How to properly save builds

How to properly save builds

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Icethorn.6570

Icethorn.6570

How to properly save builds

The follow is how to properly save gear and build configurations so players can switch on the fly for raiding or other in game activities…

Firstly create an equipment manager in the Equipment screen of the Hero Panel.

In the Hero Panel under equipment create a dropdown list.
The top of the list should have the an option to “Create new Profile”.
Below it should be a list of user created profiles.
Users should have the capability of naming the profile.
Examples: “Magi Healing”, “Zerker DPS”
This function will save the current configuration of all your armor, weapons, and trinkets.

When the user wants to retrieve the profile they open the dropdown and simply click on one of their created profiles in the list.

At that point use a search algorithm to scan the inventory and find the matching pieces of gear. When the pieces are found the gear is pulled from inventory and a swap function places them into the correct gear slot, while replacing that inventory slot with the previous gear.

If the item(s) being searched for is is not found in your inventory a pop up will appear notifying the user that not all items were replaced.

The idea here is that the user can quickly click a profile and switch between gear types, for example changing from a Berserker to a Magi set.

Next you need a way to manage the actual build configuration.
Hence you need a “Build Manager”

In the Build Tab create a dropdown which allows a user to select a build or “save current build”

The “save current build” option saves the current build to a dropdown list. When the configuration is added to the list the user can specify a label such as “Druid Healer”

The build manager will remember the following
- The Healing Skill
- The 3 utility Skills
- The Elite Skill
- The 3 Specialization (and their paths)

You can make this function very easy if you simply use (row, column) coordinates to index a skill from 2D arrays.

Using Druid as an Example:
(2,1) = Glyph of Rejuvenation
(4,3) = Frost Spirit
(6,1) = Glyph of Alignment

Thus you could just pass a series of coordinates to a list which is saved.

Similarly you can use (row, column) indexing to select the specialization.
(2,1) = Skirmishing

Then use a collection of (row, column) to save the path.
(1,1), (1,2), (1,3)

This example would tell you to select the following
Sharpened Edges
Spotter
Quick Draw

These coordinates make it easy to set/get the needed abilities.

I hope these suggestions make it easy for you to develop the process.
If you have any questions on the methods I can provide more details including pseudocoding the process if necessary. Every person who raids would greatly appreciate this feature. It’s about time we had this functionality.

How to properly save builds

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Posted by: Hevoskuuri.3891

Hevoskuuri.3891

Since this has been requested from the beginning, and is pretty much standard in any MMO, I’m quite confident Anet will add a build saver at some point. But likely not for a long time. That could be one of the selling points for the next expansion, so don’t keep your hopes up until that happens.

In general, I’m hoping that instead of new race or class or mounts, the new Xpac would bring us many long-requested QoL changes, such as more customizable UI, build templates, keyring, and a ton of other tweaks the community would love to see. That would make the game so much more enjoyable, and remove the “other MMOs do this so much better” moments. GW2 is IMO hands down the best MMO in the market, but I can’t understand the missing stuff that is basically a standard for games of this genre, like aforementioned UI customization or build templates.

How to properly save builds

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Posted by: Katastroff.1045

Katastroff.1045

It’s the thing i mist the most from GW1.

Except maybe for Jora.

=P

+1

Why simplify things when its so easy to complicate them ?

How to properly save builds

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Posted by: Keltan.1827

Keltan.1827

One of the problems is a lack of hard core programmers. I used to think game companies had bunches of such programmers, but now I speculate they are only about 5-10% of the staff. Most of the staff are either customer support or artistic types.

Customer support are of course the folks working through all the tickets and banning spammers and such. Artistic types include the artists who paint up all the items, characters, buildings, landscape. Also included are the game devs who use fancy 3-D programs to lay out new zones, design new NPCs and bosses, or modify the animations of the current powers.

I don’t know what they use their programmers (people who stare at source code all day) for, but I don’t think they have very many of them. They certainly don’t use them to fix the “disconnect during personal story with out credit for completion” issue. That’s been around for years now. Geez, they can’t even add checkpoints for the longer stories as a work around.

So, yeah lack of programmers is the problem behind these QoL and no bug fix issues.

How to properly save builds

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Posted by: Blude.6812

Blude.6812

One of the problems is a lack of hard core programmers. I used to think game companies had bunches of such programmers, but now I speculate they are only about 5-10% of the staff. Most of the staff are either customer support or artistic types.

………. Geez, they can’t even add checkpoints for the longer stories as a work around.

One reason I haven’t bothered to complete echos of the past. Having to start from the beginning and redo the boring find books, talk to cook etc every time was nothing short of ridiculous in the 1st place and can’t now because of a small development staff, any major additions like saving builds will be a long time coming if at all.

How to properly save builds

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Posted by: Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

So, yeah lack of programmers is the problem behind these QoL and no bug fix issues.

No, it’s not.

No matter how many coders at ANet, there would always be issues unfixed and unimplemented, popular features. There are never enough. Never.

The questions are: why hasn’t this been a priority over other things that ANet has fixed or implemented? Why hasn’t ANet broken down build saving into a series of incremental steps, so that we have something rather than nothing? Why wasn’t this an important feature when the original game was designed?

Typically, I’m willing to give ANet the benefit of the doubt. In this case, I can’t think of any reason that we don’t have, at the very least, a ‘confirm build’ (before saving) or ‘compare build’ option (show us an image of what we had before).

Regardless, ANet knows how to do this; they don’t need to ‘schooled’ in the many ways builds can be saved. They know players want this, they have a variety of options. They just need to prioritize it.

John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”