Official Feedback Thread about Build and Equipment Templates

[lukebytes.4358]

This is coming from a casual player, for clarification.

The goodit's a nice convenience item.the extra storage gear templates give is nice.bonus; tnx for giving us a free tab expansion.The badthe price is a little too high. now, i say a little. i can see why gear templates cost more since there also extra storage, and the real thing that took so long to make. but i don't see why they cost 500 each, especially if there character bound. i don't see why gear temps shouldn't at most have the price of build tab expac's, or why builds cost anything at all.it doesn't support skins that well. as long as that armor is there, the skin or dye will stick with you gear switching even if you change it for a specific build. now my revenant looks kind of weird with red dye next to my ley line gloves and pants.no clear way to navigate through stuff. it took me a while to figure out where gear temps are (i didn't watch the presentation) and to figure out you get that account bound build by clicking copy. why? this is ironicly very inconvenient. why can't you set the build, double click to copy it to your current one, and right click to rename and overwrite? not very intuitive if you ask me.you can't bind build temp's and gear temp's to the same key. simply annoying.the switch to your PVP build whilst entering is gone. just why? why replace a perfectly fine feature for one that just came out and has many problems, which i assume is what the constant "new build available"'s are for. there was no reason to do that, aside from money i assume. this is the one bad that actively harms the experience for me, and makes it so much less inconvenient. especially for those that switch between gamemodes often.

Conclusionat best, it's fine. it's a nice convenience feature for us filthy casuals. the extra storage is nice as well. and although there are annoyincess, it's generally a non harmful update for us.however, i cannot ignore the frustration it has caused with hardcore players. which is where it is the worst. even ignoring the clear monetary motive. its a very limited amount of storage for them. even 6 is not enough to fill every role for each proffesion, unless you just want DPS/Healer for each core and spec. it's for from the most convenient thing in the game, too. the unintuitive system making it a lot more confusing than it should have ever been, the key binding's not working together so you either have to selectively pick which specific key to use that isn't already used up by mount binds or other binds, or though it out and go to the hero panel and switch them that way. (which is not at all convenient) and, while im not one for dredging up the past, i can't imagine how this was day one for hardcore player's with all the bugs and kicks.

Overall, even if you can ignore the monetary aspect, the system is just bad at it's core, it's about as inconvenient as possible. it wasn't just whoever manage anet or ncsoft who kittened up, you guys, the developers, failed.

SuggestionsFirst and foremost, if you can, please bring back the PVP switch. the removal is easily the worst part about this patch.keep the skins in certain builds and not in others if we so choose.make it easier to navigate through. build and gear temps are in different tabs. they should not. put them into the same tabe or maybe even make a different tab entirely for that. make it so that double clicking copy's the acc build to your current one, and right click for other options.

while i don't think this is worth leaving over, this patch leaves me very dissapointed. seeing this in summer thinking; "oh, cool! i don't have to do this anymore", to now and it ended up being a mediocre patch with inconvenient conveniences and you thinking it would also be good enough to replace a perfectly fine feature. im dissapointed. and mine doesn't even measure in miles to that of your hardcore audience.

[Rubius.9280]

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!

[Nidome.1365]

@"Kong.3280" said:

4. Build Storage is EXACTLY WHAT WE WANTED. The community has wanted this for over 7 years and it's finally here.

I'd just like to point out that you do not speak for all of "we" or all of "the community". I've been playing since launch and never needed or wanted this and judging by a lot of other people commenting on various threads and forums I am not alone.No offense but please do not claim to speak for me when you do not.

Thanks.

[Nidome.1365]

It appears from the multitude of comments that those who used the 3rd party ARC template add-on really liked it and it worked better than this system that has just been patched into the client.

Therefore based upon this it seems that the simplest solution to the template issue would be:1) Roll back/undo the templates to the original system with one automatic selected by game mode build for each game mode.And2) Officially recognise & recommend the 3rd party template client so those who want templates can have them while those that don't want templates can ignore them.

Apart from not getting a few gem store sales seems like a win for everyone?

[Acheron.4731]

I tried to type this earlier but it got removed. I don't know how to be MORE constructive but I SUGGEST:Revert or give the players a 'no thanks button'This is more of a hindrance than a QOL improvement.

read that with a constructive tone I guess

[Vash.2386]

Is anet going to make any response to this feedback or are they just going to cower in silence until it all blows over and something new becomes the topic du jour.

Why do my infusions and Sigils keep falling out every time I swap my legendary weapon? Is this working as intended. I would be much happier if we could revert back to our previous 3 build system (pve/wvw/pvp). Or better yet, let us use the arcdps build template system which was far superior to this mess.

Are you listening to your player base anet? Are you going to respond to the feedback in this thread that you asked for?

[Grey Werewolf.8452]

I really expected this functionality, but was disappointed( I do not have two armor sets on the characters, but there are legendary things that are not convenient to transfer between the characters. Is it possible to keep the legendary set for two different classes so as not to transfer it with general storage?

[Frostfang.5109]

The templets have increased the feeling of personality for my character - Think you!! ?

[SerynNovah.4319]

I just learned that you can keybind the templates. Now I can change elite specs and builds instantly!! And I freed up space in my inventory so I don't have to carry my extra weapons everywhere. This is one of the best features to ever come to the game!

[Dana windfelt.8160]

Considering GW2 has three primary play modes ingame - Anet could have implement "set active play mode" tags to the templates that allows for auto-switching when your character switches between game modes.
Also, it would have been nice for a similar binding "tag" between builds vs equipment - that would auto switch togetherOne complain I see often is players "losing" stuff when items are moved into the equipment templates - anet should make a clear distinction from where items are being stored/displayed - e.g. inventory vs equipment template vs unused items in inventory template.

[Kamsin.8541]

PLease add an option, 3 checkbox,... (pve,spvp,wvw) to the build templates and active/switch automatically the 1/2/3/4/5 or 6 template depending of the area.Please add also an option to link an equipment template with a build template. Maybe with a 10sec casting time and only off combat to avoid ninja fast clothes change.

[TPMN.1483]

I believe these build templates are okay for the ‘traits and skills’, the price of them should be a 1/10 of what they are now for this component- it’s only a chat code that is being stored. The pricing model is a Hugh mistake, with at least 6 different alternatives out to manage build template chat codes for free, the best one being https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/dpskt4/buildpad_a_build_storage_plugin_for_arcdps_for/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf.

The gear templates are a complete farce and badly implemented for the following reasons:Limited to 6(or 10 see reddit)They are loadouts not templates - which is more suitable for FPS games not MMOs esp something as complex as GW2.Chat code or similar functionality which can be copied / pasted is essential and missing.The implementation of how legendary armour / weapons / infusions/ sigils work with them etc...The list of problems with this is growing and needs an extensive rewrite and a 90% cost reduction. The prices are not justified for what they are considering many games will give you this for an in game currently low cost - think 100g/old commander tag pricing if you compare how Ubisoft does this very similar approach for their games - eg AC Odyssey and it’s a baked in component of the game.

The implementation of this function has been poor, without interaction with those that that need it most. The casual user with a few builds may find it sufficient those invested in understanding the complexities of the game not so much driving us away from this model anet have provided leading exclusively to third party tools to suit our needs at much lower cost.

A lower more reasonable price point would have resulted in more people using/buying these. I can not justify the cost of >24K gems to max this out on one of each of my professions. This situation needs urgent resolution - I would suggest an immediate and permanent price cut and refunding of gems to those who purchased. This would be the same as when infinite harvesting tools became account bound instead of soul bound.

I implore ANET to do the right thing.

[skoda.4619]

My suggestion for fixing some of the issues would be:

Needed changes

• You need to make legendary gear worth going for, as it's a long term goal that keeps some people playing. Ascended gear drops a lot from all content and if you play fractals or raids you don't ever need to craft any of it (i personally haven't crafted a single piece of Ascended gear).
• Fix the issue where people with legendaries can't swap weapons without the legendaries popping out all it's upgrades and stats. This is a big issue, especially because this does not happen with ascended gear so ascended gear has now more features than higher legendary tier gear. At the moment people with legendary gear are forced to play with one gear template and keep everything else in the inventory, because that's the only way to keep this feature.
• Let us export gear templates to a notepad file, like we have with build templates. This way people with legendary gear (other gear as well of course) can prepare loadouts and import them when they need them, at the cost of it not being as convenient. I would limit this so items have to be in either gear load outs or in characters inventory. I don't think there's a need to have a way of sharing account bound gear between characters without having to go through your bank.
• Ability to use these templates as actually templates and not loadouts. Give use a button we have to press to save the changes we made to a build and one to revert changes, so if we don't like the changes or make changes on the fly we can revert them easily.
• Give visual indication what build and gear loadout you're swapping to, when using key bind. At the moment the game only tells you you're "applying templates". If for instance you have legendary armor you won't see what build you've changed to with your character, as they will look the same, same as with build templates. You give us ability to name build and gear templates, show that name on the screen and not just "applying templates".
• Give us either templates by game mode or ability to set which builds should load when we enter a certain game mode.

[Grumpdogg.6910]

The Build and Equipment UIs are confusing and ugly. Par for the course then.

[BlackyWarsX.5384]

I already posted this on reddit, but I guess it doesn't hurt to put it in here as well. It's mostly copy/paste from there.

Disclaimer

Please keep in mind that I’m not a developer of any sorts. I have no knowledge about Arenanets inventory code, how difficult it would be to implement and what would have to be changed on their end. I do know they didn’t want to touch the inventory code, though.

TL;DR

This is just a design concept.

I reimagined the build template interface and functionality with some pretty picturesI tried to stay true to the original layout of the hero window.

Basically, templates and inventory share the same layout for consistency's sake, but work differently in the background.

• Inventory is your actual equipped gear
• • Every change you make will stay there, not saved
• Templates are where you save what gear should get equipped (it isn't stored in templates)
• • Every change you make here will be applied to your inventory once you load the template you choose
• Gear will have to be in your characters inventory
• • Needs an item check to be in place, looking for the items in your inventory
• Introduce a new bag container with a new slot (much like shared inventory, but for gear) which only gets used for storing gear you intend to use in templates

Maybe I'll revisit the concept, scrap it completely and start fresh just for the fun of it (playing with the UI for stuff like this really is fun!).

What I think is wrong with Arenanets “template” system

There are a few things that rub me the wrong way with how they implemented “templates”

• Builds were separated per game mode and automatically loaded when entering them. They no longer do that.
• Equipment and build heavily depend on each other, there is no way to link them.
• It’s somewhat too limited
• Equipment can no longer be shared easily without breaking your “template”, as you store them in gear slots now
• They’re not templates

What could be improved/changed?

• Separate game modes again and let us set a default build per game mode
• Separate equipment templates from actually storing the items on the character
• Combine build and equipment templates to a single template
• Make them actual templates

So, how would that look like?

Your basic inventory (un)changed

The Inventory Screen: Overview

Basically, you’ll still have an inventory and a build screen separate from the templates themselves. You can (un)equip items here or change stats, upgrades and infusions depending on the rarity of your gear. Any change you make here won’t affect the currently active template, but you can save it to your active template with the click of a button.

The Inventory Screen: Gear

This is still the normal inventory, but everything that is relevant to the build and actual armor has been moved to the left and right sides of the character. Everything else (which is basically just gathering tools) is still on the far right along with the attributes.Equipment, Builds and Wardrobe are now tabs above the character, rather than separate sub-menus.

The Build Screen

Nothing out of the ordinary. As explained above, this is the current build screen where you can change traits on the fly but won’t affect the template you loaded.

Bonus: The Wardrobe

So the wardrobe now has its own slots in a build. Here, you equip skins, not gear. It will still work like it does currently: you select a slot, you select a skin, you apply it with transmutation charges.The difference: you’re applying the skin to the slot, not to the item itself. You’ll only be charged for applying skins. You can turn on the dye channels via a button on the bottom.

The layout of the slots has changed slightly: outfit- and glider-slots are now part of the wardrobe inventory! You can either activate your favourite outfit or use the armor skins - the functionality is the same as now.

You may have spotted miniatures, mail carriers and finishers as well. Since they’re basically just skins, I wanted to merge them with the overall wardrobe to not have them all in a single tab with just one slot respectively.

What I’m not sure about are novelties, since there is a (very low but still) possibility that it could get expanded on. They either get integrated as well or get their own tab away from the wardrobe.

The actual templates

Templates in this concept are actually templates and are stored in a sub-section of the hero windwo which I call the “armory”. They do not change whenever you change a skill, trait or armor piece - only if you want to, and only on your command.

However, you can set one active build for every game mode which will automatically load whenever you enter the respecitve game mode again.

The Template Overview: Equipment

The templates consist of three tabs, much like the inventory: equipment, skills & traits and wardrobe. You can change the name of the template via context menu or the edit - button on the top right corner. You can also change the game mode of the template in the settings section and set your active template simply by checking it on the list on the left side.

Equipment Template

Screenshot: Equipment Template

The equipment template saves the kind of armor, weapons and trinkets you’d like to use in your build. The information that is stored is: the item you put in there (rarity, stats, upgrades and infusion/s). When loading a template, it checks for the item in your inventory or currently equipped gear. If it’s not there, it won’t be equipped, if you have legendary gear and everything else (infusions, upgrades) in your inventory, it’ll be changed accordingly. (I guess this is how ArcDPS worked, no?)

Skill & Trait Template

Screenshot: Skill & Trait Template

There’s not much to say here… it’s pretty self explanatory and works exactly as it does now.

Wardrobe Template

Screenshot: Wardrobe Template

That’s new! Now you can even have fashion wars templates. Remember earlier when I talked about the wardrobe applying skins to slots? You can use that in templates and have different looks for different builds! Finally you can see at a first glance what build you just loaded accidently (This basically enables you to use the same item in different builds AND have a different skin for it as well),

You can also have different finishers, mail carriers and minis for every build now.

Equipment Template: PvP

Screenshot: PvP Template

Since PvP does not use equipment but amulets, the equipment template tab changes from armor and trinket slots to a single amulet slot. Skills & Traits and Wardrobe remains the same. Additionally, a fourth tab appears for the Mist Champion. Maybe?

Gathering ToolsI didn’t put gathering tools in the templates as I didn’t want to bloat it even further, but I could imagine that it makes sense to have gathering templates for different glyphs.

Sharing templates

Arenanet would need a better way to store the information for sharing since equipped items, skills, traits are A LOT of information for a single build to share.The current chatcode for skills & traits only is [&DQcBJRgtOx3uFSMPZQGAAYEBgQGDAYMBRhe8AQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA=], which is pretty long. Now imagine you’d get additional information for armor pieces, weapons, their upgrades and infusions. That chat link would be huge. Unfortunately I have no idea how this could be handled.

• Maybe a file export / import?
• Huge chatlinks with generic names?
• Sharing skins doesn’t seem to make much sense right now. Maybe allow to individually share a skin template with information about skin and dyes per slot.

What about mounts?

Mounts are not part of the template system, they get to keep their own tab in the inventory window. Since there is no individual dye tab anymore (it’s integrated in the wardrobe as a toggle), they also get a toggle to turn on dye channels.

Additional Notes

Inventory Space & Monetization

Since this concept does not use gear slots as storage, you’ll have to use your inventory. So what better opportunity to offer more bag slots - but for gear only. These slots could be character bound, placed below the other inventory bags and work like inventory bags, but actually not counted against the inventory.

• You can only use these slots for gear and upgrades
• Up for discussion: You can put (special?) bags in there and expand one slot with up to x spaces for gear / fixed amount of bag space?
• You have to fill these bags manually, no loot or anything else you pick up will go there automatically
• Templates only look in the gear storage for… well, the gear you specified in the templates.

Things to think about

• Disconnect upgrades from gear and give it its own slot much like PvP already does.
• • Introduce "Extraction Charges" (much like the upgrade extractors we have now) to extract an upgrade from its slot (unless a legendary rune or legendary armor piece / weapon is equipped)
• Integrate gathering into templates as well with possibility of different skins and glyphs for a build
• Integrate mounts just for the fun of having a different mount skin from one build to another?

Even writing this down, the concept still feels complicated. It probably is even more complex and complicated to implement.

This is the end, you made it! Full album of mockups

I don’t know if I gave it too much thought or not enough, but it was fun playing with the interface for a bit.

[Kamsin.8541]

wow, great work

[Tommo Chocolate.5870]

From my point of view, the build and equipment templates do pretty much what I want to use them for, and I appreciate that they free up some inventory space as well.

However, I really don't understand the rationale behind the way they are designed. The system is a real benefit to players (like me) who have a fairly limited amount of time to play, only play one game mode, have only two or three builds per character, and use mostly exotic (and therefore soulbound) gear. But players like that are never going to spend much, if any, money on extra build and equipment slots! On the other hand, the players who might be inclined to spend money on it are those who play multiple game modes, have many builds per character, and use ascended and/or legendary equipment that they want to switch between characters. For players like that, the system is clunky and restrictive. I just don't understand why you would make a system that annoys, inconveniences and restricts the players who should benefit from it the most! Regardless of whether the aim is to provide a QOL improvement or to make money, that doesn't make sense.

The main source of the clunkiness seems to be in the functionality of equipment templates, and I think there's an important moral here that has got lost amongst the other complaints: it was a mistake to make builds in this game so gear-dependent. Making weapon skills depend on the nature of the weapons equipped was fine, but binding stat bonuses and passive skills (in the form of rune and sigil bonuses) to gear was always an annoying hassle anyway, and for people who share gear between multiple characters, this annoyance has only been exacerbated by equipment templates.

I'm also uncomfortable with the monetisation. Specifically, I disapprove of charging for build storage slots: paying about £5 to be able to store what is essentially a short text code is really taking things too far. I appreciate that GW2's monetisation is better than that of other MMOs, but as my complex analysis lecturer used to say: "being better behaved than the Yorkshire Ripper doesn't imply that you're good".

[Cranky wo Coffee.5914]

@"Sumpfkraut.7195" said:it should be 4 free... or not (he speak english and it's not my native language)

If nothing else listen to Mike Z pitch about templates with full control over your characters builds and especially the last part about being free.*103/104 minutes

Thank You Sumpfkraut.7195 for finding this and reminding us.

[Ironhand.9081]

I don't really have any complaints about the templates since now I have something I didn't before.

That said, I'm not really interested in unlocking per character only. Immediately went from "yeah, gonna buy this" to "nooope".

A total of 24 build storage doesn't seem like much when its account-wide. That's it for my reflections so far.

[notebene.3190]

Enjoying them so far. One QoL might be to allow 'Hide/Unhide' setting to save with the equipment template so it can be different across sets. Pretty low on the nice-to-have list, if I'm being honest about it.

[Draes.5493]

Also wanted to post some constructive feedback about this seemingly contentious issue. Have been playing around with build / equipment templates for the the last few days and I don't think they are too bad at all, although I must say I initially thought it was really strange they were split separately into equipment templates AND build templates.

Equipment templates were pretty straightforward to setup but I did find customisation and storage of build templates quite complicated to begin with. I play every game mode in reasonably equal proportions between THREE characters (Warrior, Revenant & Engineer) and have been able to find a reasonable compromise in regards to the number of build / equipment templates that I realistically need to store using the default number of unlocked slots.

HOWEVER, I think some very valid suggestions have been made (both from various forum posts and from talking to people in game). From what I have been informed regarding how the development process works, a complete overhaul of this update is highly unlikely (although someone please correct me if I am mistaken), therefore some recommended tweaks would include:

• Automatic build template switching between game modes (I think the idea of having a checkbox in each character build template tab corresponding to the game mode the build should automatically switch to is a good suggestion that some people came up with).

• Template locking / saving (Some people suggested adding a dedicated SAVE or LOCK button to build templates to prevent unintended changes, i.e. to ensure they are indeed templates, not "LOUDOUTS")

• Pricing (Like many people I certainly don't object to paying for additional equipment / build template tabs but I think a fair and reasonable gem price would be at the very least HALF of the current price OR keep the current pricing but let an additional tab be unlocked for all characters on the account).

I know there are more issues that have been suggested (such as the account cap limitations for hardcore players) but I believe the above mentioned tweaks would be a good start.

Thanks for your time ?

[Thundabolt.8541]

I never used ArcDPS.

From what I can see, the majority of people dislike build templates because they're not ArcDPS build templates.

I strongly dislike having to bloat my game with unofficial add-ons.

I'd rather have aenet build templates than unofficial build templates.

[Adotiln Urthadar.1823]

I agree with many of the comments here - as disgusting as the monetization is, and as stupidly low as the limits are, the best QoL tweak this system could have would be the simple addition of a "load" button. It's so clunky that in the current system we cannot make adjustments to our builds/gear without "corrupting" one of our templates.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

After taking a few days to absorb this system, play about with it, and the like, here's my feedback.

This system can be made to work for me. It's not without its clunky aspects for a two-mode player (PvE and WvW) who usually only changes a couple of traits or a utility depending on the game-play situation. It looks to free up a few bag spaces (8-12, probably less than a lot of players) on characters who carry two sets of gear. The downside is the loss of auto-switch by mode, especially since I have been considering PvP as a third mode. I can work around this, but for the moment, it's an annoyance. Should I ever need more than the free slots for builds, I'm likely to use a text file with a chat code to store build info locally, a feature that GW provided more seamlessly and intuitively.

I have no plans to spend money or gold to get the upgrades, which for me provide no value beyond small in-the-moment convenience at a too-high cost. Par for the course for about a year before PoF came out, ANet is providing gem store fodder that tells me I am no longer their target customer. That's OK for me, but what it does is encourage me to look elsewhere for places to spend money for entertainment.

What's also clear is that some (if not a lot) of the target market is very unhappy. I fully agree with their feedback on how it works for those who use a lot of builds, and those who have Legendary gear. For those players the system is an overpriced downgrade to the QoL they enjoyed a month or so ago. I would not be surprised if GW2 again bleeds players as a result of this feature. This time, it might even be a significant number. While the feature may (or may not) be a victory as far as a quick infusion of cash goes, I'm not sure how many more such victories you can afford, ANet.

[Seer.7906]

Thank you for your work. I like it. Didn’t cost me anything.