Templates Preview Guild Chat -- We want your questions!

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@c space cowboy.2764 said:

@Vagrant.7206 said:

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@maultasche.4082 said:So we crafted legendary armor to be restricted to 2 stat combinations now? Raiders had perfect build templates for the past years thanks to arcdps. Now we get a downgrade provided from Anet. I don't see the advantage of this.

Then don't purchase them carry on using Arc templates

Deltaconnected (maker of arcdps) said he's going to deprecate the feature once this goes live.

Anet is making him...

Makes sense I guess.. we want stuff, stuff costs so to protect there revenue stream they have to apply some pressure on what will of course be its main rival.

[EagleDelta.4726]

@Dzjudz.9142 said:

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Neutra.6857 said:

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Neutra.6857 said:

@Agrotera.1254 said:

@Dzjudz.9142 said:What would you say to people who have legendary gear for the convenience of swapping between lots of builds (many runes, stat combinations) and now being locked to only two possibilities (with having to buy gems for more options)? A ranger can for example use power soulbeast (berserker), condi soulbeast (viper), heal druid (harrier), deimos hand kiter (minstrel or whatever), wvw condi (trailblazer), and many more. What is the benefit of legendary gear if you lock the options via build templates?

I believe this statement answers your question ...... "Equipment Templates can also record the customization of legendary items, which can freely change attributes and upgrades. You can equip a single legendary item to multiple Equipment Templates with different attributes and upgrade choices for each."

The issue is that those who will most likely use templates can use a large number of different runes/sigils for different scenarios (like changing runes/sigils between fractals) an can easily have wy more then 3 or 4 different varieties all for the same armor stats.

The impression I've gotten from the people I play with and the average player is that the player base that needs more than the 3 build, 2 equipment, 3 storage (+3 more) is actually a huge (but vocal) minority. The company has to make money or the game goes away. Developers are expensive to have on staff, so to justify the time spent on this feature, they have to charge money somehow.

And doing so will only kitten of the player base, because they are losing what is a free system with infinite options that they have had access to for years.

It's this or a subscription, you choose.

Why are those the only two options? That's a false dichotomy. There are other options too. Just because they offer this, that doesn't mean that it's either their offer or a subscription fee.

How else do you suppose they make money then and pay their devs? As I've already stated devs are not cheap. There's a reason that in the 90s and early 2000s many "old-school" companies (and some current ones) see the Devs/Admins/Engineers as a black hole of cost. Technology is expensive, and will continue to be as long as there are more jobs than bodies to fill those jobs. You want this game around, then it has to monetize. Boxed prices can only be used for large content releases, but those don't sustain the game on its own, if it did then MMOs would've always worked that way. It doesn't MMOs have always functioned with MTX and/or Subs as the primary income source.

Players don't want a rise in boxed price, players don't want to pay subs, players don't want to pay MTX...... what is the option then?

[Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365]

holy moly people,,, just save the builds you're most likely to rotate through and set up the other ones manually when you need them

[Akachi.1352]

Why are you restricting us to 6 (3 +3) baseline build storage slots when we had infinite with Guild Wars 1.

[mordefelix.5826]

@"Stephane Lo Presti.7258" I'm actually kind of angry for once for whomever/or whatever groups made this decision it's just .... well wrong. Anet is charging us for... builds. Builds that have been FREE on arcdps for years and should be a baseline feature. People don't feel happy about this, we don't want Anet's build template anymore because they've voided our trust on what they were bringing to us. On top of that you're voiding arcdps buildtemplates too? Veteran players and players that enjoy the game and played the game to the upmost of highest levels are the people really getting hit and for what reason? Because we enjoy the game and want to play every single build possible? We want to be helpful by being able to play any role for raids and fractals, but what it's like you're saying to us is...." Well you know what? fuck your build and all the work put you in, give us money so you can play your cool specializations. Also fuck your legendary armor too that you worked so hard for, you can only have TWO build templates you can use. The rest you need to buy with money" That's just wrong to tease us something even better than arcdps templates to only find out its gated by a paywall. People have worked hard in this game to get where they're at, and to KEEP where they're at, we have to pay more? At least pick something else to monetize. This is not the way Anet and although you have been disappointing in the past, this is just borderline EA levels of Audacity here now. We've been loyal customers for years to you guys. Where's the trust and honor with this?

[Tails.9372]

Is there any chance that these templates are going to be weapon slot specific? E.g.: if I use D/P on my thief it loads in the build I set for slot 1 and when I switch to rifle (and vice versa) it loads in another build I set up for slot 2. Having to go out of combat in order to switch up my build every time I want to switch to a different weapon set is really annoying. Also, can we have weapon slot specific key bindings?

[Dzjudz.9142]

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Dzjudz.9142 said:

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Neutra.6857 said:

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Neutra.6857 said:

@Agrotera.1254 said:

@Dzjudz.9142 said:What would you say to people who have legendary gear for the convenience of swapping between lots of builds (many runes, stat combinations) and now being locked to only two possibilities (with having to buy gems for more options)? A ranger can for example use power soulbeast (berserker), condi soulbeast (viper), heal druid (harrier), deimos hand kiter (minstrel or whatever), wvw condi (trailblazer), and many more. What is the benefit of legendary gear if you lock the options via build templates?

I believe this statement answers your question ...... "Equipment Templates can also record the customization of legendary items, which can freely change attributes and upgrades. You can equip a single legendary item to multiple Equipment Templates with different attributes and upgrade choices for each."

The issue is that those who will most likely use templates can use a large number of different runes/sigils for different scenarios (like changing runes/sigils between fractals) an can easily have wy more then 3 or 4 different varieties all for the same armor stats.

The impression I've gotten from the people I play with and the average player is that the player base that needs more than the 3 build, 2 equipment, 3 storage (+3 more) is actually a huge (but vocal) minority. The company has to make money or the game goes away. Developers are expensive to have on staff, so to justify the time spent on this feature, they have to charge money somehow.

And doing so will only kitten of the player base, because they are losing what is a free system with infinite options that they have had access to for years.

It's this or a subscription, you choose.

Why are those the only two options? That's a false dichotomy. There are other options too. Just because they offer this, that doesn't mean that it's either their offer or a subscription fee.

How else do you suppose they make money then and pay their devs? As I've already stated devs are

not

cheap. There's a reason that in the 90s and early 2000s many "old-school" companies (and some current ones) see the Devs/Admins/Engineers as a black hole of cost. Technology is expensive, and will continue to be as long as there are more jobs than bodies to fill those jobs. You want this game around, then it

has to monetize

. Boxed prices can only be used for large content releases, but those don't sustain the game on its own, if it did then MMOs would've always worked that way. It doesn't MMOs have always functioned with MTX and/or Subs as the primary income source.

Players don't want a rise in boxed price, players don't want to pay subs, players don't want to pay MTX...... what is the option then?

The gem store works fine? I don't see why functionality needs to be hampered in the name of profits. I already don't like legendary type skins being sold in the gem store instead of ingame achievements etc, but I accept that they don't give gameplay functionality and that ANet needs to make a profit. I vehemently disagree with this upcoming build system monetization.

[Setz.9675]

My questions:

Are there any plans for shared armor/weapon slots the same way we got shared inventory slots? I mean I got 3 different types of legendary armor sets, all legendary jewelry/backpieces and 17 ish legendary weapons, being able to access that on all my characters without having to unequip/equip them constantly would be a next level QoL improvement.

Lets say I have a fully decked out berserkers equipment template on my elementalist, will my mesmer be able to use my elementalist's berserker equipment template? Any plans for shared equipment build templates?

[Neutra.6857]

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Neutra.6857 said:

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Neutra.6857 said:

@EagleDelta.4726 said:

@Neutra.6857 said:

@Agrotera.1254 said:

@"Dzjudz.9142" said:What would you say to people who have legendary gear for the convenience of swapping between lots of builds (many runes, stat combinations) and now being locked to only two possibilities (with having to buy gems for more options)? A ranger can for example use power soulbeast (berserker), condi soulbeast (viper), heal druid (harrier), deimos hand kiter (minstrel or whatever), wvw condi (trailblazer), and many more. What is the benefit of legendary gear if you lock the options via build templates?

I believe this statement answers your question ...... "Equipment Templates can also record the customization of legendary items, which can freely change attributes and upgrades. You can equip a single legendary item to multiple Equipment Templates with different attributes and upgrade choices for each."

The issue is that those who will most likely use templates can use a large number of different runes/sigils for different scenarios (like changing runes/sigils between fractals) an can easily have wy more then 3 or 4 different varieties all for the same armor stats.

The impression I've gotten from the people I play with and the average player is that the player base that needs more than the 3 build, 2 equipment, 3 storage (+3 more) is actually a huge (but vocal) minority. The company has to make money or the game goes away. Developers are expensive to have on staff, so to justify the time spent on this feature, they have to charge money somehow.

And doing so will only kitten of the player base, because they are losing what is a free system with infinite options that they have had access to for years.

It think you're being overly dramatic about this. Most people I play GW2 with don't even use ArcDPS, let alone Arc Templates. It breaks after every update and doesn't add enough to be worth the effort when it does work. Even then builds randomly disappear from it and if your PC/Laptop/Harddrive went down/died you lost the templates.I know non-technical users like to compare things like this as if they're the same..... they're not. To you it may seem that way, but you're comparing a plugin someone worked on in their spare time to something a company put money, a lot of it too, into.

Additionally, a dev can cost between $70-100K per dev/per year (sometimes less for junior devs, and a lot more for senior devs). You have to justify where that dev spends his time otherwise the company (whose goal is to make money) won't approve the work. It's this or a subscription, you choose.

I am not being dramatic about this at all, just pointing out that the system being used is likely to annoy the players who would use it. Most of GW2 player base does not care about builds at all. Thus this template thing is useless to them. Templates are used by those who have a lot of characters and whose characters change their build a lot, as in the more hardcore community.

Correct the company put time and money into this, something that should have been released at the start of the game given it already existed in GW1. As the years went on and there was no signs of a template, another person spent their personal time to make something that was free to the user with essentially unlimited slots. True it would break when there where game changes, but that was because there where game changes and there where constant updates to fix it. Now that templates are coming to the game itself, that hardcore community is losing their free unlimited template, and you think they will be happy with this change?

The problem with your argument about someone else putting their own time into it for unlimited templates..... the community will always be able to do things and give people things for free that ANet can't do. They don't get to work on templates for free/in their own time for us. It never has and never will work that way in business.

Additionally, we don't get to say "you can't charge for that, it should've been in at the beginning". That's not how design works. Just because players ended up taking things beyond the original design does not mean that ANet ever intended there to be a need for build templates. The GW2 player base demands/expects a lot without realizing the fact that only some of those desires can be met at any given time.

Why do you assume anet can't do this for free? WvW is supposed to eventually get an entire rework, and that is for free. This is a system that already existed (as in the code was available to them since you know arcdps existed.)

And yes, we do get to say this should have been in since the beginning and not be something you should charge for, particularly since there is already a better option. True only some desires can be met, there are limited resources, that does not mean you create a worse situation for your existing base.

[Titan.8215]

This is pathetic, this should be a feature from release and we get it 7 years late and with limited slot. I don't know if devs actually play the game, but only for fractals with my elementalist I have at least 10 different templates, specially for gear, which we'll get 2 per character. Is this a joke? ffs, if you want our money just do a great expansion, this game need new content from long ago.

I thought that the legendary sigils and runes costing more than a legendary armor was a joke and now this...

[Dumat.1479]

@Setz.9675 said:My questions:

Are there any plans for shared armor/weapon slots the same way we got shared inventory slots? I mean I got 3 different types of legendary armor sets, all legendary jewelry/backpieces and 17 ish legendary weapons, being able to access that on all my characters without having to unequip/equip them constantly would be a next level QoL improvement.

Lets say I have an equipment template on my elementalist, will my mesmer be able to use my elementalist's equipment template?

I hope they will never do something as stupid as this.

[Vostroyan.9214]

I was happy the way the build template was in gw1 where you could have "" Infinit Builds "" now that i see how its coming to Gw2 and being heavily monotied, just dont cair for it all all any more. I have been linient on many things in the past and would suport in any way or form but as for this i also have my limits. This is my opinion.

[Kargos.9051]

Will this be for traits only, or will builds automatically swap over stats on legendary gear / swap out gear?

Edit: never mind, I see equipment templates, Think I need more coffee....

[Astralporing.1957]

@"EagleDelta.4726" said:It think you're being overly dramatic about this. Most people I play GW2 with don't even use ArcDPS, let alone Arc Templates.Those people are not likely to need these new build templates either. Much less pay for them. And the people that are most likely to find use of the new system, and would need ore than those 2 gear 3 build slots? They for the most part were already running arc templates and so will find this new "QoL" a downgrade. Instead of giving them new options, it will take them away.

[Vyrulisse.1246]

Why are you monetizing this?

Why are Build Templates and Equipment Templates not given to to you in equal numbers?

[Adibas.6982]

I'm surprised at how hard and how many people are upset at this feature being linked to gemstore. Convenience features are a big part of what keeps game models like that alive.But I do hope that with cap like this gemstore prices will be reasonable

[shadow.6174]

@Vanessa.1906 said:Can you make it so that we could post a code from our build templates and share it to other people, so they can easily get our build just by pasting the code?

That way much more would use template who usually don't look up builds and bother with proper builds for the specific content they do.

If you look at the linked blog post, it's already going to have that feature.

---

For those complaining about additional ones being charged or too few slots... that's why we hardly get nice stuff, whenever something is made, there are always some whining :tongue: Impossible to please everyone.

[Danikat.8537]

Questions I've thought of:

How long has this been in development in total? I assume it's not actually taken 7 years to do, and was started much more recently but it would be interesting to know how long it did take and maybe a bit about what some of the challenges were.

Will it still be possible to change skills, traits and equipment manually if we want to? For example I often swap a spirit for Signet of the Hunt on my ranger if I need the speed boost somewhere I can't use mounts. Will I need to have 2 almost identical build templates to do that, or could I just change the skill like I do now?

@Rising Dusk.2408 said:

1. What do the three-packs of build templates cost in the gem store?
2. What do the equipment templates cost in the gem store and how are they sold? (ie. single-purchase, two-pack, etc)
3. Do build templates include Ranger pets and Revenant legends?
4. Is it possible to increase the default available number of equipment and build templates available freely beyond what is listed in the blog post? My least played characters all have at a minimum 4 unique setups right now, so it's going to be extremely costly I imagine to get back to where my characters are actually usable again.

My understanding is this is in addition to what we have now, not replacing it. (You can see in the screenshots the tabs for skills and traits are still there, but there's a new one beside them.) So to get back to what you have now you'll need to do exactly nothing. If you want to continue manually switching between those builds you can. Or you can copy and paste the chat codes. The build slots are only if you want to have additional builds saved onto your character to swap between instantly.

@"Neutra.6857" said:Why would you buy additional build templates when you can simply paste the template in an external notepad for use?

"Build Templates can also be copied as a chat link in the game. You can send them to friends to help them prepare for a raid—or to your enemies to boast of your superior build. These chat links can also be copied and pasted out of the game and back into it from your clipboard, making trying a new build from another player or an external website a breeze."

Just like Gw1 use a notepad to save the build template or use a personal guild to do so....

That's my plan. Just like in GW1 I'll save my builds by saving the chat codes and load them into the game when I need them.

@SonicTHI.3217 said:Is it 3 build slots per character or 3 slots per character per game mode (3x3)?Or is it 3 for WvW and PvE, and then PvP (once it is done) will have separate slots or a different system?If it is shared do you have to manually switch your build (unlike now) once you go into WvW/PvE?

Only 3 across all game modes would be really bad for the game as people would not want to sacrifice their slots to try other game modes.Not to mention it is technically the amount of build slots we already have.

My understanding is you wouldn't have to 'sacrifice' a build slot to try a game mode you don't already have a build saved for. You'd just have to change your build manually like you do now. The templates are only if you want to save your build to switch to automatically in future. (And of course if you save the chat codes for them then you can get them back even if you do over write the build in the slot.)

[shadow.6174]

@"Titan.8215" said:kitten, if you want our money just do a great expansion, this game need new content from long ago.

Funny that we keep getting new content every two months or so O.o How comes it needs "new content from long ago"? Haven't you played PvE on past months?

[Seera.5916]

Some questions that I've thought of:

1. Is the low limits for starting templates and storage a way to prevent bugs from really crippling a player's account? If there are no major bugs or once the major bugs are worked out, are there plans to increase the starting amounts?
2. What is the maximum number of slots allowed? IE: if I had unlimited gems, how many total build templates and equipment templates and storage slots can I purchase?
3. If I put a legendary weapon into an equipment template, would I be able to use that legendary on any character that can use that weapon or would I have to take it out of the equipment template first? Example: I have two characters who use Scepters, Chymea and Sollemnis Pyrestorm. I have 1 Meteorlogicus. If I create an equipment template for Chymea that uses Meteorlogicus, can I do the same for Sollemnis? Or would I need a second Meteorlogicus to do that?

[Setz.9675]

@Sharen Graves.1276 said:Ok sure....why monotize the #1 requested feature since launch that was free in GW1?

because $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

[Astralporing.1957]

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@maultasche.4082 said:So we crafted legendary armor to be restricted to 2 stat combinations now? Raiders had perfect build templates for the past years thanks to arcdps. Now we get a downgrade provided from Anet. I don't see the advantage of this.

Then don't purchase them carry on using Arc templatesThere won't be Arc templates. They will be shut down as soon as ingame templates appear - that was the deal between delta and GW2 devs.

@shadow.6174 said:For those complaining about additional ones being charged or too few slots... that's why we hardly get nice stuff, whenever something is made, there are always some whining :tongue: Impossible to please everyone.Nah, the reason why we nardly get nice stuff is that, like in this case, whenever Anet decides to do something nice, they always add something to make us sorry we ever asked for it.

[Pagan Highlander.5948]

WOW! so much negativity!. Its a nice Feature, if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. You've done without it for 7 years complaining about having to switch out equipment, now you want to complain about something that makes it easier. Use it if you want, don't if you don't want to. there is no requirement to buy anything, so don't if you don't want to and let those that do, purchase extra templates. they give you free ones and you complain about having to pay for extra ones on something you didn't even have for 7 years. Figures, ANET gives us something nice, and people complain about it

[Kalaina.8245]

Will there be a way to single click/keypress swap both our traits and our equipment? Or will we need to swap build template and then equipment template afterward? I could see this being weird for people who don't have a 1:1 association having to remember which equipment goes with which build.

[Dzjudz.9142]

@Pagan Highlander.5948 said:WOW! so much negativity!. Its a nice Feature, if you don't like it, you don't have to use it. You've done without it for 7 years complaining about having to switch out equipment, now you want to complain about something that makes it easier. Use it if you want, don't if you don't want to. there is no requirement to buy anything, so don't if you don't want to and let those that do, purchase extra templates. they give you free ones and you complain about having to pay for extra ones on something you didn't even have for 7 years. Figures, ANET gives us something nice, and people complain about it

Umm, I've used build templates for years. Build templates that are far less restrictive than the ones ANet is implementing here. And they were free.