[Crazy Idea] GW2 Mercenary Heroes for instanced content

[Zacchary.6183]

Taken from GW1's Mercenary Heroes, a Mercenary Hero is an NPC that follows you around in instanced content as an AI party member. To get one, you take one of the characters on your account and register it. Once registered, any character on your account except the one who registered can use it. The NPC will retain its look and weapons setup only.

 

Features:

1. All gear is replaced by three exotic items that determine the NPC's stats. Stat distribution is split between weapon, armor and trinkets and each can be selected freely. Can be upgraded to Ascended through crafting.
2. Runes and sigils can be equipped and they will only need one.
3. The Hero's name, build and AI can be modified in the Build tab in the Hero Panel.
4. The AI will essentially be the same as with PoF Story NPCs, but will do and prioritize certain things depending on what type it is set at.
5. AI types selectable from Assault (Focuses your target), Sentinel (Focus smaller targets), Sapper (Prioritize conditions and CC when break bar is available), Support (heal, boons, revive), Tactician (focus mechanics)
6. Heroes can be ordered to attack, guard an area (or interact), or Stand Down with a menu that expands when you click on a hero's name within the party list. Utility skills can also be selected from here.
7. All Heroes in your party can be ordered at the same time by clicking your own name.
8. Can be used in Story, Dungeons, Fractals, Strikes, Raids etc.

 

Limitations:

1. You cannot change the Hero's appearance except by updating its registration.
2. AI will prioritize commands made before their AI. You can end commands by selecting them again.
3. Mercenary NPCs will not appear outside instanced content where they are allowed.
4. Each Hero takes up a slot in the party.

 

If anet could do something like this, then content like Dungeons could see some more use. Instance leaders who lose a member for whatever reason, could fill the hole with an NPC that is more or less affective than an average player.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

This topic has come up before so there are likely some very good ideas already on this forum. 
 

I don’t care for the idea of mercs as it can become the crutch some players rely on.  Having used them in SWTOR they are fine and fulfill a need but I think they also create issues. 
 

for instance, players may feel more likely to leave a group because they ‘can just use a merc’. Or feel okay kicking another player because ‘just use a merc’. Or starting without a full team… 

dungeons are dead content and if Anet wants to rejuvenate them there are many ways they could go about it before adding mercs.  It sucks saying dungeons are dead content but, Anet has the tools already to make dungeons more engaging to players and they don’t do anything with them. 
 

 

[wickedkae.4980]

This would require the team to be able to code in some actual AI.  If you haven't noticed, Anet is not very good when it comes to pets and you want full fledged heroes?

Edited August 21, 2021 by wickedkae.4980

[Zacchary.6183]

3 minutes ago, wickedkae.4980 said:

This would require the team to be able to code in some actual AI.  If you haven't noticed, Anet is not very good when it comes to pets and you want full fledged heroes?

It doesn't have to be sophisticated. They already have NPC mechanics for story missions that they could modify so that they can do the bare minimum, like get out of the way of attacks. The rest will depend on how well the owner builds and micromanages their mercs.

[masterJP.5048]

If you use a Lord Hizen build, any dungeon is solo-able, except when mechanics come into play, like CoF P1 & P2 , but the problem is, then the AI would have to be coded to do that... As well with Strikes / Raids - Getting AI companions to play along with that mechanics ? That is a lot of work, and there is a bunch of negatives coming with doing so. 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

It was a sad day when Heroes were added to Guild Wars.

Just killed any kind of parties forming.

I'd hate to see the same thing happen here, just for the sake of old dungeons.

(By the way, the Devs consider Fractals to be dungeons.)

[Tiilimon.6094]

Seems like a lot of work for the devs to code some amazing AI, when you can just grab some real dude who acts like a bot anyways 😄 

[Cyninja.2954]

Just 1 question:

What is the goal of adding heroes at this point in time to the game?

 

In GW1 case it caused for players to not have to group or play with others any more, which given the goal of transitioning to GW2 made sense at the time. It also left the game in a state where a solo player can reasonably well experience most if the game, even with a dwindling player base.

 

In SWToR, easier instanced content can just be soloed with mercs. Which sounds great on paper but actually does a lot of damage to the game as a whole under the prospect that it is a MMORPG.

 

Besides the obvious answer (and the implications and effect this answers has): well I want to solo group content. What else do heroes bring to the table eight now?

[Rod.6581]

No, this is a terrible idea.

I agree something should be done to dungeons but there are way better ideas than adding mercenaries.

[Dawdler.8521]

Just use a minion master necro.

 

Every bone minion is a hero.

[yoni.7015]

5 hours ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Taken from GW1's Mercenary Heroes, a Mercenary Hero is an NPC that follows you around in instanced content as an AI party member. To get one, you take one of the characters on your account and register it. Once registered, any character on your account except the one who registered can use it. The NPC will retain its look and weapons setup only.

 

Features:

1. All gear is replaced by three exotic items that determine the NPC's stats. Stat distribution is split between weapon, armor and trinkets and each can be selected freely. Can be upgraded to Ascended through crafting.
2. Runes and sigils can be equipped and they will only need one.
3. The Hero's name, build and AI can be modified in the Build tab in the Hero Panel.
4. The AI will essentially be the same as with PoF Story NPCs, but will do and prioritize certain things depending on what type it is set at.
5. AI types selectable from Assault (Focuses your target), Sentinel (Focus smaller targets), Sapper (Prioritize conditions and CC when break bar is available), Support (heal, boons, revive), Tactician (focus mechanics)
6. Heroes can be ordered to attack, guard an area (or interact), or Stand Down with a menu that expands when you click on a hero's name within the party list. Utility skills can also be selected from here.
7. All Heroes in your party can be ordered at the same time by clicking your own name.
8. Can be used in Story, Dungeons, Fractals, Strikes, Raids etc.

 

Limitations:

1. You cannot change the Hero's appearance except by updating its registration.
2. AI will prioritize commands made before their AI. You can end commands by selecting them again.
3. Mercenary NPCs will not appear outside instanced content where they are allowed.
4. Each Hero takes up a slot in the party.

 

If anet could do something like this, then content like Dungeons could see some more use. Instance leaders who lose a member for whatever reason, could fill the hole with an NPC that is more or less affective than an average player.

This is not a good idea. It would only make sense for dungeons and that’s not enough to implement it. In GW2 there is no need for Mercenary Heroes. 

[Zacchary.6183]

15 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

What is the goal of adding heroes at this point in time to the game?

To make the content that it targets have more activity and therefore give anet a reason to update it. Because right now, the biggest issue that is keeping this content from being relevant are groups disagreeing on how everything should be played. Of course there are guilds dedicated to combating this by training new people, but they have not really made a dent. Because the issue is not the content, it's people. Some do not want to adhere to meta, some require meta, some are leeches, others just want to solo and not deal with anyone like you said.

 

If that is an issue, there are plenty of things that can be done to make it less enticing both programming-wise and reward-wise.

[The Greyhawk.9107]

Probably not a good idea for GW2.

[Mungo Zen.9364]

1 hour ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

To make the content that it targets have more activity and therefore give anet a reason to update it. Because right now, the biggest issue that is keeping this content from being relevant are groups disagreeing on how everything should be played. Of course there are guilds dedicated to combating this by training new people, but they have not really made a dent. Because the issue is not the content, it's people. Some do not want to adhere to meta, some require meta, some are leeches, others just want to solo and not deal with anyone like you said.

 

If that is an issue, there are plenty of things that can be done to make it less enticing both programming-wise and reward-wise.

The issue I see is, if your assertion is correct, then the mercs would have to compensate for the players lack of skill, ability or cohesive build.  
 

and if the mercs are compensating for a players lack of skill or ability, can we expect that player to get better at the game when they have, as I said in my first post, a crutch. 
 

Putting players into dungeons in this manner will not make dungeons live content again. Anet developing recurring reasons to do dungeons would.  While everyone would kick and scream if this happened, but forcing players into dungeons for legendary collections would go a long way towards keeping dungeons relevant.  There are various world bosses and metas that are relevant in part due to collections associated with them.  Those bosses and metas would be a lot less engaging if there wasn’t a steady stream of players farming them for collections. 
 

even if it wasn’t legendary collections, but perhaps another way to farm crafting items like funerary incense or amalg gemstones. Anet could do this at any time and give players a reason to go back to dungeons, but they haven’t, which leads back to it being dead content because Anet is the one not doing anything about it. 

[Dante.1508]

I Doubt henchmen would be able to keep up.. These things take some precision and finesse, i'm not sure bots could do.

[Zacchary.6183]

2 minutes ago, Mungo Zen.9364 said:

The issue I see is, if your assertion is correct, then the mercs would have to compensate for the players lack of skill, ability or cohesive build.  
 

and if the mercs are compensating for a players lack of skill or ability, can we expect that player to get better at the game when they have, as I said in my first post, a crutch. 

They actually would not have to compensate for the player's lack of skill, merely be there for damage and minimal support. Or in the case of Tactician AI, help with mechanics if multiple bodies are required to complete the mechanics.  Otherwise, they will just deal damage and try to avoid attacks until you command them to do something else, which gets more tedious the more you have to command. This would enforce smart composition design and any holes left would have to be filled with the owner's coordination abilities on top of managing DPS or w/e. So in a sense there is a drawback to replacing the skill of real players with commandable NPCs.

 

For example, Vale guardian's green circle would only automatically trigger Tactician AI to react. And since setting every Hero to Tactician would prevent any one of them from doing anything other than attacking w/e their AI targeting priorities dictate, managing the positioning and focus for those 9 Heroes would be stupidly inefficient. Having a well designed comp would make such a task easier as all they would have to do for that mechanic is All Guard that one spot and then All Attack VG with commands.

[Sobx.1758]

17 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

They actually would not have to compensate for the player's lack of skill, merely be there for damage and minimal support. Or in the case of Tactician AI, help with mechanics if multiple bodies are required to complete the mechanics.  Otherwise, they will just deal damage and try to avoid attacks until you command them to do something else, which gets more tedious the more you have to command. This would enforce smart composition design and any holes left would have to be filled with the owner's coordination abilities on top of managing DPS or w/e. So in a sense there is a drawback to replacing the skill of real players with commandable NPCs.

 

For example, Vale guardian's green circle would only automatically trigger Tactician AI to react. And since setting every Hero to Tactician would prevent any one of them from doing anything other than attacking w/e their AI targeting priorities dictate, managing the positioning and focus for those 9 Heroes would be stupidly inefficient. Having a well designed comp would make such a task easier as all they would have to do for that mechanic is All Guard that one spot and then All Attack VG with commands.

tl;dr it's either almost an auto-play literal party of bots controlled by one person or an absolutely underpowered, useless addition to the game. I don't like either of those outcomes. Even moreso that it tries to make mmorpg to be more of a single player game.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Substance E.4852]

19 hours ago, Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:

It was a sad day when Heroes were added to Guild Wars.

Just killed any kind of parties forming.

I'd hate to see the same thing happen here, just for the sake of old dungeons.

(By the way, the Devs consider Fractals to be dungeons.)

Not having to sit in town repeatedly shouting that your 6/8 team was looking for 2 monks was the greatest feeling on Earth and nothing can change my mind

[mythical.6315]

I don’t see this working for any instances that have mechanics which rules out raids, strikes, and high level fractals. It’s completely unnecessary for story instances.  This is also an MMO so I don’t feel that certain group aspects should be bypassed. 

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

19 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Just use a minion master necro.

 

Every bone minion is a hero.

Explodes a Bone Minion

[Raknar.4735]

7 hours ago, mythical.6315 said:

This is also an MMO so I don’t feel that certain group aspects should be bypassed. 

 

Well, this is about instanced content, where the massively-multiplayer from the term MMO doesn't really apply, as group sizes are mostly small-scale. Not to mention the whole persistent world that doesn't exist in instances.

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Raknar.4735

[kharmin.7683]

Mercs would probably be just as useful as the NPCs that travel with your hero in certain story instances.  Which is to say, not much help at all.

[Sobx.1758]

5 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Mercs would probably be just as useful as the NPCs that travel with your hero in certain story instances.  Which is to say, not much help at all.

In which case, as I already said, this would be a useless feature beyond the story mode level content.

[mythical.6315]

7 hours ago, Raknar.4735 said:

 

Well, this is about instanced content, where the massively-multiplayer from the term MMO doesn't really apply, as group sizes are mostly small-scale. Not to mention the whole persistent world that doesn't exist in instances.

 

Group content in MMOs doesn’t include only those done in massive groups. 

Edited August 22, 2021 by mythical.6315

[Raknar.4735]

2 minutes ago, mythical.6315 said:

Group content in MMOs isn’t just massive groups. 

 

The term MMO literally stands for Massive Multiplayer online. Also instanced content isn't always group content in MMOs. So your initial statement about "This being an MMO" makes no sense.

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Raknar.4735