Selling In-Game Advantages (The Great Debate Over Mercenary Heroes)

Right! It'd be like a mentoring program -- Professor Main is along for the ride to show New Alt how it's done!

You could make your MH'd main a /P and load it with "Fall Back!" "Stand Your Ground!" "Make Haste!" "Never Surrender!" and similar skills so he can scream at your new alt like a proper instructor would.

Of course it's a paid advantage. That's the whole point. It's the exact same kind of paid advantage a Nightfall buyer has while playing Prophecies content compared to a Prophecies-only player playing Prophecies content. And as such there's nothing wrong with it.

I want to start out by saying I love analogies. I love using them, I love reading them and they speak louder than the most long-winded arguments using fewer words.

However, as epic as this could have been, I'd like some clarification, because it doesn't sound right.

Well, if hamburgers represent what Anet sold, that sounds like campaigns. If that's true, you're claiming they're all the same and came with the same flavors, which is not correct. If not, please explain.

So, you're suggesting that if they sold a campaign that allowed people to do DoA in half an hour solo, you'd be ok with it?

What? No.

I'm going by the basic, standard definition of an advantage. For example, if you were an Olympic hurdler and suddenly the Olympics allowed every contestant who paid an extra fee to take 30 seconds off of his/her time, would that be a paid advantage?

Yes. This isn't rocket science. As most people have come to understand tin this thread, Mercenary Heroes are a paid advantage. You can't even argue that they're not anymore. It's just the truth.

The argument should now be whether or not it's justifiable (which some people have jumped onto) or trivial.


If you want to know my personal opinion, then I'll give it here:

Anet is a video game company with a parent company over it's head. Meaning that they have to produce in order to keep their doors open. Whether they like how they do it or not, they have to make money or NC Soft would shut them down. I think over the years, the model has drifted further and further from the original ideology of the game, but it's still a decent game. The original creators of the game are close to gone, so the themes and virtues of the game have changed. That's to be expected.

I think this is a step over my caution line in the direction of cash shops, but I'm probably not getting GW2 anyway, so I'm not really all that worried about it. I just really respected Anet over the years as a company, and part of me keeps hoping they'll live up to it again.

For the last time, I do not want Mercenary Heroes for free. I haven't played GW in almost 3 months.

I could not care less. If you had read the OP, or really any of the first 3 pages of posts, you would know that.

I was simply interested in different players opinions.

I'd question the powercreep such a campaign introduced. But how much time did the Nightfall and EotN campaigns/expansion shear off the time of a complete UW run? And everyone seems OK with that.

Yes all purchased items are advantages. But cosmetic items are a justifiable advantage.

They in no way whatsoever affect the in game mechanics or economy. They do not exclude other players from the metagame. They do not affect other player experiences significantly except visually at all.

Merc heroes are a non justifiable advantage. They will affect the in game economy (people who can roll through all areas faster will be able to kill faster and accumulate gold faster). They affect how I play.

They are an advantage which is not cosmetic in nature. They provide bonuses in efficiency and strength to the player and exclude others.

Extra campaigns are purchased advantages, and they sure as hell completely excluded the Prophecies-only player from the metagame when it comes to playing in the UW.

And hey, mercenaries don't exclude people from the metagame in the slightest. So what is that all about?

None of that is content. The "game" portion of the game has never truly been affected like this outside of campaigns. Just seems like a drift from the felt values portrayed by the game and staff.

I can justify campaign advantages. I just can't justify a cash shop item adding that much of an advantage to the game.

Campaigns are completely justfiable.

They are an extremely standardized format of expanding the metagame. Meaning, people will accept the fact that campaigns will become the new playing field.

Microtransactions are very non standard. There is no incentive to buy them as they do not contain much content to play through EXCEPT for the fact they will offer advantages.

Campaigns are not the same type of advantage as microtransactions.

I have more gold and other items than my husband or my best friend. I finished all three campaigns & EotN faster than them. This was due, in great part, to my having immediate access to any skill in the game for myself or my heroes. I now spend a considerable amount of time running around with them so they can cap the skills I've had for months.

In other words, the skill packs provided bonuses in efficiency and strength to me and excluded others.

I can say the same thing about the Fire Imp which, incidentally, was not limited to pre-searing. I left pre at lvl12 and continued using my Imp until I got to lvl20... I think I was at Yak's Bend before I hit 20. My husband is doing LDoA on a pre-toon and is dragging his Imp around with him. This is allowing him to farm the pre-searing Zaishen quests faster and more efficiently than players who don't have the Imp... he can wipe those mobs faster than someone without the Imp and thus farm more XP off of them, not to mention drops.

My extra storage panes allowed me to hold onto many more items early on in my experience which are of use to me now... including a ton of items I'm able to sell for a hefty profit now that I understand what they're worth. I paid extra for those, too.

None of these benefits to my efficiency & strength can be obtained without spending money. You must buy an edition that includes the Imp, or you don't get it. You must buy extra panes to get storage above the 8 toons you get with all three campaigns. You must buy the skill packs to have something like say, Signet of Spirits, right away. You cannot duplicate the benefits of these things in-game.

You can, however, grab a friend or two and run around with 8 identical professions and some fantasy uber-bar that allows you to roll through FoW, UW, The Deep, etc.

Without spending a dime.

You can access those same skills without paying a dime (outside of paying for campaigns, which again I feel is justifiable).

You can't access 4 mesmers without paying. 1-to-1, you lose an advantage.

Again, that's not even the question. Is it justifiable or trivial? I think we have to keep coming back to that. If it's neither, in your mind, then we have a problem. If it is one or both, then Anet's chosen the right path for you.


FYI: I like playing Devil's Advocate

But you can't access them straight out of the box. It takes a pretty long time to get an account up and running at full skill efficiency. I've been helping my neighbor along, a few hours most days, and it's already taking weeks.

That's WEEKS spent being ineffecient, not making as much gold as you could, and for a double whammy of wealth deprivation, spending it on skills to unlock them for your heroes. The unlock packs are a VAST advantage for starting PvE players. And it's exactly the kind of advantage mercenaries arguably provide: save time, make more money.

Now take all of those advantages available from the cash shop and lump them together.......

Put all the cash shop advantages Fire Imp, Skill unlocks, Extra Storage, and Mercinary Heros on one player and then on another don't. Now the margin is pretty large and blatently obvious. Alone each one doesn't look like much but lumped together they compound into something significant. Then consider what might come in the future and lump that in....etc...etc...Eventually it will become a major problem.

But you still have access to the same things. Being inefficient is part of the beginner's experience of any game. I'm not making the efficiency argument. I don't think it can hold water. My thought is access.

When you compare two players 1-to-1 who both own all 3 campaigns and EotN, what cash shop items add in-game advantages that would make one player "better" than the other.

The Fire Imp is definitely arguable in Pre-searing, but not after (because of Mysterious and other summoning stones). Mercenary Heroes provide an advantage due to the imbalance of the professions in PvE.

I can't think of anything else that does that.



EDIT: Essence Snow and I seem to be hive-minding. The graph Snow posted makes a lot of sense. Over time, these cash shop advantages will add up, especially if they keep doing it. Will there be a day in the not-so-distant future where players won't let other players into their party unless they have the mini pet that resurrects players every 20 seconds? Or the weapon-pack upgrade that adds damage?

It's a scary thought.

Just think if you bought any thing from the shop you have the same results! But you know with a fancy BMP sword and Gwen's Wedding dress. hehehe

just adding to the point it speeds up PvE. You get from A to B faster.

I'm not convinced that it makes any kind of sense to exclude the effect of campaigns upon the gameplay in other campaigns. So I can think of some things that do that.

You were doing pretty well until this. Players in PvE are not contestants. They aren't competing against each other, in the sense of the actual game-play. Time to complete goals is irrelevant.

1) make a game call it Free
2) sneak in pay content
3) ????
4) Profit!

FTFY heheheheeh but really Nope. you nailed it! Next month will see the same threads with WoC outfit or whatever comes in the few months. etc...

I'm not excluding campaigns. They add an advantage. If your only consideration is black and white cohesion, then yeah they're an advantage.

The advantages gained from campaigns are justifiable to me, but that's me. This is a thread of opinion, not fact (as all are). And I think it's good for Anet to see how their community reacts to their game additions.

Depends on what guild you're in. Some people play PvE competitively. There's a reason timed speed run records exist, and a reason that these guys post their times on forums to show off.

In other words:
"People aren't agreeing with my opinions, so now I'm going to troll".

I don't have a screen shot atm, but doing FoW with 7 heroes is very doable in under 2 hours. In fact, the average time is about 1.5 hours as near as I can tell. (I recently did my survivor title the "long" way by doing 10 FoW trips and the titan quests. A single FoW trip never took me more than 2 hours, even when I took decent length breaks). For some of these trips I used the standard issue heroes, for a few towards the end I used some merc heroes. I didn't see a big difference.

Doing UW in under 2 hours with heroes would totally be possible... if not for the difficulty of doing 4-horsemen with heroes at all. Merc don't make this any better. Still, if you have mad micro skillz, its probably doable to do 4-horsemen with heroes as well. I'm still waiting to hear about hero teams doing Urgoz/The Deep, but I have plenty of reason to believe it should work just fine as well, at least for a player with experience in these areas.

Costumes? No, nobody argues about such a purely cosmetic addition (except for pricing). Additional WoC mesmer hero that you have to pay for to get? Absolutely. Here's hoping that it won't come to that.

I really don't see how the very minor advantages granted by mercs can be considered unjustifiable. And that's of course my opinion, and I'll tell you where that's coming from: I play games as a pastime, and I never let them turn into a frantic obsession, where I have to do everything fast, fast, fast! I've never done a speed run or speed clear of any area, nor will I ever. I also never use consumables (except to cash in their party points) and refuse to tag along with people who do. So, I couldn't give a rodent's rectum that people who spend a little money could do something a tiny bit faster than they were already doing it.

That's not a 'game' ANet needs to consider, because it takes place entirely outside of the game they run.

I'm not sure why you want "paid" to mean paid with real world money. For a person who didn't buy the skill unlock packs, you'd have to spend something like a million in game gold to buy/unlock all the skills (I know because I recently finished doing this). To acquire that kind of gold in game, you either have to buy in game money with real world money (which is bad and would be stupid for the purposes of unlocking skills) or you must invest a serious amount of time getting there. The time spent playing the game vastly outweighs the monetary investment of ~$40. So, while you may not have shelled out the ~$40, you paid for those advantages with your time (which was almost certainly worth a lot more in terms of real life money).

Generally speaking, there are no free advantages in guild wars. Either you buy them with your money or you buy them with your time and effort. The only exception I can think of at the moment would be if someone gave you their account after gaining those advantages on their account, but this is hardly how it works for the vast majority of the player-base.

The majority of arguments for advantageous DLC are irrelevant.

Because it's a video game with virtual currency...

oh yeah! sorry. you know what i mean. again this Mech Hero took me by SUPER surprise! (yeah yeah again) In the interview with wartower john did talk about it but didn't say (or i missed it) about paying for it. He did say in april "A big" thing is coming.

So it's probably some wacky thing and sneaks in pay/DLC options for hardcore fans....etc... happened in the past will happen again. nothing new under the sun or Tyria

Yep, it's probably all downhill from Mercs on out .

Oh boy, what a ride! How did I miss this thread, and Stumme's opinion in particular. Well, it explains a lot - so basically they've settled for selling mechanical content now (as opposed to aesthetics), in smaller bits & pieces and higher cumulative price tag.

To me, that's basically a stealthy subscription fee - no longer the solid game content is limited to base game and it's expansions, in fact solid game content is being developed for microtransactions specifically.

Micros before used to be aesthetic devices and harmless account functionalities (with exception of PvP unlock packs & BMP). As I see it now, rather than a boxed/digital expansion we'll see quarterly updates with cumulative 45$ price tag if you want it all.

Very uncool way to advertise your new game, Anet, even before it's released. I appreciate the honesty, though - so now you realise subscriptions in one way or another are strictly necessary to meet the publisher's wishes and fund your own growth, AAA+ MMO game developer company?

I disagree with Stumme on two points, basically:

a) solid game content, regardless of distribution method is a fair game
b) solid game content offers no substantial advantage but more variety & choices, as in previous games

First off, comparing original gw's business model with traditional p2p games is a pretty stupid thing to do, simply because no sane p2p developer would offer solid game content in his cash shop.

Secondly, these p2p businesses charge for account (not game) functionality and in-game aesthetics, and little else.

Thirdly, it's pretty naive & stupid for any (apparently enlightened) game developer to say that more choices and higher adaptability don't give an advantage. They do, when you have a 'skill deck' or 'profession deck' the player who doesn't have access to all of them is going to get soundly beaten, because the game itself is always balanced around the choice to pick any skill or any profession in question at any given time.

Back in GW it was 'fair game', because the content was packed in actual game expansions, and playing this kind of silly game now that 'boxed expansions' are basically 'big microtransactions' doesn't quite change the reality of gamers. Gamers never needed/wanted microtransactions, it was shoved down their throats as a means to monetise on the business more.

Traditional game content on the other hand, in form of boxed expansions, requires the developer not only to produce a high-quality product, but to price it reasonably well, let alone make sure the product is highly accessible (that's why it's boxed in the first place, rather than limited to credit card owners).

For any and all merit in this discussion, the ridiculous claim that microtransactions offer developers (or rather, give them incentive to) release more content (in total) or produce a higher quality content, is blatantly false.

Microtransactions are an invention of greed, not the creative force behind games. If you let greed seep into your game design principles, it will inevitably mean: less boxed/traditional content, more microtransactions, higher cumulative price of the product (or, to be exact, service), divided/partitioned/unequal community base and quite possibly - a drop in content quality.

Dear Stumme, game industry isn't just business - it's a big, social phenomenon, and in reality the gamers equally own every bit of your game - especially true for MMOs (but not limited to: see "user generated content" which is basically the lifeblood of any other game out there), where the "game" is in fact created by the players, for players ... if you make the service uncomfortable and the online world uninteresting, the people will just leave, looking for a more creative & innovative social hub. Please don't forget that.

You are here to serve (literally), and the "game" is not your sole creation. You don't own it, you don't rent it - all you do is create the "environment" for the players to interact with each other, and bringing in the solid-content microtransactions is possibly one of the most fatal and irreversible mistakes you'll ever make, as a MMO game developer company.

If you trifle with the community and purposefully distort the "world" by post-purchase real money transfers, it will bite on you hard, believe it or not. There is a very good reason why the quality of service should be universal for all participants after initial purchase (purchase ---> access to whole online service) and why you shouldn't have players with unequal purchasing power/ability (especially drastically unequal) running all over the place, and I suppose you know it (basically a big "+" for p2p MMO devs who settled on monthly fee alone and offer expansions digitally, free of any additional charge - it's the ultimate way to run this 'thing' without silly compromises, either on MMO's quality, or at the cost of final customer's satisfaction).

In any case, I'm not going to stop people from supporting a destructive and greed-oriented game design, which basically undermines the foundation of what made computer games (and MMOs in particular) great works of art, living manifestos of the creative force behind humanity.

Jesus Swords for all! With a side of Freshly cooked hamburger included!


@AmbientMelody. well put! i hope he reads your remakes.

Did you actually read the post you quoted? Or did you just read the first line. Either way, your "explanation" is irrelevant. The notion of cost is not at all limited to monetary costs. Especially when the argument here is about merc heroes allowing people to do thing faster than others, it would be stupid not to consider that plenty of players have more time to play than others, thus giving them an in game advantage. Not only is that not a problem, but it's yet another example of how in game advantages are common-place. Saving a bit of time does still help the player with more time devote, but it also makes it possible for those who actually have things going on in real life other than GW to accomplish the same in game content. After all, wasn't the game set up to emphasize skill over time? If you can skillfully play with merc heroes to save time, where is the problem? You can have merc heroes and still take longer than a skillful player using only the GI-heroes (general issue heroes).

John Stumme shouldn't feel like people paying for DLC is telling him he did a good job, not turning this into a generic hidden pay to play is what he should take pride in, I bet when he was designing his first game at age 11 and the glory of creation was overcoming him, he would have shit a brick if some publisher barged into his room trying to convince him to sell advantages in micro packs.

I hope so at least.


My talk of relevance had nothing to do with you, funny you took it as such. Your portion of my post was an edit afterward.

Do you actually talk to people like that when they oppose your view? What you just posted is totally irrelevant, some people have more time to play than others, such is gaming in general. Those people did not sign into the NCSoft store and buy real life time now did they?

This is simply protest to people paying money for an instant advantage over another gamer who once started with the same IP.

EDIT: @ AmbientMelody I'm glad you understand.

I'm sorry you're not seeing how this is relevant. Think of it this way: the current discussion is about whether the sold advantages are a good thing or not, and also how big an advantage is too big? The merc heroes offer an advantage, no question. However, that advantage is only in terms of time saved (at least as the evidence presented so far suggests). Thus the point is that said advantage is minor, especially when we consider that fact that the "more time vs less time" to play inequity exists. In fact, now the players who were more restricted by the amount of time they had to devote to a GAME can accomplish more, if they choose to spend their money instead of their time.

Clearly a player who buys merc heroes has an advantage in game, but they are also disadvantaged out of game because of the costly purchase. As many have already stated, they would rather have the real world money than the in game time savings, and that is their choice to make. I maintain that the time savings are not huge to begin with, so probably the smartest overall choice would be to not buy the mercs and just play as normal anyway. However, if someone wants to spend their money for what is at best a minor time saving advantage, what's the problem with that? So far, in this entire thread, I don't see that anyone has really come up with a concrete answer to that question.

It has been answered numerous times.....It goes against the entire philosophy that GW was based on.

the mercenary heroes are no more of an in-game advantage than character slots.

lets just assume theres some imba build with 7 of the same profession heroes (not saying there is). So now they can vanquish an area 5 minutes faster.

what benefits do character slots give?
dont need to reroll pvp characters, reequip them, etc etc.
can do zaishen missions/bounty/vanquish on more characters, more rewards.
can take zaishen combat missions on more characters (and complete them after the combat day is over)

these things are more of an in-game advantage than the 5 minute vanquishing time saved.
5 minutes faster of vanquishing doesn't give you anything besides saving 5 minutes of time. You don't make more money because you have 7 necros, but having 20 characters means you can, for example, take Zaishen Combat HA quest 20 times, and complete them over a week. After a week, its HA quest day again, and now you retake everything. This means you basically always get the Zquest Reward Bonus. Even if you only monk or something, instead of buying 8-pack mercenary, you can buy 5 character slots, and fill it with 5 pvp monks. Now you have 5 * 9000 extra balthazar faction, 9 extra zkeys per week.

So if your usual GW week is : log on, play some specific PvP arena, log off,
you now make >50k extra gold a week just by having additional character slots.

This is assuming you only HA. If you GvG and RA, its even more.

People are upset of the mercenary heroes because it offers something "different" that can't be done without mercenary heroes. But it is not an "in-game advantage".

yep some have accepted this and moved on. they are still playing/paying/put-up-with-it or have left.

Anet is not going to step backwards. why would they? Only forward . Those who want to follow and play the new game/content hop on board.

I don't think there was just one philosophy the GW was based on. Certainly one of the more predominant is the notion of skill > time. Having merc heroes doesn't make you a more skillful player... but it does (potentially) save time. What philosophy are you thinking of when you say that?

The idea of purchasable advantages have been in the online store for a very long time, so if you mean to suggest that the philosophy was a completely free to play model, that's a gross misunderstanding. If for no other reason, you had to purchase stuff just to play the game in the first place. They even used to offer the ability to buy just the PvP game content (although that's been phased out of the online store) and they still do offer the ability to purchase every skill in the game on your PvP characters and heroes. As far as I recall, this has been around basically since the beginning.

So I'll ask again, what specific philosophy does this violate and how?

Well if they continue down this road I won't be purchasing GW2. I may only be one lost customer, but I am pretty sure there are a lot of others like me. The player base/customers are part of what made/makes GW great. The *og philosophy is a reason that attracted a certain type of players to create a unique community.

The philosophy that all players would be on equal playing ground. GW was supposed to be a whole new type of mmo (one that address so of the issues that other mmo's had).....yet it is has been straying more and more towards every-other mmo. While one specific purchase may not make that much of a difference, when lumped together they make an obvious difference. As time progresses and more advantages are available the difference will increase.

I am not saying, nor are most, that MH are the only problem....they are just the point where we have decided it's definately headed in the wrong direction and needs to be adressed. Nip it in the bud...if you will...

If you want anymore information on why I feel this way, please refer yourself to my previous posts...as I feel I am repeating myself in replying.

@Snow that would suck! I would love to roll with you in GW2! you have tough me much here in GW. i mean not literally . just your post and few PM's. But i understand now if you (or others) do no purchase it in the future.


@Captain Bulldozer maybe it's just unspoken philosophy we hold as a gamer or the user when we purchased the game? or maybe what we were sold at the time we got it doesn't hold true any more? how knows?? but i felt a bit duped when i had pay for the BMP back in 06 to play the extra side content. me-->QQ


got that right. i'm just playing GW till D3! Ready to Kill that demon for the 3rd time! aaahhh

I'd agree more with the complainers if it was something actually significant which gave a distinct, tangible advantage, but it isn't and it doesn't. Five, even ten minutes saved per VQ is very little overall.

However, I can't argue the idea that if it was purely intended to be cosmetic, then they should introduce additional normal heroes to redress the unintended advantage they've given to those who bought the MH.

Like some other people though, I do worry about the path this may be starting down, though I doubt ANet are quite that stupid. Then again, 7 heroes is pretty much 2 years too late for most people, so I might be wrong. I've started playing again, but my friends list is still all offline because they couldn't give a shit anymore.

In all fairness GW was based on a business model that expansions would be released every 6 months - 1 year. We all know what happend there. The MMO community and gaming in general is leaning toward DLC. Its a model that Gillette and Bic have used for decades. The money isnt in the razor, its in the blades. It's still the same business model.

As for the game model. MHs only benefit the solo player. And then your only competing with yourself. When SC times get faster for the MH party than full player parties, you can make the arguement that it's unfair, will ruin the economy, and provides a game changing advantage. In order for you to use MHs properly you still need to rune/weaponize them give them the right builds, and it still takes alot of player skill to use at thier full potential(key binding, flagging, and running your main simultaneously). Otherwise, MHs left to thier own AI dont offer much. GW is still based on skill rather than gear or level. This has not changed. Give an unskilled player the MH DoA SC build, and they would still fail.

For the record, I have bought a few MHs. And I feel Anet should give the community a chance to aquire more heroes through playable content. We should have the chance to aquire all the professions up to 7 each, but I have a feeling just giving us Mesmers and Rits would even the playing field.