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

I still don't know what this MH advantage that people keep referring to is.

A reason why people bought them? For fun, so they can experiment with more variety of funky team builds that may or may not be viable for most areas.

Are you implying Anet isn't going to add additional heroes to the game?

Are people starting a lobby to prevent Anet to add additional heroes?

More heroes are expected with winds of change. A paragon hero was added just a couple of months ago.

Before that M.O.X was added to the game.

I see a pattern of Anet adding new heroes to the game with new content and they seem to keep adding heroes to the professions that have fewer of them.

Of course 1 year ago no one would have cared if there was only 2 mesmer heroes or 18 months ago no one would have cared if there was only 2 ritualist heroes since they would have sucked big time.

Maybe in a couple of months with the promised melee AI fix and the promised paragon revamp, no one will care about how many mesmers a player with the merc heroes can have.

How? Say I have no friend, no guild, can't pug.

PS. An easy fix if people really are only going for cosmatic, is to limit the number of necro hero to 3, mes to 2, monk to 3, etc, etc. And those people will start QQing.

Fair point, fun is another reason yes. But what happens when during that experimenting, the person discovers a build that means they can farm an area in half the time it takes someone without them. Answer is it'll be abused and create a situation where either you have to buy to get the same advantage or you go without.

There isn't yet a precedent for this with purchasable upgrades, but over the years we have all seen it happen when someone discovers that such and such build works better. Sins used to be pretty much shunned in the early days, same as rits. But now how many people created one of these profs just to take advantage of the builds available(not entirely the same thing i know but it's an example of how the majority of humans behave).

EDIT: IIRC someone stated that after we got "Thickery" we wouldn't be getting another hero with the WoC, not entirely sure on this but a memory of something like this is lingering in my mind

If you don't have a guild, friends, can't pug can you do heroes ascent?
No.

Can you do AB?
No.

Can you do Urgoz or the deep?
No.

Can you play GvG?
No.

If you don't have a guild wars account can you play the game?
No.

You join with someone else that doesn't have merc heroes and are done.

Then you wouldn't mind if they put in generic heroes so everyone can make any team they want.

Who cares HA, AB, GvG? fyi, you can't have hero in those places.
I want to macro smiteball in pve! I want to macro bloodspike in pve! What's the advantage? more fun!

I believe this issue is about the same concept when they decided to remove heroes in HA/GVG.

I'm pretty sure Anet didn't ask Daesu or anyone else if they can or cannot add more heroes.

Speaking for myself, I don't mind - for example I almost always play with another person and we both put 3 heroes each. Curiously we have never added more than 2 rits or 2 mesmers.

I doubt they will add generic heroes, but most likely they will add at least enough to make 3 per profession.

You can have that now - just buy the mercenaries.

Every business in the entire world operates for their own self interest. If it appears that the business is operating in your self interest, its not the case. The business will expect a gain in the future. The gain could be monetary, or it could be psychic (Emotional, makes you feel good, etc...). Typically the gains from companies are monetary, however there are still a lot of psychic gains.

For instance, if NCSOFT/ANET provide you with additional 'free' content its likely because they want you to buy the next expansion pack that is not free. Or they want to increase their player base through establishing more satisfied customers (Hence increased profits). Every single business, and every single person only does what is in their best interest. In economics class this principal is called 'opportunity cost.'

In everyday life this is called greed, and its probably the best thing that can possibly happen for humanity. Greed actually causes maximized public interest. That's why when you get government involvement in something you typically end off with inefficiency. If people were not greedy, there would be no reason for people to even get out in bed, let alone to accomplish anything to benefit humanity.

That is the most retarded theory I've heard since trickle down economics.

Perhaps they will indeed find such a build or perhaps they would never find such a build. At this time, however, that is mere speculation.

It is pointless, to complain just based on pure speculation.

ANet can choose do that, but how would that earn them any extra money?

Basically when you let government involved you remove the balance to Greed which is the Fear of losing what you already own and/or simply if you lose it doesn't matter cause it wasn't yours in the first place and can always tax some more, which leads to inefficiency or wrong/insane decisions that aren't then subject to the natural selection of the global market.

Don't worry. The citizens of many western countries will, unfortunately, learn the truth of what he is saying in the next few years, when it will start to be impossible to borrow to consume more than what a country produces.

Well for one i'm not complaining i'm making valid points, myself i don't care either way i've never done something just because everyone else is.
And if you had actually read this discussion in full. You would know i have already pointed out on a few occasions that at this time it is speculation. But remember that where theres a will theres a way, people will discover an advantage to it it's just a matter of the time it takes for this to happen. It's been shown many times in GW and everywhere else, humans en-masse can out think what any one person can.

And as for the post about greed being the best thing, please remember to tell that to all the people who have lost someone just because someone got greedy and wanted to take what was not theirs. Greed isn't noble it's a cancer of the human civilisation.

If you want to have an economics debate, the Off-Topic forum is available.


You and just about all other purchasers of mercenary heroes who've chimed in have gone on the record as saying that vanity was the primary motive. Why would that be significantly impacting Anet's revenue?


You don't see an issue with that?

>_>

Maybe they will or maybe they won't. It is pointless to speculate on this at this time.

I didn't say "significantly".

It is a FUN factor to offer this in the store for people who like experimenting on hero builds, whether this would result in finding a better build than it is possible without merc heroes, nobody can say for sure at this time. So there is no obvious advantage to merc heroes at this time.

There is no reason why ANet can't charge us extra for a new fun feature.

Isn't "fun" the point of the game? Isn't "fun" the point of new content, new stuff? So if they decide to start charging money for any additional "fun" feature, we should shrug it off? At what point does charging for the "fun" change the game from free-to-play to pay-to-play?

We're (supposed to be) discussing the advantage at stake and whether or not it's enough to call MH unacceptable. I personally feel that PvE is already on the easy side and there is little to gain when you compare heavily homogenized parties to other seven hero team builds. For $45, you'd really need to do a lot of work before you can say the investment has paid off.

But I haven't heard much response from my point about game balancing other than "it's too hard". As a ranger, I'm really at a disadvantage in PvE. Why are my skills so slow, underpowered and difficult if not harmful to use? Why is the ritualist so much better and can even use my most powerful elite to greater effect? As an elementalist, why do my spells have to respect armor while other professions outright ignore it?

So instead of throwing weight on the other side of the scale to level things off, let's level the real playing field: skills.

No because it is an extension of what already exists in the game - heroes.

If the mercenary heroes could use PvE-only skills while regular heroes couldn't, that would be an obvious advantage. But since mercenary heroes behave like already existent heroes (other than appearance/names) I don't see how it is an advantage.

For example the introduction of profession agnostic PvE-only skills in EotN was a much bigger departure and gave a much bigger advantage to the players that owned/own EotN over those that didn't/don't.

Yet, everyone just assumes all players own EotN - EotN is canon, mercenary heroes aren't.

Why is that? Both were created by Anet after all.

Other than the fact one was available as a boxed product and the other isn't, both in essence are game enhancers and extend the amount of game time.

Additionally, full parties of the same profession can be recreated in game without mercenary heroes in case they confer any advantage in terms of killing/completion speed. I can't simply ignore that you can party with other people in this game.

For example the BMP offer weapon skins that can't be recreated in game, but offer no advantage in terms of killing speed.

Where is the line drawn then?

The line is drawn if something confers a killing/completion speed advantage that can't be recreated in game by any other means.

A weapon that exceeded max damage found in game, for example. An inscription that exceeded the game status.

What about new professions/and or skills?
I'm a bit more concerned with that. Something that extends/improve current content is alright. Something that changes existent content is much more worrisome and depends of how it is implemented. Ursan Blessing and Shadow Form (still a problem) comes to mind. On the other hand prophecies mobs always had big problems dealing with professions like paragons, for example. I for myself would just buy the profession and the slot to make the character since a few hundred hours of game play seem decent.

Would I rather that everything that is in the online store was free?
Sure.

But as I said in a previous post, there is no harm in charging for something that adds game play value to the game.

The game was supposed to have a new campaign every 6 months, so you would be paying something like $100 a year or $8.33 a month. The advantage over traditional pay to play MMORPG is that you were free to make the investment at any time and if you decided to take a break for a few months and then return you wouldn't be competitively hindered.

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It would also be fun if after all these fights over here Anet would just turn up on the 6th birthday and said "Surprise, 2 merc heroes slots for everyone!". Would be nice to have all my 10 chars available.

The game has always been free-to-play. But they can always charge for new fun feature or content. Costumes are fun too but they are not free.

At least the extra feature/content payments are optional, unlike traditional subscription-based MMOs.

Free-to-play excuse everytime is a bit easy though... I mean , why didn't we get paying content then . I'm sure there would have been less problems if we had to pay 5.99 for some missions or to unlock some arena instead of just to have some flashy costume or useless hero skin ( by that , i mean something that's gonna be fun 10mn and that's all....)...

The bonus mission pack was good and they still managed to fix abuse of that by dedicating weapons. Why didn't they continue with that ....

It keeps coming up, value, advantage and finally honesty.

If anet had said this is there plan that they would use microtransactions to fund development after they stopped with EoTN then it would be a different issue. Firstly, they do not need the money. NCSoft is loaded and fronting them fully, all this money does is justify that they can use some resource that is sitting there doing squat.

'Development' is the issue, content over cosmetics, over advantage over cost. Over priced items in the shop and no real content excluding their marketing plan WiK/WoC (which is a methtod to generate interest to migrate customers from GW1 to GW2) is the issue.

By the way, this game is not FREE TO PLAY. I paid to play this freaking game.

Silver

Are you really bringing this whole debate down to whether or not you think the 'best' mh team setup is better than the 'best' hero setup? You dont see anything wrong with that?

And yes, it does give you an advantage. The advantage is not the 7 proff MH setup that is better than the 7 hero setup. The advantage is being able to do more in pve and have more flexibility and options with your teams in pve just because you payed $45.

Forget this arbitrary comparison of which teams are better than others. MH will always provide and advantage because people with them have access to team setups non-paying players will never have. Prime example: doing DoA with heroes, you cant bring the much needed 5 mesmers it wants without paying

So people make a bunch of pve necros over and over just to fill their party with them?
That sounds like one hell of a chore. And the benefit you get from it is? Some ecto? Can't you just speedclear with people then? And is playing like this even fun for you guys?

In the time you need to train all those necros i can collect all the materials for a vabbi by doing DoA two times.

The guy can actually do it with 4 mesmers as well.



And next week that guy decides to try with only 2 mesmers and still does it.

Or in a couple of months there are changes to skills and the ideal setup is different or Shadow Form is nerfed or more heroes are added or whatever.

Or you could bring a friend.

People spent 4.5 years without doing DoA (these players complaining never played with friends/guildies/pugs) but now they are worried that some can do it in 2/3 of the time because they payed $20.

I'm going to vanquish an area later today. There is a good chance that nobody in my alliance wants to do that area as well. As for pugs, has there ever been a random pug for a vanquish other than the last few days with zaishen vanquish quests? It's not so easy to make a full team of heroes to make any sort of team setup. Even if you could get 8 players together, the chance is very small that they have the setup you were looking for in 7 heroes (e.g. 4 mesmers etc).

Why do you need 4 mesmers?

All these situations where a bunch of the same profession is the best choice (and for a vanquish 4 mesmers doesn't make a difference in speed) just means that profession is overpowered and/or the other professions are underpowered and Anet should actually take measures to correct that.

In the end you will just have that area vanquished in a similar time to a hero with 8 merc heroes.

On the other hand if a guy has 4 mesmer heroes but not a shadow form assassin he/she will not reach that 1:30 hm run time.

On the other hand if a guy has a shadow form assassin but not 4 mesmer heroes he/she will not reach that 1:30 hm run time.

We all know the game it's always rebalanced. Buff and Nerf happens from time to time. And players enjoy the so called overpowered profession/build before it gets nerf. Who knows what is going through anet's mind tmr? Tomorrow, it may not be 4 mesmer that is imba, but a 7 rangers B/P team that let you finish UW in 15 mins.

Again, if all they want is skin/bring their alts, just limit the number of heroes of each profession.

I'm actually liking the MH's. After returning to the game after about a 12 month absence to find my accoutns been hacked, all may characters and heroes apart from my Assassin and Elementalist have been stripped of ALL thier gear I am basicalyl having to start again from scratch.

The reason I like the MH's so much is that I am finding there a MUCH less human players in the game than there used to be. Time was you get a PUG for pretty much any mission or elite area, now your lucky if there's more than a dozen players in any outpost. So I've fallen back on Hero's and MH's. I don't think it confers any kind of real advantage over standard heroes, assuming you dont have 10 character slots all filled with the same class, I personally have 1 character of each class, so its more aeshtetic than anything else. Yes it means I can have an additional hero of each class I still wipe as much as I did using Hero/Hench combinations, ok maybe a little less than I did but I wouldnt say its a massive difference.

I think it would have been a bad move if there had still been the number of players as there used to be as it would essentially cut out the need for you to group to do things. With the drastically reduced player base I am seeing, its no real problem.

This is, of course, just my opinion.

Sure I have GWAMM and 50/50 on one account and almost there on a second account, I know what's possible in PvE. My point is not that it is hard to make a 7 hero team setup, the vanquish example was just one example of a situation where the "oh you can make any team you want with 8 players" argument is really short-sighted.

And who are you to decide what we are and what we are not getting?

The topic was reopened for sensible debate and examining the issue from all sides. You don't have to participate if all it boils down to for you is "QQ."

We don't expect merc heroes to be given away for free. No, that wouldn't be fair to people who already paid for them. But I don't see the issue in giving us more heroes, or a primary-changeable hero for free. Make them/it ugly as sin for all I care. Then the mercs would be truly cosmetic. If those who paid for mercs have a problem with that, then they have to admit they did pay for a significant advantage that's more than just vanity.

Let me start by saying that this is a TL;DR type situation. That is, I didn't bother to read the rest of the thread (or the old one) before replying.

I think that creating a Mercenary from a temp PvP character may have been an oversight. But, in the long run, I don't think it matters, and I like the idea in general. I think Mercenary Heroes were both a nod to long-time players and a way to generate some needed cash.
Note to NCsoft - how about a 5-slot bundle for those of us who bought a 3-slot and may now want to get all 8.

It has always been possible to have a team of Humans of the same profession. Most reasonably good team builds can steamroller through most GW1 content already, so I can only see this as making a marginal difference.

Overall, I think the continuing "watering down" of the RPG aspect of GW1 is a bad thing for GW1, and I hope it doesn't affect GW2 too much.

I think the term "income" is more accurate than "profit". Any adult, not living at home mooching off their parents, needs some sort of income to buy food, clothing, and shelter. Businesses need income too - to pay their bills (massive server farms and network connections don't come cheap) and to pay their employees.
It's nice to live in some dream world where nobody needs to make money and everyone does things for "free", but that's just not reality. Even those companies that supposedly add "free" content, are probably doing it mostly to ensure the long-term loyalty of customers and/or sweeten the deal to attract new customers.

Not specifically. My fears for the direction of GW2 started way back when they started to "kiddify" things by adding stuff like Party Animal titles. My fear for GW2 is that the RPG elements may take a back seat to the hack'n'slash or frat-boy elements.

wait what? Worried about doing DOA 2/3 time? can you please rephrase that. Because why does someone worry about doing DOA 2/3 time if they never did it at all? I"m just trying to understand what you saying". I"ll respond once you do. I"M one of them "complainers" of DOA with ppl/guid/pugs.


also a few pages back. BMP http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild...s_Mission_Pack

People must be sup'ing up there heroes or you guys are more HARDCORE then me for heroes. I'll just toss my heroes whatever drops i get and do fine in game. What ever max dmg item i get i give them. or some Green Drop i have in storage. I can't see how the BMP is some sort of advantage. I rather use blue collect items then BMP and having to search/buy inscriptions for them.




To me i'm just seeing it as people want to steam roll over some area in PvE 20 mins faster then 5 mins faster. or farm something faster to make a buck faster.

Storage panes aren't free, but character slots are better value. That was the part about storage panes which was and is ludicrous.

As for MH, the QQ is both funny and sad. I mean, really people, come on.

And how is giving everyone generic heroes so they can make the parties they want giving "the unique ability to create heroes with my own ideas of appearance" to others free? Mercs will still be the only way to do this. Like you say, you didn't buy Mercs for the mechanics but for appearance.

Again, we do not want free Mercs (as in, having a hero with the appearance of another char).

Flexibility doesn't imply an advantage. Someone who bought the costumes has more flexibility to change his appearance, so by your argument that already grants an in-game advantage from money?

If that is your definition then everything in the store is an advantage, pet unlock set, skill unlock, costumes, xunlai storage pane, ability to change character appearance/name, etc.

Nobody has proven something that can be done through MH but cant be done without them. 5 mesmers means fewer rits and necros than you can bring in the team, with just using standard heroes. Are you saying that rit and necro heroes are always inferior to mesmer heroes? Because many people would argue against that. Every class has its strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, people have completed DoA HM without using MH and without using cons, so who says 5 mesmers is much needed?

Nah. They could easily set it to "No more than X Heroes with the same primary Profession in the party" and not affecting the human and Henchman portion of the party. (in fact, now that I think about it, I'd rather like the idea of a limit of no more than *1* Hero of each primary Profession allowed in the party at one time)

Character slots aren't better value. Major pain in the ass to be constantly switching characters to pass things to and from the mule (which, of course, has to be done through the more limited storage space you're left with due to the lack of extra panes).

45 slots (or 50 if you count the small equipment pack.. I don't) vs 20 slots, for the same price.... yeah, I know where the value is there.

Let's be realistic here, how often do you use the stuff on your mules? Yeah, me neither. Mostly they're for storing materials/weapons/mods and stackables like party/drunk stuff. Plenty of space on the 5 normal panes for passing back and forth to mules.... if your mules are on the same account. If they're on another account, it's just a simple trade.

Hello, this is an interesting thread to read.

There is an "on paper" advantage inasmuch as I currently have more necromancer heroes than you do, if you have not purchased any mercenary slots.

There is no "practically applied" advantage inasmuch as I didn't have trouble shredding through PvE like wet paper BEFORE I added a merc hero. Now, after I added a merc hero, I have not noticed an increase in the speed with which I shred through PvE.

The mercenary heroes change didn't provide me with NEARLY as much advantage as the 7-hero update did. Having 7 heroes is what made me ridiculously powerful. Having an additional necro is moot, really, now that I have 7 heroes.


You may ask why I made the extra necro then? Because she's been an alt of mine for years, and I'm pleased that she gets to come along with me now, instead of being bored and useless on the character select screen.

This is my general feeling on the mercanaries. It's more so that 7 heroes have made my teams more efficent. Mercanaries have just allowed me to change up the look of my party(sorry Norgu, my mesmer looks far more fabulous then you do).