Use Characters as Henchies

I wish that we could take our other characters along as henchies.
The characters would still have to open the game when they are selected as primary tho.
for instance, I have a warrior who has just done searing, I would like to take him along with me with my ranger who is wading thru yaks bend. if i choose the warrior as my prime he still has to go thru all of the quests and such as usual.

well thisisa new idea! I can see it working sorta provided there is a level restriction to the party leader, or area. To prevent a player from using their big strong characters to help a little one out.

However.... it could be alot harder to impliment then you'd think.

Given allt he monsters and AI controlled enemies are "job sets" that likely have a preset of skills laid out for each one, and each have their own specific section in the AI. So, using your own players as henchies means the AI has to be dynamic to handle a much larger range of variety in skill possibilities which could confuse it, or make it act "oddly".

It's a neat idea but, well I think the actual application could be tougher then expected...

why is that? you character is already stored on their servers, all that would be needed is to have the game look up your for character's and display them. they would/could use the last saved set up you gave them only . you would not be able to control them.
and also people already take level 20 characters with them to help them finish quests and such, all i see is having the server look up your character(s) display them and make them selectable. the AI would e simple too, they would follow the AI of you primary class, and do use your secondary class randomly. or even better.
say you have a warrior necro. the first thing an AI would do is use its buffs/debuffs and then go from ranged to mêlée depending on the equipped weapon. judging by how well balanced the game is now, i would say that the AI would e the hardest aspect to work out but Arena Net has done a stellar job so far, I think they could handle it.

There are several hundred skills. Personally... I doubt the AI script handles ALL of them. Atleast for the possibility of all of them as a contingency on a single character (any combination of them, meaning). The rest of the AI would work fine, but the character could easily end up conflicting itself and end up notusing alot of its skills because another is "more important" int he AI.

It's a nice idea, and could work, but there are alot of issues with the AI that would have to be resolved before anything like it could be done - and right now, the AI is well... it needs help.

The AI script is perfectly capable of handling all skill combinations, though just how WELL is debatable. The evidence of this? The Mirror Image at Augury Rock.

you guys make good points. what im thining now is that if a person knows he/she is going to use thier character as a henchie, then he /she would customize that character for that purpose.
so with a necro/ranger, i would give it a good bow, and all debuff's. one would have to mix and match tho and tinker to see what makes the best combinations. i mean this is a skill based game. the more i think of this the more I like it.

But every monster, every Henchman, has a single class. Maybe the AI of the game considers debuffs more important than attacking, so just sits around debuffing everything. Maybe a Mo/W has Sever Artery equipped, so the AI decides that instead of healing, he should run into battle. There are too many problems, and people will make skillsets to try and abuse them.

this is a freekin awesome ideal. i would totally love it. it would make henchies so much cooler. make it work GW. thats all i gotta say.

One way to get around the AI of two seperate professions would be to set up the character you want to use as a henchman with skills from one profession and when you pick that char as a henchman you have to choose one of their professions to use so they only have skills from one profession to worry about.

I would not be opposed to the idea as long as there's absolutely no specific benefit of using henchmen over the NPCs. No gaining levels, no extra loot, no quests, etc.

Well, maybe the guild cape.

One way to implement this is to have designated skill sets for each combination, 6 times 6 is 36, minues the 6 which are single class without a secondary so you have 30. This way you can select your characters as henchies and they would have the lvl, armor, weapons, and certain bonuses available to them wile using specified skills just like henchies.

Personally, I think this is overpowered and would created a great deal of lag, characters images are loaded for all original characters (ones you make) so having all your characters selectable as henchies would be a bit broken, and even if you had thier lvl scaled they would still be exponentially more powerful then normal henchies who only have 1 class of skills and crap for armor. I think to keep the balance of power and for simple management reasons, this should not be implemented. This isn't a console RPG where you use 3 characters or more on your own, PvE and PvP are ment to be enhanced with group play, and your henchies should never compare with real players for power (although sadly, many players are much worse then henchmen).

It is a novel idea, but unless they make this playable offline at some point, I don't want to see this implemented.