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Should Anet pause development and use those resources to properly rework Build Templates?


Elrey.5472

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Honestly, Build Templates is such a freaking mess that it broke half of the game:

And that is only a few of the issues that we found in 2 days.

So I think it's time for Anet to really stop for a moment and think about the current status of a player experience and then re-work Build Templates even if that delays the next episode, because let's face it, we can't play with the current iteration. You know reworking Heart of Thorns, 2 months after its release, saved that expansion; now we need something like that to save the game from the mess build templates created. I want that but I'm not sure about others, so it's poll time!

In that direction, this is in my opinion the best suggestion to fix the system. It's simple, elegant and gets the job done:

Bonus: This is a must-do IMO and Anet feel really disconnected from the playerbase for not doing it: Build Equipment Slots should be accountwise

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No, the teams that worked on this have nothing to do with the other content teams, they've said this many times in the past. Pausing development would not help these issues get fixed, it would just leads to more people leaving.

It's not all as bad as you make it out to be btw, alot of these are false flags brought on by people mad about the arcDPS thing. It is a very old tactic in video games; get really, really mad about something and harass the developers about unrelated problems until they removed the system altogether, restoring the status quo, but it never actually works because companies always follow profit.

Alot of what we see here lately is little more than people throwing tantrums to try and get their way.

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I think a very simple and quick way to make many people content would be to have 3 split sections again (PvE, WvE, PvP) and EACH of them has 3 build templates (or more if you buy them in gem store) per character. That way you have auto-switch to PvP-, PvE-, WvW-build again once you enter that zone AND you can save your different builds that you've created for the (totally) different purposes there. It wouldn't fix equipment problems yet, but it would help a lot to reduce the pressure that we currently have in this topic.

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No. As stated, not all teams—let alone devs—have the same skills or knowledge. A dev who works primarily on scripting Living World content may or may not know how to change the UI just like a dev familiar with the backend of mechanics may or may not know how the inventory system works. A team that works on PvP probably doesn't know how raids are made. There may be some crossover and basic knowledge but odds are it's very specific and/or surface level rather than the extensive knowledge and experience needed.

If there are devs working on smaller QoL improvements who have the knowledge and skillset to help out, it may not be a bad idea to move them over, but not many devs even know the UI intimately enough to be able to help. If you have to spend 20 hours teaching and helping someone learn a new system, that's 20 hours that an experienced person didn't work on it. Heck, you'd likely still have to go over their work to make sure there's not simple mistakes. If you teach someone, you generally have them shadow you and give them basic tasks for them to familiarize themselves with the process and work them up to a point where they're independent. You don't throw a complex system that could possibly lead to player items being deleted completely and en masse and expect them to figure it out right away because outside a massive crisis where there's no other options, teaching people during a rough period instead of just dealing with it ASAP is a poor choice.

And that's assuming it's an issue involving the game engine instead of the servers. How many devs know the architecture and structure of the servers well enough to work on them and it not require a massive rollback or potentially even brick the whole thing? You may as well ask a professional water painter to carve something from marble while expecting the same quality because technically both painters and sculptors are called artists, right?

Also the issues, while annoying, are blown out of proportion and the entire playerbase shouldn't be punished with delayed content because there's crashes. I'd rather deal with lag and crashes—even the occasion 5 minute rollback—for a week or two than have the next LW episode delayed a month or more. It wouldn't be the first time and it won't be the last and people survive it each time.

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i see they are too far down the track with, it's gonna take them more than twice the amount of time for rework, which = development

this is why we need Public Betas for new system implementations, so new systems can have continuous feedback loops from players to dev to ensure good user experience is maintained, problematic issues like this can be resolved, or be drop if it is 'too hard' before reaching to Live Servers

the beta server does not have to be an exact replica of the live server

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They have a large enough team - putting everyone into a single qol feature won’t speed anything up and only serve to annoy those of us wanting other things

There does need an official response though. Staying silent has never worked in the past and will not work now. I would like to see evidence of them learning how to correctly interact with their community

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Imagine you go into work on Monday and your boss says "Hey great news! I know you've been really busy lately so I've arranged for all the people in the marketing department (if you work in marketing insert another department here) to stop their work for the next few weeks and come and help you instead. Just tell them what you want done and they'll do it for you!"

Do you imagine your work would go any faster? Or would you just waste all day trying to teach a bunch of people with no experience how to do things you could be doing yourself in 1/2 the time it takes to explain it, and fixing all the mistakes they make?

Why would Anet be any different? The people who write the story, write and direct voice acting, the artists, the sound engineers, even the people who turn concept art into 3D models for equipment won't know any more about how to identify and fix bugs in build templates than I know about processing invoices. And the same goes the other way around, in case anyone thinks I'm just saying build templates are just that complicated. The guys who program the UI wouldn't be any good at sound engineering either.

They absolutely should make fixing the bugs a priority (by which I mean actual bugs not "lol they clearly put the wrong prices in, that needs fixing!") but delaying completely unrelated work done by other people at the company would be nothing more than a stupid PR stunt for the benefit of people who don't know how companies work.

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@Amaruq.1249 said:I think a very simple and quick way to make many people content would be to have 3 split sections again (PvE, WvE, PvP) and EACH of them has 3 build templates (or more if you buy them in gem store) per character. That way you have auto-switch to PvP-, PvE-, WvW-build again once you enter that zone AND you can save your different builds that you've created for the (totally) different purposes there. It wouldn't fix equipment problems yet, but it would help a lot to reduce the pressure that we currently have in this topic.

This is the one. Anet please hire this guy.

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I voted for an entire rework of the system. Because I don't think Anet put any effort in this. Taking into account how many problems this "feature" brought my opinion is that no tests were performed. And comparing what a single person done (with Arc), the statement that a team worked 2 years for this ... [i don't find an appropriate and in the same time polite word] seems like a joke.

So, I think the variant of "Start working on Build Templates, please" is closer to the reality.

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@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:Maybe they should reverse their new Template system, contact the guy who built the Arc app and buy him out and make Arc Anet’s official Template, because I get the distinct impression from what they’ve said that their Template can only be bug fixed, not improved.

Just what I was thinking. Not sure what the Arc guy would charge Anet for this, but it would probably pay for itself . The Devs could trash their "creation" and not have to spend more manpower fixing said "creation."

The purchase would also buy Anet some goodwill from the player base, and might even keep people from quitting the game.

Yes, Anet should at least put out feelers...maybe the guy who built Arc could come up a way for Anet to make some money with this to recoop the money Anet will spend to buy this.

Lisa.

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Yeah, went to a small restaurant few months ago, the cook had an accident, had to go to the hospital and they had to close for the day, i should have gave them your suggestion, "hey why don't you send the cashier and the guy at the front handing flyers to cook the food, nothing will go wrong and you won't need to close", such a great idea, so simple, lel.

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@"cNd.1096" said:I don't care at all about build templates. I don't want ArenaNet to take people from doing things which I do really care about, to fix and improve one I don't care at all.

I understand your feelings, and I feel the same way, but there are many players in the game who really, really, really want the build templates fixed...hard call here.

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@"Brandon Uzumaki.1524" said:Yeah, went to a small restaurant few months ago, the cook had an accident, had to go to the hospital and they had to close for the day, i should have gave them your suggestion, "hey why don't you send the cashier and the guy at the front handing flyers to cook the food, nothing will go wrong and you won't need to close", such a great idea, so simple, lel.

I remember a long long time ago when angry players wanted everyone in the studio to fix some sort of game shaking problem..don't recall what it was.

In a video they put out, I recall Ruby asking uncertainty "You want me to push some buttons?" Or words to that effect. I cannot remember exactly, but I do remember Ruby's face as she said that, and, I remember laughing and laughing and laughing.

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So, we are going to suggest the "Throw more bodies at the problem because they will be solved faster and more efficiently" strategy? This rarely works as intended and I have seen too many management teams suggest this way too often.

Just have the team prioritize their fixes, locate the cause of the issue, develop a technical plan for the fix, get approval from the team that the fix is sound, implement the solution in the development environment, conduct unit testing, have a code review done and passed, pass the user testing(this can be internal testing), then be ready to install the fix.

These are the biggest steps I have to go through to install a bug fix, I am sure they have a process with similar steps. It is not "Oh look, If I just change this all will be well" solution, it takes time to get them corrected and I am sure they are working fervently on them at this time.

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Companies can multitask.If everyone in the company were to work on the same problem, you would actually get less done. It's the whole "too many cooks in the kitchen" effect.

I think they are doing less stress testing. They can see what happens when a couple dozen gamers use the system at the same time, but when a couple million across the globe are on the system ....

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