Rubius.9280

Did you find the story engaging and do you want to see more of it? If so, worth coming back - lots of great stuff there. (Just note, you do have to buy it.) There were some great twists and turns through both expansions and the living world series. In my opinion, if you want to play the game casually and have a friend or two to play it with, you can have a lot of fun catching up on content, doing meta events, following story, etc. If you want to play the game more hardcore and get into either end-game raiding, World Versus World, or sPvP, perhaps reconsider as these areas are unfortunately not really getting the same level of attention they once did. There were significant layoffs at the developer earlier this year, so they are likely doing the best they can with a very limited team. Legendaries are fun to make and imo a good goal if you want something to work towards. It is worth noting that they're arguably worse / less convenient now than at any point in the game previously, with the limitations of the new build templates system. (Especially legendary armor.) They have posted they are looking into this on the official feedback thread, so it might change next year. Hope this helps!

It's only max convenience if they can use a single button to swap into any previously set build. Until a couple weeks ago, this convenience was possible for them using a free player-made Add-on that was green-lit by ArenaNet staff years prior. Now, they need to spend ~$30+ per character with legendary armor if they would like to have the same functionality. This is the issue -- the convenience is entirely gone, and to access it again, they have to shell out even more real money on top of the huge amount they already poured into creating the legendaries in the first place.

The good: Sharing build templates to others with codes is a great concept.The OK: Items moving out of bags was neat, though not a huge difference since many of us already spent big money on those expanded 28-34 slot bags you introduced previously. (And on bag slot expansions from gem store.) The really unfortunate: I'm a player with 3 full legendary armor sets and a second WvW Rank 2000 chestpiece. These loadouts are not only worse than my previous free option from ArcDPS, they make me feel entirely devalued as a hardcore player and like all of my work building these sets was for nothing. The convenience of having legendary armor now comes at a minimum cost of almost $30+ per character if I want to fully utilize it. The price for all of these options, especially Equipment Templates, is far too high. $6 would be too much even for an account-wide unlock -- but per character? It's insane.For the record, I really appreciate the GW2 staff and have purchased gems from the store on an almost-weekly basis for a long time for events, giveaways, etc - I've felt no regret supporting a game I loved. I know you guys are doing your best, but for me, this is the anvil that broke the camel's back. I firmly believe we have to speak with our wallets and with action, so this will be it for me after I wrap items up with my guild next month. I hope the staff can consider re-allowing the ArcDPS templates, which would solve the problems for many hardcore players without having to sacrifice your monetization for new players who don't care and didn't use the Arc templates in the past. Thank you for reading!

Still testing, but knee-jerk reaction to the pricing is that the Equipment Templates cost at ~$6.25 USD per expansion per character is... very expensive.

There's a Wurm by SE camp and a Warg by S camp that counts. There's also a Tiger between the two southern Ruins, but I'm not 100% sure that counts for Daily. The tiger does not, but there's also a Veteran Harpy near the eastern keep (high in the ruins) that will count for your veteran dailies and wxp. For OP: My guild used to hate the desert BL but after spending a lot of time defending on it, we slowly warmed up to it. There are some really neat tricks you can employ due to the terrain, and in my opinion much of WvW for havoc squads does rely on being sneaky and finding good spots to use that terrain to surprise your enemies. The only problem with the map is that the vertical nature of it is very difficult for newer players to understand, and does take some time for them to figure out if they aren't following their commander or are trying to get to one.

its best to find a guild and play with them. This, 100%. Playing with a group of friends / guild that you love makes WvW a great experience, even when you're constantly outnumbered or when the odds are against you. LOL No one wants me in their guild and it doesn't bother me any. Plus if any when a guild considers inviting me to their guild it means they respect their guild and acknowledging its on its death bed instead of a continuing slow painful death they invite me to make the painful process go faster than expected. So when you see me repping an actual guild and not a storage guild you know that guild is about to disband. Its the right thing to do so that is why I exist now that roaming has died.Ah, gotcha! Guilds may not be for everyone and I understand if maybe you feel that way. I hope you can find a friend or two that might also enjoy roaming to hang out with (if you haven't already) as perhaps this might be able to make things more fun in place of guilds.

Just wanted to say this is an awesome cause and always happy to see Anet supporting it! Thank you to all the staff who are involved in making this a reality each year.

its best to find a guild and play with them. This, 100%. Playing with a group of friends / guild that you love makes WvW a great experience, even when you're constantly outnumbered or when the odds are against you.

Definite yes! The joy of the packs is being able to get nice skins that are themed for (almost) all your mounts. Granted, it's probably a lot more work... but would be a cool quality of life bonus for everyone who has the mount.

Yes, sounds like we agree here and glad to see more understanding of the point. (So much better than people claiming it was illegal!) Realistically speaking, there's probably very few (if any) publishers that will ever give full 100% backing to add-ons in this case. Almost all add-ons remain "use at your own risk" if anything breaks, for any game. This is pretty standard and ArenaNet is part of the norm, not a deviation, in this case. ArcDPS templates was as close to "officially" endorsed as it ever possibly could have become, and you can read the literal praise from Chris for it in the quote about the developer. I'm not sure arguing this point will really get us anywhere. Saying "get used to something worse" is fine as a statement, but that's not what people supporting this thread are trying to achieve. (Plus, there are some really great features Anet is adding in their system that Arc didn't have, to their credit.) The hope is that Arenanet might listen and provide additional options or solutions. There are absolutely ways to make everyone happy here (or at least, most people)! I hope you can join us in trying to find a positive solution here, as opposed to just criticizing people. It's absolutely possible!

I disagree - green-lit means exactly what everyone understands it to mean. What you may be reaching for here is the disclaimer, which is in the quote I mentioned, where Arenanet still notes that it's not officially supported, even though they gave it the stamp of approval for players who want to use. Given that Arenanet has to have at least some distance in case anything goes wrong, the statement is as close as anyone was ever going to get -- Chris even invited other add-on creators to reach out to him. His intent in supporting these people was crystal clear, and in my opinion, was a great move on Anet's part. Tons of games, MMO's especially, allow for Add-ons within limits. Outside MMO's, the entire Steam workshop is dedicated to this type of content for other PC titles. There's not an ounce of truth in claiming that all developers "hate add ons" because they invade their privacy. This paints Arenanet to be the villain way more than I think is fair. They mentioned they have been working on this for quite some time, and the likely truth of the matter is that they probably had a lot of constraints and challenges to overcome to get an official version working. They are probably in a very tough position right now and trying to do the best they can. People aren't upset that ArenaNet is finally releasing build templates and gear templates. (Many of us were so stoked when we heard the news in that event!) We're upset that what we're getting seems inferior to an approved add-on that used to be free, and that the estimated cost for the game's most hardcore players is going to be more than buying an expansion - or two - just to keep playing the way they used to.

A key strategy for many groups (especially smaller havoc groups) is being able to attack a target and progress quickly to the lord without the enemy team being aware, or at least, with them finding out as late as possible. While this scenario is probably rare, in the case of tag sniping, a spy could keep an eye out for tags on any given map and report their location to the team they're spying for. Large groups or any public tags can have their position fed to a larger enemy group before they even arrive at a location, or moments after they do, which makes for a much harder fight. (To Anet's credit, I think the hidden tag option is a really great way for a lot of guild squads to counter this.) Separately, there's the discussion of players on alternate accounts pulling tactivators ahead of a siege to harm the defense of a team, which definitely does happen sometimes but can also get mixed in with people who may be new or people who may just be trolling.

I keep seeing this completely inaccurate statement thrown around, so here's the exact quote from Chris Cleary of ArenaNet where he gives the full green-light for the ArcDPS build Templates, years ago: Chris Cleary:"About 2-3 months ago I asked /u/deltaconnected to take down his previously created Build Templates addon to ArcDPS. At the time it was in violation of our rules to distribute it and it had key issues with it when it came to functionality and interaction with the game client. This release is the result of a multi-month coordination to get his Build Templates addon into a place where I can green-light it for release. Unlike DPS meters, Build Templates is a much more passive user interface addon and thus it could be individually allowed to release outside of the DPS meter Terms of Service rules restriction. If future developers are interested in working with me to create addons, please reach out to me and we can chat. I'm green-lighting this due to the developer's trustworthiness after months of interaction and willingness to add key restrictions and functionality changes to accommodate my push to keep addons away from becoming a "must have to win" situation (WvW restrictions were not outlined in his post, but they are there along with others). In their current state, /u/DeltaConnected's Build templates are green-lit and safe to use by users (in terms of violating the Terms of Service). I've asked him to run any functionality changes by me before releasing, so hopefully we don't need to worry about things changing in the future in terms of "safe to use". This is officially unsupported, and ArenaNet will not be able to offer any support for this addon or issues that occur due to use of this addon." Please, stop this false narrative that the past build templates were "Illegal" or that Anet "turned a blind eye". They were green-lit and specifically tailored to ArenaNet's requests to ensure their approval.

The idea for high-rank WvW players to have some extra powers is pretty interesting, though I do worry that if you give players the option to abuse something, they will find ways to abuse it. (It's exactly what we're seeing with people/alt accounts pulling tactivators on purpose in this thread!) Feels like the best solution would be to have the staff deciding what is and is not abuse / malicious behavior, which players can report for review, though this would require more work for everyone involved. Given the upcoming 2-year anniversary of the alliances announcement, it's probably not realistic to expect. Still... we can dream, right?

If a team is able to head back into their spawn to adjust their composition (say, adding more healers if they need them, or swapping heals into DPS), I'd say that's a valuable strategic play if they have the gear and characters for it, wouldn't you? There's really very little difference at that point between build swapping and just having players log onto other characters to update their WvW team composition, besides maybe 30-60 seconds of load times. It would function almost exactly the same as the game currently does.

I believe this is already not possible in the design and was mentioned on the last livestream when they covered certain limitations. If memory serves, you will need to be inside the starting camp on the map for your team to swap builds. Worry not!

Could work! An option without storage for legendary armor folks would probably result in very few complaints, while still giving them the convenience and functionality that they spent all that money/time on in the first place.

In lower tiers, didn't used to feel that spying was an issue at all. Thought it was just a myth until we noticed someone pulled all the tactivators in a keep and within 60 seconds a huge enemy force showed up... and then the same happened less than an hour later on another map with the same group. Have long felt that a log would be really useful -- new players might accidentally pull tactivators, and we should be helpful in teaching them how they work. But if there are records that could prove the behavior was malicious in trying to hurt a team, and is being constantly repeated, it would be nice if the support team could review and perhaps action any really crazy offenders there.

Nailed it! Made 3 full sets of legendary armor from raids and some additional WvW legendary armor (the 2k chest piece effect is awesome!). If the system were able to factor in legendary armor and allow these swaps (as players build these expensive pieces with that convenience in mind), I feel like many of us who built these sets would be much happier.

Wanted to give a +1 to the OP for a great post that outlines a lot of concerns regarding the templates. Love the game, have really enjoyed the raid and WvW scene for the last couple of years, but am very worried that these changes will either limit my guild's options or force us to spend a lot of cash to continue. (Especially with gear templates.) Was also a little sad to see that Legendary Armor will require additional gear templates for every adjusted configuration, as this is a big (and expensive) step down from what the ArcDPS templates were able to provide. Thanks for reading and fingers crossed that perhaps some of the feedback on the thread is considered!