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Why are Build Templates so Expensive?


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@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Fenella.2634" said:I was not talking about getting them for free.However, the current price is way too high for a single feature. I am not willing to spend hundreds of euros just for loadouts. Not in one go and not over time.

, you can look at anything in isolation and say that's too expensive/too cheap. However the monetisation model in GW2 is not just load outs. This is about something in the shop that someone wants and is not prepared to pay for it, that's buyers privilege - Supply and demand will determine the price ultimately. You could equally argue a mount at 2k gems is crazy, or a key at 125 is crazy, or storage expander at 600 is crazy, however within the context of a free to play AAA mmorpg where there is no buy to win its perfectly fine.

Another way to look at it is desirability, a thing that everyone desires will ofc be at a premium (otherwise Anet are commiting commercial suicide right?) , and you would expect the opposite of things that have low demand. Now compare a build template at 300-500 against storage boosters. No-one complains about those prices that have been like that for years.So... What? I either have to agree to all prices or to none?I do spend money on the game. ^^ I am still making differences and choices. And as discussed above, the "templates" do not seem to sell well, so yeah. Supply and Demand indeed.

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Only Anet knows how well they sell but imo they are way to expensive (both equipment and build). I was really hyped and was sure this will be one time purchase for unlock of infinite templates or at least way way more than what we have available now. If they are to be interesting to me the price should be like 10 or 20% of what they are now. I am not buying any because having a few extra slots is nothing.

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Why? Market research indicated these pricing levels were adequate and appropriate for the type of item being sold, and within tolerances, or what people would be willing to pay (even though specific individuals, such as yourselves, might balk at it). This was a measured and calculated MSRP, not just random dice rolls.

Welcome to the world of business.

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At the end of the day, we also need to consider the fact that guild wars is a very alt-friendly game.Deep down, I am sure Anet prefers to have players buying and playing many alts than having players only playing a few characters with many different builds that could be free.

Sounds like the cost of build templates is just there to break it even the cost of development and the opportunity of players having accumulated many alts over the years.

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@"Shao.7236" said:They cost the same as a character slot so that whether you make a new one or buy the templates, the price is the same.

Lol no^^1 character slot = 800 gems = 2 gears loadouts + 3 traits loadouts = 1900 gems (if bought on a same character) :)

That's why many will tell you that buying new character slots is really cheaper than buying their "templates".

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@Danikat.8537 said:Probably because players kept asking for templates for years, so someone at Anet thought they'd be willing to pay this much to get them.

I use the 3 build slots in-game for the builds I use most often and then have a file on my computer with all my builds saved as chat codes (with notes to say what they are) so if I want a different one I can just load it from there, overwriting one of the 'defaults' then replace it afterwards. It's not quite as quick as saving them all in-game but it means I can have as many builds as I want saved for free.

And so far none of my characters have more than 2 sets of equipment. Honestly I'm more inclined to work with what I've got than make or buy a whole new set for perfect stats for one part of the game. If I'd gotten rid of one of my duplicate elementalists or engineers and just used 1 for everything they'd need more equipment space, but I wouldn't want to do that even if it was free.

It was a tactical mistake to try to directly monetize this feature. Not only did it lead to them over-engineering it, costing them god only knows how much unnecessary time and money, but it also represents gem store overloading, which usually results in people losing interest and spending less money. It makes it worse when it's something that we had for free through addons beforehand.

They would have saved on cost, generated good will, spiked player interest, and almost certainly increased their revenue indirectly through other gem store items by making it a free and simple feature like the wardrobe system was and like the addon was.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

@"Einlanzer.1627" said:

They would have generated a lot of good will, interest, and almost certainly increased their revenue through other gem store items by making it a free and simple feature like the wardrobe system was and like the addon was.

Increase revenue by making it free? How does that work?

I'd assume he meant that a good QoL add-on would keep more happy players in-game actively. I don't have the stat but apparently a few youtuber stopped playing the game on the "loadout" release because the tripple monotization and it's clunkiness of the functionality has reduced convenience to the veteran players. So if they didn't quit, the people who watches their stream, watches the tutorial provided by them, watches how they praises the game (free advertisement), will bring in new players or keep the old players playing: some of those still-active players could have spent real money on gem cards to acquire cosmetics, other QoL like bank tabs, and etc...; If the veteran who teaches the game quit, there'd be less free advertisement to the game. That's what I think but I could be wrong.

To answer the OP's question: I don't know either, I have predicted that they'd charge for it before the release, but the cost was far far exceeded what I was willing to pay for. It's not like I was expecting it to be free, but rather it's more like they're charging too much that has disappointed me. I wish they were cheaper and account wide, the tripple monetization was the reason why I still haven't spent a dime in this game ever since.

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I like the idea of additional build and gear slots, however, just like bag slots, I'm not going to buy them without an account-wide option.

I already went through the trouble of buying character slots to specialize my characters to fit various roles, so added slots aren't going to really help me that much 7 years late.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

They would have generated a lot of good will, interest, and almost certainly increased their revenue through other gem store items by making it a free and simple feature like the wardrobe system was and like the addon was.

Increase revenue by making it free? How does that work?

Uhm... because you generate interest in the game, which means you have more people jumping in to play and making gem store purchases? This is basic economics. Trying to directly monetize everything and overloading the gem store in the process is usually a losing gambit because it kills player interest rather than generating it and it also causes analysis paralysis even among active players who would otherwise be willing to spend money in the gem store.

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Marketing missed the mark. They thought people would pay the current amount. They want to make the max profits, so they went for it.

We know this failed. Gem to gold prices were not impacted. March sales have more impact. Which means, not many players were not converting gold to gems to buy these templates. It's safe to assume demand was lower than expected. The most wanted items have more of an impact on gold to gem prices. Even the unicorn??? had more of an impact. These should have been account bound instead of character bound. Then I could justify the price.

Now they are in a conundrum. They have to keep the current purchasers happy, and do not want to be forced to refund them.

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A lot of players are complaining that build and gear templates are not account-wide. The reason is simple- some players have 5 character slots, some have 70. So you're giving 14 times the storage space to the to the accounts that have topped out their character a slots. Not that accounts with 70 characters slots are common, but accounts with 10 slots probably are, and accounts with 20 slots probably aren't that uncommon. So there's really no way to make certain account bound things fair. Plus it'll use up a lot more space on accounts that have a lot more character slots.(space those players are getting for free compared to players with less slots) And it would use up a lot of server storage space, which may actually be the driving factor.

In this case IMO,. they charged far too much for something they felt they couldn't make account bound. If we have to pay for each and every tab, they ought to be more reasonably priced. Yeah, yeah, gear tabs give you storage space, but when it's cheaper to buy a whole character slot for the storage, something is wrong with your pricing.

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@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:Probably because players kept asking for templates for years, so someone at Anet thought they'd be willing to pay this much to get them.

I use the 3 build slots in-game for the builds I use most often and then have a file on my computer with all my builds saved as chat codes (with notes to say what they are) so if I want a different one I can just load it from there, overwriting one of the 'defaults' then replace it afterwards. It's not quite as quick as saving them all in-game but it means I can have as many builds as I want saved for free.

And so far none of my characters have more than 2 sets of equipment. Honestly I'm more inclined to work with what I've got than make or buy a whole new set for perfect stats for one part of the game. If I'd gotten rid of one of my duplicate elementalists or engineers and just used 1 for everything they'd need more equipment space, but I wouldn't want to do that even if it was free.

It was a tactical mistake to try to directly monetize this feature. Not only did it lead to them over-engineering it, costing them god only knows how much unnecessary time and money, but it also represents gem store overloading, which usually results in people losing interest and spending less money. It makes it worse when it's something that we had for free through addons beforehand.

They would have saved on cost, generated good will, spiked player interest, and almost certainly increased their revenue indirectly through other gem store items by making it a free and simple feature like the wardrobe system was and like the addon was.

This.I'm not playing now.On reflection I can attribute my disdain of the game at the moment to the whole templates bullshit.Such a shame.

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@Elden Arnaas.4870 said:A lot of players are complaining that build and gear templates are not account-wide. The reason is simple- some players have 5 character slots, some have 70. So you're giving 14 times the storage space to the to the accounts that have topped out their character a slots. Not that accounts with 70 characters slots are common, but accounts with 10 slots probably are, and accounts with 20 slots probably aren't that uncommon. So there's really no way to make certain account bound things fair. Plus it'll use up a lot more space on accounts that have a lot more character slots.(space those players are getting for free compared to players with less slots) And it would use up a lot of server storage space, which may actually be the driving factor.

In this case IMO,. they charged far too much for something they felt they couldn't make account bound. If we have to pay for each and every tab, they ought to be more reasonably priced. Yeah, yeah, gear tabs give you storage space, but when it's cheaper to buy a whole character slot for the storage, something is wrong with your pricing.

Unlike gear templates which have to be balanced against both bag slots and character slots, having 71 character slots doesn't suddenly make 71 different builds viable which is a strong argument for accountwide. It's also highly likely you will need to purchase equipment templates. There's already been a precedent set with additional crafting license at 800 gems : having an additional crafting profession per character is not gamebreaking either.The pricing could have been far less to make it more viable or even per character (instead of a build template , all 3 locked templates are unlocked) even if it weren't accountbound. The bundle that was run a while ago (2 equipment templates, 2 build templates, 1 build storage, exp boosters + makeover kit) was a joke, let's face it. Unless you want/need to hotswap a build via hotkey, there's no direct advantage for a build template over build storage or loading a chatcode.

In addition, build templates are literally one line if you look at the code and do not include note on which weapon was equipped. Equipment templates have to account for rarity , skin, stat selection, and upgrades while also not being sharable due to technical limitations and equipment variance.

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@Elden Arnaas.4870 said:A lot of players are complaining that build and gear templates are not account-wide. The reason is simple- some players have 5 character slots, some have 70. So you're giving 14 times the storage space to the to the accounts that have topped out their character a slots. Not that accounts with 70 characters slots are common, but accounts with 10 slots probably are, and accounts with 20 slots probably aren't that uncommon. So there's really no way to make certain account bound things fair. Plus it'll use up a lot more space on accounts that have a lot more character slots.(space those players are getting for free compared to players with less slots) And it would use up a lot of server storage space, which may actually be the driving factor.

In this case IMO,. they charged far too much for something they felt they couldn't make account bound. If we have to pay for each and every tab, they ought to be more reasonably priced. Yeah, yeah, gear tabs give you storage space, but when it's cheaper to buy a whole character slot for the storage, something is wrong with your pricing.

Its totaly fair since the low slot accounts can just buy character slots and get as many as the 70 character slot guy over time.You know they dident just magicaly get 70 character slots they bought them for gems the same way anyone else can.

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@Danikat.8537 said:Probably because players kept asking for templates for years, so someone at Anet thought they'd be willing to pay this much to get them.

I use the 3 build slots in-game for the builds I use most often and then have a file on my computer with all my builds saved as chat codes (with notes to say what they are) so if I want a different one I can just load it from there, overwriting one of the 'defaults' then replace it afterwards. It's not quite as quick as saving them all in-game but it means I can have as many builds as I want saved for free.

And so far none of my characters have more than 2 sets of equipment. Honestly I'm more inclined to work with what I've got than make or buy a whole new set for perfect stats for one part of the game. If I'd gotten rid of one of my duplicate elementalists or engineers and just used 1 for everything they'd need more equipment space, but I wouldn't want to do that even if it was free.

LOL, no, not at all.

Players asked for them, anet ignored them and a person in their free time coded an addon for the game that gave you templates, most people stopped asking because this existed, which btw was FREE and UNLIMITED. Anet then figured since the work was done for them, they would also add it to the game (which should have existed from the start), but in a broken and not as functional way, then tell the person who offered the free template addon they can no longer update their addon, and then charge way to much for each tab and not even include the weapons tab AND it's not account wide!!

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@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@Danikat.8537 said:Probably because players kept asking for templates for years, so someone at Anet thought they'd be willing to pay this much to get them.

I use the 3 build slots in-game for the builds I use most often and then have a file on my computer with all my builds saved as chat codes (with notes to say what they are) so if I want a different one I can just load it from there, overwriting one of the 'defaults' then replace it afterwards. It's not quite as quick as saving them all in-game but it means I can have as many builds as I want saved for free.

And so far none of my characters have more than 2 sets of equipment. Honestly I'm more inclined to work with what I've got than make or buy a whole new set for perfect stats for one part of the game. If I'd gotten rid of one of my duplicate elementalists or engineers and just used 1 for everything they'd need more equipment space, but I wouldn't want to do that even if it was free.

LOL, no, not at all.

Players asked for them, anet ignored them and a person in their free time coded an addon for the game that gave you templates, most people stopped asking because this existed, which btw was FREE and UNLIMITED. Anet then figured since the work was done for them, they would also add it to the game (which should have existed from the start), but in a broken and not as functional way, then tell the person who offered the free template addon they can no longer update their addon, and then charge way to much for each tab and not even include the weapons tab AND it's not account wide!!

The person who made it knew from the start that when anet launched their own they had to stop update theirs.

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@kharmin.7683 said:

They would have generated a lot of good will, interest, and almost certainly increased their revenue through other gem store items by making it a free and simple feature like the wardrobe system was and like the addon was.

Increase revenue by making it free? How does that work?

The more free quality of life features that get added, the more people are willing to spend their money on fashion. Good will begets good will.

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