How did Heroes kill Guild Wars?

To add to this excellent point, I want to draw attention to the often used line "Dude, its just a game."

That is supposed to make me feel better about wasting half an hour on a HM Mission because the retarded Monk decided not to bring Prot. Spirit like he was asked to...

As far as I'm concerned, Heroes are what saved Guild Wars and anyone arguing otherwise is a narrowminded control freak who wants to dictate everyone else's gameplay style. Blow that.

You are obviously exaggerating, like most parts of your posts, when LOTS of people are pugging ever since the zquests started. In a singleplayer game, you can never ever play with other humans.

You are contradicting yourself again. If it is a single player game, how can game be less or more populated? By NPCs?

It is much more likely that you are wrong since we already have evidence to prove that.

Most parts of PvE is easy enough, so which areas are you having such a problem?

If the others areas that are more difficult, I can't rely on H/H. I have to rely on the over powered human teams to succeed.

That is not true at all. There are many missions/quests that make it very hard or impossible to accomplish without teaming up with other human players. The resurrection signet quest in pre-searing is an example. Some missions are difficult to succeed with H/H because they can't carry objects or they require a split. For example, Eternal Grove HM is difficult as luxons are coming from both sides. For Sunjiang District mission, a H/H team cannot hold both spear and urn. Dzagonur Bastion HM is also difficult to do with a H/H team as you are running all over the place. Jennur's Horde is another mission that a human team performs better because of its ability to split when needed. For prophecies, Auorora Glade is harder for a H/H party because you need to split up and heroes also do not prioritize runners on their own. For GWEN, Heart of the Shiverpeaks is another quest that is alot more difficult to succeed with H/H than with a human team because of the ability for human players to carry kegs. Not to mention the difficult HM elite areas that human teams excel at while you cant even bring henchies in to H/H, except for Slavers.

You can always not install NF and EOTN and ebay them off. If you hate heroes so much

As for heroes in PvP, ANet has decided to remove heroes because of all this bitching. I know for sure that some guilds would have to give up on GvG because they rely on heroes to make up a full team since they dont have enough members that are interested in a regular GvG.

Alot of things contributed to an exodus in HA that have alot more impact than heroes.

Uh...like you? Aren't you an example of a contradiction to what you just said?

I think you should just quit GW and play chess then.

Better? And you are supporting pugging? Please dont say that your average pugger is a better player...

The barometer to know when you suck is not to read up before you enter a mission, you dont even know where to go and what to expect. Many puggers are too lazy to read, so they just join a pug and follow others around. Can heroes read up? No. So the person controlling the H/H has no choice but to prepare, so how can he effort to even suck? Pugs are the ones that allow sucky players to succeed.

Didn't you just advocated a nerf to heroes and forcing people to party up?

Read my other post. Not all options maybe good, but this one is because it caters for a wider variety of playing style.

What are you talking about? A H/H team is weaker than a human team so how can they be too strong? Stronger than what?

Lol! What team skill? Most pugs just do not have team skills. They join the team with different buidls, no synergy, so what team skill are you talking about? And if you happen to be lucky enough to party with people who would leave the missions after capping the skills they need, then that would teach you something about the "team skill" pugs provide.

So now you are admitting that human teams are more overpowered than H/H teams because they can abuse more stuff.

Hold on, I want to quote this a few times for truth.

I am quite sure that every mission can be beaten with just Henchmen in Normal mode, except without some of the bonuses.


Well, not forced, but before heroes you couldnt exatcly do Sorrows Furnace / Urgoz / Kanaxai / FoW / UW with henchmen. All of those areas do require grouping. Also DoA and dungeons in EOTN still see plenty of groups forming for these.

Pugging has not been made any worse with heroes, it is just as bad as it was before them. People are still grouping up for elite areas and now also for Z mishions, so the pug community is probably even more alive today then it was prior to heroes.

now that's the problem, if starters don't know what to do and they make mo/n minion masters and add healing breeze and mending to a warrior they suck, so that's why they NEED wiki

Bah ok so it was poorly worded. You want scientific proof of my claims. We don't have it (yet). We have educated guesses.

I can take it two steps further. I win.

As well they should require it. So should hard mode....or anything that is supposed to be hard.

As for Daesu, I'll respond to you later. I don't got time right now.

Dreamwind, why do you think people should have to group? You know none of us would ever want to play with someone as unpleasant, spiteful, and hateful as you, someone who believes that others should stop having fun because it isn't the kind of fun you like.

Sure...just keep on contradicting yourself over and over.

Not scientific proof, just proof. We don't want proof of your claims, we want proof of anyone's. While educated guesses are fine and good, the problem is we have only our experiences which vary greatly as seen in any of these threads. and knowing only the start and end product, not knowing how much each of the problems contributed inbetween.

I pretty much agree with everything that Yelling @ Cats said.

There is something wrong when people get punished for grouping with other players, because their own NPCs are so much better.

So if there's no people i cannot enter mission?
You're ideas are an epic fail.

Putting up with other players is the punishment for playing with them.

If you were paying attention, there are A LOT of suggestions that stop people from being able to do anything without grouping. If that isn't forcing them to group, then I suppose their other option is to stop playing? GG troll.

i don't really feel like replying to this fail thread anymore, but i would like this argument resolved. so here it goes:

statement 1: heroes saved gw.
statement 2: heroes have decreased the multiplayer of gw.

conclusion: both are correct; heroes saved gw because the majority of people prefer smaller scale multiplayer and singleplayer gameplay. gw changed to conform to the majority, and this has upset the minority--but because they are the minority they are automatically wrong. in other words, heroes only saved gw because the majority of the population perceives it so.

please stop yelling at each other.



(dreamwind, sorry to say but its a lost cause man. anet sacrificed game integrity in order to appeal to the masses. even if your principles are in the right place, you are heavily outnumbered here. but at least they are somewhat trying to get back on the right track by removing heroes completely from gvg/ha in a future update.)

I agree with this. Personally I know I would have uninstalled Guild Wars a long time ago if heroes were never introduced, and I'm sure many others would have to. All heroes have done was kill pugs for most areas, and really, I could care less. I'd rather play with heroes than play with terrible players with bad skill bars. Guildies/friends > h/h > pugs.

Yes now in 2009 it's much easier, do remember though how many PVE skill updates there has been since proph was released. Not to mention a 2/3 increase in skill choices compared to back in 2005. If people think henchmen AI and their skill bars are bad now, imagine them 4 years ago.

Heroes saved GW.
Heroes and henches are the best point of the entire game.

I quit pugging long before heroes came out.
Doing a mission with 7 henchies can be tough, but doing the mission with 7 other people, 1 of whom is usually a griefer/idiot/leeroy, can be impossible.

Without heroes I'd have been gone by now.

I feel that the large scale multiplayer could be pretty hard to deal with when the gameworld gets larger and the game itself gets older.

But still, I digress. All I want to know is what and why it happened: were heroes just a "hay this sonuds like a cool feature" or were they actually in response to dwindling pugging numbers? Do the pros outweigh cons or vice versa, and if so by how much?

I don't want to be right, I just want to know what is right. The sooner we know why, the sooner we can figure out how to come up with ideas to resolve it instead of just throwing stuff at each other.

Well I think that the introduction of heros yes it made it easir to go through missions

But some have quoted 4 years ago I still have old screenshots showing that you could do proficies ect with hench only completely

Yes you had to be careful and flag ect but it was also fun back then also

The Nerfs ect was brought about by guys posting builds on wiki and subsequently these were adjusted as is now.

If you look back at skills since the start yes introductions of new ones..nerfed others ,Nothing changes just that you had to adapt..so when heros came on the scene you would make those guys like a partyof Pugs

Epeen of guys was rife and groups became less because of this also.

So there is no right or wrong .just that Heros made some guys choices easir

What suited some did not suit others as this post also shows.Guys its about fun and enjoyment to the people who are playing the game.

Heros in my mind let you become more creative in builds ect so it did not spoil my playability................Everyone has there own ideas on what should be ect.

So go out there and enjoy the game if you cant then im afraid its trolling the forums to rage your feelings

Flag? lol

You couldn't flag henchies back in the day, fwiw

Meh...have you been reading my posts? Singleplayer game with multiplayer option...its not multiplayer with singleplayer option. I don't know how else to explain it.

Show me your evidence plz.

Nobody needs to team for hard areas anymore because it is much easier to beat easy areas with H/H and get better rewards for doing so!!!!!!! That means integrity of game=shit.

Any area that requires the use of teamwork to succeed is good for the game. I laughed out loud at your use of the pre searing res sig quest as an example though.

Eh I had to install NF for PvP purposes back in the day...little did I know what I was getting myself into. X_X And don't get me wrong...I don't hate heroes. I am simply saying they were a detriment to the game.

It is already too little too late. Removal of heroes now will most likely do nothing. The problem was their original introduction...THAT is what caused the problems in PvP.

Sure...but heroes were quite probably the biggest impact. I've never seen such a drastic population change over night. All the other problems in PvP have led to slow decline. Heroes were a turbo decline.

I don't play much anymore. I still post here once in a while though to check up on the game. I did play nonstop for 2 years after all.

You think things that make GW easier than it already is are good for it? LoL.

You do know that in 90% of cases, people who complain about other players or complain when others critique their build, are generally the bad ones?

If by skill and preparation you mean putting all the best stuff and bars on your heroes, then yes I suppose skill is alive and well in this game. -_-

No? I said heroes were detrimental to the game. Nobody has ever been forced to party nor should they except in PvP and areas that are supposed to be challenging.

Sigh...back to my original post. A wider variety of playing style is not necessarily good if that playing style is degenerate to the game. This can be seen in many inbalances that people do not want touched because it would affect their playing style.

I said any human build that is able to beat areas more mindlessly than a H/H build should be nerfed.

Geez dude you keep missing my point. =( I am saying that any area that promotes team skill is a good thing. It has nothing to do with pugs. Perhaps your guild group has to be able to work together good enough to beat an area. THK is easy now with H/H but back in the day it was not. You are correct in the fact that your average pug could not beat THK. And that is a good thing! THK was a barrier between coordinated teams and bad teams. The fact that many areas that used to be team oriented (not just THK) can now be beaten with H/H is sad. What is even sadder is that there is no REASON to team because many H/H beatable areas have better rewards. I already said this like 3 times right?

Ok...I am really close to giving up now. ;(

If you have been reading my posts, you would know that I don't think people should have to group except in areas where groups should be required (like PvP or a team skill PvE area). I also fail to see how you think I am unpleasant, spiteful, and hateful. LoL. You're statement on fun also doesn't respond to my point...if something is degenerate to the game should it be left in just because something is having fun with it?

How did I contradict myself? Nobody has ever had to team up in Guild Wars outside of areas where they SHOULD have to team up. I already said this like 3 times (again).

Fair enough. Maybe you could help me get some.

I already responded to this. Honestly you are barely worth responding to anymore. While I completely disagree with Daesu, at least he is responding to my points. Meanwhile you sit here and throw around the troll word in a thread where people like me are SUPPOSED to respond. Kthxbai.\

I disagree with statement 1. How can heroes save GW if GW was never dead? We got a lot of people in here saying heroes were the savior of the game. If that is the case then you are saying GW was dead before Nightfall which is absolutely asinine.

Fair enough. Just because I am outnumbered doesn't mean I'm not going to give my opinion in a thread that asks for it however. Its just funny how my opinion is getting me attacked by some people though lol. Its like these people have never used a forum before.

Probably the most we can do at this point is just ask around, see why people are no longer grouping, etc. Maybe a poll asking when/how long people started to go solo, why, if they were content before heroes released or not...just a lot of things. But even then that's only talking to a couple hundred players regarding changes and directions that affect millions.

Polls are a very tricky subject. In addition to trying to get a random sample of GW players, rather than just people interested in replying to polls, you need to worry about (the following list pulled from the Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making):

The order in which the questions were presented
The context in which the questions appeared
Whether the question format was open or closed
Whether the question contained catch phrases
The range of suggested response alternatives
The order in which the response alternatives were presented
Whether middle categories were provided
Whether problems were framed in terms of gains or losses

I was more thinking we somehow get Anet to give us the numbers of how many people solo with heroes and those who play in human teams. I know they are capable...they have done so with skill useage as well as player counts for PvE and PvP.

Heroes made GW more tolerant IMO. I would generally try to start a PUG during a new mission, but most of the time the PUGS failed. Hard.

I think this is a pretty good summary of the issue. More emphasis on the conclusion than on the statements.

I first played GW almost 4 years ago, then quit due to not having time for it. I'm now playing again. Back then, I chose to play with henchmen over PUG, until at some point I joined a small guild (then I mostly played with guildmates and henchmen). That puts me in the 'smaller scale multiplayer'/singleplayer category.

Dreamwind, it seems like you're approaching this from the point of view that GW was and should be primarily a multiplayer game, with the possibility of singleplayer secondary. Therefore, the addition of heroes is a sacrilege because it destroy that aspect of the game.

However, how can you be sure that Guild Wars was meant to be that way? Are you one of the original developers? Did some of the developers say. 'Guild Wars should be pure multiplayer, we added the henchmen grudgingly'? As snaek said, you're part of a minority that feels that way. Being a minority doesn't make you wrong, but it doesn't make you right, either.

In the end, it looks like the addition of heroes made a lot of people happy and a few people unhappy. Well, that's life.

I do think you're right about heroes in PvP, though. But as I've never played much PvP, I don't think that opinion's worth much.

Guild Wars is indeed, a singleplayer game just as much as it is multiplayer.

And always has been:

Wow Zahr, you just owned every single q.q'er in this thread.

MY HERO!

Well let us think about it...they made a game called Guild Wars where guilds (and PvP originally) were the primary focus, the teams require 4-8 players, and henchmen are significantly worse than the average player. I'd say all that promotes a multiplayer game. To me it is almost as if they added henchmen as a "just in case" measure.

Uh...so you post a picture saying you can play with henchmen and claim it proves anything about heroes?

The ability that one can play a MMO all alone is a very modern idea but it is very popular. The origin of the idea was that most classes could not solo in EverQuest.

People can do that in newer MMOs, for example World of Warcraft. You cannot do "instances" all alone, but you can level up to 80 without ever talking to another human player if you want.

And now the beef: We cannot solo in Guild Wars. We have some farming builds for some class combos, but these often cannot clear a whole area, just farm a specific mob group.

This is why henchmen and heroes are necessary in Guild Wars to allow soloplay.



The problem is that we have our favorite team setups in mind, and we know that this team of heroes/henches and you as a player will succeed.

Now take a look at a PUG: Monk AFK, one leaver, one guy is getting on your nerves. Success is a gamble. There could be nice players, you could even find some friends, or have fun. But most people just prefer to get the mission done and not try it over and over.


If the party dies in a GW mission, it is game over.
Now take a look at other games: If the party dies, they end up on the graveyard and then go back to their corpses to try again.

We also have this in GW:EN dungeons, they are lot like instances in other games, you are allowed to fail and try again. Death Penalty and getting kicked in HM after reaching 60% DP for everyone is also a mechanic that is absent from many other MMOs.


As people nowadays think everything that makes them win by default is cool and a good skill or a good update (/rant off) and play with an instant gratification and entitlement to win all the time mentality, there is no wonder why Heroes were the final nail in the coffin, the dead of players grouping together at all. Players were already reluctant to group in times of Henchmen, and Heroes are so much better.


How can they make grouping more attractive? What do they plan for GW2, more singleplayer style or a more social experience, which was once the hallmark of MMOs.

We have only stone old, limited information what they envision for GW2.
Heroes apparently will get reduced to 1 companion.


It is not just heroes and henchmen who favor singleplayer+AI gameplay in GW1. The whole design is party unfriendly.

It seems they want to strengthen the multiplayer part somewhat for GW2. I just wonder how they will do it.

Can you imagine how shitty it would be if we start out with skills like Save Yourselves, There is Nothing to Fear, minion and spirit spam builds in GW2 and no limiters like DP and so on?

If they really want us to be able to play solo and group for missions only, it will no longer be like Guild Wars 1. It would be an entirely new design.
All classes would need some basic healing and fighting abilities and be able to overcome the odds for instance. Sounds pretty much like an Asia Grinder with en masse slaughter of mobs in explorables.

'[your] worth with every battle at skill, not hours [spent]'.

I'm not sure I'd trust the box much. We've been through this before.

If you actually responded to what you quoted, you wouldn't be a troll. All you do is keep referring people to your previous posts and repeating the same things over and over. Hi, when people quote your posts and respond to them, the response is not to refer them to that post again.

You keep saying that people are not forced to do anything with others and that you don't advocate forcing people to team up with other real players. You also claim that people shouldn't have to team up in areas that don't require team skill, but it's glaringly obvious that you have problems with H/H in general and don't want people to be able to H/H. Which is it? In your ideal world, would people be able to use H/H to do anything or not? Are there signposts that say "Use of Heroes is allowed here." and they are forbidden everywhere else? If the choice is between H/Hing, teaming up, or not doing it at all, then not allowing H/Hing IS forcing people to team up. Stop contradicting yourself.

They didn't - but there are many opinions on why PUGing has declined over the last four years.

What Heroes allowed for (and Henchies previously) was for players to be able to log in and have the ability to play whenever they want without needing to spend time forming a group. This is a necessity in a game designed for the casual player who does not normally have oodles of time to play, let alone try to form a suitable party.

Heroes came about because of the limitations of the Henchies, and were an inevitable addition to the game (anyone who DIDN'T see them coming had some serious blinders on). Taking Anet's original business model into consideration, the player base would have capped out at some point, and adding two campaigns per year would have seriously stretched the grouping options mightily thin, especially in older campaigns. Some form of mechanic that would allow for solo play would have become necessary in any event in order to allow for playing less populated campaigns.

In all reality, changes will still need to be made to GW to keep it viable, especially once GW2 is released and we see a dramatic drop in the population as players migrate over. That's why any suggestion that zones should require grouping is "less than ideal" shall we say in nice terms. It's all well and good to promote co-operative play in a multi-player oriented game, but imposing hard limits on zones that will prevent play outright because there simply is no one to group with is not the correct solution. If anything, after GW2 is released and Anet gets a good indication of how successful the franchise will be, I think we will see many more changes to GW1 that will almost certainly turn it into a primarily single-player oriented game.

Hanok Odbrook

I can't answer for DreamWind but I know how I think about this.

I would favor teaming up with humans more than playing solo.
And in some areas making playing without full human teams impossible.

You want to play with AI only? Sure, you can play about 80% of the game that way. But teaming with humans will net you about 2x as much loot compared to playing with AI.
And certain high-end areas are off-limit. See it as a relay race (think that's the word, the running sport where you hand over sticks).
You might be the best individual runner in the world, the moment you can't perform as member of a team it means nothing in certain situations.

And if you don't want to team up with others? Well, that just means you can't do certain things.


But you paid for the content?
Yes, sure. You also paid for the content of HA, but without teaming up with other human players you won't see much of it. Oh, and without nice PvP players seeking profit you can't even get a crystalline without playing HA.
So people are restricted in content already.... And people playing HA even get rewarded with some emote thing representing an animal depeding on rank. Also something PvE players have no acces to. But you paid for it, A-net should open /dragon for everyone!

I don't see why there can't be content in PvE that is resticted to full-human teams. As long as there is plenty of stuff to do solo this isn't too bad. And if you really, really, really want to play an area that requires a full-human team you just have to play with other humans. It's a choice, you play with humans or you don't play the area.

The only problem there is with your argument is that PvP is voluntary, and understood that live players is a requirement - np with that concept, you skip it because you choose to skip it.

However, PvE is a different story. You can have the choice to party or not to party, but what happens when that choice is taken out of your hands? This was the whole reason for H/H to begin with (see my above post). But what happens when there is no one available for me to play within the span of time I need? In this scenario, I pretty much have no way to play any part of any campaign unless a Z-Quest was attached to it, or enough players were interested in playing that area for the same reason I logged in to play. Epic failure there.

Keep human party reqs to PvP where it belongs. We need to ensure PvE remains Player vs. Environment and not Player vs. Play When Someone Else Decides You Can.

Hanok Odbrook

This thread should have ended with Cthon's post, frankly.

The forced party mechanic is one of the root problems with this game, and is an incredibly high artificial barrier to any kind of serious play. Success depends a great deal on something that has nothing to do with the game at all - finding 7 other people who are at least as good at the game as you are. Why should people have to play Facebook before they get to play Guild Wars?

The party mechanic is why titles became such an issue. As far as metrics of player skill go, titles are just slightly above "completely ****ing useless". And yet, the party mechanic forces players to assess the skill level of other players on-the-fly, and usually without ever seeing their actual performance. So either you make the "grade", or you go home; nobody has the time or patience to figure out if you're actually any good. That's not good for any competitive community.

Chicken Ftw FTW.

This sums up exactly what I'd say about it.

Here's the thing. Guild Wars is a game that's been around a while. It's not soloable in the traditional sense of the word for the most part, you usually need a party of some sort if it's you or others. In some ways that's good, and others bad.

Another thing is the fact that everything is instanced. Let me state, I love instancing. I love having my own sandbox. But now that I've played some other games, I also see the value of non-instancing. My ideal model is a shared world with instances. Not only can people play by themselves without relying on extra players, they can also run into people with similiar goals, play alongside them, and it becomes easier to group. Instead, in GW, we get the worst of people in outposts. They're sitting around board and being annoying. No one wants to group with that.

I love that GW is different from other games, it gets me a fix I can't get elsewhere, but lately it feels like where I go for my antisocial fix. And in an MMO, that doesn't translate well.

And the other thing that caused a population decline (I won't really say killed because I don't think GW is THAT dead) is the fact that this game wasn't meant to go on and on and on. People ran out of things to do. What do you do when you've done everything? I used to farm to stay busy when I was bored, but any builds I used would end up nerfed. So, now I admit I usually just play a game where I keep finding stuff to do, instead of getting bored to the point of farming a ton.

Look at the size of the PvE content.
Look at some of the basic rules of GW.

Yes, I agree.
If heroes or hench would not exist, we'd see MUCH more players in outposts. Quite simply because no one could leave them since we'd be all waiting for a healer.

The reason I repeat myself is because there are a bunch of people who are responding to my posts without reading them or responding to my posts without understanding what I'm saying. In the case of Daesu, half of the stuff he says has already been answered by me in previous posts. And for an example of what I'm saying here:

Looks like we've found one of those people. Honestly if you don't know my answer to this yet, you haven't been reading my posts. It is as simple as that. Small hint: Some areas should be soloable and some shouldn't. I still claim that heroes ruined a lot about this game.