Nightfall... the game that practically plays itself.

This morning I left my hench/hero party in some god forsaken spot in Elonia (it was crawling with djinn, those firey lion resmers and big dinosaur necro things) while I went to take a pee...

Well what do you know... upon returning to my comp (and feeling much refreshed) I find that my hench/heroes are just mopping up from their second mob kill. (I know this because Olias had 10 minions and there were 6 drops for my char on the ground.)

Sadly... the game is now more akin to a chore... the chore being marching my henchies from one spot on the map to another. Maybe for a challenge I'll make Olias a N/R with a pet and a bow and Jin into a R/N (non-touch) with all blood skills like Vamp Gaze and Dark Pact... meh... they'd probably still beat out most PuGs.

BTW... Jin makes a sweet CG ranger. Just don't give her any other stances and fill the rest of the bar with interrupts.

Everyone knows that NPC's have godly reflexes. I was running this sick Rit Spike that I normally hold with, when, low and behold, we come up against a team with Dunkoro, who, low and behold, has infuse. Guess the rest...

lol, they say it gets much harder, my guildy said he and his heros/henches just ran from mobs in the finall areas, i'll bet you could mop up outside droks with heros/henches wile afk as well

this is true for most of the game.. but when I reached the final area of nightfall (won't spoil ) things got interesting Hero's didn't kill groups, even when setup was good ^^ I needed to work for my kills, and that is, of course, a good thing

WARNING! the post beneath this one contains spoilers which could spoil some interesting events late game

Edit for spoil warning

mrcake, you are a spoiler :O (i'll edit it my post above you to warn people ^^)

I doubt you can leave henchies/heroes alone in realm of torment, you can get your hat handed to you fast. The demons seem to multiply or summon new ones of themeselves too. Unless I was hallucinating or something.

Maybe I didn't have an excellent team build but I fought my way to Gate of Madness with hero/hench and if I didn't run some intelligent interference things went downhill fast.

Again, Arenanet can't win. People complain that henchmen sucked and were inadequate for the harder parts of the games, so they buff the AI and add Heroes. Now complaints that they make the game too easy and the game is now a chore...

On the digglings mission (i think that's the name), where you kill harpengers, you can flag them at the top of the stairs and they will kill the incoming mobs indefinitely while you run off to collect lights.

Honestly, I was afraid that this might happen. It's a difficult balance issue - the more you replace people with AI, the more apt the game is to playing itself for you.

might been the ennmys were wandering and went into agro of ur heros and or hench so they reacted and attacked

BOOOM! Right on the nail.

3 monk henchies with Spellbreaker = GG for casters!

I give my hero monks power drain because i no they can use it, i even add leech signet against those lion mesmers resser things

Well the boards are full of apologists too. It's amazing how they sprout up... like mushrooms on a rotting log.

So count me in the opposite camp. My critique is valid in the context it was given. Elonia is vast and for most of the game (save the last part) the monsters are no match for the hero/hench team. If I wanted Dungeon Siege II... I guess I'd be playing it right now and not GW.

I want to try this out.. henchies way using iway skills!

Loki has a point though. Just look at the giant threads complaining about the A.I. being too hard or being too stupid or blah blah blah. There's no pleasing people.

Now, while I agree that if you setup your heroes decently, they can practically play themselves in SOME areas. But if you really are so annoyed by it, then don't use heroes. Simple as that. Use the "dumber" henchies. Or even better/worse yet, use PUGS. Now THAT'S the best challenge yet.

Look at my location under my avatar...

I'd use PuGs if I could find them. The problem is the game is full of people with "8" over their heads. The other problem I have is that the level of PuG play has degenerated (which I didn't think was possible).

Heroes are so good that a lot of people overextend themselves in a PuG group now. They think a human monk can keep up with them like a hero monk could. Remember in Prophecies... learning occurred over the course of the game? You learned that you couldn't Leeroy every mob. The game rewarded patience and careful play while it punished stupidity. Nightfall doesn't seem to do that... at least not through what I've seen.

I guess there are a lot of threads complaining and I've reluctantly joined in the chorus.

Honestly, I do have my concerns about the direction the game is going. I personally feel like the 'multiplayer' in this game only applies to the part where you find yourself in an outpost/town and see that there are actually other people playing Guild Wars. Even if you say Guild Wars isn't an MMO and say it's a cooperative online role playing game there still feels like something is missing to me. What am I cooperating with? The AI? I feel some of the magic has been rubbed away.

I understand what you're saying. The magic of playing an MMO is that you get to play with/against other people. However part of GW's problem is the horrible community. People say that's just how gaming communities are, but I've been around and I have to say that the GW community is THE worst.

So what's my point? Because the community is so crappy and because heroes allow people to "solo" I'm not surprised that PUGS are pretty scarce now. If the community were a lot more mature, I'd go with PUGs over Heroes anyway. But if I have to put up with a bunch of snotnosed kids not listening or ordering me around, I'd go with heroes or guildies any day.

You know, I honestly wouldn't even want to bother with PuG's anymore these days for missions or whatever, unless it's guildies or something. I was in a mission area earlier today, and some random person was advertising for a group, and then included "No Dervishes" at the end. Somebody asked why, and the person spouted off some crap about how they die too much and bla bla bla. At first, I might have taken them up on a group or something, but I was playing a Derv, oh well, guess my heroes/henchies don't care.

Plus, I'm really interested in both the new professions, so I'm not gonna let some random moron, who deleted their derv because it didn't have 100 al armor and couldn't tank, spoil my fun in this game. Really getting annoyed with the crowd that declares certain professions useless because they suck at playing them, and ruining everyone else's chance in a PuG while playing that profession. But that's beside the point really.

Guess what I'm trying to say also, is that for people that have good experience in playing all the professions, their heroes will greatly benefit from that as well, so I see nothing wrong with that. If you don't have any experience playing a certain profession, some of them might not be of any use to you, and it's back to PuGs maybe. Who knows.

it is abit spooky how quiet places are now...