We know Anet can’t/don’t want to implement a build template like GW1.
I can understand this thing could be difficult, but, why don’t just add some duplicate Hero Panel Skills and Equipment + Hero Build ?
ALL PLAYERS would love to have, at least 3 to 5 different :
- Skills
- Hero – Equipment
- Hero – Build
with a shortcut to switch between them at any moment (out of combat of course).
This way, we can switch build/trinkets very fast : I wan’t to play zerk in PVE, then condi in fractal/raid, then support/heal.
Switching gear/build took minutes each play session, hours each weeks, days each year … it could be done is seconds with multiple hero panels.
For the short version…. their UI system and datastorage doesn’t support it in its current form. A lot of the original code for the game was “for purpose” and made a LOT of assumptions pm how things were handled under the hood. Understand that GW2’s engine is a heavily modified version of the engine from GW1; but its selectively overhauled to support specific features needed for the game.
What that usually means is any feature or function that doesn’t require a lot of attention for project goals, tends to get kludge solutions that make it work in one specific case… but will immediately break the moment you try to change anything related to it. You can kludge another solution for short term results…. but eventually its better to overhaul it with a better design and a more robust set of standards, so you can more easily build on top of it without having to redo bandaid fixes every time.
The reason this rarely happens is due to the man hour and schedule cost needed to make it happen. It could literally take months, depending on how deep in the code the limitation is being created; and the deeper it is in the code, the more things it impacts as a collateral concern. As an example….. Super Adventure Box was built on multiple quirks in the old physics system. When they overhauled the physics for the Glider and Mushrooms, it essentially broke the methods used in the Super Adventure Box on a very fundamental level. To fix it, they have to redo, or even redesign parts of the map to utilize the new method of physics that came with the overhaul.
For the case of loadouts…. the equipment system has to move away from single defined values, and replace them with a reference to another system that can call/select from 2 or more tables containing the loadout data. They also have to go in and change how the game, and the UI, handle equip/unequip events, so the game doesn’t accidentally merge 2 values and corrupt the data. You could kludge it by making a load/unload macro… but the moment you rename one of those variables, or have to add a task concerning meta data, the perpetual maintenance starts to cost more time then it ever saved. Instead, you break apart the UI and character data elements, and build a framework with intent of being able to load and unload an entire table of data, as well as validating and altering meta data tags for equipment if warranted. That way if anything changes, you can change the UI portion and Character data table/structure portion to reflect the updates, but the load/unload process is completely agnostic, and would only need minimal maintenance beyond that. And because the behavior is now standardized, you can use it to build additional features that utilize it easier, and with lower risk of regression.
Of all the changes made to the game’s core features, its actually a little surprising to realize the Equipment panel has largely remained untouched since the beginning. The inventory system hasn’t really changed that much either, aside from a few layers of updates to support new sub-menu options. I believe the single biggest change to that window was the migration of the Wallet from the hero panel, and its ability to be context sensitive to map currency.
