How did Heroes kill Guild Wars?

Many PUG players did indeed not make it to my friends list.
I used to be rather chatty in teams and would just see if others picked it up. If so we would usually tag along once in a while to do something fun.
Not every PUG member is chatting a lot, but that's the same for some guildies.
I have had several who joined up for events and were good but you would hardly ever see or hear them talk.
I don't recall many bad PUGs but they must have been there.
My FL has been full since early 07 so I might be an exception to the average PUG.

About THK: I beat the mission with henchies in 06 on my mesmer (so yes, I know the discrimination). I had a relatively easy time since mesmer > Willa and I finished it on 4 characters already. I know other teams had some trouble getting that boss down.

Let's take a look at an old resource on THK: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/content...eep-id1897.php
I wonder why split is suggested....

Oh wait, I remember. The nub king had a bad habbit in those days as far as I recall. He would attack the foes and remain at the place where he fought last. This could get him in annoying places to defend him. And the foes were changed so the mursaat didn't push in as hard as they used to.


Then we have this other thing. THK did (and does) require coordination in human teams. Henchies are easy. They have infused armor, don't rush around, will attack the foe you attack (most of the time). And don't requires a stable internet connection (reconnects didn't exist back then). I've had several occassions were we were defending the fort with 5 or 6 players instead of a full team. Not wanting to res uninfused players till the mursaat were gone (they only gain DP) or because of DC.
You don't have to tell them what strategy you will use and to stick in range of healers (something humans tend to forget when the strategy is camp and they run off to the ballistas).
You still need to work as a team in THK today and it's a shame that hench and heroes tend to do that better than human players.

So from what I can gather, you want PvE areas to require methods that the heroes and henchmen cannot do, effectively eliminating H/Hers from being able to play through them?

DreamWind is quite right.

More complex mission/PvE design is not possible if you want players who exclusively play with henchmen and heroes to pass through the mission/area. Designed-for-players-with-heroes is definitely a limiter.

Nobody cries that you need other humans do play a dungeon in other online games. The world itself can be soloed without help or 1-2 helpers for some quests occasionally. Yeah, I again refered to the ubiquitous WoW...^^ GW just has the problem that it is so much team oriented that you cannot do anything all alone, and this is why we have heroes and henchmen.

Guild Wars is just taking the idea to fill up missing party spots with henchmen too far. We have complete 1 player+AI parties. This is just the other extreme.

I just had a funny idea: Remove heroes/henchs from supposed "elite" areas, to make them harder... oOoo... it hurts when one thinks about it!

Nobody doubts that it is fun to play all alone. I often say that heroes give me some extra buttons to click, many people who play other MMOs are really put off by GW having "only 8 abilities". Playing with two or three other players is fun, too. ANet named this "buddy gaming", you and 1-2 of your best friends.

I wonder why there is no offline-modus like in "Diablo". A new mode of gameplay perhaps, the "offline char". Allow me to edit and give me all the fancy gear and stuff that I want in offline barbiedoll mode. :P


Forced grouping is something that I really hate, but it created a very good atmosphere in games like EverQuest. You just cannot be a jerk 24/7 if you want people to play with you again. You risked your reputation. In GW, next to nothing prevents me from taking a long shit on someone's head if I am in a bad mood.

GW on the other hand allows me to play whenever I want with whomever I want. This is very good, too. I do not have to wait hours for missing party members.
But on the other hand, GW has no social dimension, WoW is also rather weak on the social component of online gaming. But solo-online-play is predominant nowadays.

It really irks me that playing with hench&heroes is much more relaxed and easier than playing with an average PUG. No wonder that PUGs are dead and we do not miss them too much. That human groups get owned by hench/heroes is such a slap in the face!


I wonder how GW2 will be. The stone-old teaser infos they released in late 2008 suggested a more standard MMO-ish world, with only one "companion" and stuff like that.

The problem is that that's how the game's been designed since the start.

This isn't a hero situation as more as it is a henchmen situation, starting right when Guild Wars was being developed. With ANet forcing full party play and with so many areas, they *had* to tailor all of their missions to be completable with henchmen. Otherwise this game would've declined much, much earlier.

Granted, it's much more easier to deal with in WoW: raids and instances require real players, sure - but while you're waiting, you can do dailies, farm mats, chill in the main cities, nearly anything - *and* you're still in the same party with the people you started to group with.

Not so much in Guild Wars. Every single area in the game *requires* a full party. This got more straining with the later chapters, with Factions and Nightfall requiring 8 players for a large majority of the game.

Heroes are great and they don’t kill Guild Wars. On the contrary, they help make NCsoft and Anet make money and I personally think they make the game better.

For example, a girl that I became friends with who just arrived in Taiwan from England was a Sims player. So I told her all about Guild Wars (as I do everyone I meet, actually) and she tried the trail version of the game and was playing in Prophesies with me for a while. She asked about the heroes I traveled with and I told her all about them. She then wanted heroes for her character and thus went straight from the trial to buying the whole trilogy of the game. Soon she will buy Eye of the North to get those heroes too.

I don’t know about you, but I want Guild Wars to stay in business and grow as much as possible because I really enjoy the game. Heroes help sell the game, so to me they are an asset, aside from the fact that I really enjoy being able to customize the heroes and upgrade their armor.

They don’t really replace human beings because there is a social aspect to the game that requires the presence of other people. There are many ways to socialize in the game, which we all know, so I don’t need to go into that here. There are also those who want to play the game solo and would not be playing it at all without the heroes. In fact, the solo aspect attracts people that are a bit fearful of online communities. If they think that they can just play by themselves and casually observe others in the community while maintaining a sense of autonomy, they buy the game. Eventually they may gradually open up and join guilds and most importantly, become loyal to Guild Wars because it is their first and in many ways ‘safest’ online game experience. The heroes are always there for them if they feel disgruntled by people in the community. Overall, anything that keeps the game alive, heroes being one of them, makes sense to me.

... Dont turn it into another "Oooh PvP is better cuz we talk on vent and stuff -_-"

While i garee that PvE mostly stops at Builds... you still forgeting that a smart player for pure efficency microes his heroes.... Needs to be learned or taughet practiced for full result and Efficency.... PvP is just pusshing butttons kiting and positioning just like anything else in game except the dullnes.. as real players think intelegently unlike A.I.. and still Tactics across GvGs are oh so simular you would expect what would split, were the gank be, what be in splits and what build a runner would use..... This knowladge comes from experience... not being oober PvPer -_-

Positioning comes from same thing as everything else.. comon sense and practice... We Vent when it comes to PvE.. its not just Tank and Spank.....Generalyzing is a very bad thing... giving a set examples would be fine but generalizing like that is really silly....

So i stand corrected PvP PvE.. doesnt matter to which extent.. Practice is involved... skill is involved...and effficentcy is achieved by the 2 previously stated things.. Be it microing your heroes, setting up builds for your heroes....venting during a Vanquish, Venting during GvG match and so on....No 1 denies that PvP is more intense and that PvE with humans with balanced set up team and vent and pre-determined plan out-matches heroes any time.... BUt it doesnt mean that all the players playing just put heroes on their team give them PvX bars and go roll through the area.... Some of Us who both PvE and PvP.. micro our heroes when there is no guild team ready to go VQ or do some hard mode dungeon.

The only micro heroes require these days is just flagging them. Aside from that all you need to do is kill monks first, then the rest.

Sure you could indeed learn how to use their builds effectively, that's what I was doing when I first started using heroes. Then I got better and researched the best builds: it was all completely unnecessary.

It's basically what Jos said: there's definitely a lot you can learn for PvE, but there's little you have to know.

Agreed.. it just seemed to me that he sadi that no body learns anything from PvE.. or PvP becaus eof heroes.. Not denying it isnt true just generalizing is very simple and easy way out and weak argument in my opinion

Like I said, most (99.9%) of the people you pugged with were not out to socialize because they were only interested to get the mission done. Therefore, pugging is hardly an activity fit for socializing. At least guidies have a longer time to get to know one another. I bet you know more than 1 person in your guild by now compared to pugging.

You still have to admit that most people you pugged with were not interested to socialize. Most people who join a pug do so not because they want to make new friends, they join a pug to get a mission done and if they think that the mission would not be done they simply rage quit instead of being polite.

I have a total of 16 PvE characters across both accounts today that have completed all campaigns and have all towns and outposts in GW with everything unlocked and all PvE skills for everyone of them. I have done THK more than 16 times though since I have also done it in HM. I have tried it with PUGs, henchies, and heroes. THK is easy even in HM, and even compared to DoA NM. DoA HM is a lot harder with its environmental effects. Many prophecies missions are not difficult if you read up, they are just long and boring.

Yes those were the days and because a mesmer was one of my first characters, I had a tough time trying to find a PUG as most of them dont believe in a mesmer.

Since I have done it 20+ times with different PUGs, some failed, some succeeded, I can tell you that most PUGs who stay at the king would succeed. You can also succeed with splitting but it is riskier should someone make a mistake, so why take the risk?

This is not a problem if you have good healers and everyone in your team is infused. If you split, and a monk makes a mistake to cause the death of his tank it can lead to a chain effect of wiping out most of the split group. With the bonus effect, if the beacons are lit, that can easily overwhelm the rest of the team. If you dont split, and someone dies, at least you have enough people to pick up the slack and do a quick res. And if someone forgot about taking care of the king, another would notice it and make some noise.

Uninfused players in THK are a liability either way because they are stupid. Just because H/H happens to be infused if the owner player is infused doesn't imply H/H is overpowered. In the same way, players who are stupid and rage quit the mission, doesn't imply H/H is overpowered either. It just means they are more reliable. You can also form a reliable human team from a good guild too.

A human team can also not rush around and call targets. Calling targets is just PvE 101, not good team co-ordination. If you want to see a great team co-ordination join a good GvG guild who use vent, co-ordinate spikes, etc. Even my PvE guild team uses vent to co-ordinate elite missions.

Not true, hench and heroes dont do that better than human players. Unless you dont count my guildies as humans. They do it better than unreliable and extremely stupid players yes, but not better than even an average human player. At least an average human player doesnt try to shoot through walls and he moves out of AoE fast. My stupid Olias dies even to a chaos storm if I dont bother to flag him.

There are already such areas in the game. Many areas are not completable or very hard to complete with H/H. The Eternal Grove is one, and elite missions. But the disadvantage of making ALL the areas like that, is it would make it diffcult to play if you can't find players, so players would only play this game sometimes. A year or 2 from now after GW2 is released, the population of GW1 would be reduced even further, so many areas of GW1 is going to be difficult to play with if all areas can't be used with H/H, so the game dies faster if it doesn't have that critical mass of players.

Also if you cant sleep and decide to play GW at midnight, you would also not be able to play since you wont have enough human players. Furthermore, if you are playing an unpopular class, like a mesmer before PvE skills time, you would have problems playing this game too, although you would have to rely more on helpful guildies.

Sorry if you misunderstood me there, I'm not arguing that people ain't learning anymore because of heroes.

The example of my work shows that experience decreases over time till the moment people need to catch up again. This doesn't happen fast, it takes a long time to get to a problematic point and at first is almost not noticable.
It also doesn't mean people ain't learning anymore, it's just that they learn to focus more on the execution of things instead of the basics.
This might look like efficiency but is damaging in the long run. There is also no real blame or something here, it's kinda 'natural' that it happens.

But what happened with Guild Wars is that on the PvE side the need to learn the basics was somewhat taken away.
First by the introduction of far more powerfull skills in Factions and NF. Some individual consumables were introduced, can't remember when. Then we got EotN with a massive number of PvE skills and partywide consumables.
With the various chapters people also got more spread through the game. So meeting more experienced players became harder, specially since many started to play somewhat exclusive in Guild and Alliance teams.
Last but not least we got titles that keep everybody busy but everyone is busy on different things.
This all contributes to an environment where learning tricks instead of basics pays more.

Heroes don't have a clear fit in this picture.
8 human players adds a certain level of coordinating complexity that, when executed right, can be far more powerfull than any team with heroes can achieve. But from time perspective, specially non-farming, every unorganised event is faster teamed with 2/6 than 8 humans except in very active guilds.
The learning disadvantage here is more that 2/6 is chosen because it's faster.
People don't cover the basics but either expect the other to know them or just doesn't care since the hero builds will do their job. Covering basics is something that's more done in full human teams.
But this is a very minor issue compared to the things I mentioned above.

To be honest, I have very mixed feelings about heroes.
On one side they are a blessing. Waiting times are completely gone.
And this is also one of the problems. Unless when organising something it became harder to team up with a full human team because it's often more time-efficient to load a couple of heroes instead of waiting for additional human players to show. An example: when I can do a vanq in 30 mins with 2humans + heroes it would be stupid to wait for a full human team that can do the same vanq in 20 mins but takes an additional 20 mins to form...

Maybe this explains a bit of my view on heroes and the game in general.

Let me give you another example. Back in 2005, before heroes existed, my mesmer wanted to do some end game quests, after completing Prophecies. They are called the Titan quests and unfortunately these quests are not popular. It was already difficult to find a PUG as a mesmer, but to find PUG for the Titan quest is many times worse. I finally got to complete "Titan Source", the last of the Titan quest, after waiting more than an hour to form the team! You can't use henchies for most of these quests because they are too low level at those areas. Can you imagine if after taking 1+ hour to form, people start to die and rage quit?

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10383762

From this thread, GW2 may be late 2010 or 2011+. Do you see any Sorrow Furnance type new content update in the horizon? No, because the artists are all enaged in GW2 development. So we have to make do with repeated content in GW1 for the next 1 to 2.5 years or more! I expect some to give up and leave the game even though zquests and zmissions provided more reasons for people to repeat content, I doubt the game would survive well for so many years without any new content.

Therefore, I still feel that getting rid of heroes, at this stage, for the next 2.5 years while we wait for GW2 to be released, without any new content, would be a mistake. It will cause GW1 to die even faster as people leave and more missions/quests become uncompletable since heroes are gone.

I'm glad GuildWars introduce hero! And this is how I keep on play Guildwars.

Pugs < seriously there are a lot of rude, sarcastic and bitter pugs out there. I remember before NF, my gaming mood could be totally ruined because of these pugs! And that defeat the purposes of playing an online game at my leisure.

That would be my preference yes. But I don't think the game can be designed that way...some areas are going to have to be beatable alone. But when it comes to elite areas, it should require humans to complete. When it comes to areas with superior rewards, it should require humans to complete.

Also I see a lot of people going on about how mesmers can't find a team and how prophecies missions are easy etc. First of all about mesmers, the game is inbalanced. If there was balance all classes would be equally wanted. Second about things being easy, people need to realize that there has been a power creep. I shouldn't have to explain this (again). Our characters are so much more powerful today its not even funny.

So, if heros are so damn good, why anet doesn't allow us to use 7 heros in party and forget once and for all about pugging and crappy henchmen?

Get over it ANET, people hate to pug in this game, so stop trying to force people making parties and give us full hero team.

^^

I dont think you realize that many players have already left the game and whoever that are left are concentrated in the zquests areas. There are many quests that you can hardly find anybody to be interested. For example, "Titan Source" good luck trying to find enough people to form a full pug for that. Some other quests like "Double Dog Dare", same problem. Even doing HM missions, for Guardian, without a zquest is difficult to PUG because hardly anyone is in the area and if there happens to be someone trying to form a group, it is for NM. Elite areas should require humans? Have you ever tried forming a full PUG in DoA? Killing the heroes feature would just cause more people to give up and leave the game forming a vicious cycle of leavers.

If it is not for the heroes feature, I would have quit this game a long time ago because it takes far too long (>1hr for Titan Source) to find people to PUG with, for many of the quests and missions, before NF.

Personally I'm greatful for the intro of heros. For me they made the game much more fun. I had given up on PuGs LONG before heros were introduced (like many of the 'solo-players'). Before heros came out I wasn't PuG'ing...I was soloing, with henchies. Seems like a lot of people think that as soon as heros came around, everyone stopped with PuGs all at once. This isn't really true, for the most part. Most of the people that solo with heros now, solod with henchies before. Heros just made it more fun.

For most of us that solo, heros didn't "kill" PuGs. Bad PuGs "killed" PuGs. And with or without heros, we'd still be soloing with our team of bots.


So in short:

"How did Heroes kill Guild Wars?"

They didn't. For me they kept it alive.

[QUOTE=DreamWind;4712252]That would be my preference yes. But I don't think the game can be designed that way...some areas are going to have to be beatable alone./quote]

Nah. Except for the actual solo quests in NF & EotN, *nothing* should be beatable alone. Everything should require a team, but why should that team have to be humans?

Other than your personal desires, you have yet to give an actual reason for your stance. (unless it appeared in a message buried due to the last-visited time getting updated to the current time due to lag on several occasions :/)

No, the Mesmer issue isn't a balance issue - it's a player perception issue. Mostly caused by AoE damage being drooled over (and there being, what? 2 AoE damage skills for Mesmers?), humans for the most part being pretty bad at interrupts, people thinking that's all Mesmers are good for, and people giving up on playing their Mesmers rather than trying anything else when they find themselves no good at interrupting...

Of course, are still plenty of people in most outposts (the American District ones, anyways), just not multiple districts full (ie, more than 125 people). Sure, a few of the more out of the way ones (such as Bai Pasu Reach and Edelon(?) Terrace in the Jade Sea or Maguuma Stade) tend to only have people popping in to use the merchant or chest and then heading back out, but most have more than enough to fill several groups.

Blame the quest (Oooh, 50k XP that you have absolutely no use for. What an awesome reward for a long walk into a zone most people don't know exists) for that and the fact that, except for the Titan Source, one of the quests out of Piken Square (only if you know about GC in the first place - I certainly didn't when I did Althea's Ashes), and one of the plans from Langmar, there is no reason to go to the Grendich Courthouse. Bet most people find out about Grendich purely by accident while trying to find the entrance to the Flame Temple Corridor since there are no quests in Ascalon that actually send you to the Courthouse... (adding one from Piken and then moving, perhaps, Althea's Ashes there - get sent to Grendich to find the scout sent to retrieve them (and who can't go on), or some such - would be a very good idea)

Largely, the only areas you'd be able to prohibit AI control are the endgame elite areas: FoW, UW, Deep, Urgoz, and DoA. Otherwise you're going to dick over casuals trying to play through the campaigns.

But honestly, if you didn't want players to be able to run with heroes in certain areas I don't see why you wouldn't just make it so you can't bring them. Saves the player some hassle of going into an area then getting screwed over by the dungeon format halfway through it.

Which brings into mind another question: why would you want to do this? If a player is skilled and is willing to forfeit a well-rounded and likewise skilled human party, shouldn't he be rewarded for completing the area with the AI?

As a final note, I'm not calling the game "easy" in the sense of being able to complete the areas. I'm calling it easy in the fact that there's very little you have to do to "play well". All of the skill comes in configuring the proper team build for the area, and that's easily mimicked.

The question is: is it really a problem that the game was designed this way? After all, in a game where anyone can go solo save for the big dungeon content, every class must be self-sufficient to some degree. This inevitably throws off balance for PvP, as we have seen with any classes that were too good at both offense and defense simultaneously.

I suppose the game design is a problem if you consider what we have right now to be a problem. I personally consider the game's current state to be more of an inevitability due to how the game started out.

And yeah, the soloing problem sounds like it could be a pretty iffy issue with GW2.

Everyone keeps saying something about heroes being removed entirely from PvP soon. Is it true or what? I'm guessing not, but would still like an answer.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10382092

Some people play for the reward, some people play just for the sake of playing the game. How much reward does "Double Dog Dare" give you? Just 2000XP and 200gp, big deal. Nobody plays the game for its FUN factor anymore? Just because the reward is not good enough doesn't mean these quests should remain uncompletable for everyone else.

Is this /signable?

^^

This whole thread has just descended into Dreamwind VS everyone else.

Ok, there is like a really good solution to this.

Dreamwind go and find an MMO which requires 100% forced grouping to play instead.

I think you will find that hardly anyone plays that game.

GW also requires grouping for its dungeons. You need to group for many elite areas, and this is the reason why hardly anyone plays them.

Other games where you are forced to group will have very few people complaining, because there will hardly be anyone playing that game in the first place.

All of the major MMOs that are successful allow people to play solo so that they can simply log and play whenever they like.

I really hoped that people wishing for forced grouping in MMOs would have learnt how terrible a mechanic this is a long time ago, but some people will never learn.

Also, if you think that THK is hard in anyway, then you are a total nubcake. I completed the mission easilly the first time around years ago with my Guild.

Yes, this game is called 'GUILD WARS', not PUG WARS'.

The idea is that you play with your guild, or if you choose to you can solo. Pugging has NEVER been how GW should be played, and people who choose to pug over the other methods are quite obviously the same terrible players that find THK hard lol.

Heres a hint - go back through the last few missions with a cap sig and cap the few elites that are available by this point. They will make the game a lot easier.

But seriously, THK = hard = LOL!

But yea, it would be hard when we have to put up with failure puggers in our groups.

This thread is just a joke now, seriously. If you want forced grouping in a game, then go and play something else. GW has no forced grouping, it never will have, and it is for the best of everyone.

The reason pugs don't form there is because most pugs can't (and shouldn't be able to) beat those areas. Those are elite areas that should require extensive coordination and teamwork (like a guild or friend team) to beat. The other (and probably biggest) reason nobody plays there is because the rewards are better and easier elsewhere.

Who cares? Anet doesn't lose anything of monetary value if you quit now. I already quit the game do to changes they made to the game. Does Anet or anybody else care?

I don't have much of a problem with the game being beatable with AI (although I would prefer a team based game). I do have a problem with areas that are supposed to be difficult or have great rewards being beatanle by a non human team in a team based strategy game. It limits design, removes challenge, and inbalances the game. The problem here is the fact that for these reasons heroes didn't fill a void of no humans, they replaced the need for humans.

No, its an inbalance issue. The mesmer is strictly worse than most of the other classes in PvE. That isn't to say the mesmer can't be effective...PvE is easy and can mostly be rolled over with anything if the player knows what they are doing and sets up their heroes properly. Besides, the only reason people perceive mesmer to be weak is because it doesn't have as many inbalanced farming options that the other classes have.

Correct (see my response to ogre jd on thiis). That is how it should be. Again, I'm not saying the game shouldn't have the ability to play alone. I'm saying the game having an entire structure that promotes singleplayer over multiplayer is a bad decision. The multiplayer is what made Guild Wars unique in comparison to many other games.

There could be areas specifically designed to be challenging with heroes. Perhaps areas that require multiple tactics of micro and hero placement etc? I wouldn't mind that...if it wasn't part of the normal campaign and didn't have the same rewards as similar human team based areas or elite areas. I object to heroes because they took over the normal game we used to have (and that makes them inbalanced). Heroes replaced the need for humans and in doing so changed how all of Guild Wars was played.

Exactly. But don't you acknowledge that heroes didn't help this problem, and probably made it worse?

All I have to say dude is, you clearly have either not been reading my posts or don't have reading comprehension. Your post completely misinterprets my position, twists it, and calls me a noob for something I didn't say. I would call you an idiot, but instead I'll just say SHUT UP if you aren't going to add anything useful.

Hey Dreamwind,

If you're the last one posting, does it make you right?

j/w is all

You just love to contradict yourself, don't you? We already know that HM elite areas are hard to beat with heroes.

That's just BS. You said it yourself HM elite areas require extensive coordination and teamwork like a guild or friend team) to beat, and heroes can't beat them, so how can heroes replace humans?

Another BS. The game doesn't promote singleplayer over multiplayer. Otherwise there wouldn't be features to support guilds and alliances. And multiplayer is what made GW unique? Sure...

The normal game was already dying without heroes. Heroes do not replace the need for humans because you still need human players in many missions. And in all the other areas, humans are given a huge edge over heroes in the form of 24 PvE skills vs 3. This is actually unfair against players using H/H because their teams are deliberately made weaker.

If you still cant beat a stupid AI as a human player, then you ought to go back to pre-searing and continue your training.

Because you said so many things that made you sound like a noob.

Everyone with a decent level of experience knows that a good human team is far superior to a H/H team. Only you keep insisting on the reverse. It is just ironical that you can't even beat an AI, claiming that an AI team is superior to a human team, and yet you are arguing about PvE.

This is a very good question.

I wonder if the 8 skill bar is going to stay. And how gameplay has to change to accomodate to real solo play.

Just imagine yourself playing through Faction explorables all on your own. This just does not work by just being self-sufficient, which would also limit the skill choice on your bar enormously.

The mobs themselves would have to be by far weaker than nowadays. We would have to trigger fewer mobs by getting in aggro range, and not a whole clan of the Jade Brotherhood.


For the PvP side the gameplay would also have to change significantly. One wonders how much GW will be left in GW2.

Oh, I play for fun. I still wouldn't bother with the Titan Source and its 3 prereqs (which also only give utterly useless XP as a reward and are almost as much of a pain to complete as TS is). And they're not uncompletable - that's what Heroes are for. I was just saying why most people wouldn't do those quests.

Never heard of "Double Dog Dare" before this thread, but looking it up, I can see why no one does it - it'd require doing "Voices in the Night", "Moa'vu'Kaal, Awakened", "Assault on Beknur Harbor", and "The Cyclone Palace" to reach. Considering that most people probably can't be bothered to do Voices (since, by the time they have a chance at survival, they're most likely in the final stages of getting off of Istan and thus have better things to do), it's not surprising that "Double Dog Dare" would be a hard one to get a group for.

Of course, if you think about it a moment, you'd the vast majority of guilds give no advantage in PvE, and really are only there so you have someone to chitchat with while you're outside of outposts. Maybe the situation's different in the GvG-focused ones if you're part of the core group which practices together, but most of the time, being in a guild only makes getting a PUG together a bit easier.

Daesu I said I wasn't going to respond to you, but I can't help myself. The amount of people claiming I said something I didn't say and then calling me a noob for what I didn't say is getting ridiculous. Please lets try to understand each other...the problem with this thread is half of it is good stuff (like me and Bryant) and half of it is useless and repetition (like Daesu and bhavv).

Even if that is true, we also know nobody cares because easier areas that have better rewards are easily beatable with heroes asfdsadfsadf.

I said they SHOULD require extensive coordination and teamwork. And even if they DO, nobody cares because easier areas that have better rewards are easily beatable with heroes adfsadfsaf.

If you say "but human teams can do it better", I will probably shoot myself and everybody can be happy again.

Multiplayer IS what made GW unique. As a singleplayer game, GW pales in comparison to many other single player options in the eyes of most reviewers I've read and players I know. As a multiplayer game, GW is unique in that its RPG PvP strategy style hasn't even been touched yet.

But it goes back to me and Bryant's debate...we need the stats to prove anything on the singleplayer multiplayer front.

You could have fooled me. Many people argue Factions was the peak of the game and went severely downhill after Nightfall.

So you are saying since PvE skills exist, that is unfair to H/H players because they are weaker. Excuse me one second...ROFLMAOLOL. First, PvE skills shouldn't exist. Second, H/H SHOULD be weaker just by nature of humans being smarter than AI but not weaker because of some inbalanced crap in the game. You keep bringing up the point that human teams are stronger than H/H teams, which has nothing to do with what I'm saying asfdsafsaf.

I won't repeat myself.

No, I was right before I was the last post.

And that is why I am saying if heroes are removed from this game, many quests would be almost uncompletable.

This is another example of you sounding like a noob, or you just choose not to read my posts but BS your way through this argument.

Why do you think people do UWSC for? For fun? And what is the team composition? Is UWSC a heroes team build? Why dont you show me a heroes team that can clear HM UW, in 15 minutes or less?

Which EASIER areas have BETTER rewards than UW? Pray tell, so that we would all stop forming UWSC teams and farm there instead.

Again which EASIER areas have BETTER rewards than HM elite missions? You keep mentioning that but you are always avoiding that question.

Then you are a fool to believe them. After spending almost 1.5 hours to form a PUG for "Titan Source", I was ready to give up on this game, because people were so spreaded out that many of these quests were almost uncompletable without extremely long waits in town.

If you have been around long enough you would know. After Factions was released many people hated it and vowed never to return to Factions. Factions introduced allegiance grinding, shorter content, ugly scenary (in early parts of Cantha) compared to Prophecies, rushed timed missions, and gated towns so you have to complete the campaign as it is laid out. All these "new" features in Factions, were foreign to the people who were used to playing in Prophecies.

Before Factions, GW used to have a good reputation of being an almost grind free game but today, nobody mentions about it being grind free anymore. The 2 new Factions professions had so many issues. Rits were quite useless and Assassins were even worse. The Afflicted death explosion was so strong that most assassins would die at melee range if they make a kill, so much so that many of them had to resort to playing a critical barrager.

You need to either wake up or get pass pre-searing. PvE skills DO exist and they will continue to exist until the end of GW1. Basing your arguments on your imaginery situation where PvE skills dont exist is just ridiculous.

H/H IS already weaker BOTH by nature of humans being smarter than AI and by your so-called "inbalanced crap". Most decent human players dont shoot into walls repeatedly or run around AoE to accumulate damage until they drop.

If human teams are stronger, then heroes do NOT replace the need for good human players despite what you said, especially in the tougher areas of the game.

It's a bit concerning seeing players rather fill their party slots with substandard AI and usually very poor henchmen as opposed to a human party that can provide more solid builds and PvE skills. It's hard to say how much blame can be pinned on heroes in this case.

We don't know how much they harmed nor helped at this point, at least not exactly. But games age, and when the player population gets thinner it becomes more and more difficult to fulfill that heavy requirement of an 8 person party. I do feel that heroes help in this sense.

If game population was always going to stay healthy, I'd consider heroes to be more of an Ursan approach to the stresses concerning PvE multiplayer: "Instead of fixing it, let's just ignore it". With aging taken into the equation, implementing heroes makes a lot more sense.

Fair enough Bryant. It seems you have basically taken the stance " although heroes may have done negative things to the game and ignored problems, the convience of it is worth it given the age of the game". That is an argument I can accept.

I guess my feeling on it is that at one time I thought Guild Wars had the potential to be timeless. A lot of other players (including ANet) must not have agreed with me, and in not agreeing with me things like heroes (that removed the timelessness) were added by Anet and celebrated by players. Fine. But the game we used to have will never be seen ever again, and heroes are a part of the reason why.

You know what your issue here is...you read my posts and don't understand the point I'm trying to make. Then you go off on a tangent about something other than my point to "prove" I'm wrong. Its amazing.

Then I suppose it is another case of we will never know. I only know from my experience everybody I know quit the game after Nightfall and say that Factions was the peak. I only know from every poll ever put up on this site that Nightfall is usually considered the worst expansion and Prophecies often the best. But we will never know.

Of course PvE skills exist, but that doesn't mean they SHOULD exist. If there was a 10 billion damage skill in the game should we say it should exist as well?

Inbalanced crap that shouldn't exist. If you are going to take the stance "Anet put it in the game therefore it must be good", then I really have nothing more to say here.

They replace the need for ALL players because players can now do nearly anything without humans. The only need for humans is to power farm or speedclear areas faster then a hero team can. If you can't see the point I am trying to make about defining skill and balanced rewards yet, well then I'm not sure theres any other way I can explain it.

Anyways, I'm going on vacation soon so I'm about done with this thread. This will be one of my last posts in it.

Given what many of us have had to go through, I don't think everyone's going to consider that a bad thing. For many, the way the game used to be was less "timeless" and more "painful". YMMV.

EDIT: In the context of PVE

Perhaps. From a PvP perspective though, the game was certainly better before Nightfall and heroes. Its basically factual.

I have to agree with Bryant here. I don't think the majority wants to go back to the game we used to have.

I can understand though that some PvP players want heroes out of the PvP part of the game.

Have a nice vacation Dreamwind and enjoy, don't think about Guild Wars too much

Yep..

But i think that both of you divide the Guild wars community in 2 parts... "HEy i love Heroes and GW now" and the other " Hey this is cwap i want old Proph back with huge areas.. long times of play and ridiculous missions without heroes so i can feel more leet than ever"

Your missing the thrid party.. the silent one.. the one i find that populates guild wars more then 2 of your parties combined.... The one that observes,laughes,combines both features, ADAPTS, use hybrid team builds of both friends and heroes. put a smile on their face go on vent and finish the UW in 1 hour enjoying their time playing or does VQs for the faction using the cheap PvE skills and/or balanced teams to enjoy their game.. Which when go on the forums laugh at the arguments

So yeah 3rd party of Adaptobale non-complaining players UNTIE and Post away so we can sweep away the 2 others and show what we CAN DO...CHARGE...henchmen are horrible honestly 33% boost -_-

i prefer pve before hard mode and heroes and titles, and would go back to that anyday.

You are naive, nothing is timeless, certainly not a free-to-play game like GW that requires servers to be maintained.

From my experience, most of my friends quit even before NF. If Prophecies is the best, then Prophecies should be the peak, not grindy Factions. However, Factions suit title-chasers well.

No they can't. Just because a cheaper Corolla exist doesn't mean people have no need to buy a Ferrari. If they don't have enough time to form a human team for an easy mission, then it makes sense for them to use H/H. Otherwise, you can spend more time putting a more powerful human team together. It is a matter of CHOICE and CHOICE is good. Otherwise if they have only 15 mins for Gate of Madness before they have to rush for an important appointment, and the team is going slowly, they would quit in the middle and impact everyone. In that case, that guy should have gone with H/H in the first place.

I agree with Bryant.

I dont mind getting rid of heroes and henchies, provided that I can quickly and easily form a human team whereever and whenever I am playing and for whatever quest or mission that I want. But the fact of the matter is there are not enough people in this game for 4 campaigns, and there are just too many quests/missions that most people are not interested to party up for.

You have a huge /agree from me on titles.
Rather indifferent about heroes and hard mode (empty outposts were starting to get annoying in Factions and certain Proph areas).
And I'd like to add consumables to the list of stuff that should not be there (and without titles people should not really need them except in a few farming builds).

But I also think this would have lead to a massive number of people leaving the game giving the lack of new content and the mechanics turning old.
And the number of people leaving or becoming inactive is already rather huge when I look around me.