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I have recently started to play this game again after playing it a lot when it released back in 2005. Guild Wars [1] unique play style and most importantly skill system make it a permanently fun game to play even now when it is considered 'dead'. There is no active development going for it, but the player base is large and it appears to be growing.
Most of the combat is based around skill templates called builds. One build has the info about chosen skills and assigned attribute points. Since at one moment a player character can have 8 skills available for use and 200 attribute points assigned to various skill schools, they are easily templated into a build.
Every build is encoded as a base64 string and stored in ordinary text file. The name of the file corresponds to the build name and the content is the encoded string. This simple format enables a lot of flexibility of the build system most notably when it comes to sharing.
One example of how the builds are encoded and decoded is my implementation [2].
Where there is sharing there is collecting. Collecting builds had become something of a game within a game (at least for me). This mini game gives a whole new dimension of the gameplay: exploring the world in search of new skills, creating team builds, sorting, renaming, organizing etc. Further, whole collections can easily be stored and shared around, again due to the simple format. A great way to store and share builds is to use Sourcehut or any similar service. This makes them always visible, downloadable and with added bonus of history tracking.
Although, almost all viable builds are stored on PvX wiki [3], exposing personal collections shows a part of the personal journey in the game, even if most of the builds are taken from PvX. If you have a collection I encourage you to share it in the same or similar way. This may even help to promote this game!
See my build collection.
If you are interested try the game out!
Enjoy!
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