A discussion on 7 heroes

95% of the time i play with hero/hench. I'd sure like to be able to set up those crappy hench the way i want them..... Anet doesn't like the anti social.

That's a bit of a contradiction if they didn't like "anti-social" then they should not have state on the box you could solo by yourself, should have avoid making henchmen and should not have put heroes in the game at all, but then... GW would have been an epic fail.

So, you are saying that introduction of 7 heroes would not hurt pugging at all because people inclined to use them don't group with humans anyway?

I must agree.

I'd be curious to see if Anet gave the ones that voted yes the ability to use 7 heroes, I bet the 15% would start a whine poll about how they couldn't lol

Sorry, just thinking out loud

I'm wondering if they will allow 7 heroes myself. Personally, I think they will, but they won't do it until Gw2 comes out. After the mass exodus from Gw to Gw2, there won't really be enough people left to not allow the use of 7 heroes.

There hoping you will go back to GW1 to max out titles to get the benefits of them in GW2, for those doing so they'd better be one hell of a benefit to it, there also hoping you'd you know go back and play it sense you enjoyed it, that is a big gamble and not one I would make in a million years it's far to risky with all the other games coming out now, besides there already is an exodus it's just a slow sad and painful death.

People on mass only return for events like Halloween/Wintersday & New Year thing in factions, then there gone again they don't stick around if another game started making events around the same time that where better than GW's you would see a dramatic drop in the population during those times, even so those events are still not enough to drag a single one of my Guild members back online.

There going about this entirely the wrong way there is no need for GW2, just upgrade GW1 with all the new features, modify the current content to be compatible to the new features add a new chapter with the new races and it's go time, no need to -completely- reinvent the wheel like this unless they've written GW1 so poorly that they can't.

Nasty things happen on my PC's when I found out there written poorly they hit the recycle bin never to be seen again.

"Somebody" made a generality earlier about nobody plays late at night. Well, I do! Not everyone who plays is a schoolkid or 9-to-5er.
When I first started playing 3+ years ago the mission towns had a steady population, even at 2am. Now, towns are silent and all but deserted at that time.
I just spent a half hour(at 4am) going on a walkabout to 9 random mission towns, 3 in each game. There were a total of 23 other players, most statues for the 3 minutes I was there. There was 1 person looking for a party(Ring of Fire), and that was the only chat at all anywhere.
The game's too lightly populated to support pugs. Simple as that. Why not add a little extra fun to it by letting me choose to use all heroes? It would probably keep me playing at least untill GW2 comes out. As it is, I'm about ready to take a break, and I'm not sure I'll be there for GW2.

Here's a saying for the girls; "Watch how your date treats the waitress, because that's how he'd be treating you after you're married."
I'm watching how Anet treats its current clients before I commit to another purchase. I hope they don't ignore us, but it doesn't look good.

I feel the exact same way. I lost a lot of respect for ANet through the years and as soon as i get my GWAMM title i will probably leave and never come back to ANet/Guildwars. I will probably dust off my PS3 and try it out for a change.

I just hope we're the minority and this isn't a general theme if it is a general theme, I think I can see ArenaNet going back to Blizzard with there tails between there legs.

World of Guildcraft FTW... Still probably wouldn't play.. Ive smoked crack before, and it wasn't NEAR as addictive as Guild wars.

They won't they've already stated they won't. It's not like UB or other things as they never stated they WON'T change/update those, but, a couple of the devs have clearly stated they WON'T allow 7 heroes for specific reasons. It doesn't matter about the already anti-social people out there who don't pug, it's about keeping those that do still pugging as allowing 7 heroes would just diminish the pugging population even more or at least make it look less enticiing than playing with 7 heroes. So, they won't allow 7 heroes.

That was not the reason, their reason had more to do with the increased complexity of the user-interface.

So the real reason is they are too lazy to make seven flagable around the radar screen and increase the hero slot from three to seven, the skill pop up show seven and the inventory pop up show seven?

Sounds like all they need to fire the dead weight in charge of the game interface and get someone who does not mind working for a living.

EDIT: If you think about it they would not even make to those changes; just add 4 more hero slots, and give the heroes "active" buttons in the team player box so you can just enable any three at one time for flagging, inventory change or skill change. This way the only part of the interface that has to be reworked would be the team/player box, it could probably be done tested and implemented in just a few days.

They seam to think that increasing the number of heros means we want every thing increased.

This is, infact, not the case.

We can stick with the 3 hero inventory/skill selection/skill bars/flags.

We just want 4 more heros in the party. We can outfit them and set up there skill bars with the current system just fine. We don't really need to micro manage them.

The bare bones of what we are after is 4 henchmen where we can set thier skill bars up. Thats really all that people want.

No, they present it in way that they suggest that people would be stupid and clutter their screen with open hero bars.

Anyhow, it is more that 7 flags: skill screen and inventory screen, etc ... would need redesign too.

which is not issue because people wanting 7h thingie always come to this conclusion: "We only want to be able to add them to party, we don't require all controls for them."

(To change skills/equipment on hero beyond three you would simply kick one of three with full controlls and put there hero you want to mess with)

I do not think it is as easy. Some changes to interface may need quite a big changes to the source code and may need some weeks of developing. With only one developer working on gw1....

I do not see the reason for them to do it mostly if it will not bring them any money but additional cost. GW is not a game with monthly fee if you haven't noticed. If they see a chance to obtain some money out of it they would probably have whole team working on its implementation. Anet is not a charity. They have their business model and they want to optimize it.

I wouldnt need any more flags.
Just need to place my heroes in the party with customized equipmnet and skillbar.

There wont be any differences like my friend disconnects and leaves the heroes for me...
I dont want to micromanage their skills and the 4th flag is quite enough to give orders to move.

It requires NO NEW IMPLEMENTATION ... just some empathy for the mass need

---EDIT---
I can accept that the CPU time what twice more heroes' coordination require is too much for poor ANET...
They simly deny to spend moneys for servers...

They also said they would not allow skill unlocks to be brought in the in game store it took about 2 years of lobbying them to death with thread after thread, eventually someone sore some business sense in the whole ordeal and relented, hence you can thank your forum going public for that little gem, if we'd sat back while they said they wouldn't offer UAX packs for sale then you might not be able to purchase them today, it has also been put forward like the UAX packs that we the public are willing to pay a fee for such things as having more hero's in out party, just like we did with UAX back in the day we're not being unreasonable.

Except we've fixed that problem for them, the 4 last heroes are controlled the same way as henchmen, thus things you need to maintain can go at the top 3, the other 4 you can't control how they use there skills - and that a compromise to make it less work for them.

Who has all 3 heroes skill bars up all the time anyway? personally I open them when I need them, then close them again so complexity of the interface is just a cheap way of skirting the issue, and anyway how do they know? my hunch is that they already have it working, they choose a business choice to limit it too 3 (maybe until a later date).

That's been one of my opinions for a long time.

Either there is too much red tape or someone over there is slacking.

It's interesting seeing this argument used... Anet's original plan was to release a new chapter every 6 months. For an Australian that's a $90-$100 committment every 6 months. As it stands at the moment you can get 60 day access cards for Wow at about $30. Therefore, technically had Anet continued with their original plan of release it would cost the GW player MORE a year than the WoW subscriber. Even if they released new chapters only ever 9 months, we'd be pretty much at an even footing of expenditure. While Anet no longer release campaigns, it was a choice they made in favour of GW2. If GW2 were not on the horizon we'd probably still be getting new chapters every 6-9 months, and still spending money. Just because we're a non-subscription game doesn't mean they don't get money out of us. In fact, they get just as much money out of us as a Wow subscriber, and therefore we have every right as consumers to expect as many updates, and as much care for the community as they have.

All 3 campaigns + GWEN still costs less than 1 year WOW subscription.

In GW you pay for the new campaign and you get it. You do no pay for the right to play the game nor for the maintenance of their servers. All other stuff implemented in game you get for free. You got what you paid for already and now you want something more... Sorry it is not like in WOW. You pay to play there so you demand something back or you do not pay anymore. Here you do not pay anyway anymore so....? What makes the difference for them? It is not a matter of rights it is the matter of attitude. They might do something additional to please the community but if it is something costly I am not sure they will have enough incentive to do it mostly if they are not sure if it will even please community. 7 heroes can even damage community. So will anet spent money to please one group and displease the other? In my opinion till the displeased group is small enough there is no chance for that.

You clearly didn't actually read any of what I said. It's an economic strategy... and your statement that all 3 campaigns + GWEN cost less than a year WOW subscription is fallatious. If all campaigns and gwen were bought at RRP we (in Australia at least) have paid the equivalent of just over two years worth of WOW play, and including pre-releases, character slots, BMP, skill packs etc you would end up paying at least three years worth of WOW subscription (and that's not even vaguely counting the people who have multiple accounts). Wow has constant updates, and we don't (we have balancing, but very few mechanics updates, or game additions). The economic strategy is to have the players pay a one time large installment instead of constant smaller ones, but both communities economic commitment to the game is almost exactly the same looking at a three year period. It would be interesting to see who got more for their dollar...

And your comment "You do no pay for the right to play the game nor for the maintenance of their servers" is more false than I can even begin to say. That is exactly what we pay for. We don't own our game. When we bought it we payed for the right to play a character on Anets servers. They are essentially renting us their data and can take it away from us at a whim. We in no way, shape or form own any part of our game. In this sense we are EXACTLY the same as a subscription based game except we buy our data in big lots for a big price instead of in a steady stream at a smaller, but constant price.

Here`s an analogy for you: Think of GW vs WoW, as being DVDs vs movie channels (HBO).

WoW is like HBO - you subscribe to it for a monthly fee. HBO needs to keep putting on new or different movies to keep you subscribing.

GW is like buying a DVD - you pay for it once, you can watch it as many times as you like, but it doesn`t change.

In both cases, you use your TV (i.e. internet) to view (play) your movies (games), but that doesn`t mean that the DVDs (GW) should in any way get updated after you buy them just because HBO (WoW) does.

P.S. - if you include the intial cost of purchasing WoW and it`s expansions, WoW is much more expensive than GW.

Nope.

For the people that can't be bothered to surf through text..


Here is what I can offer, after speaking with James Phinney less than 10 minutes ago: The all-hero party is not under consideration at this time. The matter was discussed thoroughly during design, then was revisited again recently. Both extensive discussions resulted in the decision to not enable the all-hero party. We have given detailed reasons why this is so, and those reasons are based on both practical and philosophical elements of design. And at present, we cannot foresee that the all-hero party will be added to the game in the future.


I have answered the core question: "Can we have seven heroes." The answer is, "No, sorry, the design team does not feel that it is a good idea, that it will not be in the best interest of the game and GW community as a whole, to put this into effect."


But sometimes, even if an idea is popular, it may not be accepted because it's not the best idea. At this point, the designers have decided that making it possible to have the all-Hero party is not a good idea.


* Citing Jeff Strain's speech -- saying there is a lie in the words "we support solo play" because in someone's dictionary "solo play" is written as "solo play with seven heroes" -- is ridiculous.

In the end, this is truth: There are many ways to play Guild Wars, and solo play is very well supported.

double post.........

However the people who release the dvd also make more dvds. If quality is not up to standard you are very unlikely to buy from them again. Both companies have an equal amount of reputation to uphold, simply a different delivery system. Both companies will want to essentially be making the same amount of money at the end of the day, they simply have different ways of going about it. People need to keep subscribing to HBO for them to make money, but people also need to keep buying further DVDs from their company (whichever distributor it might be) to make the same amount of money.

Also Knight O Cydonia, that post by gaile is from a year ago. We all know how much the dev teams priorities change in a year - just look at the game as it was a year ago. Those reasons were given a year ago, and with increased community pressure may be rethought.

Yes they may have changed their minds, but it's still the only official response on the issue of 7 heroes, and therefore can still be seen as relevant.

Increased community pressure? All I see here is the same 5 or 6 people giving the same arguements over and over. The size of this thread would be minimal without if people hadn't repeated themselves 500 times. Ok, so 625 people have voted yes. It's hardly a landslide is it? I think that represents 0.1% of the people that have bought a GW game. I'm not saying i agree or disagree with 7 heroes, but I think claiming that there is vast community support for it is wrong.

Sorry but that is the case here. I bought all 3 campaigns + Gwen for my friend last week and its cost was equal to 6 months WOW. I do not know how much it all costs online or in US or in Asia. So prices do depend on the place and maybe even on the store. Sorry but I would not use one continent as rule for all others. Anyway it is off-topic.

I can argue that you try to omit my point regarding the purpose of payment. You did got you paid for or not? If yes you demand something additional for free. If you get stuff for free anywhere else does not make anet obliged to do the same? If you buy non-online game you still ask for new content? No you ask for patches if the game is not working properly. Quaker example is much better than mine.

I read your post but I do not understand how totally different economic model can mean that the support has to be the same. To the contrary. It think it is more about legal obligations and less about economic model.

Absolutely a fair point, but if you also add the over 800 people that voted on the topic on the website you quoted gaile from you already get a vastly increased number. Add to that the huge number of OTHER forums dedicated to Guild Wars, add their poll numbers and the number is increased again. And I'd wager if an in-game poll was done of every single player you'd get a pretty huge number voting for the addition of 7 heroes. Next time you're all online ask each of your guildees who are on with you whether they'd like this implemented. I'd like to see where their thoughts lie. That's not sarcastic, I genuinely am interested. If everyone in this topic asked at least 10 of their guild mates what they'd like in relation to this and posted the number for or agianst here I think we could definitely get a good cross section of hower in game players feel as well as us here on the forum.

Shasgaliel, you really need to learn to read thoroughly. I did say RRP. The campaigns are no longer at their RRP. Discounted games like they stand at this point is the monetary equivalent of a player in WOW who simply chose to play 3 months and then stopped their subscription. Also I did not ignore you point regarding the purpose of payment, as we have not BOUGHT the game. We are renting the server use as I stated above. The game does not belong to us. The packaging and the disk do, but our characters and achievement still remain solely the property of Anet/NCSoft.

Support must not be the same, but they must be of a similar quality. If the quality is not there then there will be no further monetary commitments from the player base. Wow wants to keep subscribers, Anet want people to keep buying their campaigns. If a game is forgotten after you've bought it and paid your money (especially in the case of an mmo or a corpg) you are very unlikely to buy from them again leaving the company without income. Seriously, what is not to understand. It's perfectly clear. Look at Counter Strike for an example. Originally it was a one off payment, but it is constantly updated and patched making it to many opinions the most perfectly forumlated pvp experience you can have as an fps player; as a consequence people keep going back to valve because they know that they produce a consistently good and consistently updated product.


Also see my rebuttal to quaker's post above.

I think the key word is 'like' though. I'm pretty sure most people would 'like' 7 heroes, but the people i ask would not be interested in game design and balance. The whole question of the poll is skewed. If it was 'Do you think 7 heroes is good for the game design and ballance wise?' you would get a clearer picture, as most of the people here have been arguing about that particular subject.

Would I like 7 heroes? Hell yeah! It would make things so much easier for me to get the titles I want.

Do I agree that it should happen on a ballance and design basis? Hmm, I'd probably say not at this time.

How do you know there isn't vast community support for it ?

Both are assumptions and actually the reason why it's gone so long is because some people cannot read, and have to be spoon fed from all directions before they can understand someone else's point of view but still keep there own, you lose nothing of your own opinion by understanding someone elses.

5 or 6? I see new poll votes almost every time I refresh the page sometimes those people leave a comment other times they keep quite, because what they have to say is already being said.

You know what is funny about that 0.1% in all likely hood that 0.1% will be the only people still playing Guild Wars in the end, that 0.1% means a lot more than you think only people that care about Guild Wars enough to vote in polls and get into heated debates for right or wrong and would put them selfs willingly though all this stress over a debate care enough, if forums start to have less and less activity then your losing the loyal fan base you have, lose that you could loss your entire company.

That sounds over dramatic and I'd agree with that, however which would you choose 0.1% = 600-800 people happy, or the same about bitter and feel ripped off by you? you choose.

Mm, absolutely I agree with you there. However balance and design is constantly changing in GW. It is not something that has ever been static where this game is concerned.

With the skill separation of PVP and PVE I think this was already a step in the right direction. 7 heroes has always been a suggestion for PvE mainly, right from the beginning. The game is slowly verging on a bigger separation between the two play styles, and as this occurs I can see the game moving more and more to a position where a serious developer discussion on the implementation of 7 heroes can be seen.

No that's bad, ask 10 random people in each of the campaigns, you can't ask the guild members because there byist and they would say no anyway because they have there guild mate to play with.

That is very true. Well, I'll ask 10 random people the next time I'm on. I really am interested. I do wish Anet would do idea polls on the login screen.

I do too but I understand why they don't, it might give the competition an idea of what there thinking or up to.

Thank you, Knight, for the Gaile post. That was a very reasonable, rational response to the request to have 7 heroes.

In support of Pamelf and her posts: I agree that it is possible the dev team may reconsider at some point.

For me, the whole EotN is what dropped a wrench in the works. It showed that ANet had changed - sometimes significantly so - their initial concept about the game. They introduced skills and the entirely new "blessings" concept, and basically abandoned the structure they had established in the beginning. A lot of people left at that time, and only some of those have come back. (Ursan was a big, big deal if you recall.)

So, it is possible the devs may change their mind about 7 heroes. Granted, not likely, and most likely not before GW2 comes out, but still possible. All the recent buff/nerfs/skill changes illustrates that they are willing to reconsider, and even change things completely.

I second that thanks.

Jada jada jada. And I'm the Jade Monkey.

Heroes can't use pve-only skills. Melee heroes (one of them was added in September) are useless. Physical damage dealers, except for Paragons, are kind of useless too. And henches have craptastic bars.

Isn't this design team the same that came up with Ursan and let it stay for almost a year in game before nerfing it?

That would be the ones.

I think there in for a mighty shock when GW2 rolls around.

yeap...

allow 7 heroes
then allow heroes to use pve only skills
then make heroes use em correctly
then add extra heroes cause this cookie cutter build i copied from wiki needs 5 eles
then QQ more about grinding

/endofsarcasm


I've read many posts in these 85+ pages and the only case i find rational is that of "elite" areas, like DOA for example, where hench are not allowed, so you cannot make a full team if you are alone.
So, allow 7 heroes only in these areas.

Sure there'll be some that might want go that far, but I'd like to hope we've got more sense than lobby for that kind of idiocy, I certainly would not condone the last 4 of your sarcasm for one.

We've at least got more brains than the design team that much is obvious.