

*edit* I was being stupid, how on earth would it take up more space in terms of runes and eq. Its already stored for all the heroes. Just because you can use more wouldnt change that...


Time taken to organise is not and should not be linked to power. And any overpowered abilities a team of heroes might have would be dwarfed by that of a team of players.

@ Master Knightfall:

1) imba is no argument because of ursan which was your main point. HM DoA full run in 2 hours netting 50k should say enough about the prowness of Ursan (just to argument no QQ at Ursan from me). You can't even start there with heroes as you only have 3 and no hench available. I play both ursan way and 2 men + 6 heroes teams regurarly and nothing can top Ursan in pure power. That one more hero won't suddenly shake the world to oblivion as 2 men + 6 heroes are pretty comon as a dev once explained.

2) they said 'no' to many things but changed things in favor of the comunity (remember Razah, DoA, more storage, etc. etc.) Games change nowadays.

3) Hard mode wasn't build in either as many other things that weren't since the release of prophecies.

4) who cares about henchies, you wanne play with them sure go ahead but let other people have more fun with synergy teambuilds and whatnot. Btw henchies are still there for people who don't own Nightfall and EOTN so they will still have a use afterall if that's your argument.

5) more data space? Nothing that can be a prob imo as the devs alrdy tested with 7 heroes according to Anet. If they can code the data for the use of 3 heroes, I'm confident Anet has the knowhow and space to do it for 7. Time might be a problem because of GW2 but I don't wanne put words in Anet's mouth, it could be an easy excuse.

6) It would make the game more fun to a lot of people imo. Happy people can't be that bad for sales, unless Anet thinks it would make GW so popular it would overshadow GW2. But shouldn't GW2 be better in the first place.

I, too, would like to see 7-Hero teams implemented. This issue actually does not affect me directly one way or the other. I am one of the lucky ones; I have another GW player in residence. Between myself and my companion, we have good, full complements of heroes and can make a wide variety of team builds. However, I recognize that I am, in fact, lucky, and I think it would be a marvelous innovation if other folks could have something like the same experience through use of 7-hero teams. I can certainly understand the argument that missions in Prophecies and Factions (I can't speak to Nightfall) would be made too easy this way, though many of the balance concerns have been fully addressed earlier in this thread. GWEN, on the other hand, is tougher and built for stronger teams. Thus, I would like to suggest a compromise.
Implement 7-Hero teams in GWEN. Try it for a weekend, as others have suggested before now. The devs have theories; the players have theories. Further argument is probably profitless. Try the experiment and see how these theories hold up in game.

it just isn't going to happen. Do you really think anet wants to embarrass themselves by showing it's players how sup-par the game really is/has become?

even if 7 heroes are allowed only in HM, it would be laughable.

I was trying to ask Gaile today how come 7 heroes are considered imbalanced compared to Ursanway, but she wouldnt answer.

I guess they just dont care about 7 heroes at all anymore.