Why are Build Templates so Expensive?

[kharmin.7683]

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@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?

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.

I disagree. People will continue to ask for free things once a company goes that route. GW2 is free and look now how many things players want for free.

[Blueberry.8095]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@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?

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.

I disagree. People will continue to ask for free things once a company goes that route. GW2 is free and look now how many things players want for free.Then make it cheaper?

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@Linken.6345 said:

@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.

Oh really? LOL.

You do understand that GW1 had templates (and not monetized), people thought GW2 would have from launch, people asked over and over again for it, and nothing after YEARS, then one person, in their free time codes a free unlimited, and more features build template add-on, which then runs for YEARS with him having to keep anet devs updated on all his work and updates. All of this is hard to find because those accounts that made those posts and comments have been deleted. Keep in mind I am sure he knew anet might at some point copy the system or bring the GW1 system in, however when he first made the add-on it was blocked by anet and was not until much later that he mentioned that he had been contacted and told that it needed to be removed just weeks before their own template launch. The main reason for this is the game is getting older and they wanted another income stream and this was an easy option, however being that the 3rd party option was far better and free, they had to force him to stop or they would have sold a fraction of what they would other wise.

I have no issue with charging something, but prices were ungodly high at release, had they been account wide unlocks, I would have bought every single one.

The best part, the ABSOLUTE BEST, is that they required him to add more restrictions to his add-on that they didn't even keep in the official version! His worked in owned territory, you had to be OOC (the only thing the official version kept), and swaps took 10-15 seconds, not instant like in game, which everyone said would be an issue, I can't tell you how many times I have made use of this, prebuff as FB, swap to glass DH and back at it's first release, I would drop all traps as DH, prebuff as FB and go pure one shot combo core and hit them as they ran into my traps. Or on thief, swap to high stealth build, stack as much as I could to get close if they were far away, then just before attacking push two buttons and instantly swap to glass one shot build. There are still tons of bugs with it, however at least they fixed traps remaining after swapping builds, but then screwed that up because if you lay a trap and swapped a build that STILL had the same trap in the same slot, the trap would disappear even though it was still on full CD on your bar.

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@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?

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.

Probably not. The idea is great, however the people who actually follow through are few, also, people such as myself who care nothing for fashion, but functionality I will pay for. The problem is it wasn't account wide unlock, or needed to be reduced in cost if they are not going to be.

[kharmin.7683]

@Blueberry.8095 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@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?

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.

I disagree. People will continue to ask for free things once a company goes that route. GW2 is free and look now how many things players want for free.Then make it cheaper?

The market should determine the price. If people hadn't bought them, then Anet would probably have been forced to adjust accordingly. Recall what happened with the first mount skin bundle? Since that didn't happen, Anet appears to be satisfied with the price and volume of sales.

[Cyninja.2954]

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@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?

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.

I disagree. People will continue to ask for free things once a company goes that route. GW2 is free and look now how many things players want for free.

This.

Sorry, even if gear and build templates might be overpriced to some players (and by extension, maybe not hit the revenue mark that was hoped expected and designed with conceptual flaws like being of less value than alternatives like extra character slots), the short fuse reaction to always ask for free stuff is very strong in this community.

There is this constant argument suggested that:more free stuff and free items will make players spend more, yet at the same time, when OPTIONAL not necessary items actually do get added (be it skins, mount skins or template slots), the outrage is always the same: WE WANT THIS FOR FREE. Literally every. single. time.

Sorry I am not seeing it. There is a HUGE part of players not spending a dime on this game beyond what is absolutely necessary, while at the same time expecting triple A content on a regular basis, free of charge and ideally yesterday with even more free stuff while complaining constantly.

That's the price you pay as a developer for offering a non subscription, cosmetic and convenience item funded, completely free DLC content to your players. You attract a certain crowd of customers which overall is very price sensitive. Which is fine, but let's call a spade a spade and not beat around the bush here.

The main issues with equipment templates are:

• functionality and not allowing for basic features as saving builds and being inferior to previous out of game options
• inconsistencies with similar in game alternatives (extra characters)
• inconsistencies with outside work around options (template codes with make account build templates obsolete)
• poor scalability from a design choice (per character unlocks)

That does not even touch on the issue of many players not even NEEDING these templates in the first place for the 1 build they play (which is fine, no one has to play multiple builds, but in this case, this feature was designed for the wrong crowd in mind).

[Einlanzer.1627]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@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?

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.

I disagree. People will continue to ask for free things once a company goes that route. GW2 is free and look now how many things players want for free.

This.

Sorry, even if gear and build templates might be overpriced to some players (and by extension, maybe not hit the revenue mark that was hoped expected and designed with conceptual flaws like being of less value than alternatives like extra character slots), the short fuse reaction to always ask for free stuff is very strong in this community.

There is this constant argument suggested that:more free stuff and free items will make players spend more, yet at the same time, when OPTIONAL not necessary items actually do get added (be it skins, mount skins or template slots), the outrage is always the same: WE WANT THIS FOR FREE. Literally every. single. time.

Sorry I am not seeing it. There is a HUGE part of players not spending a dime on this game beyond what is absolutely necessary, while at the same time expecting triple A content on a regular basis, free of charge and ideally yesterday with even more free stuff while complaining constantly.

That's the price you pay as a developer for offering a non subscription, cosmetic and convenience item funded, completely free DLC content to your players. You attract a certain crowd of customers which overall is very price sensitive. Which is fine, but let's call a spade a spade and not beat around the bush here.

The main issues with equipment templates are:

• functionality and not allowing for basic features as saving builds and being inferior to previous out of game options
• inconsistencies with similar in game alternatives (extra characters)
• inconsistencies with outside work around options (template codes with make account build templates obsolete)
• poor scalability from a design choice (per character unlocks)

That does not even touch on the issue of many players not even NEEDING these templates in the first place for the 1 build they play (which is fine, no one has to play multiple builds, but in this case, this feature was designed for the wrong crowd in mind).

You and kharmin are both missing the point. When you go overboard in putting focus on the gem store, you actually short-circuit player interest in utilizing it for anything either by driving them out of the game altogether or by making them comfortable with never buying anything. This isn't just an Anet or MMO thing, this is a basic economics thing. It's pretty much just a version of analysis paralysis similar to what you see with the over-abundance of tvshows and streaming services that exits now.

It's ironic, but players are likely to spend more money when you carefully manage what goes into the gem store instead of just indiscriminately trying to monetize everything. That is especially true in this game because you can buy gold with gems (which is what I always do because I tend to play casually and have more money than I do time.)

It's even worse in this case because they took a feature that was previously free, eliminated it, re/over-engineered it, then re-released a for-pay version of it that was technically inferior in most respects to the free version that existed before. And to top it off, they made it overpriced just like they did the "premium" mount skins. This just pisses people off because it feels like a minor form of exploitation.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Einlanzer.1627 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@Eloc Freidon.5692 said:

@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?

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.

I disagree. People will continue to ask for free things once a company goes that route. GW2 is free and look now how many things players want for free.

This.

Sorry, even if gear and build templates might be overpriced to some players (and by extension, maybe not hit the revenue mark that was hoped expected and designed with conceptual flaws like being of less value than alternatives like extra character slots), the short fuse reaction to always ask for free stuff is very strong in this community.

There is this constant argument suggested that:more free stuff and free items will make players spend more, yet at the same time, when OPTIONAL not necessary items actually do get added (be it skins, mount skins or template slots), the outrage is always the same: WE WANT THIS FOR FREE. Literally every. single. time.

Sorry I am not seeing it. There is a HUGE part of players not spending a dime on this game beyond what is absolutely necessary, while at the same time expecting triple A content on a regular basis, free of charge and ideally yesterday with even more free stuff while complaining constantly.

That's the price you pay as a developer for offering a non subscription, cosmetic and convenience item funded, completely free DLC content to your players. You attract a certain crowd of customers which overall is very price sensitive. Which is fine, but let's call a spade a spade and not beat around the bush here.

The main issues with equipment templates are:

• functionality and not allowing for basic features as saving builds and being inferior to previous out of game options
• inconsistencies with similar in game alternatives (extra characters)
• inconsistencies with outside work around options (template codes with make account build templates obsolete)
• poor scalability from a design choice (per character unlocks)

That does not even touch on the issue of many players not even NEEDING these templates in the first place for the 1 build they play (which is fine, no one has to play multiple builds, but in this case, this feature was designed for the wrong crowd in mind).

You and kharmin are both missing the point. When you go overboard in putting focus on the gem store, you actually drop player interest in utilizing it for anything either by driving them out of the game altogether or by making them comfortable with never buying anything. This isn't just an Anet or MMO thing, this is a basic economics thing. It's pretty much just a version of analysis paralysis similar to what you see with the over-abundance of tvshows and streaming services that exits now.

Player interest drops a lot more with lack of content and other aspects. Convenience items barely make a dent. If there is a feeling that there is an over focus on the gem store, given the last few years revenue developments, it just means that players have been spending a lot less money, which needs to be compensated in some way.

Given most want their game content to remain free, the natural approach is to tie those revenue options to ideally optional items. Which templates are absolutely a part of. You can't get everything for free, it just doesn't work.

None of this disproves what I stated about this games player base, which is exceedingly price sensitive (which as mentioned is in the nature of the product and how it is delivered).

@Einlanzer.1627 said:It's ironic, but players are likely to spend more money when you carefully manage what goes into the gem store instead of just dumping 10000 things into it. That is especially true in this game because you can buy gold with gems (which is what I always do because I have more money than I do time.)It's even worse in this case because they took a feature that was previously free, eliminated it, re/over-engineered it, then re-released a for-pay version of it that was technically inferior in most respects to the free version that existed before.

Yes, and I'd argue had they known that this would have developed this way, they would have been better off not to allow the temporary build templates offered by deltaconnected with arc as to not create a price point expectation.

Yes, the version offered in game being inferior in functionality is a big issue. The fact it is priced is not. The arc build templates work around was always meant to be temporary and let's not forget how vocal players were about being willing to spend money on such a feature. Lo and behold though, once implemented the screams for free stuff were there again.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

@Cekay.2614 said:^Title.

I just discovered that i need to buy ~300 gems to Unlock a new Template. For EVERY Character i have seperatly!Thats ~110 Gold each...whats up with that?

The funny thing is, this does NOT include new Equipment slots or account wide templates.Those cost 500 gems each...Thats ~184 Gold for one of those...

I mean come on...why the heck is this so Expensive?

because for years people wrote 'give us templates, we will pay for them.' So anet gave them templates. Also anet does need to make money. You know, paying for the servers, paying the people working there.

[Moradorin.6217]

@"Cekay.2614" said:^Title.

I just discovered that i need to buy ~300 gems to Unlock a new Template. For EVERY Character i have seperatly!Thats ~110 Gold each...whats up with that?

The funny thing is, this does NOT include new Equipment slots or account wide templates.Those cost 500 gems each...Thats ~184 Gold for one of those...

I mean come on...why the heck is this so Expensive?

Yes even on sale they cost WAY too much. Im pretty offended with the entire template system. It was poorly designed, it has massive problems with legendary items dropping sigils, runes and infusions each unless they are "saved in another template" apparently another way to try and force people to buy them. Then its PER CHARACTER which just completely blows the idea out of the water for me, So to speak.

Even if each upgrade was unlocked for every toon and if they fixed all the legendary issues. I would still be offended enough by the way the made template storage slots, equipment slots AND actual build template panels ALL separate purchases. Just saying! Its seriously offensive and over the top literally 3 way from Sunday!

If they combined all 3 into one 200-500 gem purchase and fixed the legendary issues. I would still have been disappointed at needing to buy the templates, BUT I would have. As it stands now they can keep the templates. I will just forever do without.

[kharmin.7683]

Flawed as it may be, I will trust Anet's marketing team to know economics than any posters on the forums who purport to know. Do I agree with their tactics? Not necessarily.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:

@Cekay.2614 said:^Title.

I just discovered that i need to buy ~300 gems to Unlock a new Template. For EVERY Character i have seperatly!Thats ~110 Gold each...whats up with that?

The funny thing is, this does NOT include new Equipment slots or account wide templates.Those cost 500 gems each...Thats ~184 Gold for one of those...

I mean come on...why the heck is this so Expensive?

because for years people wrote 'give us templates, we will pay for them.' So anet gave them templates. Also anet does need to make money. You know, paying for the servers, paying the people working there.

yup, i would rather anet tried to get money from us from QOL items and fluff rather than paying £120 a year for a sub (which would be getting on for £1000 for a player that has played since beta!) A Lot of people have no idea how good they have it.

[Elden Arnaas.4870]

re: ANet needs to make money - I see this all the time on the forums. Yes, ANet is a business and businesses need to make money. Then ANet can make stuff worth buying and charge a reasonable price. Their build and gear templates are better than nothing. But they didn't replace nothing, they replaced ArcDPS's templates.

And ANet waited for so long to re-add templates(GW1 had templates they were removed for GW2) that many players really didn't feel the need for them, diminishing the perceived need. Then ANet allowed a 3rd party substitute to be distributed. It was from everything I've heard a well designed, easy to use product. And it had the tremendous advantage of being free. So ANet let this exist for a while, allowing the competition. Then made themselves the bad guy when it was taken out of service.(Though this was agreed upon ahead of time) So ANet made a hostile market for the release of build and gear templates. They should have priced them better. At least they still allow the offline storage of the text codes. But that requires that the players devise their own system of storing and organizing builds.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@kharmin.7683 said:

The market should determine the price. If people hadn't bought them, then Anet would probably have been forced to adjust accordingly. Recall what happened with the first mount skin bundle? Since that didn't happen, Anet appears to be satisfied with the price and volume of sales.

@kharmin.7683 said:Flawed as it may be, I will trust Anet's marketing team to know economics than any posters on the forums who purport to know. Do I agree with their tactics? Not necessarily.

The thing about posters saying that the price point is a negative factor is that they are saying this for themselves but projecting it onto others -- a common occurrence in social media of any kind.

ANet has made marketing mistakes before. Was load-out pricing one of them? If you look at the revenue numbers for Q4 19 when the templates released, revenue was down significantly (~25%) from Q3. That certainly means the load-outs did not cause a revenue increase. We cannot know how much they contributed to the decrease. It's very likely, though, that they did cause some of it, because people who think they are being shafted are disinclined to give money to the company they think is doing so. That may not be economics, but it is psychology -- something ANet has had issues with in the past.

Still, I think a larger factor is that the implementation had a large number of flaws. For one thing, a lot of players (those who rarely change builds) are simply not the target market. The baseline 3/2 system was an upgrade for them. For anyone who was using the Arc templates, though, the implementation was a huge downgrade with a price-tag to max multiple characters larger than the cost of a new game.

Maybe ANet's goal was to provide a convenience feature for those who don't change builds often (which I will grant this is). Maybe they thought people would buy a few slots now and then with gold, leading to a more favorable gems->gold exchange for whales. However, the poor functionality combined with price point stuck a finger in the eye of a different demographic. That demographic has been very vocal in the MMO genre and should have been the target market for "templates." Whether that's a mistake, time will tell. On the face of it, it certainly looks a lot more like something that has backfired than it does like a savvy economic move.

[lare.5129]

I never buy templates .. Too big price for me. But "on sale" I close all my requirement list and buy what I want.

yes, if it will be 5x cheaper will be fine. But - "welcome to real Neo"

[Cuks.8241]

Making them server side is not an excuse. Its a bad system and this is pretty much it.

Build templates are common in games and have been a common feature for a long time. GW1 had them, this game had them. Yes there are qol features that they can monetise. Monetising a basic feature for game like this is just bad publicity. Having to spend hundreds of euros to have a real use of them is insane.

Implementation is lacking. Its either a really bad design which is strange because there is really nothing to design since it is a common feature everywhere, or it is designed in a way to increase money gain. Which is bad and not something anet is known for and people see it as the start of the end (milk the last drops)

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Elden Arnaas.4870 said:re: ANet needs to make money - I see this all the time on the forums. Yes, ANet is a business and businesses need to make money. Then ANet can make stuff worth buying and charge a reasonable price. Their build and gear templates are better than nothing. But they didn't replace nothing, they replaced ArcDPS's templates.

And ANet waited for so long to re-add templates(GW1 had templates they were removed for GW2) that many players really didn't feel the need for them, diminishing the perceived need. Then ANet allowed a 3rd party substitute to be distributed. It was from everything I've heard a well designed, easy to use product. And it had the tremendous advantage of being free. So ANet let this exist for a while, allowing the competition. Then made themselves the bad guy when it was taken out of service.(Though this was agreed upon ahead of time) So ANet made a hostile market for the release of build and gear templates. They should have priced them better. At least they still allow the offline storage of the text codes. But that requires that the players devise their own system of storing and organizing builds.

except that majority that did not use arcdps did get great new content. The fact is it did take a lot of time and money to build templates, otherwise they would have done it earlier. There's a world of difference between building a plugin and building professional robust software.

[kharmin.7683]

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:-- snip --Well stated. ;)

[Einlanzer.1627]

@kharmin.7683 said:Flawed as it may be, I will trust Anet's marketing team to know economics than any posters on the forums who purport to know. Do I agree with their tactics? Not necessarily.

You shouldn't. 10+ years in the corporate world has shown me that pretty much nobody really knows what they're doing - executives least of all. It's all posturing.

[Elden Arnaas.4870]

re: There's a world of difference between building a plugin and building professional robust software. - Actually, a plugin could be professional, robust software. Your comparison assumes all plugins are inferior products. And I'm not arguing for Arc templates in any way. (I never used them or any other 3rd party add on) I'm just saying ANet did a lot of things wrong, and really cast themselves and their new templates in a bad light.

[Shena Fu.5792]

@Elden Arnaas.4870 said:re: There's a world of difference between building a plugin and building professional robust software. - Actually, a plugin could be professional, robust software. Your comparison assumes all plugins are inferior products. And I'm not arguing for Arc templates in any way. (I never used them or any other 3rd party add on) I'm just saying ANet did a lot of things wrong, and really cast themselves and their new templates in a bad light.

Ironically, ArcDPS was more professional, more robust, and more ideal for target demographics--and arguably even more marketable and profitable.

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

The only way this price can be justified is if they separated transmutation from equipment and make the equipment slots themselves what is transmuted. Then I can see equipment templates also being cosmetic/visual templates too.

Even the build storage is grossly overpriced (as in it is not free) since linking them is a thing and can be saved for free on a notepad without the storage. It is clear evidence that Anet doesn't know what they are doing and over estimating the value of the whole system.

[TPMN.1483]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/fdbusl/build_template_equipment_loadout_improvements/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

TLDR:Reduce cost significantly (it’s too high) or Release ability to save/load equipment templates from local files.

It’s too expensive per character as many have demonstrated with the mathematical calculations and has actually caused many dedicated players to leave the game or reduce the amount of money they spend with ANET that wanted a workable “build” template system (not loadouts).

[Moradorin.6217]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Elden Arnaas.4870" said:re: ANet needs to make money - I see this all the time on the forums. Yes, ANet is a business and businesses need to make money. Then ANet can make stuff worth buying and charge a reasonable price. Their build and gear templates are better than nothing. But they didn't replace nothing, they replaced ArcDPS's templates.

And ANet waited for so long to re-add templates(GW1 had templates they were removed for GW2) that many players really didn't feel the need for them, diminishing the perceived need. Then ANet allowed a 3rd party substitute to be distributed. It was from everything I've heard a well designed, easy to use product. And it had the tremendous advantage of being

free

. So ANet let this exist for a while, allowing the competition. Then made themselves the bad guy when it was taken out of service.(Though this was agreed upon ahead of time) So ANet made a hostile market for the release of build and gear templates. They should have priced them better. At least they still allow the offline storage of the text codes. But that requires that the players devise their own system of storing and organizing builds.

except that majority that did not use arcdps did get great new content. The fact is it did take a lot of time and money to build templates, otherwise they would have done it earlier. There's a world of difference between building a plugin and building professional robust software.

That "robust" software still drops runes sigils, and infusions for any legendary item that is swapped while not being saved in another template. That isn't very robust IMO.

[TinkTinkPOOF.9201]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Elden Arnaas.4870" said:re: ANet needs to make money - I see this all the time on the forums. Yes, ANet is a business and businesses need to make money. Then ANet can make stuff worth buying and charge a reasonable price. Their build and gear templates are better than nothing. But they didn't replace nothing, they replaced ArcDPS's templates.

And ANet waited for so long to re-add templates(GW1 had templates they were removed for GW2) that many players really didn't feel the need for them, diminishing the perceived need. Then ANet allowed a 3rd party substitute to be distributed. It was from everything I've heard a well designed, easy to use product. And it had the tremendous advantage of being

free

. So ANet let this exist for a while, allowing the competition. Then made themselves the bad guy when it was taken out of service.(Though this was agreed upon ahead of time) So ANet made a hostile market for the release of build and gear templates. They should have priced them better. At least they still allow the offline storage of the text codes. But that requires that the players devise their own system of storing and organizing builds.

except that majority that did not use arcdps did get great new content. The fact is it did take a lot of time and money to build templates, otherwise they would have done it earlier. There's a world of difference between building a plugin and building professional robust software.

Source on the "a lot of time and money"? Because if it did, they might think of hiring someone competent. As one person, in their free time, coded the exact same thing with more features, and being limited and restricted on what could be done since he only had default API access like everyone else does and all changes had to be approved by anet. And after all of that, it was still free.

The fact anet came out with templates is NOT the issue, the issue is that the 3rd pary templates worked great for those who used them, anet (as shown in my post above) stated that the addon was safe to use as far as ToS goes as it only used the default API of the game to work. That is their own words, then they tell him he can't distributed it anymore without legal action or arcdps as a whole being marked as illegal software and probably either being blocked or result in users getting banned for it. Now, nothing else had changed, so we know it was not for ToS reasons, the ONLY reason was a money grab. Had they released templates and allowed him to continue with the addon as well, no one would have issue with this.

It's their game and platform, they can do as they wish, but I am the one who forks over the money to keep it going. And templates were a "we don't care about the players, we have a worse system that we are going to charge high prices for and we are going to block all other options even though it doesn't break our ToS and only uses the API that we provided for people to make 3rd party addons for."

THAT^^^, that right there is what made people mad.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Elden Arnaas.4870" said:re: ANet needs to make money - I see this all the time on the forums. Yes, ANet is a business and businesses need to make money. Then ANet can make stuff worth buying and charge a reasonable price. Their build and gear templates are better than nothing. But they didn't replace nothing, they replaced ArcDPS's templates.

And ANet waited for so long to re-add templates(GW1 had templates they were removed for GW2) that many players really didn't feel the need for them, diminishing the perceived need. Then ANet allowed a 3rd party substitute to be distributed. It was from everything I've heard a well designed, easy to use product. And it had the tremendous advantage of being

free

. So ANet let this exist for a while, allowing the competition. Then made themselves the bad guy when it was taken out of service.(Though this was agreed upon ahead of time) So ANet made a hostile market for the release of build and gear templates. They should have priced them better. At least they still allow the offline storage of the text codes. But that requires that the players devise their own system of storing and organizing builds.

except that majority that did not use arcdps did get great new content. The fact is it did take a lot of time and money to build templates, otherwise they would have done it earlier. There's a world of difference between building a plugin and building professional robust software.

Source on the "a lot of time and money"? Because if it did, they might think of hiring someone competent. As one person, in their free time, coded the exact same thing with more features, and being limited and restricted on what could be done since he only had default API access like everyone else does and all changes had to be approved by anet. And after all of that, it was still free.

The fact anet came out with templates is NOT the issue, the issue is that the 3rd pary templates worked great for those who used them, anet (as shown in my post above) stated that the addon was safe to use as far as ToS goes as it only used the default API of the game to work. That is their own words, then they tell him he can't distributed it anymore without legal action or arcdps as a whole being marked as illegal software and probably either being blocked or result in users getting banned for it. Now, nothing else had changed, so we know it was not for ToS reasons, the ONLY reason was a money grab. Had they released templates and allowed him to continue with the addon as well, no one would have issue with this.

It's their game and platform, they can do as they wish, but I am the one who forks over the money to keep it going. And templates were a "we don't care about the players, we have a worse system that we are going to charge high prices for and we are going to block all other options even though it doesn't break our ToS and only uses the API that we provided for people to make 3rd party addons for."

THAT^^^, that right there is what made people mad.

you know this world has become full of people who demand everything, and complain about everything, its a sad fact of this greedy resource consuming society we have in the west (getting oh so mad at computer games). In reality resources in this world are finite. Evidently it did cost a lot of time and money to develop, because Anet knew there was demand and that people would pay for it (why didn't they 'money grab' earlier?!) There's a couple of possible answers to why Anet took ages to develop:

1: There are incompetent and they could not do it. Well we know Anet generally deliver good content, and we know they eventually did build it.2: They didn't know about the demand. We know that's not true.3: They had no resource and built other stuff with better cost/benefit for us the customer, and they knew there was a add-in out there that people could use in the mean time. Probable.

4. It was more difficult to build than amateur armchair developers realise. Probable. see 3.

Not everything has to have en evil/incompetent face when its not what you want, and sometimes you cant satisfy everyone all the time. In this case it was the majority of players that did not use arcdps that gained, arcdps users lost a bit. What option would you choose?