An examination of PUG and Hero/Hench gameplay.

Then I guess that's where most of our differences come from in this debate. Personally, I feel there's nothing wrong with being able to play a solid team build any time. I'll still play with friends and guild teams if they're doing something, but when I'm alone I still like the ability to play at a similar level of ability.

I'm exactly the same but anticipate that if this ever did happen it's main implementation would be OP'd perfect synergy H/H teams steam rolling the whole game as opposed to a solid team build that is comparative to a good all-human setup.

Look at the popularity and use of the current OP'd team builds like Sabway.The reason they are so popular is that in most cases they are actually better than the average all-human team excluding the use of OP'd player builds like Dragon Slash SY or Imbagon.

It's more the negative ramifications that I'm concerned with as I certainly like the idea but would hate for GW to turn into Dungeon Siege due to the fact H/Hing would in many cases be hugely preferable to human teams, more so than it is now.

100% agreed.

Another interesting point raised. Sabway would basically die because a full balanced Hero team build would probably end up being better than 3 imbamancers with henchies, but I still can't see how pitifully stupid Hero AI could outshine a team of 8 solid guildies. With the introduction of 7 heroes, it wouldn't eliminate anyone's ability to team up with friends or guildies or even PuG's if you so chose to. I really don't see how this would drastically destroy anyone's gameplay experience by implementing it.

No.You are doing it wrong all 8 members of a group should bring a res. of some kind.I would hope most would bring a hard res in a group.

What I am really saying here is other expect the Monk to do the ressing even in mid battle thisis because they see the henchies doing it or heros as when they first start playing the game.

I always try to carry a res of some sort in my non-Healing characters. It simply makes sense to do so...

Vandevere

lol.

If your team is dying that much that they need 8 rezzes you are in fact doing it wrong.I've never needed a rez on my bar in 2+ years of playing.None of my friends or guildies use them unless they are backline support, most PuG's I've been in kick or laugh at those outside of support classes that bring them.

There are more effective ways to play than assuming you will all die.8 rezzes is both playing it safe and compensating for a crap team.

As for your monk comment yes.I expect at least one backline to bring support skills including a rez.Thats their job, to support the team, and as such I view a rez fitting this role.I help kill things, they help me kill things by keeping me alive.That's the very definition of support classes and if you don't like it I'd suggest not playing one like I do.As for people expecting rezzes mid-battle I agree they are idiots most of the time but there are obvious exceptions.

Necessity dictates both need and relevance and I just can't see either being applicable to a team with 8 rezzes.It's overkill and your taking away 4-6 offensive/defensive skills which imo is vastly more effective at preventing wipes than 8 rezzes.Heck half the reason some players see this as a must is imo exactly the reason they view it as justifiable due to the fact the are limiting their teams potential to succeed by taking a "worst case scenario" bar into the game.

If your team has 8 rezzes chances are you will often wipe and die more than a team with 2.

Anyway it's pretty off-topic.Maybe start a thread about it if you wish to discuss it in depth and get other opinions?

Agreed.

My point is more discussing how it would effect the desirability of H/H over all human teams.GW has always tried to cater to both sides of the coin but I still question what effect this would have on the overall game.Pugging is pretty hard already, again I'm just wondering if turning H/H into even more of an attractive and potentially OP'd option would make pugging, guilds, and basically playing with others even less relevant or desired than it already is especially considering much of the games rewards or motivation to play is now grind based as opposed to team oriented enjoyment.

In a game where people seem to want to do things as fast as possible with as little hassle as possible I'm not sure what effect this would have on GW.

Sure a good guild team will always outshine a Hero team in many ways but in others it's vastly inferior, ease of use, time spent to organize, build synergy etc, etc and with the mob-AI being what it is who exactly needs an 8-man guild team anyway?

I do think H/H changes will have a direct symbiotic effect on the ability to group with non-hero solo teams but I'll admit to assuming here.

/still signed, if reservedly.

These days, I'm finding it harder and harder to keep the 3-hero limit in. You simply cannot beat SY! or UB, so /signed.

Gave up PUG:s after I did the mission before Abbadon (can't recall the name)
They flamed me the entire mission for not being a ood obby tank... It was my first time obby tanking, it's not that easy imo. And the monks where terrible...

My vote goes for removing the hero limit.

Then what you are saying is that in 8 vs 8 they don't need to have 6 players with res signets only 2.I havemet players that don't even have res signet they forgot do the quest in pre.I disagree with beginning of your post but the rest is fine.

Sorry dude but you just confused the heck out of me.

Take it easy.

/signed for nightmare mode!

I am all for 7 heroes simply because most people just can't cooperate. I am playing this game for my own entertainment not that of an immature ass who laughs as he over-aggroes or draw dicks on the tactical map. All the build possibilities are causing me to drool....

7 heroes will also come in handy when the in-game population begins to decline a lot.

3 heroes were already too much, it was more than enough to completely kill pugging. (There are exceptions but they're just that - exceptions)
The game was completely different before NF, so much better.

/vote "Disagree - Keep the Hero limit.", going even further would be a catastrophe

I was sort of on the fence about this one.

Whether you like it or not, this would probably hurt PUGs more than 3-hero teams already have. If this were to be implemented, no one would ever have ANY good reason to play with other people, and I think it's important to encourage at least a little bit of interaction between players.

With this system, any player would likely be able to finish the game without ever speaking a word to anyone else. That's fine, but I don't think Anet should encourage that type of behavior any more than they already have.

Point: Anet's already made the game 99% solo-able. So, I say they just allow henchmen in elite areas. This way, it'd be POSSIBLE (but still hard, as it should be) to solo these areas.

Note: I don't think increasing the hero limit would make the game more fun for longer than a week or so, after which we'd have nothing left but a single-player RPG with a side order of Q_____Q threads.

Face it, there already is no reason to PuG. And even with 7 heroes, guild + friend groups will always be better.

The only thing 7 heroes does is let people who play solo have a better experience. Now, before you get the wrong conception that a solo player never talks to anyone and just goes by himself... most of us who vanquish and do HM with H/H do it because our guildies/friends are busy, have done it already, or don't want to do it. This is a multiplayer game; everyone has his or her own goals. You can't always find a group for some elusive area.

H/H (and even 7 heroes) will never be more desirable than a friendly group of people whom you know and trust. H/H, and 7 heroes, will always be better than PuGs until ANet does something drastic to the game.

So in reality, allowing 7 heroes does nothing to affect the balance between solo and group play.

Not everyone is going to use heroes because not everyone knows how to use them properly. Heroes are only good as you are. If you're still a little inexperienced, you're going to have a hard time. If you're having a hard time with the heroes, you'll fall back to pugs.

Actually, heroes are only as good as the builds you can look up on wiki. Unless you are manually controlling your heroes and their actions, they are pretty much are on "auto-pilot", so the skill/experience level of the individual player isn't really relevant.

Three heroes provides for a decent margin for error (given that only 50% of the party is based on builds you can control), while seven heroes provide a very minimal margin for error. I would highly doubt that anyone that knows how to navigate wiki and download skill templates would have anything close to a hard time using seven heroes, especially in normal mode.

Now, if you're so inexperienced that you don't know what the wiki is (or how to use it), that's another story.

How many times it has to be said that idiotic pugs killed themselves?

People still actively try to PuG outside of HA, and HM UW and FoW.
I'm lucky enough to have the ablity to do me + 6 heros and thats better than me + 3 heros + 4 hench.
God knows if I didn't have this I wouldn't still be playing this game.
/signed for "Remove hero limit"

A lot of PUG players I've met think heroes suck and that their "omg leetzorz heling breze + orisn" build is better, so I think that most hardcore PUG players (the ones who always or regularly play in PUGs, and this makes up most of the PUG population, they're also the ones that make PUGs so unpleasant) aren't likely to change to using heroes.

Even the best player in the game with the 3 greatest Hero bars ever conceived is still going to have problems doing some high-end Vanquishes/HM Missions just because of the pitifully stupid Hero AI.

Not always the case. Due to the heroes being on auto-pilot, they rarely know how to use a build effectively: they screw up casting order, don't know what skill to use on how, and when to *not* use a certain skill. So that's why you have to give them a build that the AI can handle with and be able to use effectively, and people don't always keep that in mind.

Not to mention that some of the Wiki's builds are often insanely questionable...

At least you know that they'll be a bit on the silly side. But I'll tell you one thing: Binding my flag/unflag buttons to Z and X has got to have been one of my smartest ideas ever. It's saved my ass countless times, and I highly recommend it.

Why they haven't allowed us to use 7 heroes is beyond me, but apparently Anet doesn't have any plans for it. Signed regardless.

/signed

While you do bring us some valid points, your analysis is biased and quite immature. Maybe if you would stop calling other people "children with psychological problems" and didn't tell them how to play their class they'd be more enjoyable. But forget it. Take your full party of heroes, I don't want to play with people with your attitude. You caused the problem your citing.

And exactly which PUGs are you playng with?

In my experience people often aren't childish or hard to deal with. Of course if I started telling everyone how to play their class they might get a little pissed.

Unfortunately when I get Monks pinging Healing Breeze and Heal Other and crap, it's either I tell them how to play their class now and hope that they listen or party wipe later and waste time.

And yes, people are childish and hard to deal with. Even when you don't bitch at them. Back in the days of 5-man Sorrow's Furnace, I'd get this about once every 3-4 runs. "We can't do this without the Flesh Golem!!!!" /leave

I wouldn't call it psychological problems, though. It's just that people aren't willing to try new things and think outside the box. They aren't willing to think at all, sometimes. I really wonder how anyone could run such terrible builds and not find anything wrong with them.

Well, it's a game; you can't really blame them. But we shouldn't be forced to play with them when guildies/friends aren't available.

I hardly ever PUG, only if I'm bored to the point that I want to see if I can find another needle in the haystack (that's what finding a good player in a PUG feels like). I play with friends and guild/alliance-mates mainly.

Every time I've been in a PUG, they do not know how to aggro properly, start blaming me when they've overextended into another mob and died, and are generally exactly what the OP stated. I have only found ONE person out of a PUG that I still play with, ever. Every other player I've been in a PUG with was childish, immature, vulgar, and inexperienced. They either don't know how to play, or intentionally play bad to make it harder on other people. Either way, I no longer PUG. PUGs themselves are a reason for me not to PUG.

Yes and no. Some of the people I met in a PUG are the rudest people I've ever had the displeasure to play with in GW. Trashtalking in PvE (wth, really), overextending, leeroying, inability to pull, and then rudely trying to shove the blame to a variety of other factors when it was clearly them. Generally, at least half the time when I PUG, there's going to be a few of these in every team.

On the other hand, I did Slaver's Exile today and a couple of days back, and I was honestly very surprised by a few things, one of which was that one of the ursans actually listened to me when I gave him advice (I also apologised for being a little harsh and he took it all very calmly and good-naturedly.) Today I was lucky enough to get a good team that called targets, pulled, and took everything in good fun and was generally polite overall. The trouble is, experiences like these are few and far between.

Not everyone who PUGs is a bad or a rude player, but chances are that you're going to find people who are childish or rude or plain bad in each PUG. It gets frustrating and annoying, and after a while people don't want to play with PUGs any more because of these experiences.

I'd take 7 heros over a pug anyday, but honestly lots of the pugs I've been in have been relatively good. I rarely find a bad pug. I just must be lucky because I've never found pugs as bad as the OP described o.O.

But yea 7 heros ftw, but I love social interaction too...

/signed!!!! 100%

this argument is way too one sided. i have met alot of good players in pugs, however, most ARE retarded. i still perfer people rather than heroes. they tend to live longer and they think on their feet. when your party is getting whiped they will move, when heroes will stay in one spot till they are all dead. no flaming me on saying "when your party is getting whiped" its happened to us all.
but i do think the hero cap should be raised. it wont kill PuGs, but in small missions/ towns it will be easier to finish.

After playing (and losing) with a Pickup Group that exhibited mental capacities that would be considered substandard in a kindergarten student, I would like to once more remind ArenaNet that there are player who would like to be able to run full-hero parties. This was after 30 minutes of trying to find a PUG (specifically to test their intelligence level) and being told "gtfo rit" "lol ritualist suckz" and "wer not taking ritualist" as well as numerous variations, again and again. Even the PUG players apparently agree with me - AI is better for the likes of us "bad classes."

Also, after testing with both healer henchmen in the Crystal Desert, being hit with blindness and crippled, and not once during the duration, having condition removal used on me despite the fact that when I tested it with Dunkoro he was quite capable of figuring it out on his own, I would like to remind ArenaNet that their henchmen are only moderately more intelligent than pickup groups and should have been replaced with heroes at this point in the game.

I urge H/H players to post in support of full-hero parties, for the betterment of Guild Wars and support of a large percentage of players.

I'd also like to take a shot at PUG supporters and say that the average PUG player seems to be around 8 years old and even the ones that aren't, do not provide the absolute obedience that I require from my H/H and human parties.

/signed, I want a worker for anet to go into hell's precipice with a good build and say lfg, see what they get.

What is the reasoning for having the hero cap anyway?

It can't be helping with socialism as all us H/H'ers use henchies over PUGers anyway. If I'm doing an Elite Mission or whatever a Hero group can't do I'll just get some guildies. Removing the hero cap would be the smart thing to do.

However, this is Anet...

The thing is that "research has shown", and ANet certainly believes, that what keeps people playing is social interaction.
Hence every design decision since the introduction of heroes have aimed at getting people to PUG, or at least not H/H.

Now, I think ANet is wrong. I simply wouldn't play if I couldn't solo with H/H's, and the increasing focus on forced grouping is one of the reasons I wont be buying GW2, but what I think doesn't matter. What matter is what ANet believes, and they believe that people are happier, play more, and for longer, if they're forced to group.

In other words, as much as I would like it to go away, the three hero limit will disappear when hell freezes over.

I could qoute al lot of these messages...

O yes would I like to have the option to add more hero's ..

The thing is.. I really like to plays days and days with H/H and would prefer
the hero above hench.
And there are stille days and days that I play with teams of our Alliance
when we do dungeons, Foe, Uw ore just vanquishing area,s.
And really enjoying the fun of doin things together.
And that wouldnt change if I get the option of more hero's

But Random Pugs... No, Ive tried them enough to know that, that wont give
me more pleasure in the game as playing with H/H.

So ....

/ Signed

I'd like ArenaNet to have 3 weekends.

On the first one, they'll have no hero limit. People can take full hero parties.

On the second one, no heroes allowed. Only Henchmen.

On the third weekend, no AI at all allowed. Only humans.

See how much activity there is out in instances and such. I personally feel there will be a lot of activity the first, somewhat less the second, and quite a lot less on the third.

I need a missing 3rd option.

No heroes, remove them from the game and, Anet, please don't even think about adding heroes in GW2. Heroes are not something I like to see in a massie multiplayer online game where the main goal is to achieve something with OTHER PEOPLE.

I will be in the UW, FoW, and Urgoz's Warren all weekend.

Sounds like prophecies all over.

If I play on this weekend I will be solo farming on this weekend.

My goal was to have fun and standing in town for 30 minutes looking for a party is not fun. Getting halfway through a elite mission and failing because several people decided to start leeching is not fun. I bought this game to have fun not to achieve anything.

I want to do a difficult mission, say the underworld, but wait you can't take henchmen to the underworld.