Guild Wars 2

Just kind of addressing Anet in general, if they respond to these forums.

Is there any plans for some kind of PvE Build Manager similar to what is available in PvP? Basically, like some kind of more specific of the bank where we can assign gear and trait combinations and easily swap between them?

With HoT, particularly with the introduction of raids, there is a demand for very specfic builds focused on healing and tanking. However, the gear and trait changes required for these type of builds aren’t very useful in other area’s of play like open world or dungeons. Managing multiple sets of gear requires a lot of bank space and it’s very inconvenient to switch between builds.

I don’t really see much downside to the addition of a quality of life feature like this. It would encourage players to create more diverse builds and geat sets, simulating the general economy. Players could start off with one slot for holding an alternative build setup besides the one currently equiped and additional slots could be purchased with gems, helping to fund GW2 development.

Why they didn’t carry over the much loved and needed Build Saver concept from GW1 we may never know. Three years in and probably dozens if not hundreds of posts later, nothing. Visual nerfs, farming nerfs, rushed content…yes! Build Saver…no!

Boysenberry.1869:

Why they didn’t carry over the much loved and needed Build Saver concept from GW1 we may never know. Three years in and probably dozens if not hundreds of posts later, nothing. Visual nerfs, farming nerfs, rushed content…yes! Build Saver…no!

I remember a long, long ago post, before the game came out, where they discussed build savers. At the time they said (to the best of my memory of something I read over 4 years ago) they wouldn’t put in build savers like Guild Wars 1 because they wanted people to be attached to their build. I remember that post most especially since I was playing Guild Wars 1 at the time and would save every build that someone pinged in chat for possible later use. The idea that someone would use one and only one build throughout their play sounded very odd, at best.

This attitude would explain the rigidity of the Guild Wars 2 system as compared to the Guild Wars 1 system, if it wasn’t designed to be flexible but made to be done once and not changed again.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Boysenberry.1869:

Why they didn’t carry over the much loved and needed Build Saver concept from GW1 we may never know. Three years in and probably dozens if not hundreds of posts later, nothing. Visual nerfs, farming nerfs, rushed content…yes! Build Saver…no!

I remember a long, long ago post, before the game came out, where they discussed build savers. At the time they said (to the best of my memory of something I read over 4 years ago) they wouldn’t put in build savers like Guild Wars 1 because they wanted people to be attached to their build. I remember that post most especially since I was playing Guild Wars 1 at the time and would save every build that someone pinged in chat for possible later use. The idea that someone would use one and only one build throughout their play sounded very odd, at best.

This attitude would explain the rigidity of the Guild Wars 2 system as compared to the Guild Wars 1 system, if it wasn’t designed to be flexible but made to be done once and not changed again.

Well, they succeeded, because the initial design of the game caused everyone to become attached to only one build: Beserkers.

Now, they are trying to destroy that, so a UI feature that allowed us to manage multiple gear sets would go along way in helping make a more diverse meta.

The exclusion of a build manager would be perfectly fine if one build could manage all encounters, however this is far from the case, and it will never be the case. People will always make different builds for different encounters.

Build managers will not help to make a more diverse meta. That is completely false. It will simply make it more convenient to switch between different roles. Switching between these roles will not change diversity as long as there is a limited pool of options to choose from.

ANet has said multiple times that they, too, want some sort of build management tool, but that it’s more complicated than we think. (They have never explained those reasons.)

I am guessing that they don’t consider it a priority, otherwise we’d at least have a ‘build saver’, something that would at least let us store the components of a build, even if it doesn’t allow us to load any. After all, several websites are able to do this, using different styles — heck even just allowing the in-game browser to read builds from one of those sites would be useful.

If I had to speculate, my guess is that they don’t have a good UI person, who can help create a simple interface to manage the components — I don’t particular think any of the websites has done this well, so I can imagine ANet is struggling with this, too.

Stand The Wall.6987:

The exclusion of a build manager would be perfectly fine if one build could manage all encounters, however this is far from the case, and it will never be the case. People will always make different builds for different encounters.

Build managers will not help to make a more diverse meta. That is completely false. It will simply make it more convenient to switch between different roles. Switching between these roles will not change diversity as long as there is a limited pool of options to choose from.

Well, I would probably invest in different gear and experiment more often with builds if I had some way to properly manage it all without it being a choir. So as such, the inclusion of a build manager would encourage me to make different builds and attempt to fulfill different roles. Therefore, a build manager would me playing more diverse builds and roles and leads, even if only in my case, to a contribution of a more diverse meta. Not completely false at all.

But yeah…back to real point at hand…build manager…awesome.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

ANet has said multiple times that they, too, want some sort of build manage, but it’s more complicated than we think. (They have never explained those reasons.)

I am guessing that they don’t consider it a priority, otherwise we’d at least have a ‘build saver’, something that would at least let us store the components of a build, even if it doesn’t allow us to load any. After all, several websites are able to do this, using different styles — heck even just allowing the in-game browser to read builds from one of those sites would be useful.

If I had to speculate, my guess is that they don’t have a good UI person, who can help create a simple interface to manage the components — I don’t particular think any of the websites has done this well, so I can imagine ANet is struggling with this, too.

If my memory of what they said is correct then it might go back to the original design of the game. If it’s designed to be rigid and not easily interchangeable because they had no plans to have build savers but the opposite with one build forever, then putting in a build saver now may mean a rewrite of the underlying design of the UI.

The original game(meaning GW1) had a very useful build saving/loading/sharing system. It also had weapons sets. Just these two things would be very nice to have. We don’t need something all-encompassing and complicated, that would manage trait, skill and gear changes all at once. That could come later, or not at all if it isn’t feasible to do.