Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Official Feedback Thread about Build and Equipment Templates


Recommended Posts

OfvU2IG.jpg

As for the feedback that actually matters, obviously we don't have access to any proper sales figures, but having a look at the Gold to Gem conversion rate (courtesy of GW2efficiency), we can see that the release of Loadouts saw just a minor bump in conversion price, presumably on impulse purchases, in the first 1-2 days of the release, just to drop off again immidiately after (although still being on a high coming out of the anniversary sale, boosted by the usual yearly inflation).

So we can conclude that at large people didn't even find them worth purchasing for gold, leading me to be fairly sceptical that a large amount of players made direct RL Money to gem purchases to get them either.Considering how heavily anticipated a native Template system was for years, I expected a feature such as this, even with it being fairly niche in it's main target demographic, to heavily spike the conversion for at least a good week or two until it would recover, if it had decent functionality and pricing.

Even with the most cynical capitalist mindset that doesn't bother at all with customer satisfaction or product quality (as long as they don't become too much of a detriment) and only cares about profits, I don't think the introduction of this system, with it's lacklustre functionality and outrageous pricing, will end up being worth it long term, considering it will likely lead to overall reduced player spending of frustrated players and complete fall off of those quitting all together, and it certainly won't be net positive for the game.

If profit isn't the only valuable metric and player satisfaction and product quality is taken into account though, this patch was downright awful for the game, especially for the hardcore population. Even some of those who caved and purchased some just to somewhat keep enjoying the game, relying on some template/loadout functionality to do so, probably will be scarred by this implementation and pricing for quite some time, leading to overall more negativity and pessimism in the community and therefor less future spending.

If you keep making these major missteps just to then hunker down upon the inevitable blowback, trying to wait it out and maybe just eventually making some minor/empty concessions to placate some remaining parts of the community, you will drive this beautiful game into the ground sooner rather than later Anet.You are not the first MMO company to think you can survive on a moderate amount of extremely casual players and spenders with a few whales to milk, but even though that might look financially viable on paper, if the super engaged and passionate hardcore and semi hardcore heart of a game dies away (or rather, is slowly killed off), even those types of players will eventually notice that things are off and move on.There is plenty precedent in the graveyard of MMO's for that, with monetization growing out of control followed by a stark decline into the inevitable death of plenty games. Don't make the same mistakes. You got a wonderful game here, which with the right care and approach could prosper and entertain for many more years.

Please make content, please make expansions. We would love to support you and buy them. Don't "nickel and dime" us with basic features such as this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The feature in itself is cool and opens the door to a lot of cool additions.The price of the additions is a bit strange.For those who like trying multiple playstyle/built, they have to compete with extra character slots and should be price accordingly. As it is, there is no way they would consist a viable alternative.For those who have a main and stick to their main, that makes a little more sense, but it is still not a no brainer.IMO, they should be sold in batch of 5, with a price balanced around the price of character slots.An interesting alternative would be to allow the slots to hold an out of profession build, so the persons sticking to a main would be able to have other playstyles available, and would be able to "maximize" their main.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@c space cowboy.2764 said:

@c space cowboy.2764 said:>Your implementation of templates is trash at best and directly interferes with how I played.

"Directly interferes"? How?

I kept my legendary armor in shared inventory slots and used arc templates to swap builds on multiple toons. Can't do that now.

Ok, I understand that. How did you manage before Arc?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@kharmin.7683 said:

@c space cowboy.2764 said:>Your implementation of templates is trash at best and directly interferes with how I played.

"Directly interferes"? How?

I kept my legendary armor in shared inventory slots and used arc templates to swap builds on multiple toons. Can't do that now.

Ok, I understand that. How did you manage before Arc?

Tediously...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've taken a while to reflect on the system & conclusion is this:

  • As far as I am concerned they could turn the build & templates system off, (or give players the option), to revert to auto build swap between pve, wvw etc and simply sell more shared inventory slots and it would be vastly better.
  • Templates & build system has reduced my interest in progressing on making legendaries, reduced the game goals that previous drew me to log in more often.
  • I feel less attached to 'main' characters I cared more for, and should just have many alts that sit on their own ascended gear sets & builds.
  • The rabid monetising of such a negative system has made me concerned that the people behind monetising this 'feature-set' are better suited to making trashy phone games to milk people's phone bills via their kids. Normally I'd make a minimum of what I'd consider a traditional monthly sub via gems, but this system has left me not wanting to buy other things.
  • It's a bad system & needs a ground up replacement designed to be some sort of shared accountwide legendary & ascended equipment vault with with build+ gear loadout.
  • A positive system could be monetised for increased capacity with no problems.

In other fronts.There's a really positive step that A-net has faced up to the fact that balance has been going wrong for a while and has taken some action. Admitting there is a problem is often half the battle.At last we have the realisation that competitive modes don't play the same as PvE & you need people adept at competitive balance to be independently doing competitive balance. Hopefully someone will finally listen to the amazing new idea that competitive fights of up to 5 v 5 have fundamentally different mechanics compared to say 50 v 50 v 50. Reflects, blocks, boons, strips, cc, stability, sustain, combos, retribution, aoe target caps - everything scales totally differently in wvw compared to pvp. Making every class/spec bring value in PvP is fundamentally different from doing the same in WvW.So having a separate competitive balance team is a vital halfway step towards the beta suggestion of having a working system of 3 separate pve, pvp and wvw balance teams.

Most else seems in a holding pattern for now:WvW content is essentially - another year has passed, but please bear with us another year to work on features heavily suggested during beta, 7 years ago or so, to address coverage & player pop.PvP content is in a rut, but there may be swiss & some interim eventy tourney stuff to stop off season killing pvp a bit more each time, etc at some point.New expansion/classes to restore interest seem far off at present though.There's some new story coming soon though so that's something at least, hopefully with a new stat set to give some interest beyond the play through.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are you guys sure that it isn't a very early April fools? But why isn't the Super Adventure Box open?

We just to have a free loadout system in the game (for each mode one). You promise us three templated builts. However you still haven't deliver any templates and instead mess up the free loadout system. The steamleass change from one mode to another isn't working any more. So a drastic drop of QoL for all the user of more than one mode on a char.

You did make it harder for player with legendary items (droping sigils, forget attributes) and make having ascended items much easier. Playing with a Revenat is now just a pain. (My one has only skill 1-6 and 10 under one god and skill 1-5 under the other). I feel like naked flighting.

And I'm pretty sure that the ones that got some items lost will hate you, while the ones that got there items doubled are also thinking what a silly system this is.

So instead of giving us something for free that has been promised we got something taken away and a lot of bugs added on top of it. Do you really think that this is what your customers want?

I used to pay round about 50 bucks each month for the game each month, since why not? But I wont give anything for a game that is worse than the game at the start 7 years ago. Other games could deliver without any problem. E.g. a free locker with 10 templates for each char (build and gear).

And don't get me started on Guild Wars 1 (500 builds for each directory) and the 4 million builds that ArcDPS could give us, if you would let him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Asum.4960" said:OfvU2IG.jpg

As for the feedback that actually matters, obviously we don't have access to any proper sales figures, but having a look at the Gold to Gem conversion rate (courtesy of GW2efficiency), we can see that the release of Loadouts saw just a minor bump in conversion price, presumably on impulse purchases, in the first 1-2 days of the release, just to drop off again immidiately after (although still being on a high coming out of the anniversary sale, boosted by the usual yearly inflation).

So we can conclude that at large people didn't even find them worth purchasing for gold, leading me to be fairly sceptical that a large amount of players made direct RL Money to gem purchases to get them either.Considering how heavily anticipated a native Template system was for years, I expected a feature such as this, even with it being fairly niche in it's main target demographic, to heavily spike the conversion for at least a good week or two until it would recover, if it had decent functionality and pricing.

Even with the most cynical capitalist mindset that doesn't bother at all with customer satisfaction or product quality (as long as they don't become too much of a detriment) and only cares about profits, I don't think the introduction of this system, with it's lacklustre functionality and outrageous pricing, will end up being worth it long term, considering it will likely lead to overall reduced player spending of frustrated players and complete fall off of those quitting all together, and it certainly won't be net positive for the game.

If profit isn't the only valuable metric and player satisfaction and product quality is taken into account though, this patch was downright awful for the game, especially for the hardcore population. Even some of those who caved and purchased some just to somewhat keep enjoying the game, relying on some template/loadout functionality to do so, probably will be scarred by this implementation and pricing for quite some time, leading to overall more negativity and pessimism in the community and therefor less future spending.

If you keep making these major missteps just to then hunker down upon the inevitable blowback, trying to wait it out and maybe just eventually making some minor/empty concessions to placate some remaining parts of the community, you will drive this beautiful game into the ground sooner rather than later Anet.You are not the first MMO company to think you can survive on a moderate amount of extremely casual players and spenders with a few whales to milk, but even though that might look financially viable on paper, if the super engaged and passionate hardcore and semi hardcore heart of a game dies away (or rather, is slowly killed off), even those types of players will eventually notice that things are off and move on.There is plenty precedent in the graveyard of MMO's for that, with monetization growing out of control followed by a stark decline into the inevitable death of plenty games. Don't make the same mistakes. You got a wonderful game here, which with the right care and approach could prosper and entertain for many more years.

Please make content, please make expansions. We would love to support you and buy them. Don't "nickel and dime" us with basic features such as this.

Best review post yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So it's been a while now since you were "considering" players opinions about that matter, any hope we can have a quick update on the situation or can we just assume that nothing will change and you will let things sink like the "unpining" of this topic suggests (btw very shady move)?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@LucianTheAngelic.7054

So now the official trailer for the next episode is out and you guys still haven’t responded to the build templates issues we’ve been talking about for a month and a half.

Easy to just sweep it under the rug and not deal with it when there’s a new release on the way, right? You even unpinned the thread so that you don’t have to think about it and just hope people stop talking about it. Disgraceful behavior honestly

That's a different subject altogether.The story content isnt run by the same team that's responsible for the templates.

(I'm not whiteknighting, but you're barking at the wrong tree here)undefinedundefined

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anyone else but me thinks this comes across as a really scummy "got'em" moment from Anet? As if they intentionally created an artificial inconvenience in order to push people to spend money. I fully understand Anet needs to make money, but this was such a disrespectful way to go about it. Hope they rectify this in the future, but until then, I cant help but feel disappointed in you, Anet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They just re-used the existing load outs. PvE, sPvP, and WvW each had their own build load out which we got. PvE/WvW and sPvP both had equipment load outs. They expanded sPvP to match that of PvE/WvW.

We technically didn’t lose anything other than the load out switching automatically when going between game modes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Ayrilana.1396 said:They just re-used the existing load outs. PvE, sPvP, and WvW each had their own build load out which we got. PvE/WvW and sPvP both had equipment load outs. They expanded sPvP to match that of PvE/WvW.

We technically didn’t lose anything other than the load out switching automatically when going between game modes.

I guess thats true, but we also didnt gain anything if (and only if) you play more than 1 game mode. They just handled this feature so weird and unusual for the sake of monetizing it. I think they could have done better and still made money off it if they didnt so obviously make monetizing the feature their focus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At this stage I take it that there will be no response, they have the feedback but choose not to address the issues people have raised or to comment. Same as the Legendary Upgrades and countless other issues that have had feedback threads. They no doubt count on fickle gamers being distracted by the next shiny.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Harrada.8041 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:They just re-used the existing load outs. PvE, sPvP, and WvW each had their own build load out which we got. PvE/WvW and sPvP both had equipment load outs. They expanded sPvP to match that of PvE/WvW.

We technically didn’t lose anything other than the load out switching automatically when going between game modes.

I guess thats true, but we also didnt gain anything if (and only if) you play more than 1 game mode. They just handled this feature so weird and unusual for the sake of monetizing it. I think they could have done better and still made money off it if they didnt so obviously make monetizing the feature their focus.

Yes we did we gained a second equipment set since before we had 1 shared in pve and wvwvw now we have 2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Harrada.8041" said:Anyone else but me thinks this comes across as a really scummy "got'em" moment from Anet? As if they intentionally created an artificial inconvenience in order to push people to spend money. I fully understand Anet needs to make money, but this was such a disrespectful way to go about it. Hope they rectify this in the future, but until then, I cant help but feel disappointed in you, Anet.

Seems lots of people think like that. But the kicker is that there isn't any 'artificial inconvenience' here ... there has always been a desire for templates. The opportunity for Anet to offer templates has always been very real in this game.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...