Henchmen, discuss

I was thinking about this while I was trying my Ranger build I use when I want to solo an area.
Yes, we have all used henchmen, and most of us at this point, heroes. Most of us like heroes, seeing as they allow us to set the skillbars we would like.

Ok, premise set.
What I'm curious about is, is the whole concept of monster difficulty necessitating the use of henchmen a good one?

For example, in Diablo II, you could solo areas, and the more party members you added, the more powerful the monsters became to compensate for your party's increased numbers.

I understand that Guild Wars was marketed as a 'CORPG', or whatever it is, and that the cooperative play was a fundamental element. But as of now, most players do not PUG, and Hero/Hench most areas.

I suppose in the end all I'm asking, with Guild Wars 2 in mind, is if you feel the henchmen dynamic was well-played, or if you would have liked the ability to venture out alone.

Personally, I always enjoyed the game more when I'd solo areas as a ranger. It was more interesting then henchmen. Granted, playing with friends was more interesting still, but I thought that Solo > Henchmen.

This is a bit of a double edged sword in my mind.

I loved pre-searing simply because I could go out alone and explore the entire area. However for the entire game to be that way it would simply not work, it would be to easy and would not realistically promote any team play at all.

That being said I do wish there were a few high end areas were a single char could venture out and find solo or small mobs to fight/farm.

I much prefer the team aspect (by that I mean AI not random players) of being able to setup a team build and see how it works make changes etc. Thats unfortunately limited with only 3 heroes however.

Ive never been a huge fan of playing solo, I would much rather be in an AI team just because I prefer the team based gameplay it adds.

I believe one of the things that makes GW different from other games is the "mob" mentality. The vast majority of foes in GW come in (reasonably) balanced groups, whereas in other games, you fight foes one at a time, rarely worrying about aggroing the entire map.

The point is, to be able to compete with these mobs, we must either be
a) Powerful enough to kill the mob oureslves
or b) Have our own mob that is powerful enough to kill them.

Albeit my MMO experience is limited, I have found that GW's party system to be very enjoyable. I hope that in GW2 that they do not leave the party system, but if they do, I'm sure that they will do it in style.

The party systems in Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate, and Neverwinter Nights 2 are ones that I love to death. I have, however, had just as enjoyable experience with Diablo, Morrowind and Oblivion.

So I guess I'm saying that it really depends and that we'll have to wait and see. But ANet knows what their doing, so I'm not real worried.

A solo "you get 100% of the loot" system is indeed way better than a "Hero/Henches take 7/8ths of your loot" system.

Although Hero/Henches is at least a major, major step up from being forced to PUG. Being forced to PUG would be a billion times worse than not being able to solo and not being able to Hero/Hench.

The henchmen are OK, but I'd like to see them eliminated in favor of Heroes.

GW2 will have an "NPC Companion", presumably for use in the persistent areas but, hopefully, for instanced areas will ...
--(1) Reduce the standard party size from 8 to 5 or 6 (eight is too many, imo)
--(2) Offer players an appropriate number of fully customizable Heroes (i.e., the player chooses the Hero's primary profession) for use in instanced areas

In other words, henchmen with fixed skill bars were a great idea several years ago, but would be pretty lame in GW2.

If GW2 offered players, for example, the option of using three "controllable" Heroes and two noncontrollable Heroes (i.e., no flags or skillbars) in its instanced areas, for example, well, I'd be very happy to see something along those lines.

If you PUG, can you convince all 7 other players to give all their loot to you?

Same thing, just for some faulty reason, people assume that henchies are different, where in reality they are just like players, except they are somewhat better players than humans.

You won't need them, you'll just level a bit more, and then solo the level 18 area as a level 58 character. Just like all other level-based games.

I could quote a lot here and most of it in agreement.

- dump henchmen in place of soloing, heroes or PUGs
- balance spawn based on how you enter an explorable
- allow the use of more than just 3 heroes

Although, I'm no good at it, it's no secret solo builds exist and have been tried and tested. So in a way the going out alone option kind of works (granted prolly not with all profs). Aside from my bullet points, I'm pretty ok with the current set up.

I like Heroes and Henchies for PvE, and I hate PUGs. I have only looked for a PUG a couple times so far, mostly when I was frustrated with my heroes for whatever reason- and all the PUGs did for me was make me realize how good I have it with Heroes and Henchies.

Really, I like playing the game the way I do to the extent of they could totally do away with letting people PUG in PvE for all I care- In my opinion PvP, guild halls and towns are the only places where "multiplayer online" seems cool or necessary to me in GW.

I would easily vote for dropping Henchies in favor of more Heroes.

You make a good point. I think each player in a player group of five should have a 20% share in the monetary loot and a 20% chance of getting any special loot drops. A player soloing with four NPCs should also only get 20% of the gold and have a 20% chance of getting any special armor/weapon drops.

If the item in question only had a 20% chance of dropping at all, then each individual group member's individual chance of receiving said item should be reduced accordingly.

Players choosing to solo should not, in other words, have better "odds" than grouping players. Having to "share" with NPC group members is a good system, imo.

If GW2 can be entirely soloed then I'd imagine there won't be any heroes save for that one companion (sounds like what they had in Diablo 2 so far.) I would hope that everything could be scaled according to party, so there'd be no use for heroes - save for "more fun factor", but ANet could use that for pugging incentive.

That sounds just awful, frankly. You can do this in most MMOs, as you say, but there is no point in it -- except perhaps to farm gear for lower-level alts. Bleh.

The whole point of Heroes/henchmen is to allow players to play instance content at their own level without having to get into some kind of LFG limbo hell. Hopefully, GW2 won't be "like all other level-based games."

And frankly, I don't even know of any games that do that anymore...That are, you know, successful.

The more option you have, the better. In fact, option is the essence of being free.

Henchmen are an option. If you dont want it, dont use it.
Heroes are an option. If you don't want it, dont use it.

The more option we have in the game, the more variety of playstyle we can do,

If you choose not to use these options, its an option too. It is always better to have it and not use it, than need it and dont have it.

Scaling opposition to the player is one of the god-awfullest ideas in RPG'ing. Anyone who wants to see why it is a truly horrible idea, need look no further than Oblivion.

I think...the mobs should exist in such a way that a solo player could sneak around the map and avoid fighting, but parties would get found easily?

*shrug*

edit:

Perhaps SOME areas are solo-able, some areas are not?

Henchmen not always in every outpost...in other words.

I would prefer it be more like presearing as I would like to solo more than party it up more and this would include the elite areas as well.I consider the catacombs the UW of pre won't say why but it is.I would prefer to solo more as the cooperative play has lost its effect.It was suppose to teach you how to play with others as training ground for competive play but that failed with heros and hench.

I'd be with you if Oblivion was a horrible game.

i.e. could you clarify?

I'd say that the persistant areas should always be soloable. Instances/dungeons/missions should scale to parties.

On one hand, some people like to build teams of NPCs...

On the other, what's really the difference between playing solo, or playing solo with a group of NPCs?

Hopefully, they'll make some kind of AI help, but as long as I don't need to join a PUG to play the game, I'll be fine. (not that I won't be joining groups in GW2, I just don't want to be forced to).