Ensign

I wouldn't call henchmen and heroes a stellar feature as much as a neccessary kludge. Guild Wars PvE is only designed to support groups of a particular size for a given mission, and completing those missions is mandatory to progress in the game. I.E., if you want to get anywhere in Guild Wars you're going to be playing almost exclusively in 8 man teams (with some smaller groups in lower level areas). However people don't come prepackaged in groups of 8, people want to play games in groups of all sizes, from solo to massive raid-sized teams, and that doesn't mesh well with the PvE design of Guild Wars.

Hence heroes are a way around the problem of the solo or small group of players being forced to play in a world designed for eight people. They can fill out with henchmen and heroes, and progress in the game more or less normally. Disaster averted for the solo player.

I have two real gripes with heroes. First, that you have to level them up and equip them, and second, that particular heroes are *required* to even attempt neccessary storyline missions. I think both of those ideas are terrible from a design standpoint because they actively punish heavy grouping. Players don't just want to play solo or in duos in order to level up their heroes, they *need* to so that their neccessary hero for a mission three stops down the road isn't just a brick when they get there. As a solo player, leveling heroes was mostly an inconvenience, but for friends and guildies who wanted to play with each other in a group, it was a huge problem - they'd get to a mission, and no one would have the neccessary hero leveled up and geared.

To that end, heroes are a decent, albeit flawed, idea. But the system that makes them neccessary is simplistic and not exactly a sterling design example, so I'm not going to give A.Net any points for building a workaround for their games' shortcomings into the game itself.

Peace,
-CxE

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