GW2 needs the henchmen from GW1

[Derenek.8931]

Currently as the game population is dying off and the veteran players are all moving to raids and fractals, the rest of the world is deserted. If you want to do a dungeon, story quests, personal story, level up, etc its either solo yolo it, or just skip past that content.... There just arent people available to join your party.

Having some henchmen that you could equip and skill up like in GW1 would be awesome for newer players and older players who want to play the game, but arent interested in doing nothing but raids and the new expansion pack zones.

It would also be great for squad based WvW or SPvP content.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I can't say I agree with the statement that the game/world is deserted. No matter where I am, there are others. Thus, I see no real need for Henchman/Heroes. The implementation of that feature totally changed Guild Wars, in the past.

Perhaps, a friendly Guild might be helpful.

Good luck.

[Ashen.2907]

I hope not.

[Palador.2170]

Personally, I would love to have at least one "assistant" NPC I could set up, equip, and use in instanced content. I'd even settle for this person being a "blank slate" member of Dragon's Watch, so I can make sure at least one of them is set up with my own character in mind for future stories but not in pre-existing content.

Question: During the Living Story, there's an optional fight against a copy of yourself with a magic mirror. And in the Riverlands, there's an event that sets a doppelganger out after someone in the zone. How well do these copies use the skills the player has? Are they using them right? Poorly? Or just running a generic build that may have totally different skills/traits? This will tell us how well ANet is able to make the game run an NPC character with a player-made build.

[Tolmos.8395]

While the entire Henchmen/Hero system wouldn’t work in GW2 for many reasons, I would give my left arm for a “sidekick” sort of system where a custom character could follow me around and fight besides me, etc. Holy crap that would rock

[GrubySzymek.1362]

I endorse any idea providing features from the original game. Customisable heroes would be great addition, most likely surpassing average pug level experience we currently have.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

The OP appears to have assumed facts not in evidence and even if those were true, making a huge leap to assume a particular solution would be best for the game and its community. Adding NPCs to teams would make it harder, not easier, to find groups. It would address the symptoms of an assumed issue, and not necessarily in the best way.

@Derenek.8931 said:Currently as the game population is dying offThe evidence suggests attrition is less-than-expected for a five-year old game. It renews itself frequently, with each expac and sometimes with balance or content updates.

and the veteran players are all moving to raids and fractals,Evidence says otherwise.

the rest of the world is deserted.That's not been my experience.

If you want to do a dungeon, story quests, personal story, level up, etc its either solo yolo it, or just skip past that content.... There just arent people available to join your party.Also not my experience.

Having some henchmen that you could equip and skill up like in GW1 would be awesome for newer players and older players who want to play the game, but arent interested in doing nothing but raids and the new expansion pack zones.You realize that adding heroes (and increasing the number of them) accelerated the decline of parties in GW1; it made it harder to find others to play with.

It would also be great for squad based WvW or SPvP content.How? The very nature of the fun of WvW or sPvP is the player-vs-player aspects, the unpredictability. Adding NPCs to your team would trivialize it.

[Ashen.2907]

What IWN said.

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:snip

All your "arguments" are based on anecdotal evidence. Game is losing players - the revenue is shrinking since LW S2. Community is in decline. I'm pretty sure there are no more than 500k monthly active players in total

[Doctor Hide.6345]

Don't know where the OP is getting the idea where the game population is dying off because it's clearly not due to people constantly always being around. Finding groups is also easy for dungeons and anything else, so I don't see the need for henchmen whatsoever for GW2. It worked for GW1 because you needed a group just to move around the open world, but you don't need that for GW2 which would make henchmen useless. It's fine the way it is.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Wondering if OP played Guild Wars before and after the advent of Heroes? It really moved the game away from any semblance of an MMO (not that it was an MMO to begin with, but...at least there was a lot of partying up before Heroes).

[Doctor Hide.6345]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:snip

All your "arguments" are based on anecdotal evidence. Game is losing players - the revenue is shrinking since LW S2. Community is in decline. I'm pretty sure there are no more than 500k monthly active players in total

Where is your evidence then of this so-called "decline" because all it sounds like so far is nay-sayer speak without any actual evidence to back it up.

[Randulf.7614]

The World is well populated. I can understand maybe for story or dungeons at a push, but we def have no need for them in open world. There is no shortage of players and the population is very strong right now

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@Doctor Hide.6345 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:snip

All your "arguments" are based on anecdotal evidence. Game is losing players - the revenue is shrinking since LW S2. Community is in decline. I'm pretty sure there are no more than 500k monthly active players in total

Where is your evidence then of this so-called "decline" because all it sounds like so far is nay-sayer speak without any actual evidence to back it up.

"the revenue is shrinking since LW S2."

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Wondering if OP played Guild Wars before and after the advent of Heroes? It really moved the game away from any semblance of an MMO (not that it was an MMO to begin with, but...at least there was a lot of partying up before Heroes).

GW wasn't really an mmo to begin with. It was more like Diablo or PoE

[Doctor Hide.6345]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@Doctor Hide.6345 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:snip

All your "arguments" are based on anecdotal evidence. Game is losing players - the revenue is shrinking since LW S2. Community is in decline. I'm pretty sure there are no more than 500k monthly active players in total

Where is your evidence then of this so-called "decline" because all it sounds like so far is nay-sayer speak without any actual evidence to back it up.

"the revenue is shrinking since LW S2."

That is not evidence that relates to lack of population. For all we know more people could just be converting gold to gems instead of actual evidence. You need more concrete reason then that to prove any validity to your claims. Actual population charts and numbers would be a start.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:snip

All your "arguments" are based on anecdotal evidence. Game is losing players - the revenue is shrinking since LW S2. Community is in decline. I'm pretty sure there are no more than 500k monthly active players in totalRe-read. Every game loses population; that happens industry wide. What I said was the rate of decline is less than expected.Further one doesn't need to provide more than anecdotal evidence to refute the OP's anecdotal claims that there aren't any people available to party up. In fact, all I said (in response to their anecdotes) was that I'm not having the same experience as the OP.

If you want specific evidence for how many people do fractals vs PvE, there are some decent proxies to compare using GW2 Efficiency. You'll find that there are far more in PvE than in Fractals & Raids combined.

But it doesn't matter if I have any evidence at all: the burden is on the OP who wants to see an immense change in the fundamental mechanics of the game. The basis of that request is based on assuming facts for which they haven't provided evidence. And it further assumes that the only reasonable way to address that assumed lack of community is to add NPCs to parties, even in WvW.

It's up to the OP to first show that the situation is dire enough to require a massive change and then to at least consider the possibility that there might be several ways to address it.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Wondering if OP played Guild Wars before and after the advent of Heroes? It really moved the game away from any semblance of an MMO (not that it

was

an MMO to begin with, but...at least there was a lot of partying up before Heroes).

GW wasn't really an mmo to begin with. It was more like Diablo or PoE

I think I pretty much said that when I said "not that it was an MMO to begin with...".

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:snip

All your "arguments" are based on anecdotal evidence. Game is losing players - the revenue is shrinking since LW S2. Community is in decline. I'm pretty sure there are no more than 500k monthly active players in totalRe-read. Every game loses population; that happens industry wide. What I said was the rate of decline is less than expected.Further one doesn't need to provide more than anecdotal evidence to refute the OP's anecdotal claims that there aren't any people available to party up. In fact, all I said (in response to their anecdotes) was that I'm not having the same experience as the OP.

If you want specific evidence for how many people do fractals vs PvE, there are some decent proxies to compare using GW2 Efficiency. You'll find that there are far more in PvE than in Fractals & Raids combined.

But it doesn't matter if I have any evidence at all: the burden is on the OP who wants to see an immense change in the fundamental mechanics of the game. The basis of that request is based on assuming facts for which they haven't provided evidence. And it further assumes that the only reasonable way to address that assumed lack of community is to add NPCs to parties, even in WvW.

It's up to the OP to first show that the situation is dire enough to require a massive change and then to at least consider the possibility that there might be several ways to address it.

Actually you focused on OPs starting claim which is irrelevant for his idea. Customisable hero addition would help people who don't enjoy very elitist gw2 community in group content to actually play the game without stress. You can even monetizehero skins to help shrinking revenue

[Gemnaid.4219]

Wvw henchmen plz.

[ovinnik.9216]

Why yes, introduce NPCs that could and would replace other players. It's not like this MMORPG is highly solo-oriented and asocial as it is. There are plenty of people, OP. They may have little need for or interest in talking to you, but that's contemporary PvE for you. I, for one, would rather see movement toward the opposite direction of what you propose.

[CptAurellian.9537]

sigh Why does the ... not very intelligent idea of henchmen resurface again and again? In most story steps and quite some other cases, we can admire the NPC incapability of doing anything useful. Who would want that nonsense replicated on a much larger scale? Not to mention all the workload that would be required for such a system, the massive balancing problems and who knows what else.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:Actually you focused on OPs starting claim which is irrelevant for his idea. Customisable hero addition would help people who don't enjoy very elitist gw2 community in group content to actually play the game without stress. You can even monetizehero skins to help shrinking revenue

Since none of that was part of the OP's argument, I can't imagine why you think it should be addressed in response to the original post.The starting claim is obviously relevant, since it was given as the basis for the suggestion.

If you want to make those arguments in your own (new) thread, go ahead. They are also based on assuming facts not in evidence and without regard to the cost of developing the system in the first place: it can't help ANet's profit to increase revenue while increasing maintenance costs.

[Laila Lightness.8742]

Gw 2 is a open world mmorpg while gw 1 was a co op game since only time you met ppl was in cities so this is not really going too work

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:Actually you focused on OPs starting claim which is irrelevant for his idea. Customisable hero addition would help people who don't enjoy very elitist gw2 community in group content to actually play the game without stress. You can even monetizehero skins to help shrinking revenue

Since none of that was part of the OP's argument, I can't imagine why you think it should be addressed in response to the original post.The starting claim is obviously relevant, since it was given as the basis for the suggestion.

If you want to make those arguments in your own (new) thread, go ahead. They are also based on assuming facts not in evidence and without regard to the cost of developing the system in the first place: it can't help ANet's profit to increase revenue while increasing maintenance costs.

Since I'm all for introducing customisable heroes for gw2, I see no reason to start new thread. OP's intentions or justifications are irrelevant as what matters is the effect. Customisable heroes would make the game more accessible for players who have troubles finding group for themselves. In addition Anet can easily monetize hero system with skins making it a win win scenario.