The effects of Nightfall and Heroes on social inclusion...

[DrMadCat]

One part of me is enjoying the Heroes, whilst the other part is sitting back and worried. It seems to me that the Heroes in Nightfall are possibly taking away the aspect of social inclusion for PUGs (Pick Up Groups). Whilst this is early days, and Heroes are all the rage, I have to remember that people are currently in awe at the new Heroes and eventually will understand they will never replace a human players ability to act in a smarter way.

When it comes to skill chaining, the Heroes are severely lacking in acceptable decisions most of the time. It is impossible to set up a specific chain build, and hope that the Hero will execute the build effectively. MMs with Death Nova are decent, but in no way does the Hero MM execute a complex management if it's undead army. Also, manually controlling them is not possible, as micro managing multiple heroes and your own toon will lower performance, whilst increase stress.

But my concern is with the attitude of players on a whole. I have been called a "noob", a "kid", and most of all I have been told that "heroes are better than players". To an extent, I agree, depending on the person. What I don't agree is the way the insults were directed at me. I simply expressed a point several times in missions. I said "Hopefully soon human PUGs will be able to form parties instead of Heroes". That comment directed nearly everyone insulting me. It doesn't take much to notice that going into a mission staging area yields nearly everyone on a group of 4 or more (heroes and henchmen), and you may get the odd 4 or so people out of the whole thing LFG. What worries me is that right now, no matter how far I have got (almost completed Nightfall), I have only been able to group with 3 PUGs (not full ones, at that). It took me about 10 minutes to form a 3 or 4 man team, and after that there were just the odd player joining then leaving straight after.

Nightfall is mainly PVE, which I also should understand, but the thing is transferring to other campaigns. You have Heroes in Cantha and Tyria.

So I am looking at the reason why people are choosing Heroes over other players. I've come up with a few answers to why PUGs are not possible to form, and socially players are being seperated.

1. New Feature Rage

2. Heroes use whatever skills unlocked, including Elites. This means you can have a pure healing Hero monk early on that does perform slightly better than your average player, due to being classed as a "twink".

3. Go it alone / Lonewolf play style (Heroes encourages this type of behavior).

4. Rushing.

5. Heroes are more controllable than other players.

So all said and done, I can't think of any other reasons right now, even though I have thought of hundreds while playing. I just think that Heroes MAY possibly cause a social seperation/exclusion, as well as Nightfall being a new Campaign, I expect to see players even more broken apart/seperated than before with the introduction of Heroes. Players are taking an attitude of including Henchmen as fillers for their Heroes, whereas they could at least help others who like to group with other players, simply...well...group!

Right now it appears to be full scale, and I am sure it'll cool down, but I just see a permanent seperation here with this new "feature".

I just figured I'd share my thoughts on the PVE aspect of Nightfall, how I see it, and concerns that shouldn't go completely unnoticed.

Heroes are sure fun, but everyone shouldn't take on the attitude I've seen so far in Nightfall. As one fellow said, "My heroes are better than noob pugs like u".

Well if Heroes are better than me, I guess every player who ever grouped in a PUG is a "noob" by that guys opinion. Guy even tried to explain to me his "MM" works better than any player controlling them. I don't think so, as BoTM is rarely used, and heal area? PFFFFt...The Hero MM can't keep them alive as long as a human players, I've tested it thoroughly. In fact, IIRC he used healing breeze on one of his minions...though I can't confirm that as I am not 100% sure.

Just my opinion.

PS. Could have put this in the Hero section, but due to this being mostly about the players attitude, and the way they perceive the heroes, I think it's best off here.

[oakwine]

Give it some time to settle down. I think the biggest factor right now is the novelty of the heroes feature.

[arrex]

A long interesting treatise
- The key thing from my perspective is heroes are required (or one of them anyway) for a number of quests/missions. Later on having low level heroes is a handicap esp if its compulsory to bring em. Thats my thought on why people are basically running around with them leveling them as fast as possible.
-Geh I didn't touch Koss for a while then suddenly needed his level 2 warrior-ness for a mission. Uff! It was ugly! :cry:

[Aksharack]

I've met alot of people who seemed really in love with their heros. I think there is just a touch of ego to it. Many of them spent alot of time equipping their hero's. (Unlike me. I just realized my lvl 20 Koss is still using a starter sword. Doh!) They have become personally attached. I hear much talk along the lines of "Well, My olias can X".

I suspect this will become a permanent part of the fabric of Guild wars.. Especially Hero monks. People may not trust a Human E/Mo, but that monk they designed themselves they will trust....:undecided:

[LagunaCid]

meh. I always henched when I could. PuGs are just too slow...
Heroes are an extra flavour.

[Toge]

Heroes - and henchmen for that matter - don't take away anything from game. If you want to have fun with PUGging you way through game, go ahead and advertise LFG in local chat. If you're another type of person, who genuinely likes to play mission for fun and not for progress(!), you might join a PvE guild and help players there. Or powerplay with your friends.

I've had mostly random experiences with PUGs. You usually get to know the signs of bad PUG. They have underleveled players, always lacking Monk, may leave during game at any point for any reason imaginable. They might start asking questions (nothing wrong in asking questions) during game and lag behind.

Heroes solve many of the problems of bad PUG. Now it's up to YOU to make your team work. It is YOU who pick the skills for every character, set up armor and weapons, alter positioning and stances and even decide when it's appropriate time to fire off skills. Nothing is random and AI is predictable - for the good and for the bad.

There are three reasons to use human players:
1. If the task you're doing is simply not doable with henchmen (somewhat less likely now with heroes)
2. If you're certain that human team of yours will perform better than henchmen, or
3. If you don't care about results of your playing (ie: play for fun, for socializing...)

[DrMadCat]

Toge, I think you are forgetting another reason for "using" human players. The social setting/environment involved in the whole thing. It's not about not caring or caring how you play, it's a global thing involved in many online games, especially MMORPGs (The Lonewolf debate). As I have explained, my concerns are mostly social based and seperation between players into alternate groups.

Random pugs are in fact, random. Some of us like that, others don't (perhaps like yourself, who likes to be in control with your Heroes/Henchmen). Fair enough, but isn't Guild Wars supposed to be banding together an online game where players interact with each other?

As each campaign gets released, the players are divided between Islands/Maps/Campaigns/Whatever you want to call it. Heroes, IMHO, could be classed as causing a secondary dividing with the release of Nightfall. So far, luckily not many people have got their characters over to later in Tyria/Cantha, and so groups are fairly the same right now, but I have already seen "Tank LFG with lvl 20 monk hero!". I was kicked out, to make room for this tank and his Hero. Once again, randomness of PUGs. So instead of saying "OMG I got kicked out", I just sit back and think of the future and how events will unfold.

I may be wrong, or I may be right, but I am taking a guess that I feel is most accurate, and Heroes are going to impact all 3 campaigns in a very large manner, on the social level between players. Disbanded or Banded, who knows, but it's a huge change and I hope ANET are aware of the consequences (If it turns out to change for the worse).

So as someone who plays the game for the Randomness of PUGs, I can't help but feel kicked between the legs so far. Perhaps enabling Heroes in other campaigns is a mistake, and just leave good old Nightfall for its own PVE/Alternate Party solution. Who knows the result, but this is on a mass scale.

It is very difficult to group in Nightfall so far, and even so more when trying to get a full group (almost impossible I'd say in the random factor), and to finally conclude my concerns, if this spreads to other campaigns, it could be a serious problem (or not).

Either way, I'll still try to form those Random PUGs I've come to love so much, with success or failure.

[Arienrhode]

i'm loving it. finally the ability to play by myself or a few friends and have everything I need to do well with AI! sorry but I despise pugs and sometimes it was equally frustrating hench'n it in the past.

[Katscratched]

I still play with people, especially my guildies and friends, but for my first time through Elona, most of my outtings are Hero/Hench. Why? I like to randomly farm up points, and I want to do what I want when I want. My heroes never have to go to the bathroom, and when I Err7, I know I haven't screwed anyone over (except maybe myself.) This is how I did the majority of Factions. I'm sure once things start getting a little more advanced, I'll play with MORE people, but for now, I'm loving the option to not need to, and to get to take advantage of all that faction I sunk into skills.

[Servant of Kali]

I have the most fun taking my heroes and then joining PUG :) In Factions i get comments like "wow is that a MM hero?" etc :P

[Almas Darksoul]

I personally find that 90% of the pugs I have ever played with aren't anywhere near as good as heroes. Also, a large portion of my guildies/friends weren't as capable of rushing missions as I was - I tend to play very dangerously in some missions, and it is even easier now because by seeing the energy of my monks (and my own) I know when I can fall back easily.

If I play like this with other players in the group, miscommunication is easily possible. It is fairly easy to run away from a fight, but if someone doesn't hear me they risk death or wasting of monks energy, both of which will make the next fight slower and harder.

That said, in one mission I had trouble with I ended up forming a group between the three people who were in the area. After 10+ attempts resulting in failure solo, we completed it the second time (the first time mainly failing due to one of the players crashing. Ah well).

So... I don't play with random pugs because chances are they'll suck, and I don't play with players who are good while rushing missions because they can't adapt to my PvE playstyle while henchies will easily do as they are told.
Plus I liked telling my guild every plot twist that occured before they got there.

[FireballX]

I control my hero builds, and therefore their quality.

Given that my hero AI isn't too great, as long as I give them a well-defined role with a simple build they're pretty good at it. Interrupt ranger, fire elementalist spamming fire skills, all sorts of warriors, illusion mesmer, etc. Simple builds around simple skills (loading stuff like Auspicious Incantation on a hero is asking for trouble), and the heroes are excellent. Having a prot monk on hand for an on-call Aegis or Martyr is extremely useful. Same for a ritualist to put up spirits on call, stuff like that isn't hard to manage.

I try to do missions by finding one other guy, loading 6 heroes, and heading into the mission, since the camaderie is pretty nice.

A 'perfect' solution would be building a PuG as normal, and if slots can't be filled, heroes are placed appropriately.

[Broken Symmetry]

I agree with the sentiments of the original poster. I've always loved random PUGs for the surprises they bring, both pleasant and unpleasant. PvE in Guild Wars is easy enough to get through even with poorly-organized PUGs. In Nightfall it has become almost impossible to create a PUG. Sometimes I'm afraid that with the introduction of heroes, Anet has decidedly made Guild Wars from an MMO into a single-player/2-player-co-op game, with some added on multi-player part (HA, GvG), very similar to most console games.

For this reason, it wouldn't surprise me that at some time in the future, in certain new (or even existing) PvE elements, and certainly in most PvP parts, heroes will not be allowed anymore. Or this may just be wishful thinking...

[Hukka]

It must be hard for these who use to spam "LFG mission" and then expect someone else know how to do it + bonus for them, so they wouldnt have to think anything. Also these who used to go afk middle of mission or just attempt to leech mission somehow will have hard time. :azn:

I don't miss PUGs one bit and heros wount stop me from playing with guild mates.

[Khaunshar]

Gentlemen, welcome to the "new" style of gaming, where MMORPG stands for "play in a world with lots of audience for our roxxor-skills, but play alone"

Its a trend seen on almost every message board of new and upcoming titles in abundance.... people, when given the choice, rather play on their own than group up. I'd guess at least 75% of all GW players would play all alone if they could.

I think its a somewhat disappointing trend, but one nonetheless. Heroes are just another step in that direction.... massive solo content, solo dungeons and solo missions are happening all over the MMO genre too.

[Elruid]

Maybe it's a phase after the "group or die" MMOs that have been so prevalent in the past years where you can't achieve anything without being in a team all the time. The worst culmination of which are the raid-centric games where you need a huge mass of people organized, ranging from 30 to a hundred.

For me, the Heroes have proven to be great, I don't have nearly all of them yet, but I tried playing with my two accounts together the first time last night.
It was a hoot.
Double Olias MM with my Paragon and Monk, the monk was left behind since I'm not THAT good at multitasking. Lucky for me the Heroes performed awesomely in every regard. Felt funny though playing a full custom build all alone. I mean being able to customise all eight members of the party.
Have to try other crazy builds in the future.

[Lord Navarro]

Heroes present me with an interesting alternative I have not been able to implelent for a while. They allow me to play a non-standard build and still have a reliable team to play it with. If I did not have a MM or SS build for a PUG my Necro would be quickly booted from the group. Now I can use whatever I want and have 3 peeps that will play with me, no matter what. I find it frustrating that players only seem to want certain builds for particular missions. This became common practice after Factions came out. Now I have a bit more freedom to experimant and that is not a bad thing.

[halfthought]

totally agree, normally, I dislike pugs, but pugs increase replayabilty, and dispite how much you hate the whammo names "I did you mom last night" it IS making your mission experience more interesting, personally, I think heroes should be limited to 3 PER GROUP, not 3 PER PERSON

[Evil Death]

I think heroes should be limited to 3 PER GROUP, not 3 PER PERSON

And how exactly would you achieve that? The only feasible method is to have the team leader only bring heroes. Cue many ragequits as the leader now has to reveal four really good skill bars and the right mix of heroes and the right weapons etc etc.

[ellsa]

Are Heroes good for the game? Well, lets take a look at the future of Guild Wars:

Every 6 months there is a new campaign. But the player base does not increase by the same amount. When Prophecies was the only game in town, there were many many people milling about looking for PUGs. And there was much rejoicing.

Then Factions. Tyria became barren. For the poor guy that didn't buy Factions, there is nobody to play with... too bad there were no good Heroes to help him.

Time passed and things settled out. Since there were 2 campaigns, there were twice as many towns to hang out in. This means when you got to a mission town, there weren't as many people to PUG with. Monks started to become more scarce because there were less people around overall, but the game was still manageable.

Then Nightfall. Everyone rushes to Elona. Of course, because Heroes are new, people will want to use them. That will settle out. There will be more people to PUG with, especially as more players get further in the game. (I know it sounds crazy, but SOME of us are still on the noob island).

Again, people in Tyria and Cantha have NO people to play with.... those poor people would really benefit from the help of Heroes.

What will happen when things settle out after the birth of Nightfall?? Probably the same that happened that happened after Factions. People will still be in the cities looking for PUGs. BUT... the player base will be spread even thinner- spanning accross THREE continents now. How long will it take to get a player monk in town so that you can start your mission?

I think Heroes were introduced to the game as a strategy by Anet to keep the game playable as the player base is spread further and further out accross multiple campaigns.

Lets say that 10 people play Guild Wars, worldwide. (I know it's more, but I'm just making up a number)

With 10 people playing Guild Wars:

Prophecies only = 10 players in game to make a PUG. Should be easy enough.

Prophecies + Factions = 5 players in each campaign to make a PUG. Hmmm... well, we can make a group of 5 and grab a few henchies I guess....

Prophecies + Factions + Nightfall = 3 players in each campaign to make PUGs. Oh dear, only THREE people here to make a group?

See where this is going?? As we are spread out, Heroes help fill in the gaps.

And a completely separate point: Nightshift workers (like myself) and overseas players will FINALLY be able to do missions when most of the player base is sleeping.

I think ANet did a really good job of introducing Heroes now. We really needed them.

[Aerolor]

I :heart: heroes. I often hench simple things anyway, so they're just an improvement. You can only bring 3, so I still have to either hench the rest or find another person. PUGs are fun, but just playing with other ppl, whether they're random or not and however many there are, is the real meat of online games. I'm happy to just message with my guildies while we do our own seperate quests. Anyway, it was really getting too hard to find monks. Now finding 2 or 3 monks is easy! No more waiting an hour to find a group! It's a dream come true... :starry:

[Viri]

I totaly agree with DrMadCat. Heroes have changed the game into SPOG - Single Player Online Game. I hate that but there's nothing i can do about it.

1 more thing - now you have to farm 4 times more (cool equipment for me and 3 henchies) than before if not more.

[FireballX]

I totaly agree with DrMadCat. Heroes have changed the game into SPOG - Single Player Online Game. I hate that but there's nothing i can do about it.

1 more thing - now you have to farm 4 times more (cool equipment for me and 3 henchies) than before if not more.

1. The MMO component wasn't really strong in GW to begin with. Wasn't an MMO, more like an online lobby where you go before you hit enter mission.

2. Give your heroes things you would have vendored. Unless you're gonna blow a few hundred plat on them.

[Desires]

Umm Heros>Pugs
Here are some reasons why

Hero Monks

Don't use healing breeze
Have energy mangment
Have AI relfexs
Don't ***** at the Warriors.
Don't ***** at Ele
Don't ***** at Assassin
Don't ***** Well you see where this is going

Hero Warriors
Will actauly agro instead of stnading with their fingure up their *** waiting for someone else to.
Don't Bring mending
Don't Frenzy-->healing sig
Don't ***** at the monks
Doesn't spam their health
Doesn't spam I'm wielding a Surrendering FDS of Fortitude (Totaly pro ain't it)
Basicly doesn't start pissing contests.

[DrMadCat]

Viri:

Exactly my point. Guild Wars is heading in the wrong way. Let's take Diablo II for example, 8 players max per game, but often people do "runs" together. There was, however, quite a lot of solo players who joined random games and just did runs on their own, or played the game in other acts. This worked for Diablo II, as the game was not "online only", and had a max of 8 players per game anyway.

Guild Wars, on the other hand, is a hybrid between Action RPG and Online RPG (Or MMORPG if you want to call it that, but coming from several MMORPGs, I can't see GW as being similar). So, what have we learned from D2? Guild Wars passed over 8 players max per mission, something similar, yet the game is a lot different. My point is that it's not acceptable to join a group and break away from it and do your own thing. It's considering bad game ethics, and self-centered behavior.

Guild Wars was NEVER designed to be a SPOG, the instancing with 8 player missions were meant to be followed by simple rules and objectives. The Mission objectives are static, and each players ultimately has the same static objective in the end.

What does this show us? Guild Wars is turning into a SPOG (As Viri said), in a game world that doesn't really support such gameplay..or should I say, didn't. Heroes are indeed changing the way people deal with each other on a social, and ethical level. The PVP aspect remains quite sturdy, but for us PVE random PUG players, we need to start banding together, because there are now different groups of people than ever before. What I mean is that with seperation of a social environment, comes the breakdown of communication between players. Think of it like a Guild, or Clan, except we have the "Go it alone" group, the "Random PUG" group, the "Guildies" group, etc etc. It appears quite clearly, the "Random PUG" group is being replaced by mostly "Go it alone" so far in Nightfall. It's already begun to spread to Cantha and Tyia.

What is this teaching us as a whole? To become more and more distant from each other? The "Guildies" who like to play with Guild mates are excluded from this, but definitely the ones who refuse to PUG because they believe their Heroes are better (Go it alone group), are socially excluding themselves. Please excuse my randomness of using D2 as an example.

Ellsa:

Thank you Ellsa. You make some good points. Can't really say much on what you've said, but a good informative read.

Aerolor:

Heroes are very practical, I must admit, but using them to replace players is perhaps the wrong way to go. But you know what, as you said, you just msg your Guildies and thus you're still being communicative and social. But when you think about it, Guild Wars isn't supposed to be used as a chat room only while you just play the game on your own. Also, don't forget that thinking Heroes as a replacement for human monks is only going to put those human monks in a more rarer class. They will think "Oh well, they've got Hero monks, and I doubt they'll agree 100% with my skill setup". One simple mistake from the poor human monk will result in even more insults, and people clinging to their beloved Heroes. Is this really what we want Guild Wars to become? Anti-social Wars?

FireballX:

But once in mission, what's the point in using server bandwidth when all you've got are henchmen and heroes? Once in-game, it becomes an 8 player mission/whatever. What should Guild Wars become, more Henchmen/Hero based during these missions or more human based? I know what I'd prefer.

Desires:

Technically not. PUG is based on human groups forming, thus the idea of Artificial Intelligence becoming pugs would basically be wrong. Although I won't really argue against this, just pointing out that Heroes aren't exactly Pick Up Groups.

------

Thanks again for anyone who reads this. Much appreciated. All I am doing is trying to explain the social problems that await Guild Wars in future, especially in the PVE field.

[Spatzimaus]

I never bought Factions, and once it came out I stopped playing simply because PUGs became so hard to find, outside of a couple specific spots (ToA, for instance). But I came back for Nightfall, entirely because of the Hero concept.

Every profession has a few roles that could be easily done by a hero. To name one for each: pure healer Monk; Minion Master Necro; Interrupt Mesmer; Barrage Ranger; tanking Warrior; nuker Elementalist. In many of those cases, the roles could be done better by an AI hero than by a unskilled person, simply due to reaction time and their tendency to attack the leader's target. How much damage is lost when the Warrior (who's standing in the middle of a pack of enemies) can't figure out which one the rest of the group's targetting? Or when the interrupt guy is lagging and just can't activate his spells in time? Or when the nuker just refuses to target the right enemy?

This, ironically, frees the players up to play non-template builds. Want to be a Hydromancer? No problem. Bring three templated Heroes along, and you'll be fine. No one will complain "omgwtflolbbq water? u suxxorz! (BOOT)" Same goes for any other build that deviates from the publicly-perceived "optimum", which is usually anything but.

Note I said unskilled person. The better players are superior to a hero, no question. But how much better? Enough to spend hours waiting for a pickup group? The other night, I was in a PUG where once we had 5/8 people, we couldn't find any others within a few minutes, so we just grabbed three heroes and went. They were better than henchmen would have been, after all, and in the old days we'd have been waiting for an hour to find another Monk, for instance.

And let's face it: most PUG players aren't as good as the heroes. Many of the more "senior" players have joined guilds, and won't bother with random PUGs when they can team with people they know. Most of the pickup groups I've been in recently had at least one or two relatively new players, who made team-killing mistakes that even an AI wouldn't have done.

Heroes will never replace human players entirely. They don't maintain enchantments well, they don't chain spells together well, they have a tendency to move badly (get stuck on walls, wander into traps, stand too close to enemies), and their energy management leaves a bit to be desired. But they're a nice alternative, especially for the more boring support roles that it's hard to find players for.

Also, Heroes double as item storage. I recently looted a Victo's Axe, and until I sell it, I'm letting Koss hold it.

[FireballX]

It's about choice. You *can* adventure with heroes, you *can* try to organize a PuG, you *can* find a friendly PvE guild to do things with.

[shaarn]

PuGs and hero/henchmen groups are the same except the later has less dirty jokes. As for the hero system itself, a friend and I are both focusing on three seperate heros so we can make a very good eight person party whenever we want to.

[Kegman]

i think it would have to calm down, but if it didn't your whole group wout be dervish and paragon anyway right now. So that sucks but it shoud level out especially when they give us some hard areas to fight in.

[Kegman]

One thing to think about that i need confirmed is this: Do drops occur less frequently with heroes like they did with hench? I seem to be getting a lot of ****, but nothing good with pure heroes

[DrMadCat]

It's about choice. You *can* adventure with heroes, you *can* try to organize a PuG, you *can* find a friendly PvE guild to do things with.

Not a very detailed reply. Choice is the ability to do what one believes in a subjective manner. It is rarely made for other people, as each person is in control of their life. What this boils down to is right and wrong choices, for the individual, or in some cases a group (as in leadership, also based on group morals).

This then brings us to the right and wrong choices part. Some choices are wrong, some are right, but what one other may perceive as wrong, the subject may perceive as right.

So, if there's no definite answers, I guess we have to think about what we have right now. Let's focus on the objective side for a moment.

Anyhow, in PVP, you'll find most griefers and those who have builds have a certain understanding that their choices are wrong, but they still do it. In game ethics, griefing is wrong, and most griefers WANT to do the wrong thing by exploiting on a persons Right/Wrong beliefs. (An example)

If it's all about choice, then I guess EVERY play style is acceptable, whether it results in bad ethics, or good ethics. If this were true, then every MMORPG would crumble to nothing, but again games are held together. The players are what make an online game like it is today, and it is the reason why some games fall apart. It's all neat and stuff with Heroes, yeah, but think about how people are dividing themselves socially whilst playing the game. Online games are not meant for just chatting, they're meant to be played with others, that is why they are "games" and "online" in most cases. There are exceptions, however.

Heroes are, and will cause a problem within the games social system. PVP and PVE and entirely different things, but who said one should be less social based than the other?

[agentele]

They way I see it, pve fun is gone forever. No use of pve char in pvp. No more farming, so what you going to do: redo quest and misisons and waste endless hours killing foes for nothing. gg Anet gg .

[Sekia]

I have to say people find any reason to complain, I hate PuGs i'd rather play alone then with people who aren't nice and bail out at any giving time, And even in a good guild sometimes guildmates are busy so you cant always know they will be there.

And to Agentele you said redo quest and missions and "waste endless hours killing foes for nothing"

Isn't that what farming is anyway?

People wanted improved AI and now people are complaing about how humans aren't needed anymore, Then find some good friends, Probably on forums insted of ingame and do missions with them I love my heroes they allow me to complete missions without wasting time trying to find a group

(And thats not easy considering im a mesmer)

Im very glad Anet put in heroes and I am glad they are good enough to make it where I don't need to use real human players, And I do know this is a online game and I do have fun playing with people I know and trust but I would prefer heroes anytime over a PuG

[DrMadCat]

I have to say people find any reason to complain, I hate PuGs i'd rather play alone then with people who aren't nice and bail out at any giving time, And even in a good guild sometimes guildmates are busy so you cant always know they will be there.

And to Agentele you said redo quest and missions and "waste endless hours killing foes for nothing"

Isn't that what farming is anyway?

People wanted improved AI and now people are complaing about how humans aren't needed anymore, Then find some good friends, Probably on forums insted of ingame and do missions with them I love my heroes they allow me to complete missions without wasting time trying to find a group

(And thats not easy considering im a mesmer)

Im very glad Anet put in heroes and I am glad they are good enough to make it where I don't need to use real human players, And I do know this is a online game and I do have fun playing with people I know and trust but I would prefer heroes anytime over a PuG

Fair enough, but I was not one of those people who wanted improved AI. In fact, since the release of Guild Wars in '05, I really don't like henchmen anyway. Just my opinion. As for "finding friends", as stated, some of us like the fact that playing with random people, with unpredicable play styles is what makes Guild Wars enjoyable. This is not ANY reason to complain. It is being social, in a way that you may meet a stranger and say hello, and perhaps it moves on from there to friendship. I am in a PVE guild, and I much prefer to play with random people most of the time. Why? Because it's "random" and "unpredictable". I personally believe that playing with a team/group/guild you know, creates a set of static gameplay. I don't enjoy this, it is not a challenge for me.

Heroes have damaged the Random Human PUGs..No doubt about it. Those who enjoy this sort of gameplay, are being punished for liking it, not by the new feature as such (It's just baiting), but the community on a whole.

But hey, if people want to Go it Alone, play with Guild Mates and friends, and take on the "screw everyone else" attitude, that's fine by me. Although I won't lie, it does cause a certain amount of frustration to sit back and watch a community rip itself to shreds over some AI.

Edit: Forgive me, I understand that the part I commented on was directed to someone else.

[Sekia]

Fair enough, but I was not one of those people who wanted improved AI. In fact, since the release of Guild Wars in '05, I really don't like henchmen anyway. Just my opinion. As for "finding friends", as stated, some of us like the fact that playing with random people, with unpredicable play styles is what makes Guild Wars enjoyable. This is not ANY reason to complain. It is being social, in a way that you may meet a stranger and say hello, and perhaps it moves on from there to friendship. I am in a PVE guild, and I much prefer to play with random people most of the time. Why? Because it's "random" and "unpredictable". I personally believe that playing with a team/group/guild you know, creates a set of static gameplay. I don't enjoy this, it is not a challenge for me.

Heroes have damaged the Random Human PUGs..No doubt about it. Those who enjoy this sort of gameplay, are being punished for liking it, not by the new feature as such (It's just baiting), but the community on a whole.

But hey, if people want to Go it Alone, play with Guild Mates and friends, and take on the "screw everyone else" attitude, that's fine by me. Although I won't lie, it does cause a certain amount of frustration to sit back and watch a community rip itself to shreds over some AI.

Edit: Forgive me, I understand that the part I commented on was directed to someone else.



Its no problem, I should have typed it out better, I don't mean to sound like a jerk or anything I know some people like that style (I don't see how personally >.>) But I was having a bad time at that momment forgive me if it came off rude.

[scamPOR]

Half the people who play this are mediocre the rest plain suck.... rarely do I pug a monk and go WOW HE WAS THE BOMB! same with players... this is a necesary evil.

Besides now I can set 3 peoples skillbars! NICE so I know that at least 4 people on my team don't SUCK! yesssssssssssssss

[Lithrim]

First of all, nightfall has been out for three days, lets not panic yet. Everyone is crazy about the new stuff and it will probably decrease and stabalise as time goes by.

In a perfect world (or server for that matter :P) there wouldn't be any need for henchmen or heroes. It would be easy to find a good pug, even though you are a mesmer like me or a necro that doesn't use SS (when was the last time you saw a non ss non mm necro?). And the ppl in the pug wouldnt leave, they would listen and they wouldnt blame it all on the monk afterwards.
But the world isn't perfect! Not even on a Anet server!

I agree with that finding a random team and seeing how it works from the beginning is the coolest thing you can do in this game. I've played since release and I've seen that maybe 5 or 6 times. How many times did the team screw up?

So for a player who don't have time to wait for that perfect pug to appear heroes and henchmen are great. I can go alone or I'll bring my friend if he's online, and we can do our mission with our non-mainstream characters. I love it.

[zweistein]

Give it several weeks, most people would have already finished game at least once, and be looking for missions done efectivelly and fast for their other characters, which includes using humans as heroes underperform some roles.

People wont bother leveling some heroes needed for quests and would rather depend on other PUGErs do the leveling and equiping certain heroes for then. (i.e. 'group lfg someone with L20 melloni, already got pimped L20 koss for quest'), so pugs will be kinda necesary.

[Cloud Six]

Most players have been playing mostly with hench for quite a while now. Granted I don't know for sure, but that's the impression I've gotten in game and the result of all the polls that I've seen. I've always spent most of my time with hench, and occassionally do a pug because I'm feeling social. But in nightfall I haven't even considered it for a few reasons.

First, if I'm going to pug I want 6 or 8 people because that way there will probably be at least one decent player that laughs at my jokes. When you add hero's it will only be 1 or 2 others, I don't like those odds, I don't want the extra trouble of asking people to kick their heros. What happens when someone rages? You lose 3 characters instead of one? Anyone can add/remove characters (hero's) to the party, not just the leader? I may have to do some experimenting :)

Hero's also bring the whole build design game to PvE, you can take the time to plan out the 32 skills as a package, combined with the known skill bars of the hench. The whole thing is under your control and you can spend as much time tweaking it as you want.

Hero's are more appealing then just hench. Just on that alone, there will definitely be a smaller percentage of the population pugging. What's required to bring me back to occasional pugging is a better party formation system, that includes heros or lack thereof, going for masters, etc into the system. The difficulty of party formation has always been the biggest impediment to pugging.

[chubbypuppy]

Before I bought NF I wasn't that enthusiastic about the heros, but now I'm loving them. Even before NF I avoided PuGs as much as possible. The negative experiences far outweight the positive ones. The "anonymous" nature of GW allows the majority of the people to be complete jerks and get away with it.

Heros actually add a bit more incentive for me to party with a friend, since we can tune our heros to compliment one another.

[uccat]

wow, some of my first thoughts also at the hero's concept... basically 'who needs anyone'.

just some points to the subject...

i have 2 accounts, and now 9 totally different characters... the thought of leveling and equipping each of the 9 characters with heros is depressing. Already trying to make a list of collectors in the crystal desert for caster items, and remembering where the good warrior/ranger items were in factions :(

i can see arguements arise over who brings 'their' heros. fortunately for me, the account i linked up first had my nec, ranger, warrior, monk all maxed out. So setting up a skillbar for all the above was pretty dang fine. :P unfortunately, i saw 'LFG, have monk with ....' some relatively low level skill. I thought geeze, i would hate to get in that group with a substandard monk.
More thought to that... in reply to some others comment about the general overall ability of many players... a LOT couldnt put together a good build on any class, let alone ALL classes, ergo their heros are gonna have a terrible skill bar. Plus, if you dont understand the skills, energy required, attribut settings for each and every one... = bad news :(

I found myself doing everything on my own, my heros, (and a few hench after i got to a party of 8 area). Understandably, with the first weekend, guildmates were all over the map, and getting people together for fun and advancement was difficult at best, same thing happened upon release of factions... depending on the day you got the game, and how may hours you had played so far... i see this being slightly worse now with the heros.

just a couple random thoughts, but in general, i agree, overall it's a bad thing... but i do like it personally at the moment. :)

[Dark Angella]

I think on the hero thing in a positive way. I used to spend ages trying to get on a PUG but my character was not desired...so now I have the chance of doing on my own when I can't find agroup that would want the type of character I'm playing at the moment. Don't get me wrong..I'm a very social person and love to make friends, and I've made good friends on this game!!!:smiley:

[Evil Death]

i can see arguements arise over who brings 'their' heros.

AIUI, two players can bring the same hero. The second copy becomes a generic hero of the same class, but is otherwise unchanged.

[Dawn Stormborn]

Heroes have damaged the Random Human PUGs..No doubt about it. Those who enjoy this sort of gameplay, are being punished for liking it, not by the new feature as such (It's just baiting), but the community on a whole.

For me the heroes simply add choice. I can see your concern, and all I can say is we'll have to wait a bit to see how it all shakes out. The PUG landscape will probably change, but I'm not sure by how much long term.

I've PUG'ed and been in some great teams, and met some cool people. I've also had horrible teams of leavers, bozos who draw on the mini map (you can imagine what they draw), people who were outright insulting to me or another player, the AFK'er, etc. I've been in groups with people who had great suggestions on skills to take and tactics to use for the upcoming quest, and had inflexible dictator types so grating they drove off most of the others before we even started. The "my way or the highway" types... heroes are tailor made for them - load up exactly what you want and set everything. Usually when I PUG I don't even bother to ask what builds people are using, unless we are coordinating spirits or other skills.

I also realize the bad memories are much stronger than the good ones, something I try to remind myself of.

I like to play all professions (well... I'm rethinking this now with so many!) and remember looking forever to group with some of my characters that aren't so-called favored professions, and also remember waiting for eons to form groups for end game quests - DNKP and TS are often the worst. Plus back when keg/stance tanking worked in SF, if you weren't a warrior, monk, or necro, or sometimes an ele, and didn't want to farm and actually wanted to quest... it was just a nightmare.

Over the months I drifted away from PUGs and started playing more and more with guildies, and between us we would switch off chars to fill out professions as needed to get everybody through the content they wanted on their chars. For us, PUG'ing meant getting a group of 4-6 guidies and then adding a handful of others people if we decided hench weren't sufficient. Now, that has become even easier to do this with heroes.

So far the system is just all plusses. The only downside is that possibly fewer people will want to truly PUG? I think the people that do will find each other and round out their group with their own hench and heroes.

Ultimately PUG'ging might become even better - the people that want/need to do it will become more tolerant of professions, builds, non-powergaming playstyles, and errors/mistakes, because of the presence of heroes and other options. All the bad player types (AFK'ers, insulters, build dictators, etc.) may drive people away until nobody wants to group with them at all.

The "anonymous" nature of GW allows the majority of the people to be complete jerks and get away with it.

I don't think it is the anonymous nature... it is the relative penalty-free environment of GW. Which is an overall good I think.

Compare to EQ, where if you died, you lost equipment and were weakened. I read a post somewhere by an EQ player that basically said you couldn't afford to be a jerk in EQ, because eventually you absolutely needed others to help you, and if you were a jerk, nobody would. The analogy would be something like this: you died at the end of The Deep and lost half your armor and weapons - there is no way you can get that back without 11 other (or in EQ's case up to 29 other) people helping you. For them, that is hours of fighting for minimal benefit to themselves, all so you can recover your stuff. They'd do it for you because they know someday they might have to call in some favors and get help for themselves. Griefers found out real fast in EQ that driving people off meant zero help when they were completely hosed. It was a very harsh unforgiving environment and griefers were weeded out fast.

So that's why jerks can roam so freely in GW - easily removed DP, no item loss on death, etc. I don't want to see that stuff added just to reign in griefers/jerks. :wink: It is just easier to avoid them.

[DrMadCat]

Its no problem, I should have typed it out better, I don't mean to sound like a jerk or anything I know some people like that style (I don't see how personally >.>) But I was having a bad time at that momment forgive me if it came off rude.

No worries. You never came off rude, in fact I probably was the one who did :) I just failed a mission 4 times in a row so was in a bit of a grumpy mood when I replied.

wow, some of my first thoughts also at the hero's concept... basically 'who needs anyone'.

Yep. The 'Who needs anyone' thing also hit my thoughts early, like yourself. In itself, I think the Hero system is a bit broken anyway. People have the ability to add Heroes without being a party leader...here's when the bad attitude of players come in to ruin the day. In itself, the Hero setup system pulls people away from PUGs even more. People will advertise for more people, someone joins with his 3 Heroes automatically added, and thus whoever else tried to join gets wiped from the invite party window. I am not sure if party leaders can kick Heroes, but right now I think they can only kick the player. While a player messes around taking up 4 slots (including himself), while the leader gets forced to kick him, there's a party of "8", or in a much worse situation, a party of 3 real players and 3 heroes. The party becomes full, thus when peope try to join the advertised group, it's "full". Not fully tested yet, but the argument about who brings which Hero is also already existing. Was in a group yesterday, and when setting up, some guy said "Can I bring my monk?". This was in Factions, and the leader said "No". The guy added his Monk Hero and started to go "Plsssssss".

I thought being kicked as a Tank to make way for another Tank with Hero was bad enough, but today I saw a human monk player get kicked by the leader, to bring his Hero Monk. I then setup a group with the monk that got kicked (I left the previous group because I don't really enjoy playing with rude leaders who kick people randomly).

Needless to say the monk was what some could say "Pro". In Dragons Lair, he kept up the entire party by himself, and no one died at all. Some of the players had absolutely no self heal. Try that with any Hero Monk, believe me, someone WILL die on that mission.

(Fyi, we did Glint too, but I consider it extremely hard for anyone not to die when you have 1 monk healing/protting, so obviously a few people died but that's the bonus, not the mission).

The negative experiences far outweight the positive ones. The "anonymous" nature of GW allows the majority of the people to be complete jerks and get away with it.

That's strange. I must have developed a sense to get on good groups in the random PUG field. Yes, I do meet some jerks. Usually I'm one of these people who setup Insta PUGs. You have the ones out there which are asking for certain professions/builds and spamming "GLF SS Necro, Monk, Echo Nuker" etc. I see them in the waiting area for 30 minutes sometimes before they get 8 and launch (sometimes I'm eating and just chatting to Guildies).

I just do a "GLF more for mission/bonus - Invite self - accept anyone". I'll take Assassin's no problem, even though I find most people have no idea how to play them effectively in PVE (and PVP) *cough* SoH and Dash *cough*. But generally I find I'm able to adapt to these peoples play style, and benefit the group by changing my tactics. I believe this is the whole point, that things never go as planned, and the gameplay and team is always dynamic enough.

I just think you've had some bad experiences, maybe more than positive (as you said), but this random good/bad experiences doesn't seem to go so well for you. I guess this whole thread comes down to how people like to play the game, and how it affects everyone else.

But there is one thing no one can argue against, and the fact is that Heroes DO cause a social seperation/exclusion between players in the Guild Wars universe, because they are a feature set that supports even more this sort of play style.

Half the people who play this are mediocre the rest plain suck.... rarely do I pug a monk and go WOW HE WAS THE BOMB! same with players... this is a necesary evil.

Ok.....if you say so....... I rarely get commented for how well I play a Mesmor, regardless in PVP or PVE. Although being able to stop hundreds of damage getting through and stopping that other player from dying, makes me feel useful. If half the people you play with are mediocre, and the other half plain suck, then I take it (no offense on this next comment) that you have quite an inflated ego of yourself. Are you better than those people? Because from your post it appears to me that you have excluded "good players" in your 50/50 thing. I'm sure some of the people you've grouped with would take offense at this. But yes, maybe you should stick more to Heroes, because I think you're lacking respect for random players. This is of course based on the fact you've done A LOT of pugging. Maybe you've only played with 10 people, and 5/5 were mediocre and crap, but you never explained this so I'll take it into account that when you mention you pug, you've done a lot of it. If not, then I don't think you've experienced pugging enough to make statements that Heroes solve a problem for people that "SUCK".


Dawn Stormborn:

Thanks Dawn, awesome and thought out reply. I enjoyed reading that. I guess it's all down to wait and see how this unfolds. While I do disagree with the plusses and that PUGing could be better because of Heroes, I do however agree with a lot of what you've said. I have had those bad experiences too, especially the inexperienced player thinking he knows how to lead the entire group through the mission. The worse thing I've found is the CALL spammers. They will call EVERY monster they attack, and even call their skills. I hate that! It forces me to totally switch off communication between the rest of my team, but I still have enough experience to know how to do the mission/quest anyway.

Usually when someone leaves, I'll just wait it out and still try to complete the mission. It's like in Random Arena, I'll be the last one left, when you have people leave straight away when they're trying to sync with their Guild (too sucky for Team Arena, so try to unbalance Random Arena).

The game is full of bad players, but still, I enjoy this..it makes me feel like a good player when I am doing the opposite in most cases. Same when I do something bad, or a mistake happens on my part, I'll happily agree and apologise to my team. I find if you communicate well in the beginning, and compliment people who are doing a decent or more than decent job, you'll often find the experience a little more enjoyable.

[Sohos]

I haven't really seen much of a problem with heros so far, almost every mission ive been in ive been able to find some people, and whenever we actually needed a hero, we would have everyone add their heros, call their heros skills, thne remove. Once all that was done the group would just vote on which hero we thought would be best for the mission. Although i do have to admit i have been in the occasional group that booted me after they found out i was a hammer warrior, and replaced me with thier level 15 or so Koss who uses a sword.

As well, ive found that heros can be used for setting up skill combinations that wouldnt be possible in a PUG or on your own, for instance, ill set up my elementalist to use Lightning spells that have extra effects when a foe is suffering from a water hex, and ill set up my elementalist hero as a water ele.
Nothing like that could be possible in a regular PUG because of 3 things :

1. Its incredibly hard to be usefull when trying to split your points into two offensive attributes

2. Most groups ive found want nothing to do with people who use creative builds (although often times those same creative builds are just as effective, or more effective, than your standard cookie cutter builds)

3. Just try to get another person to coordinate their skills to work well with yours. Tough, isnt it?

[Lytha]

Heroes are the greatest invention in guildwars so far.

With my main character a mesmer, and blessed with a tiny guild, I've been playing with henchies before in about 99% of the time. The cases of me joining a human group were either: because my guildmate preferred to play with humans, with my guildmate and henchies, or because I felt like going on an adventure into the depths of human behaviour - a PuG, that is.

When your main character hears the "kick that mesmer, they suck in PvE"-line too often, even your other characters start preferring the company of the henchies. Lately, even my formerly PuG-oriented Monk started to team up with the henchies, rather than chaotic random human groups. Lets face it, a lot of PuG-participants play like they're escaped from an asylum, or something.

However, henching missions was sometimes a pain. For instance, Coventina needed some interrupts, but my class didn't have any... now, I just can add Norgu or interrupt-Jin into my group and beat it.

Heroes were the reason why I decided to pick the Nightfall box from the shelf in the shop. Nothing else.

[Fafner]

Add this to the stack.

I enjoy the hero system as an experienced player because I prefer being a lone gamer. I like the fact that two experienced players with heros can fill out a whole team.

So far I've found the heros up to the challenge (for more fun I started 2 new toons, a D and a P and got them off Istani...I'll play my 8 tyrians/canthans later as I'm sure they'll be easier). And I'm hoping that I can hench my entire way through the game with the new AI interface. I'm more comfortable pugging when I know how the mission goes and can bring an appropriate bar. I'd rather fail a couple times henching it and learn than be the useless newb in the group with echo mending.

I hope the game can be finished by 2 competent players with heros. As an older player, I know a few couples who prefer to play together and not have to play with kids and teens who can get boisterous (totally off the subject aside, when did "***" become a popular suburban kid verb? I only heard it used in college by an ignorant football player who chewed tobacco and blasted Garth Brooks).

The hero system (need to lvl heros) definately does discourage pugging until all heros are lvl 20. I hope those who enjoy PUG culture can still hook up later in the game though.

[DrMadCat]

And I'm hoping that I can hench my entire way through the game with the new AI interface.

Hey there. Just completed Nightfall. I think Heroes will work in Tyria/Cantha for doing the entire game (maybe), but my Heroes + Henchmen were not up to the last few parts of finishing Nightfall. Maybe I just built them wrong, but they just didn't seem to cut it. They were not doing what a human player would do in order to predict and keep players alive, and manually controlling all of them was quite difficult. The Henchmen monks are indeed inferior to the Hero ones you can make yourself. Anyway, just thought I'd let ya know how it went for me. Had a REALLY hard time near the end.

Hope it turns out different for you though.

[ellsa]

But there is one thing no one can argue against, and the fact is that Heroes DO cause a social seperation/exclusion between players in the Guild Wars universe, because they are a feature set that supports even more this sort of play style.


Using your own logic:

IF having the choice of Heroes = downfall of social interaction
THEN making the game playable as a farmer ALSO = less social interaction

therefore => Farming, especially SOLO farming, is causing social exclusion also.

I think that is each players' choice to make- whether or not to be social. I don't see a problem with henching or with farming, although I've never liked to farm myself.

MadCat, I think you need to calm down and realize that Guild Wars is about more than what happens in the first 4 days of a new expansion. Yes, things are skewed at the moment. They will be less skewed in the future. Will they ever be the same? No. But with new content and new adventures comes new challenges. People WILL play with PUGs again, I promise you.

I'll close with this: I love a good PUG. I always have. I love meeting new people, experiencing new opportunities, and seeing new ideas. There are a LOT of great people out there in the online game world we call Guild Wars. I know that people are what make online games special.

In my last game, when I met someone new and they asked me what build I played, I told them "guild leader". To me, the social interaction was more important than the game itself. In Guild Wars, I know that I'll continue to meet new people and experience the online community....

but

Just like I would not invite some people (what I like to call "tards") into my guild, I don't want them in my mission party. Sometimes... its nice to have some low-intelligence excitement. But most often, it's nice to be able to play without the "Mad Scribble-Pinger" going crazy on the radar map, etc.

Now, I'm happy that I can make a choice of NOT hanging out with someone just because they're the only MM I've seen in 2 hours.

I guess what I'm saying is- Mean people suck! :P
Anyone nice want to group for Mission + Bonus? :D

<hugs>
Ellsa :)

[DrMadCat]

Using your own logic:

IF having the choice of Heroes = downfall of social interaction
THEN making the game playable as a farmer ALSO = less social interaction

therefore => Farming, especially SOLO farming, is causing social exclusion also.

I think that is each players' choice to make- whether or not to be social. I don't see a problem with henching or with farming, although I've never liked to farm myself.

MadCat, I think you need to calm down and realize that Guild Wars is about more than what happens in the first 4 days of a new expansion. Yes, things are skewed at the moment. They will be less skewed in the future. Will they ever be the same? No. But with new content and new adventures comes new challenges. People WILL play with PUGs again, I promise you.

I'll close with this: I love a good PUG. I always have. I love meeting new people, experiencing new opportunities, and seeing new ideas. There are a LOT of great people out there in the online game world we call Guild Wars. I know that people are what make online games special.

In my last game, when I met someone new and they asked me what build I played, I told them "guild leader". To me, the social interaction was more important than the game itself. In Guild Wars, I know that I'll continue to meet new people and experience the online community....

but

Just like I would not invite some people (what I like to call "tards") into my guild, I don't want them in my mission party. Sometimes... its nice to have some low-intelligence excitement. But most often, it's nice to be able to play without the "Mad Scribbler" going crazy on the radar map, etc.

Now, I'm happy that I can make a choice of NOT hanging out with someone just because they're the only MM I've seen in 2 hours.

I guess what I'm saying is- Mean people suck! :P
Anyone nice want to group for Mission + Bonus? :D

<hugs>
Ellsa :)

Ellsa, you're right. I do need to calm down! I think perhaps I am making the situation worse than what it really is. I think it's stress. I've been adding so much stuff as well, and typing stuff here, while playing Guild Wars is a little too much. I think I'm a little out of it, and maybe not seeing things as clear as they should be.

I'll be withdrawing from this thread, and let everyone else discuss about it. I have to focus my time purely to adding content, and I guess I shouldn't worry about other stuff as it's totally messing me up.

Cheers Ellsa, for helping me realize this. I'm not saying that I'm backing down from all my posts and what I've said, but I am saying that I've gone a bit overkill on my predictions and concerns.

[ellsa]

You're all right in my book, Mad Cat.

PM me in game sometime if you can ACTUALLY catch me online (working 75 hour weeks right now). I'd love to chat or PUG with you.

IGN: Ellsa Ryse

Oh, and try to take care of yourself. Breathe. Breathe. :D

<hugs>
Ellsa :)

[DrMadCat]

You're all right in my book, Mad Cat.

PM me in game sometime if you can ACTUALLY catch me online (working 75 hour weeks right now). I'd love to chat or PUG with you.

IGN: Ellsa Ryse

Oh, and try to take care of yourself. Breathe. Breathe. :D

<hugs>
Ellsa :)

Will do, Ellsa. *Breathes slowly* :)

If I see you online in-game, I'll send you a whisper. Oh, and take care of yourself too.

[Kikos]

You can play the game how you want. Trying to make people decide if they want to use a PUG or not is none of your business. I don't know why this is even posted.

[Tinnic]

IMO if there is any saving grace for PuGs it's that Hero AI isn't the best. They can't use any builds that are even remotely intricate AND some of their AI naunces are definetly a bit weird.

Case in point, Zenmai doesn't seem to understand how to use AoD properly. Normally not a problem but last night during a mission her AoD misuse nearly cost us the mission. :(

[vaxmor]

heroes are smarter than the average W/MO.
Why chance an hour long mission (eg THK) to a W/MO not going leroy on you, when you can have a rock steady hero?

heroes only take the skillz you want.
Why chance a sorrows furnace run on a MO/X packing no condition or hex removal when you can have a hero monk?

heroes wont kick you from the party calling you a 'n00b' because youre not playing an accepted cookie cutter build.

heroes wont kick you from the party calling you a 'n00b' because your playing
a mesmer. . .

heroes are *more* communicative than the average GW player, a hero monk will show you his exact energy/HP status and recharge times of his skillz.

the number one reason not to pug is:
heroes do not draw male genitalia on the map. . .

in addition, desires post was very articulate and xpressed the point xcellently.

there is one other point I wish to raise, people may be choosing heroes over people more so now because they need to level their lvl2Koss/W to 20; once people have a full set of lvl 20 heroes they may be more accepting of taking in people. . .but probably not, why go back to mending/breeze W/MOs, 55HP iron monks, verbal abuse. . .etc. . .when you can have a fully kitted out hero?

[Sha Lar]

I would just like to add that I share some of Dr Madcat's concerns but I also appreciate the choice that heroes offer.

When I look back I believe that the reason I have enjoyed GW so much is mainly the social interaction and 'randomness' of PUGs. This said, it can also be the most FRUSTRATING part of GW too!

I also hope that the heroes novelty will wear off a little and it will be easy to find a PUG of (mainly) human players. But then when I am in a bad mood, I have the option to go kill things with my heroes!

[Vexenna]

I thought that part of the problem was needing a certain Hero for some missions, and mission can be hard enough as it is unless you have a full group.. I wasnt too happy about that.

[DrMadCat]

You can play the game how you want. Trying to make people decide if they want to use a PUG or not is none of your business. I don't know why this is even posted.

This was posted because everyone is entitled to freely discuss their opinions. No one should be silenced. I addressed some concerns, not entirely my own concerns either. While I play a game with an online community and with a system that supports social gaming between players, if you don't want to read what I've wrote, then simply don't. Comment though, however much you want.

Why are people posting how cool Heroes are, and yet in your opinion, you have no idea why I post how socially excluding they are? Did you not understand what I typed? Play how you want, but this game wasn't meant to be "keep your nose out of my business because I'll play how I want!!! STAY OUT!!!". If that attitude were completely true, imagine how much more selfish people would be? Imagine how much worse Guild Wars would be.

Online Gaming is a very good example of how society functions on a whole, as it is pretty much integrated nowadays. If you like Heroes, so be it, but to anyone thinking about completely doing away with pugs (whereas before they didn't), all I ask is that you think about the social aspect of the game.

My post my be contradictory, because I've been extremely busy these last hours and I'm very tired. I know I said I'm done, but I just couldn't resist a reply to this. I feel sort of baited, but meh, I'm used to it.

[woeye]

I, too, share most of DrMadCat's concerns. I for myself will wait a bit and see how it will influence the manner of the general community.

[HorrorScope]

I love all the options the way they are. I like choice, I am pro-choice. You can put me down for that one. I see no reason at all to worry about this, imo you really want to run all humans join a PvE guild and even then it's great to have heroes there to fill a team out when needed or just again have options. Never fear an option.

IMO kikos is right on this by the way.. Your last response to him is humorous in the way "You want freedom to discuss" about "Taking freedoms away". Not a slam towards you at all but interesting and amusing nonetheless for me.

Or lets put it another way. There is a couple Husband and Wife that like playing coop together. If you took Hero's and Henches away there is $100 out of Arena.nets pocket because some random 3rd party doesn't want that type in the game. Doesn't make much sense. I usually play with 2 because it's quick and simple, I used the Henches before and they were avg. with imo poor builds. The Heroes is exactly what I would have asked for. Sometimes I have up to 4 playing and we just take a single Hero each. That is how we all enjoy the game. We won't be playing with you period, we did the PUG's been in both good and bad but in the end didn't enjoy the waiting/leaving/leroy experience as much as just dealing with the henches issues. Sorry. So again do you cut us out all together? Fine save me the time and money, or are you now the lead designer at Arena.net? 10+ for the hero addition!!!

Some of us do some PvP but realize that we will never be that good because of time. We've been in and out of guilds and maybe join another again, guilds come and go imo, why because of life outside the game. What is sort of funny is that the argument is about no socialization in an online game when the rest of the world thinks you are unsocial just because you are playing an online game to begin with, that makes me chuckle a little inside, right or wrong.

Another angle that excites me from arena.net is that they now have some specific things in PvE you can get that aren't available in PvP. That allows a more robust PvE experience but it's the first step in differences between the two, which imo is a smart move and what I hope for is in the next chapter to have the ability in PvE to swap any skill on the Power Bar during a mission, so we can think a bit more on our toes. This would be a PvE only thing and by doing that it causes no harm to anyone by being PvE only and again adds another layer of depth and coolness. I'll be submitting this hope.

[Kojak]

In my experience with Nightfall. I pugged most of the game. Only when there weren't enough people, did the group decide to add Hero's. Whoever had the 'best' or 'highest level' hero in question, added theirs and we went on with the mission.

To back this up. Most of my hero's are level19, with no runes, and starter weapons :P And I'm not in the mood to fund their growth

[Bugboy]

DMK: at some point in this thread, you said something about this community tearing itself apart. No offense, but...what on Earth are you talking about? I mean, good grief, it's a game. I'm with HorrirScope in just about all repsects here. The concept of inclusiveness, as that concept has taken its meaning in the past 10 to 15 years, is pretty dubious at best, and in the context of a computer game, it's almost irrelevant. My guild has been together for over a year and we talk to each other every night on TS, but that's only for a couple/few hours, and it's just for the game. We just enjoy playing it. Our real social lives lie outside it. We love the heroes because we can fill out our groups with competent characters while avoiding the pitfalls of PuG players mentioned already in this thread.

If you like pugging that much, then by all means, go ahead and do so; I love the game because it's a great game, and about the most fun hobby I've ever had. Play it the way you love it. But tearing apart the community...what community?

[Mirka]

What I've noticed, though I don't know if this trend will continue as more people will start to fill the empty missions and outposts... but a lot of people don't bother getting 6/8 then spam for 40 minutes for two monks. They throw a group together, add two monk heroes and start the mission right away. I'm hoping this stays the same, as maybe the whole "ZOMG WE NEED A MONK *spam for an hour for one*" stuff will stop in future pugs. :)

[ellsa]

There is a couple Husband and Wife that like playing coop together. If you took Hero's and Henches away there is $100 out of Arena.nets pocket because some random 3rd party doesn't want that type in the game. Doesn't make much sense. I usually play with 2 because it's quick and simple, I used the Henches before and they were avg. with imo poor builds. The Heroes is exactly what I would have asked for. Sometimes I have up to 4 playing and we just take a single Hero each. That is how we all enjoy the game. We won't be playing with you period, we did the PUG's been in both good and bad but in the end didn't enjoy the waiting/leaving/leroy experience as much as just dealing with the henches issues. Sorry. So again do you cut us out all together? Fine save me the time and money, or are you now the lead designer at Arena.net?

Ummmm I think you're mis-reading the point of this thread. MadCat never said "heroes are bad and Anet needs to get rid of them". So please turn down the flame. Nobody is taking away your beloved heroes.

What MadCat DID say (not a direct quote) was that people are now going to be less social. And... in an online game made to be played with other people, that isn't necessarily a good thing.


What I've noticed, though I don't know if this trend will continue as more people will start to fill the empty missions and outposts... but a lot of people don't bother getting 6/8 then spam for 40 minutes for two monks. They throw a group together, add two monk heroes and start the mission right away. I'm hoping this stays the same, as maybe the whole "ZOMG WE NEED A MONK *spam for an hour for one*" stuff will stop in future pugs. :)

THAT is what I see happening all over the GW campaigns. I had a wonderful PUG last night in Factions in Arborstone. Group formed fairly quickly and we only ended up bringing ONE hero to fill the role of 2nd monk since it takes so long to get TWO of them. THAT was nice. Not having to wait.

Another thing I'm HOPING will happen is the end of bad PUGs. Personally, when I PUG, I like to be group leader... and I'm rather choosy about my group because I hate wasting my time. I don't mind booting someone for acting like a child. Better booting them in town then getting into the mission and having a bad time. I like being able to throw a monk out of the group for spamming gogogogogogogogogogo as we're trying to get our skills ready before we leave. If someone is going to be a kid- that's fine. I've got 2 hero monks who are perfect gentlemen to me. They never rush and they never draw fallices (spelling?) on the radar-map.

Do I think heroes impact our online community? Yes. If you don't know what the online community is, then you're not a part of it and I'm sorry for your loss. I'm going to keep enjoying the online community, meeting new people, learning about myself and about society... and I know that others will too. I think, as always, people will adapt and things will turn out just fine. And (just maybe) with less jerks in my party.

[HorrorScope]

"Ummmm I think you're mis-reading the point of this thread. MadCat never said "heroes are bad and Anet needs to get rid of them". So please turn down the flame. Nobody is taking away your beloved heroes.

What MadCat DID say (not a direct quote) was that people are now going to be less social. And... in an online game made to be played with other people, that isn't necessarily a good thing."

Again double speak. What then is exactly being said? If he doesn't like the less socialization due to heroes and his solution isn't getting rid of heroes or making some significant adjustment to them for the sake of socialization. What is the point? Sorry for being so literal.

[ellsa]

Just a discussion. :P

Similarly, I don't like football. Do I yearn to see football fields burning? No. I just don't care to watch. Do I think football makes my husband less social? Yes. :D

MadCat was saying that PUGs might be harder to find because of the introduction of Heroes. Being a fan of online gaming (aka group play), a discussion was started.

Also, I think MadCat may have been overreacting. But that's a story for another time.

[rentauri]

Just a discussion. :P

Similarly, I don't like football. Do I yearn to see football fields burning? No.

Why not? I'll bet some of those quarterbacks start hauling *** if the field is on fire.

Back on topic:
As I have been playing through the game I have noticed the lack of groups and I know it isnt because of everyones love of hechies. Maybe it is because the outposts are empty and maybe this will stop when more people flood in but as it stands the Ive barely PuGed and when with people it is normally friends or guildies. I do find it strange to hit a mission with a bunch of people and see nobody (or very, very, very few) LFG's and GLF's in the chats. I love PuG and I love my heros but most seem, in Nightfall at least prefer to play alone.

[Drarra]

I like having the choice to bring my heroes. My main character is a mesmer, and finding a PUG can be challenging at times. A MM or fire nuker comes along, and I'm kicked from the group. I've also found that I'm playing alone less with heroes. I can meet up with a friend, we can bring complimentary heroes, and we're off to kill things.

I've also enjoyed using them to round out a party. A guildie and I were doing a mission last night, and we picked up every other player waiting to do the mission. We still didn't have 8, so we completed the party with a hero and henchie - then headed out. It was so much easier than trying to hope another monk came around who wanted to party with us.

My opinion is that the early days of NF are going to see a lot of people using heroes for everything. Eventually, I would guess that it will shake out, and you'll be able to do PUGs more easily. The heroes are new, and most people want to rush through the game for the plot or armor. Hopefully things will get more "normal" once the new factor has worn off, because PUGs can be a lot of fun.

[Dutch Gun]

I definitely see the concern about heroes making PUGs harder to find. However, the way I see it, there are technical solutions to this problem. If anet were to implement an effective game-wide matchmaking system, it would pretty much mitigate this effect. My guess is that they haven't done this yet because it's not really considered critical at this point. When it does become critical due to the critical mass of total missions throughout the GW universe, you can bet they'll roll it out as a new feature.

In general, I don't worry about this too much because I have faith that anet will take care of their own game. After all, they want to keep their customers happy.

So, for now, please don't stress out too much about this. Enjoy the game, and let's let things settle down a bit before writing the obituary for random pickup groups.

[I Orca I]

Im about halfway now and really quite sick of henching/hero'ing.... but then I decide to pick up as many players as possible and what happens, 2 of them leave when WE dont rerez THEIR monks, we used our signets before and then they leave because they dont use rez...

I may be bored of not talking to anyone for ages but the incompetance T_T

[Desires]

I guess another thing is its not the heros are that great its pugs are that bad. on sunday i was doing the last mission and when i zoned into the map to my suprise there was a group forming(I mean for so early in realease it was odd to find pug groups at all late game. So I shortly in one monk hero dies and a few minutes later one of the warriors dies which promts 1 person to rage quit and someone else to rage quit because of that rage quit. Next atempt was with henchies/heros... No deaths and masters. Pugs will remain only for the crappy players who can't beat missions solo and ahve a bad guild or those rare few who enjoy the incompetency of pug groups.

[I Orca I]

the number one reason not to pug is:
heroes do not draw male genitalia on the map. . .


Ooooh yeah cant forget those lovely images.

Ohk, after going through 5 or 6 missions today I saw 2 pug groups being formed... This is playing across a pretty large timeframe and mostly through the "prime time" people play in.

Human monks now rarely go for human groups anymore because they can and will hench/hero every mission.

As much as some people make me want to push them into a flame trap I still like to be able to talk to people and have a variety of builds going on.

[JoeKnowMo]

I do enjoy pugs, but heroes seem better for a few reasons:
I can take a break whenever I need/want to.
I'm always the one doing the pulling of mobs.
I can explore areas at my leisure.

The biggest reason for me is the ability to arrange multiple skill bars and choose the composition of my team.
I fail a mission or quest, it's usually due to skill bars or professions that don't suit the situation. With heroes, I'm able to change skills around and change the makeup of my group to better handle the challenge of the mission/quest (whether I need interrupts, corpse exploit, etc.)

Players weren't showing love for my paragon. Most pugs were looking for the standard - tanks and monks. I was running the duo paragons (with General Morgahn) build, and it worked incredibly well except in areas with anti-shout hexes/wells. It's a bigger pain for me to get someone to run one build while I run the other than to just do it w heroes... esp. if they don't have the skills unlocked.

I will go back to pugs. But I will certainly be more picky than before as I have a viable alternative in heroes.

[arcady arc]

In all my time with GW, I've PUG'd maybe 3 times at most.

Twice on the 'over the wall' quest in pre-searing, and once to get to post searing. My other times on that quest I went with my brother, and only once one the mission to get to post searing did it pair me with other people. Every other time it gave me henchmen.


I would -like- to PUG, but reading in these forums has always scared me off of it. Like I'd have better odds as a woman in a red mini walking into a biker bar at 1am to get a decent and safe date...

The forums have turned me -off- to PUGing, especially as I joined the GW community in May right during what seemed to be getting billed as a 'bot-crisis' that brought all the negative community relations topics.


As for Nightfall, the Heroes give me a perfect excuse to avoid taking the risk of PUGing. I can manage the flags well enough to handle any mission sent at me so far, and my heroes are actually leveling faster than me (they level 1-2 encounters before I do at present), which may point to my ability to overuse them them effectively... :)

I would like to try PUGing at some point, but at this point what is there to get me to risk it?

Now... as to the overall topic, I think Heroes will get in the way of not just PUGing, but Guuld formation and trade. I suspect Guilds can often form when people meet after successful PUGs, and likewise trade can get a boost from meeting people you trust and like enough to trade with - and PUGs are the engine that drives meeting people. PUGs and random arena PvP.

And as far as I have found, Nightfall lacks a random arena PvP like the one in Shing Jea monastery. If someone knows where it is, tell me... I haven't seen it.

Nightfall seems to be built to be anti-social, and I too am wondering what long terms effects that will have.

[Shulkor]

rofl lol hahaha

[wilted lillies]

I've always used Henchmen. The few times I have had other players in my group happened to be very bad experiences. I now exclusively use henchmen. I think the Heros were the best idea yet!

[Servant of Kali]

I tried PUGing in Cantha with Dervish... it usually goes like this:
I try PUG group. Failure. I do it with Heroes. Masters.
I try PUG group, full of enthusiasm again. I meet warriors with mending and monk using Rebirth at first death(after which half of the team dies since he is out of energy). I meet "MM" necro who is in fact Fireballing and randomly casting minions.


I have found the highest success rate so far. It's with 2-3 other people, the rest hench or hero. It's also more enjoyable, there's MORE social interaction than with 8 people, trust me. The only problem is that some just want all-player group...

[Evil Death]

the number one reason not to pug is:
heroes do not draw male genitalia on the map. . .

You need to get the latest patch. They now do penises and swastikas.

[tegororn]

One thing to think about that i need confirmed is this: Do drops occur less frequently with heroes like they did with hench? I seem to be getting a lot of ****, but nothing good with pure heroes

İ haven't read the posts after yours yet,but that is what i'm exactly thinking.I've been farming with my heroes for 3 days now,only 1 green i got.I didn't even get a gold item.

[MStarfire]

So far, i've been able to do pretty well in Nightfall with my heroes. However, there have been some missions that require that the team splits its efforts, and that's fairly difficult to do, even when you have control over 4 characters at once. I've come to look at heroes as a way to "round out" a PUG when required or desired human-controlled professions aren't available, and hench just won't cut it.

I also agree with their poor skill-chaining style, but the hero AI is GOD with interrupts. Pack Margrid with distracting shot, savage shot, and punishing shot and the enemy will never have a chance to do ANYTHING.

[ellsa]

I will go back to pugs. But I will certainly be more picky than before as I have a viable alternative in heroes.

Yup. If you're an idiot, I don't have to put up with you. THAT is the true benefit of heroes. Not the choice to "go it alone", but the choice to choose your companions instead of being forced to pick whatever idiot monk shows up.

[Bugboy]

Is there a good player/bad player distinction going on here? The "social benefits/detriments" aside, all of the people on this (and other) threads who love the heroes love them for mostly the same reason I do: avoidance of idiot PuGers. In my guild, whenever we get together to do a mission/quest, we tend to burn through it pretty quickly. When we go with 2 or 3 players and 5 or 6 heroes, same thing. But when we PuG it, it tends to take a lot longer, because things just don't die nearly as fast. I'm wondering if the main complaint from at least some of the anti-hero crowd is that they can't get into groups that will carry them through missions/quests anymore.

[Evil Death]

THAT is the true benefit of heroes. Not the choice to "go it alone", but the choice to choose your companions instead of being forced to pick whatever idiot monk shows up.

And better yet, it's killed the "Will Heal For Plat" idiots dead.