Official Feedback Thread about Build and Equipment Templates

[onio.6403]

While I think that the added equipment options are very useful I also believe that they are not well posed in the sense that the character cannot customize each armor correctly for the following reasons:

1. Objects that can be hidden or displayed should be independent for each armor set.
2. Each armor set should be able to have its own outfit selection.
3. It should be possible to put a different hairstyle on each set of armor (consuming the corresponding hairstyle kit).
4. Each armor set should be able to be associated with a glider design and a mount.

Point 3 is of minor importance (although it would be a way to reactivate the purchase of the hairstyle kit).

In short, the character's look is not being respected and it should be noted that the appearance is something that has a high cost in this game.

[Kageseigi.2150]

Are builds/loadouts a good thing? Yes.Is the implementation good? No.Is a bad implementation better than no implementation? No, not when the change is inferior to not changing at all.

Anet, at the very least, you should have given each character 2 or 3 templates/loadouts PER GAME MODE. And have them automatically switch whenever switching game modes as they did in the past.

What really hits me as slimy (and really eats away at the goodwill I have) is unlocking the mode-specific "templates" that we already had, then marketing them as giving us 3 "free" templates with the new system. Are we supposed to be happy that we are not having to pay for things we already had? And that it doesn't even have the functionality that it had before?

Alas, why does this even affect PvP? Why not make PvP "gear" templates even more useful by allowing use to simply change our appearance/skins/dyes instead of having to actually switch gear? The equipment is all the same in PvP. Why force us to change our equipment just for a different appearance? Just let us choose our equipment/appearance from the skins we have unlocked in the wardrobe (i.e. Bank).

[Balthzar.3807]

@linamaria.1830 said:For me 2 actions need to be done, then I will start to use the new features, even buying extras slots:

1. Equipment Templates: The legendary/ascended gear need to be easily swapped between characters. Right now, I don't feel like using the equipment templates at all, as the equipment storage is character based, instead of account based.
2. Build Templates: The traits need to automatically be loaded while entering into different game modes, just like it was before yesterday.

Those 2 changes are fundamental in my opinion.

neither will happen, if they do it means more functionality and less revenue. Welcome to the new City of Heros where cash is king and NCsoft can kill a game faster than you can say creditcard

[Vissarion.6509]

Too expensive.

clunky to use if you play more than one gamemode.

legendary gear feel worse to use now.

doesn't actually save any build, those are loadouts not templates.

cool idea, fast changing.

very limiting.

instead of character bound should be account bound unlocks.

instead of 6 builds, there should have been 6 builds per gamemode per character!

too expensive!

[Eloc Freidon.5692]

Suggestion:

Make equipment template slots remember what was in them even when you remove the equipment. Just make them nullified and grayed out.

Don't make legendary equipment remove their runes/sigils infusion upgrades when equipped.

[Aerythia.6415]

Just here to add my thoughts to the multitude before me, and to say I agree with the vast majority here. Aside from all the issues regarding use of legendary gear, the lack of lock of the template, and issues going between game modes, the one that irritates me the most is the decision regarding the pricing of these build templates. Whoever came up with that made a very poor decision.

I play Ele and Guardian, with a multitude of builds between both characters. I accepted I would spend some money to equip them fully with the builds I use. I tend to buy gems once a month, as I enjoy playing GW2, and would like to support further development of this game.

However, when I saw the ridiculous amount of cash I would need to shell out just to gain the necessary build and equipment slots, something broke inside. I questioned why the hell I would spend £40-50 just to gain slots for two characters in a GAME, and decided I could spend that money on something else. As did a large number of my raiding friends. We, quite frankly, are disgusted at how we have been treated. As has been said time and time again, the average casual is not affected by this, as they probably only ever had one build. It's the more "hardcore" or "veteran" gamers who needed build templates... yet what has been provided requires them to spend a few weeks rent to return to functionality they had access to before. Why?

There needs to be a serious reconsideration of the pricing strategy for this. Given the people I have spoken to, and conversations I have had, Anet are missing out on money people were prepared to spend. By charging less, they would actually make more.

Very disappointed in it all. I may buy one or two templates if they end up on sale, but the way forward appears to be buying character slots instead. Was that really the aim of this all?

[Hunt.3054]

Generally, I play just one character per profession, have whole legendary armors, and this update is so disappointing for me, sadly.

I would be happy if the build/equipment expansions are account-wide (or lower its prices). I was planning to buy some before update, but now, I have no plan to buy them. I'd rather create a new character than buy those template slots at this point. It's a little too expensive considering its usefulness. Also, account-bound build storage is kind of itchy to use.

The only good points I could find atm are that it covers Pets/Legends and saves some inventory spaces.

Overall, Ark was better for me. Please rework/improve the official one or let us use Ark template again.

[sajah varel.9261]

@Hunt.3054 said:Generally, I play just one character per profession, have whole legendary armors, and this update is so disappointing for me, sadly.

I would be happy if the build/equipment expansions are account-wide (or lower its prices). I was planning to buy some before update, but now, I have no plan to buy them. I'd rather create a new character than buy those template slots at this point. It's a little too expensive considering its usefulness. Also, account-bound build storage is kind of itchy to use.

The only good points I could find atm are that it covers Pets/Legends and saves some inventory spaces.

Overall, Ark was better for me. Please rework/improve the official one or let us use Ark template again.

Money-wise the equipment slots you gain are not even a good point as it costs more to get an equipment tab than getting a bag slot. A bag slot is cheaper and with the gem difference you can get more than a 32-slot bag. While an equipment tab has 19 slots. So you're losing money by slots.

The sad part is I'm sure it's not the coder's fault, because while the feature is not perfect, if it was not locked behind a huge paywall that no one is going into (because we don't have the money), with one or 2 minor fixes (and more tabs) it would work fine.It's the commercial department that is either not doing is job, or thinking people are so stupid they wouldn't look at the cost between tab and bags or chars.

[Cuddy.6247]

As a pretty casual player, I don't entirely mind the system as it was implemented. For someone like me it's probably actually a really good improvement to the system. However, I definitely see some gripes with it - it's kind of bad PR to eliminate the way WvW and PvP builds were more or less saved to those modes and then talk about how you're giving people "3 templates" - you just gave us exactly as many templates as we had before. Only now there's more choice in there. For me that's kind of nice, but you could've raised the bar a little and aimed for like 5 templates. Or better yet, retroactively add 2 templates per expansion, with a base of 4. So people who bought HoT and PoF would start with 8 free templates. Then some very dedicated players might want to buy some more, but it also doesn't feel like a cheap cash grab.

Another gripe I have is how many bugs have come out of this update. Was there no QA done at all? Like what the actual QoL. I literally couldn't join half the squads doing lab farm? I have no idea how it's related to build templates at all, but it's certainly not a problem I experienced prior to the patch! I've read about other bugs on the forums and Reddit too, so it doesn't sound pretty at all.

My closing statement would be something akin to...you took something that hardcore players really wanted and delivered a product that only casual players could really relate to as being QoL. And then you didn't QA it nearly enough.

[Elku.6429]

Can we opt out of this stupid thing? At least before I could hop between WvW and Conquest without having to fiddle with a bunch of buttons that break half the time.

[Okami Amaterasu.9237]

. . . .

[Henrik.7560]

This has to be most disappointing, money grabbing, band-aid feature I've ever seen anet release. It's extremely overpriced for a convenience item, costing thousands and thousands of gems per character to get a suitable amount of templates to play multiple game modes.

it's poorly implemented, causing constant crashing and dcing, in addition to being buggy in ways such as deleting or duplicating items.

The even more stupid thing is, anet officially requested arc dps build templates to shut down, who made a better, more functional, user friendly, free version of the feature, so they could sell their overpriced trash.

This is the most disappointing thing I've seen from anet, and quite literally the game deserves to die from this.

[Willow.7210]

I am sure much of what I am going to say has already been said, so let me try and sum this up quickly.

I agree with other sentiments, I do not begrudge arenanet trying to make money to support their game. The problem is they are making money off a function I used for years, for free, and with less of a headache.

If you want to charge for storage of the materials assigned to a template, that is your business, but charging for template builds should not exist. I prefer arcdps for this, simple UI I did not find complicated. Use that UI if you have to, don't make an unintuitive UI when there was a working one already out there. I don't care if it's pretty, I want it to be intuitive and easy to manage.

Keep it simple if you are bent on having a template limit, longevity of a character should be taken into account, and each additional character slot purchased for the account should add another free template to the total.

Some classes will not need as many load-outs as others, being able to move the template limit from one character to another would be nice, if my guardian needs 6 then my engineer could have zero, that kind of thing. Honestly though, I think the limit should be dropped for the template part, not including the new storage in this.

All build storage materials should be accessible account wide for easy gear swapping. And if you're making build template material storage character bound and not account wide, if I am understand this part correctly....well, it boggles my mind how anyone at your offices sat down and seriously thought this was a good idea.

Fix the storage part, make it so swapping your gear across characters who share gear isn't a headache or don't do it at all. As much as build templates for gw2 should have been part of the game years ago...we found a solution in arcdps, and while it wasn't perfect it was far better than this. Not sure why there was a need to over-complicate implementing templates when you had that as a guide. It's not like those of use using that add-on for years aren't going to notice this change, and not be extremely put out over it.

I miss arcdps build templates, and that is not a good sign your template system was implemented well, either do it better than it was or don't do it at all.

[Master Ketsu.4569]

Honestly I'm less concerned with the monetization than I am with how buggy and unresponsive it is.

Especially on rev. Changing templates or even just loading into maps with a template already chosen has brought back the old spaghetti-code bug where rev skills randomly swap themselves and get jumbled in odd ways. This is actually the worst one yet because sometimes skill icons don't even match what skill they are, meaning that to know whether or not a skill is bugged you have to actually USE it because sometimes it is bugged so that the skill is randomly jumbled othertimes it is bugged so that only the skill icon is wrong but the placement is correct.

Here's a quick screenshot of the madness crossposted from the bug thread:

These templates were just not ready for release and needed more dev/QA passes.

[Frostfang.5109]

Plz make tabs with the same number from both templets possible to link together so u can switch both gear and build at once.

[Yogurt.4092]

cough I know this will be unpopular but ...whatever xD

The System in itself:Not that bad, it does what its supposed to. easy swapping of preequipped gear and build.Not perfect but what would you expect of something that is likely to be expanded in the future.

Only thing i'd like you to do is to make it possible to create chat links for gear templates. Doesn't seem to be a thing atm. (unintended?)

The price seems high as people like to tell everyone who asks but tbh i don't see it.500 gems is like 150-200g in the game xD i can make like 20g by doing t4 frac dailys once a day. 10days 1h a day to buy something that ill keep forever is not expensive at all.

So all in all i dont dislike this system even if its a bit restrictive. Just don't give up on it half way through like you did with dungeons and Legendary Weapon Collections xD keep developing it and it will be fine.

[AzureNightmare.3914]

You know ANet, the more and more I think about it, the more I think the best thing you can do is just make the upgrades account-whole.From my super-casual PvE perspective, its already really appreciated that the Equipment Tab makes it so I can have more armors and trinkets and whatnot without it taking inventory space; at the time I made my post in Page 5, its come to my understanding I actually misunderstood how this work, so I'm actually more positive about it than before. Yes I can't instantly hotkey to cycle stuff, but in GW1 we couldn't either; we had to manually load our builds, and if I'm remembering right (correct me if I"m wrong), I recall our F1-F5 weapon slots to cycle through weapons didn't actually free up our inventory spaces. Maybe I'm wrong, but especially as someone who never used this Arc thing, its appreciated. I honestly don't think its that clunky anymore; yes its annoying its on two separate pages (switching between the Equipment tab and Build tab), but its not as bad as I thought it was before the more I get used to it.

The REAL kitten problem I feel more than anything, something EVERYONE seems to agree on, is that this is WAY too expensive. It costs well over $30 to get everything on ONE character. That's absolutely unacceptable. This is going beyond "necessary evil" monetization to "absolute greed." This is my biggest gripe by far at this point. I still recommend what I said in page 5; cut the prices of this crap in half. Make Build Storage Spaces 250 gems. Make Tab and Equipment Templets 150 gems. OR, if you really wanna make a buck on it; make these account-wide upgrades. Someone even said I think in here, linking to their blog, if it was an account-wide upgrade people would probably be willing to spend 1000 gems on some of this stuff. 1000 gems so ALL characters you have get another Equipment Tab and all future characters you make will have more Equipment Tabs capping at a maximum of 6, for 4000 gems (STILL pretty expensive, that is a $50 account investment right there; I still think it should be half of that). Make these purchases account-wide instead of an individual character.

I still think trying to be able to hotkey things would be really cool, but more than anything, I'm begging you, for the love of Dwayna PLEASE reconsider how you're monetizing it. Its too much.

[Dawdler.8521]

@"Elku.6429" said:Can we opt out of this stupid thing? At least before I could hop between WvW and Conquest without having to fiddle with a bunch of buttons that break half the time.Ignoring bugs - which obviously should be bugfixed - I find this argument absolutely silly.

I understand that the 1% of the playerbase that utilized arcdps and whatever portion of them that utilized arcpds build templates have issues with the limited amount of saved builds sure, but for the rest of the player base this only added to the game. I wouldnt even be against if arcdps templates was reinstated and worked together with the new system.

Before we had "1 equipment slots" (ie the gear you carry) and "3 build slots" (PvE, WvW and sPvP), + 1 "Unique sPvP equip" that I assume is like it was as I havent been to sPvP. Now we have 2 equipment slots - and each additional slot except the first being the eqvivalent of 15 or so free bank slots (armor+trinkets+weapons), the same 3 build slots and the same sPvP equip. Why one would want to revert this claiming "its better without it" is completely beyond me. Hell I see people claim that oooh all gear should be global what even is this. As if we didnt have to move gear between characters before. The grass is always greener on the other side indeed.

Is there issues? Sure. I myself as a casual have several of them so far (again, ignoring bugfixes):

• legendaries should be equippable account wide (+value)
• You should be able to tag a build and equipment template to automaticly equip upon entering a specific gamemode (improve previous build-only method and smooth over the transitions without manually having to select it)
• Some sort of menu where you can bind a chosen build and chosen equipment template to a single shortcut (improve the way the build+equip split works)

The monetization is still completely in line with previous Anet gemstore items yet people are having a hizzy fit over it which I find hilarious. If you dont want to use the additional templates well then just buy a new character slot and make it for a specific build and purpose. It cost exactly the same as before. It works exactly the same as before. And... wait you're still getting free additional stuff on that character as the equipment templates is still in effect. Hm. This is tricky.

[Firebeard.1746]

I initially supported build templates but can't any more: the issue, is that not having a separate build template system for PVP is too clunky (like it not automatically switching, and essentially not being its own set of templates entirely). It really sucks. And it makes new players' experience worse. This is too new user unfriendly in its current iteration. This won't be good for the long term health of the game. Heck if I was a new player and hadn't been reading feedback I wouldn't have known to even check that my PVP build is now my build when i phase out. Not only that, but this means I actually have to remember to switch my builds at the beginning of a match if I want to be effective. This game is so great, man you guys are just driving it off a cliff. I might have to start investing some time and/or money elsewhere in case this doesn't go down well in the long run, either for me or other people.

And the 3-6 slots, depending on when you get them are ACCOUNT WIDE? Kitten, you realize that anyone who had more than 3 characters lost functionality based on the PVP changes alone, right? Because each character basically already had 2 to begin with: open world and sPVP. Because sPVP basically acted like a separate build template that auto-activated. I thought this was going to be an improvement. smh. This needs to be reverted.

How about you revert build templates, sell gear templates (as they're essentially extra storage) and allow ArcDPS to do its normal templates, and before you decide to experiment with selling build templates again, you try to actually use dev time on a purchasable season pass with special rewards for participating in WvW, Fractals, Raids, and/or SPVP over the course of the next 6 months, and add some season-flavored mechanics to those experiences, free of charge, so everyone gets to try something new and people who like your game can earn something new in it for participating? This feels like a lazy cash grab.

[Faish.4238]

In general, I like these changes. I've saved quite a few inventory slots thanks to equipment templates, and I don't play GW2 too long, so I don't have more than 2 sets of gear on any of my characters yet.

There is one major problem with these new build templates that needs to be adressed, and that is switching builds between PvE, PvP and WvW. I've played PvP only for a month, but I'm already used to having builds switching automatically between modes. They no longer do that, you have to switch them manually. Despite it seems minor, it's a huge QoL step back. At the very least, we need the ability to set default build for each game mode like we used to, and they would switch automatically depending on if you're in PvE, PvP or WvW zone. But optimally I'd like to have sigils, runes and stats from PvP builder included in build templates, as they are integral part of the build (also worth mentioning: not dependant on the gear). This part of build templates could be hidden while in PvE zones, but visible for every build in PvP. If you want to avoid confusion among PvE players, that is.

If equipment templates were real templates, not just loadouts, I'd like to have distinction between intentionally empty slots and slots that are ignored when changing templates. Items in "intentionally empty" slots would always be unequipped when switching to a template (useful when you want to have an empty offhand slot, for example), while "ignored" slots would be just that - ignored, when activating a template that has them (useful when you don't want to change whole gear, but only few pieces).

Another minor bug I noticed: if different equipment templates have different pieces of gear in one slot, but one is dyed while other isn't, switching between them will copy dyes from one item to the other, like if these items were manually equipped one after another.

There is a bug/issue/inconvenience with weapon sets that has similar cause: if different equipment templates use completely different weapons, switching between them will always set second weapon set to active, like if weapons were manually equipped one by one. Or if only the first weapon set differs while the second one is the same in both templates, then switching between templates will always set first weapon set to active.

[Umberbeast.4986]

Thank you for adding the template system, I really don't have any complaints about the template system itself. I have 24 toons and now I only use 4 or 5 :)

[Fenella.2634]

@Yogurt.4092 said:The price seems high as people like to tell everyone who asks but tbh i don't see it.500 gems is like 150-200g in the game xD i can make like 20g by doing t4 frac dailys once a day. 10days 1h a day to buy something that ill keep forever is not expensive at all.10 days for one slot. Nice.I actually roughly calculated that yesterday too. If the price for 400 gems stays at about 150 g and I farm at about the speed I did for the griffon, it will take me something between 2-5 years (depending on wheather I buy bundles or everything piece by piece) of daily farming to finish all classes accountwide. :lol: No legendaries, no mounts or anything else in between.Sounds like fun?

[Nick.5276]

WoW! I just experienced the versatility of templates first hand! Went to pvp and it loaded my pve build, lost the game with 1 afk anyway and it dropped me back into a fight in pve with my pvp build and pve gear, awesome!

[BloodyKate.4021]

1) Fusing equipment and build template. Because it would make it so much more practical to have all your build ( which also consists of equipment ) in one click and not having to find what equipment goes with what build. It would also make the price a bit more acceptable since we're paying for the whole build and not just parts of it.2) More tabs. Because you can already have multiple builds for fractals, dungeons and raids. But also add to that wvw and pvp where you also may need several builds depending on the situation.3) A way to save the equipment templates. If I need to give my stuff to another character, I break my equipment template. Then I'll have to give it back and do everything all over again. It's even worse with legendary equipment... and since it's legendary it should in no way be the worse option !4) An equipment bag shared with all account. That way I can easily share my ascended and legendary stuff with all my characters. They can all have their templates without having to destroy them everytime I move an "accountbind" item.5) A way to give a separate appearance for each build. Again, when you have legendary, it feels you have the worse option. I change of equipment template but I see no difference while people with ascended stuff can change the appearance depending on the build. ( By the way, a way to save appearance sets in a whole would be awesome ).6) Would be nice to be able to set up a "by default" build for a game mode. For example : when I arrive in wvw, use this build in priority. That way I don't risk stumbling on an enemy with my pve build because I forgot to change it x)7) And as everyone has mentionned it... it's overpriced. I gladly give money to gw2 but this is asking too much for not enough. Either make it accountwide or less expensive. A template upgrade should have the same value as a brand new character, since it kinda replaces it ( Since a new character doesn't have only one template, then an upgrade shouldn't cost as much as a new character while giving less templates as a new character )

Thank you for trying though and I hope you can make it as awesome as possible.

[Grumbler Guest.3865]

imo; they should separate templates by game modes & characters, and link trait & equipment selections.gw2 is b2p game. do not make us spend too much gem for this a-net. just keep this simple pls.this new template system just broke my wwe builds for now, it ain't useful for me like this way.