Curse

The Legg · Jun 13, 2007, 03:35 AM // 03:35

heros are the best addition to guild wars for a long time. They mean we no longer have to rely on pug groups with one or two horrible players in it that was a bane before nightfall.

Gaia_Hunter · Jun 13, 2007, 04:44 AM // 04:44

It doesnt matter if I m arrogant, a fool, a noob, a bossy asshole, a idiot, whatever. I may be all that.
Thanks to heroes you will never have to deal with me. And so I will never have to deal with u.

I play like 60% with my heroes, the other 40% with my friends/guildies. I ve fun. On ocasion I pug. Sometimes its a pleasure the other is a pain.

When you go dinner, go to the cinema, go play football, go to the beach, with whom will you go? Your friends or some strangers that believe pop music is the way, while you are all metal?

Heroes are there for you when your friends arent available, cause Anet didnt design the game to be played solo, and really try to kill every single place that can be played solo while your friends arent ingame and you want to play some.

Pyrea · Jun 13, 2007, 09:07 AM // 09:07

Heroes actually have made GW more enjoyable. I am someone who has always used henchmen, mostly because I have always cleared map, so now with heroes the task is made much easier.

Sophitia Leafblade · Jun 13, 2007, 11:22 AM // 11:22

I think a good reason why Heroes were a needed addition was the rise of the Faster game style. Prophecies quite slow moving and large you have to get all the way to The Dragons Lair before you could have a full party of 8, there’s around about 20 missions before then which req just 6 or 4 finding a party for 6 or 4 is much easier than finding a party of 8. Factions (especially) and Nightfall favoured more High end content and less mid to low end content, making characters lvl and progress faster, 2 missions into Factions and your already in partys of 8, and about 3 missions in Nf your also into 8 player partys.

With this increase in missions requiring 8 players and of increased difficulty, finding a party becomes increasingly hard, the increase in content and expansion to 3 contents spreads the player base thinner. Spreading a player base + increased numbers of players required for the majority of missions is what promoted Heroes and Henchies. Henchies are ok but they lack builds that are useful 100% of the time and with increased difficulty missions, quests and Hard mode, Heroes become a much more useful addition to a party than Henchies since they can be adapted to work better.

Henchies have been popular since the dawn of Gw, There is a massive number of side quests and areas to explore and finding people to join u on such things is difficult because they always want to do something else, do it differently or they don’t like/sync well with ur build etc. etc. People have also become increasingly annoyed with random PUGs for unreliability. Knowing a friend and letting him play an experimental or randomised build on a mission while with henchies wont affect ur party too much, having 7 people who u cant predict and who are all using experimental builds is going to cause problems, its not there fault but its how it is. Most players play in a team with a friend or two, guildies or the odd new person they take under their wing, heros fill in the gaps.

Chieftain Heavyhand · Jun 13, 2007, 12:16 PM // 12:16

Maybe the title of this should be Heroes Killed PUGs.

Before Heroes came out there were Henchmen. The Henchmen were more reliable than most PUGs. Then Heroes came along and the end of the PUGs was at hand.

Heroes are the best thing Anet has implemented into the PVE part of the game. The only thing that would be better is if they would allow us to bring more along. Heroes allow us to build teams instead of players. PUGs are more like a group of individuals instead of a team. HH groups have one leader instead of 4, 6, or 8. Heroes don't flame, rage quit, or whine. Hero's don't get pissed when you have to answer the phone or want to take a break.

The reason most of us play this game instead of WOW is because there is the option to play alone with Heroes and Henchmen instead of having to rely on others to complete goals. I get plenty of player interaction while gearing up in town to do quest.

The great thing about GW is that I can group up with real players if I want or I can take my A team and go it alone.

So to answer the question did Heroes ruin GW? No.
Did heroes kill PUGs? No not really, people are still free to form a PUG
Did heroes make GW more enjoyable? Yes

Keithark · Jun 13, 2007, 02:08 PM // 14:08

Hero's are great..it is all the skill and farming nerfs that have killed Guild Wars. But no big deal, because they got a new game comming out and it will be fun for a while until they start nerfing it as well

Ozric · Jun 13, 2007, 03:19 PM // 15:19

Play with heroes? May as well just watch youtube vids of gameplay.

There's only a scant few places if any that are viable to even find a pug, and as such has crippled the amount of content for me. But at least there's no sub, so I can still enjoy booting up GW every great once in awhile.

I suppose heroes are a good thing, they eventually cured my GW addiction.

yukimura_gw · Jun 13, 2007, 05:01 PM // 17:01

Before heroes, I had to PUG sometime 10-15 mins before
finding a decent group. Then sometime, during the mission,
someone (especially a monk) dropped from the group for
an unknown reason.

When that happen, it's a total waste of time.

Now with heroes, I can easily do mission and I don't need a
Guild anymore for PvE. I always use Talkhora, Dunkoro and
Koss for mission (replace Koss if other hero is needed) and
everything goes smoothly.

I don't even play with my old monk because she can't match
the speed of heroes for the healing.

So I kinda feel that heroes ruined PuG (or improved it).

I think being a monk in PvE is pointless right now because
Heroes do the job perfectly (if the build is good :P).

But heroes won't replace competent players in FoW, Underworld,
etc... (but you can do campaign with heroes easily).

Bryant Again · Jun 13, 2007, 05:17 PM // 17:17

Quote:

Originally Posted by yukimura_gw

But heroes won't replace competent players in FoW, Underworld,
etc... (but you can do campaign with heroes easily).

Actually, it's not too hard when you and a friend go in together with 6 heroes. You can probably do the Deep, Urgoz and DoA as well, but it'll be harder.

Mjhammerman · Jun 13, 2007, 06:50 PM // 18:50

Hero's were put there to help u in the game. I know that when i try and find people for a mission (i dont just use hench/heros), it may take a half hour to find some one that is even willing to talk and not just sell shit. Then they mightnt ever be willing to help, majority are ass holes really. I just got out of my former guild for that reason. At least in my new guild, they will help. But if all else fails, heros do in fact help.
Some people just run through the game with heros but its normally for all the reasons that i just mentioned. The people who actually form a party are rare, and if they offer their service (yeah, i hate those asses) they just ask you to pay for probally something u were gonna do anyway but u wanted that "human" interaction that comes with MMOG's. So hero's arent bringing the game down, they just make it more accesible, not exclusive to those who have been playing for several years and have all the connections. I know i use my hero's loud and proud, but only as a last resort.

Lord Feathers · Jun 14, 2007, 04:41 AM // 04:41

Heroes were the best thing they ever added, 95% of all PUGS I have ever been in simply sucked, end of story. Nothing like waiting 20 minutes to get the right group togeather since there is ONLY ONE WAY of doing a mission and then watching it all fall apart. If Guild Wars actually forced PUGS on me I'd simply stop playing.

I was able to defeat NightFall with a paragon using just heroes and henchies and I did it without dying. Heroes don't rage quit, they don't act like idiots, curse since their parents aren't watching and they annoy me far less then most of the players out there.

WinterSnowblind · Jun 14, 2007, 08:16 AM // 08:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ozric

Play with heroes? May as well just watch youtube vids of gameplay.

There's only a scant few places if any that are viable to even find a pug, and as such has crippled the amount of content for me. But at least there's no sub, so I can still enjoy booting up GW every great once in awhile.

I suppose heroes are a good thing, they eventually cured my GW addiction.

I think you got that a little mixed up. If you're trying to PUG, even before heroes were added, it usually involves a 20-30 minute wait to form a group. You'll then go out, with undoubedly a few idiots on the team who will screw up the mission, so you'll have to restart. And then, of course, half the team will leave, forcing you to wait another 20-30 minutes for more to join.

Thus continues the endless cycle of PUGs.

Why should I sit through that, when I can just take my heroes and actually play the game?

Angelic Upstart · Jun 14, 2007, 10:13 AM // 10:13

Heroes in my opinion, are what improved the quality of my GW experience, pug groups for me in the end ionly really used for FA/SF etc, even then you would get the tosspot tank who joined our five man final assault team with the the opening remark of ''howz it goin n00bz'',or another time i had the tank tell me to drop spinal shivers from my skill bar because he would do all the interupting of enemies,so yeah heroes ftw

vaxmor · Jun 14, 2007, 12:25 PM // 12:25

Heroes didnt kill PuGs - W/MOs using mending killed PuGs.

wetsparks · Jun 14, 2007, 08:09 PM // 20:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by vaxmor

Heroes didnt kill PuGs - W/MOs using mending killed PuGs.

Don't forget [skill]healing breeze[/skill] and [skill]vigorous spirit[/skill]

Aera Lure · Jun 14, 2007, 11:17 PM // 23:17

Heroes are a boon and a curse to me.

They are fun. I can set their builds to be ideal to what I am doing and I can create a fairly competent team to do a mission when no one is around to do so. They're certainly more capable than henchmen which still have those mostly inane and spectacularly mediocre builds most of them have. Heroes made hard mode actually viable, because its near impossible to get a full team of humans together to do something anywhere in hard mode and you certainly wouldnt have wanted simply all henchmen for that (sans the flagging feature too, which I wrap in with "heroes").

They're sort of a curse in normal mode though. I played through Prophecies and Factions on all the core classes and got Protectors on both for all largely through PUG play and had a blast doing it. This was pre-heroes timeframe. Certainly I did a number of things with my previous guild as a preference when possible and, for my warrior, she simply went off and henched most everything herself because I wanted her to do it that way. By and large my PUG experience in those times were varied, fun, entertaining, humorous (sometimes hilarious), social and totally random lol. Surprisingly though, they were better on average than their general reputation and examples tossed around nowadays. My experience. Sure a fair share of failures and reforming of groups, but I chose that over playing with all henchmen *yawn* when the guild was doing something else.

The level of ability of most PUGs I joined was above what it is now. Heroes are the cause I think. Most any competent player with any experience at all can play through all three chapters in normal mode with just heroes and henchmen, if they so choose, and they do. I find many people choose to do that now when friends and guildies arent online, so every single town and outpost has everyone standing around with [4] over their heads. The only PUGs left usually are made up of new players, players that cant make it through things using just AI, players that dont have heroes, and the select few that still wish to try playing with other humans in teams made up mostly of players for the fun of it. Most everyone else plays with one friend and all heroes or simply all heroes and henchmen.

In and of itself that is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on how you look at it, but it is a shift in the way the game is played. I do miss playing more in PUGs but even now I dont all that much either. They are indeed even worse now than ever. They lack some experienced players that they at least used to have in some quantity. Nowadays lucky to complete a mission frankly.

Another thing heroes did was to encourage me finally to focus on only one character. The way heroes are set up now I simply do not want to micromanage multiple sets of them over multiple characters, buying that many more sets of runes and insignias, levelling all of them, extra weapons sets and wondering where this that or the other things is and who has it equipped. Made worse soon with more heroes from GWEN. Much as I miss my other characters, every time I come close to bringing one through Nightfall, I dont, and this is the reason. Starting to think I never will.

Still, heroes are great fun. No denying that. Have a good friend who has heroes and the time to do some of the same things you wish to do and you are good to go, through the whole game, faster than if you had to stop to organize PUGs etc or wait for guildies to be online (or maybe your friends happen also of course to be your guild members). Not a good thing, not a bad thing. Just different than the way it used to be, fun certainly, but I also lament it a bit at the same time, since I meet and play with new people far less often.

Oh well. I do at least go join a random NM PUG still from time to time simply for the fun of it without a care in the world what happens (though I try to ensure we win of course, to benefit all those in the team that need the mission done) just to experience that a bit again. Heroes and henchies do get a bit boring at times, though you're playing with a friend or two which is great, but PUG level has dropped so low now and hard mode is so hard to build teams for that heroes and play with them is here to stay.