If there is a goal to nurture a competitive PvE scene, templates need to be demonetized

[Labjax.2465]

2 gear templates and 3 build templates per character, and the rest is nickel and diming, with the objectively better deal being a convoluted process of buying a character slot, max leveling them, and then using them as an alternative source of templates for the same class. Which isn't even a good deal, it's just a better deal than the godawful templates situation.

Competitive raiding types are gonna be exactly the kind who will hit their limit on templates fast. How likely do you think it is they're gonna go, "Well there's literally no other game out there that has competitive PvE content, guess I'll pull out my wallet instead of playing one of those other games that definitely doesn't exist and couldn't possibly be built more heavily to support competitive PvE from the ground up"?

I know $$$ makes the anet go round, but as far as I can tell, this is a question of priorities and how you (anet) are limiting who you can appeal to and in what way with your monetization choices. There are tradeoffs to making something like this so heavily monetized and such an awful deal. It's not without consequences in how people engage with the game.

I could point out other consequences, but I thought I would put emphasis on this one because nurturing a competitive PvE scene seems to be something you actually care about based on some of the moves you've been making more recently.

[Sobx.1758]

So you're unable to swap gear and traits by clicking on them now or something?

Also... "nurturing a competitive pve scene"? "Nurturing" how? "Competitive" how?

Edited August 14, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[lezbefriends.7516]

The best players are whales. This is true in every game. We are slowly getting exposed to p2w elements. Look how many people played Lost Ark.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

I'd love to see this suggestion adopted.

 

ANet probably monetized this system because as the game has aged, it's likely that more and more of the people who might be inclined to get bag/bank slots already have them.  So, that revenue stream would have been shrinking.  I could, of course, be completely wrong about that.  If I'm right, though, then ANet will be reluctant to remove the cost.

 

I might be willing to buy loadouts if they were account wide.  As character bound items, they're ridiculously overpriced.  That would at least be a partial remedy.

 

Of course, ANet may view the loadouts as a boon to players who never used Arc templates.  To Arc users, of course, the system is pretty bad.

 

The cynic in me thinks there are just two chances that either the OP's suggestion or even mine would happen, Slim and None.  And, Slim has left town.

[Sigmoid.7082]

Nobody else remember the "please add in game build templated...I would even pay for them" type posts from the build template threads back in the day? 

 

To me it's just another example of be careful what you wish for. 

 

That and they aren't really that different from other things that fall into the same category. 

[Tinker.6924]

21 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Well there's literally no other game out there that has competitive PvE content, 

Not sure any content in gw2 is applicable to competitive pve play.  Unlike World of Warcraft which has the Mythic Dungeon International, a regularly held competitive pve tournaments with cash prizes.  Blizzard also has another version of this mythic dungeon tournament whose name escapes me.  WoW also has the Race To World First everytime a new raid is introduced which isn't technically sanctioned by Blizzard but Blizz does plenty to enable and allow it.  It's insane how much real world money gets pumped into with esports teams like Method and Liquid and corporate sponsorships from Red Bull, Razer and others.

 

[Labjax.2465]

17 hours ago, Sigmoid.7082 said:

Nobody else remember the "please add in game build templated...I would even pay for them" type posts from the build template threads back in the day? 

 

To me it's just another example of be careful what you wish for. 

 

That and they aren't really that different from other things that fall into the same category. 

Blaming the players for a decision they were never consulted on is a strange practice.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

I make enough gold from instanced content to buy a new template every day. Maybe hitting the limit is a problem, but being able to obtain them without "nickel and diming" isn't, and I seriously doubt you're going to hit the template limit on all your available character slots.

[Labjax.2465]

9 minutes ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

I make enough gold from instanced content to buy a new template every day. Maybe hitting the limit is a problem, but being able to obtain them without "nickel and diming" isn't, and I seriously doubt you're going to hit the template limit on all your available character slots.

Alright, you go mail new players gold in queensdale for templates then. Should be very easy and cheap for you to do.

[Linken.6345]

56 minutes ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Alright, you go mail new players gold in queensdale for templates then. Should be very easy and cheap for you to do.

And new players  need those templates why?

[Parasite.5389]

Oh no, i have to spend monies to raid?!   how ever did we survive before Templates?!

[Labjax.2465]

34 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

Oh no, i have to spend monies to raid?!   how ever did we survive before Templates?!

Well this game has never had a very successful raiding scene, so I'm not sure going back to before templates is doing you any favors here...

[mindcircus.1506]

On 8/14/2022 at 1:14 AM, Sigmoid.7082 said:

Nobody else remember the "please add in game build templated...I would even pay for them" type posts from the build template threads back in the day?

While the premise of this thread is a complete junk argument powered by fanfic rhetoric:
Those of us who WERE excited by the idea of build templates and would have happily paid for them were absolutely NOT asking for (or willing to pay for) a system that purposefully split the QoL feature into three separate parts solely for the purpose of monetization.
I would absolutely have paid decent money for a reasonably priced system.
I'm certainly willing to pay money for a decent pizza.
But what Anet did was effectively offer me a pizza that only had toppings on two slices by default and asked me to pay to get cheese and sauce on the rest, one slice at a time.

The entire system was created to effectively milk the most dedicated players of this game and was polished to offer less value for the money than new character slots.
It  stands out as Arenanet's biggest cash grab that over-reached so far that it turned off just about everyone.

Yes, many people expressed they were willing to pay for Build Templates.
No, not a single person asked to be bent over and done dirty, the way Anet implemented it.

[Jokkerzzz.5471]

47 minutes ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

While the premise of this thread is a complete junk argument powered by fanfic rhetoric:
Those of us who WERE excited by the idea of build templates and would have happily paid for them were absolutely NOT asking for (or willing to pay for) a system that purposefully split the QoL feature into three separate parts solely for the purpose of monetization.
I would absolutely have paid decent money for a reasonably priced system.
I'm certainly willing to pay money for a decent pizza.
But what Anet did was effectively offer me a pizza that only had toppings on two slices by default and asked me to pay to get cheese and sauce on the rest, one slice at a time.

The entire system was created to effectively milk the most dedicated players of this game and was polished to offer less value for the money than new character slots.
It  stands out as Arenanet's biggest cash grab that over-reached so far that it turned off just about everyone.

Yes, many people expressed they were willing to pay for Build Templates.
No, not a single person asked to be bent over and done dirty, the way Anet implemented it.

Just make the price of those thing a little higher and with one SINGLE purchase add ONE template to EVERY character you have because when you want to be versatile as possible you are limited by very high paywall which causes you to farm gold to buy them instead making legendaries etc etc. The worst thing is mesmer where you have way much builds than any other raid class (maybe mech now but we don't like mech here).
And yeah just click and change traits its free LOL. try to that everytime you do raids and have to swap between 4 classes constantly with changing builds, its so much fun right?

[Forum Moderator.3419]

Hello Everyone,

Just a reminder to keep it civil and avoid fighting with each other. I've removed some posts.

Regards.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

13 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Alright, you go mail new players gold in queensdale for templates then. Should be very easy and cheap for you to do.

New players in Queensdale don't need templates. Its usually a year or two before an average player has maxed out both equipment tabs and all three build tabs on all five character slots.

 

You start with a very generous offering of build possibilities. The only reason players need build templates at all is for very restricted scenarios like, only playing one character, only having one character geared in Ascended for Fractals or WvW, or only having legendary armor unlocked for one weight class.

 

Maybe you could also count needing to have both PvE and PvP/WvW builds on a single character, though that's rare since most players I've seen have dedicated characters for those game modes.

 

Also, all of these are far end-game situations.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Labjax.2465]

3 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

New players in Queensdale don't need templates. Its usually a year or two before an average player has maxed out both equipment tabs and all three build tabs on all five character slots.

 

You start with a very generous offering of build possibilities. The only reason players need build templates at all is for very restricted scenarios like, only playing one character, only having one character geared in Ascended for Fractals or WvW, or only having legendary armor unlocked for one weight class.

 

Maybe you could also count needing to have both PvE and PvP/WvW builds on a single character, though that's rare since most players I've seen have dedicated characters for those game modes.

 

Also, all of these are far end-game situations.

Your first post was from the perspective of a 9 year veteran player with 34k ap, 21k hours, and 28 characters, telling people that actually, templates are easy to get because you, this veteran player, can get enough gold for a template from instanced content every day. Since this is nowhere near what the experience would be like for new players, I suggested that you go mail them gold for templates, since you are obviously way better off than them in-game and are doing so well at this point that farming hundreds of gold and dropping it on a character bound template slot is no big deal to you. In other words, if it is really no big deal to you, then why not help make it no big deal for other players. Cause it's not no big deal for most players.

This game has probably thousands of things you can spend gold on when you're new, god knows how many things you'll want, and we're supposed to expect people to choose some objectively bad deal character bound template slots as a candidate for gold to gems conversion over everything else? Unreal.

[Pifil.5193]

18 hours ago, Mariyuuna.6508 said:

I make enough gold from instanced content to buy a new template every day. Maybe hitting the limit is a problem, but being able to obtain them without "nickel and diming" isn't, and I seriously doubt you're going to hit the template limit on all your available character slots.

Wait, you make 150gp a day from instanced content (currently costs 150gp to buy 500 gems which is the cost of an equipment template)? How much time do you spend on instanced content for that?

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

20 minutes ago, Pifil.5193 said:

Wait, you make 150gp a day from instanced content (currently costs 150gp to buy 500 gems which is the cost of an equipment template)? How much time do you spend on instanced content for that?

I was referring to build templates. Equipment templates are a completely different thing, and as I stated earlier, for meta builds it often costs more to fill them than to buy the template.

 

But yes, 150g is a rather low amount of gold for someone who plays alot. Assuming an eight-hour farming day your daily income from open-world alone is 200-250g, depending on the activity. That's with basic spirit shard promotion only, and no TP flipping.

 

The income of Silverwastes 24/7 RIBA farm, the oldest and most casual farm in the game, is only a little bit lower, at about 160g per day for the same eight-hour farming cycle.

 

Even casuals (i.e, people with work or school) who play upwards of 10-15 hours a week only at 1-2 hours a day, can walk away with 300-350g+ a week without even doing specific tasks. Most players who can't make gold don't understand things like, proper salvaging, material sorting & selling, spirit shard promotion and so on, and the game doesn't teach them about it, either, which is unfortunate.

 

Most instanced content is different to open-world in that it allows you to get Best In Slot (BiS) gear easier, in exchange for making raw gold. You save gold in the long-term by not having to craft your gear, although some instanced content does provide direct farms (e.g Fractal Encryptions, dungeon currencies being used to buy rares to salvage for ectos, etc.).

Edited August 15, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Ashen.2907]

18 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Alright, you go mail new players gold in queensdale for templates then. Should be very easy and cheap for you to do.

New players

Competitive endgame.

 

Pick one.

[Sobx.1758]

10 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Well this game has never had a very successful raiding scene, so I'm not sure going back to before templates is doing you any favors here...

"Never had successful raiding scene" and yet you're trying to use it (still not competitive btw) as a launch pad to free templates. Still wondering what logic there is behind it.

18 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Alright, you go mail new players gold in queensdale for templates then. Should be very easy and cheap for you to do.

In addition to the above, you're also trying to use new players (....in starting zone, at that?) for it, as if new players somehow need to wildly juggle between builds to play (be it harder pve content or not). The whole argument you're trying to build seems to be aimed at sounding nice ("but think about the new players!") instead of being truthful.

At the same time "competitive raiding types" will be able to just grind out gold > gems if they'll want it.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Doggie.3184]

Most MMOs the biggest whales dominate all competition so everything you're worried about would be intentional.

I don't really mind 'too much' buying equipment/build loadouts since you can convert gold to gems but even with conversion I find the build storage aspect to be intensely overpriced by a landslide.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[Linken.6345]

19 minutes ago, Doggie.3184 said:

Most MMOs the biggest whales dominate all competition so everything you're worried about would be intentional.

I don't really mind 'too much' buying equipment/build loadouts since you can convert gold to gems but even with conversion I find the build storage aspect to be intensely overpriced by a landslide.

Then use a persnal guild message of the day or a notepad doc on your desktop instead?

[Doggie.3184]

13 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Then use a persnal guild message of the day or a notepad doc on your desktop instead?

All the more reason they're overpriced when there's alternatives like that. You only help the case. It's not something I'm going to buy. They don't even have the decency to unlock 5 for 500 to help OCD. XD

Edited August 15, 2022 by Doggie.3184

[Labjax.2465]

1 hour ago, Ashen.2907 said:

New players

Competitive endgame.

 

Pick one.

That's not a dichotomy...

There are people who are competitive in other games who could consider trying this one if the game is made better for it and anet seems to be trying at least a little to nurture a competitive PvE scene. New to this game doesn't have to mean they are born yesterday and gonna take months to reach level 80. They can also be someone with a lot of knowledge of MMO systems who is going to be looking to jump into the competitive scene as soon as they can, which is the picture of what kind of player I'm thinking of that they seem to be trying to make some effort to attract. Maybe I'm wrong they care at all in that way, or maybe I'm misunderstanding how that demographic works, but that's along the lines of what I'm thinking of. I'm not thinking of a person who tepidly engages with the game and eventually starts engaging with end-game PvE content after a number of years of getting most things they want in the game and knows how to farm gold efficiently and is now more comfortable with the idea of converting some gold to gems for templates.

26 minutes ago, Doggie.3184 said:

Most MMOs the biggest whales dominate all competition so everything you're worried about would be intentional.

I don't really mind 'too much' buying equipment/build loadouts since you can convert gold to gems but even with conversion I find the build storage aspect to be intensely overpriced by a landslide.

Since when? What does being a whale have to do with being a top competitive player, unless the game is full-throated P2W?