Guild Wars 2

Becoming a leader in WvW combat within the current system—which is simply raising and spending 100 gold pieces on a book—allows many inexperienced players to become Commanders; renowned players that, by definition, command other players in their squad to do specific tasks. This obviously can lead to many problems that can be back-breaking for server efforts. Additionally, the use of the Commander icon outside of PvP is—in its current state—ostensibly useless, as most players contend in PvE solo or in parties of 2-5.

So.. what are you suggesting?
Instead of the Commander books being purchased in cities for 100 gold, they should be available inside WvW and be bought with an amount of Badges of Honor, currency given to players who defeat other players. This allows inspired individuals who wish to lead to earn it, rather than simply grind PvE or ask their guild for gold. This number could be anywhere from 500 (equal to the Gift of Battle for legendary weapons) to 1000, giving players the chance to become experienced with WvW combat and tactics before they begin leading groups of players, and no chance for them to grind or ask for badges, as they are account bound and human players aren’t exactly farm-able.

What do we do with the current Commanders?
Refund. Give every single Commander book back to those who have bought it for their full 100 gold. But, you might say, what happens when there are no commanders because nobody has had the chance to raise x number of badges? Well, an easy fix for this would be a heads-up announcement. Let players know this change is on its way so those who are inclined to become Commanders can begin earning the badges ahead of time.

What about people who want to be led in PvE?
Another separate Commander system could be created, with a book purchasable for 100 gold, but would only be viable in PvE. Players who would like to run with a leader can join their squad. These Commander icons, unlike those in WvW, would only be visible on the map if you are currently in their squad.

Remind me, why do we need this?
It keeps players who don’t know much about WvW from leading. It’s awfully vexatious having a Commander who doesn’t know what they’re doing simply because they played the economy and not the game.

Criticism and counsel encouraged.

Edits and Clarifications: Based upon suggestions by comments.

• Jumping puzzles would no longer reward players with BoH. This prevents players from grinding them daily for the badges instead of actual WvWing.
• There would be a prerequisite achievement for buying the book. A couple comments have mentioned that 1000 BoH is quite an easy feat (technically 1000 badges = 10 gold), and having a required achievement or achievements, such as x towers/holds captured, x players in WvW killed, etc. would make it more difficult and rewarding (experience-wise) to players who want to become Commanders.

The idea is good, however, it’s been suggested plenty before. Search feature at the top right.

I happened to see a level 56 thief with a commander icon earlier today… In PvE. Somehow I doubt that level 56 earned 100 gold for it on that character. It seems now commander is more of a icon to show off wealth instead of actually being used in WvWvW. I support the change.

I did use the search feature, I couldn’t however find a post (at least in this area of the forums). If something has missed my eyes I apologize.

Thank you for your input, and I agree: Commander icons seem to be more of a flaunt of wealth than an actual utility.

February is supposed to be bringing a major PvP update, and the impression have been given there will be many helpful changes to WvW. Exactness of February is rumor, I don’t think it’s been more accurately promised beyond “soon”, but such details originate from devs.

Commander status has been long discussed, and it is pretty unanimous that 100 gold =/= ability to command. Because this has been the most widespread opinion for a very long time, I expect that ANet has already decided upon a change for implementation in February. While I agree on “revoke and refund current commander status”, there’s a possibility they may leave that in and try to instead put more emphasis on a new type (maybe a different color icon?).

Personally I would like for it to not be “bought” at all. In the current implementation of Badges of Honor, it is possible to be a poor commander and earn many badges, or a good commander and earn few (relatively at least, examples being chasing kill targets more than objectives vs organized support-build leader).

I personally would prefer no permanent commander status (although maybe earning some sort of qualification status at least) and otherwise implement a voting system where you can regularly give or take your votes. I’ve seen that work great in a particular RTS/FPS game where the top-down perspective player gets voted in (and typically accompanied by some chat discussion). But my hopes aren’t up for this, I think ANet would still want it to be relatively easy to claim.

I do not advocate removing it from PvE I’ll add. Commander status is great in Orr, and may get more useful with time (perhaps starting in the WvW update, surely we’re getting a proper “squad” interface).

I’d be happy if people couldnt use it to show off how much cash they have in towns, sure it’s usefull in orr and other areas where having that sort of ability helps you turn the tide but it shouldnt ever be visible in towns imo and there should be requirements other than gold added to the rank(perhaps a way to ensure your deserving of the honor of command or capable of leading).

I like the idea personally. I was playing over the weekend and a Commander was running all over the place with his squad (in PVE) doing events. Normally this would be fine, but he (or she) was running very inefficient routes between the events (I was able to get to events quicker, and even finish a couple of them before the swarm showed up).

For this reason, I believe that having separate PVE and PVP (WVWVW) commanders would be quite nice to have around. I also believe that the PVE badge would be nice to have, if visible at all, as something that you can hide would also be quite nice to have. If, as an example, you were in an area that you weren’t familiar with then having a swarm following you around wouldn’t necessarily make sense (thus hiding the badge would be of use, not only for the player, but also the squad that would be following them).

I agree that badges of honor would be a better way to earn these. I only WvW for the monthlies, but I’ve seen commanders ask questions about stuff that even I’ve picked up on. It makes sense that there should be some prerequisite to ensure the person has at least a little experience in WvW.

As for PVE, I think the best option would be to have a checkbox to turn the icons off. On my server, at least, a lot of people seem to leave their commander icons on in Orr even when they aren’t doing any events. A commander icon isn’t helpful if it’s off running to an ori node or just sitting at the Shelter camp. It just clutters up the map. Honestly, there are very few dynamic events where you can justify having a “leader” at all. Most people have already farmed these things a ton of times, and new players that trickle in can get by fine by just following the zerg.

Tera GX.8149:

Personally I would like for it to not be “bought” at all. In the current implementation of Badges of Honor, it is possible to be a poor commander and earn many badges, or a good commander and earn few (relatively at least, examples being chasing kill targets more than objectives vs organized support-build leader).

brokenserenity.4638:

… there should be requirements other than gold added to the rank(perhaps a way to ensure your deserving of the honor of command or capable of leading).

Agreed. Perhaps a ranking system in WvW?

Something like so:
1-80 Ranks (much like the PvP system, albeit this does not replace experience totally)

• WvW experience is tallied in the PvP UI, under a new tab
• Players receive WvW experience by completing and participating in WvW events (tower/keep/camp/etc. capturing, yak running, siege building/deployment, etc.)
• Commander books, which still require 500-1000 Badges of Honor, can only be purchased at rank 80.

A ranking system for WvW, although a pretty radical change, could solve several problems… but, one that is done right may require too much work from developers unless it is used for other things, such as new sets of Invader gear and weapons.

• Replaced by the achievement prerequisite suggested by a comment. An achievement would be easier to code and more comprehensible.

great idea,i think Commander title for about 1000 badges would be nice,atleast you know someone is commanding who played wvwvw before not some random rich pve kid who likes to show off a blue icon and think commanding is KewL but doesnt know jackkitten about it.

It should be a combination of BoH and gold in my opinion.

A lot of guilds that do WvW like to bring together gold to make certain leaders in the guild into Commanders.
And it’s often quite possible that that person hasn’t acquired a lot of BoH yet, but is very experienced when it comes to strategy and squad organization.

When I first found the vendor selling the Commander book, I thought: “What the heck is this for? Is this for identifying leaders in WvW? Why the heck can you buy this with gold? They have actual tokens you win from doing PvP, right?”

I don’t know why there should even be commanders in PvE. I guess it was intended for Orr..? I have never seen anyone organizing anything in Orr. I’ve only ever seen “Commanders” sitting around cluttering my mini-map in Lion’s Arch.

You get my vote. It’ll get those elitists to spend their money on something different than annoying me miles away. There’s a counter-argument to say you can grind the JP’s (i made well over half my badges for the gift from the JP), but at least it shows you were in wvw.

Mystic Starfish.2586:

There’s a counter-argument to say you can grind the JP’s (i made well over half my badges for the gift from the JP), but at least it shows you were in wvw.

Excellent point. In order to fix this, perhaps jumping puzzle chests will no longer reward you with BoH, instead only schematics/clothing (and thus making the grind pointless). I will add this in the top post.

Although it’s a bad idea that commander rank can be purchased with only 100g I don’t think that changing it to badges of honor is a smart thing to do because as being a commander myself I use all my badges for siege and really saves me money although I still have to spend lots of gold buying siege. And if u make the commander rank available for 1k badges that would freak me out personally, not that it is not obtainable but siege-wise. But yeah arenanet pls change the 100g books

Pumillion.2519:

Although it’s a bad idea that commander rank can be purchased with only 100g I don’t think that changing it to badges of honor is a smart thing to do because as being a commander myself I use all my badges for siege and really saves me money although I still have to spend lots of gold buying siege. And if u make the commander rank available for 1k badges that would freak me out personally, not that it is not obtainable but siege-wise. But yeah arenanet pls change the 100g books

I think the problem is, if they want to change it, what number is equal to 100 gold.
Is it 1000 BoH or 10000? perhaps even more, wich is highly unlikely

As Pumillion said if they are changing to 1000 BoH it would also freak me out.
If you play active WvW everyday and you go with the zerg you can have 1000 badges within 2 weeks. It can go fast so i think changing it to BoH isn’t a good idea either.

Try finding an replacement that equals 100 gold. In the end i think there is none. And for most players 100 gold isn’t easy obtainable. So they would rather spend it on there endgame then on buying a stupid sign above your head and calling orders in WvW :P

To be honest i’m glad i was able to buy it for 100 gold. For me it was totally worth it. I love WvW and i get good responses of my actions as a Commander.

It takes not away the fact that i also would like to see this way of attaining Commander being changed. Not in gold but in some other way. But then the second question pops up right away. What had to be the replacement???

1000 BoH + 100 tower good idea

^the main point is, BoH shows they are actually doing stuff in WvW. Anyone can go and pay rl money for 100 gold in gems, and buy a commander icon (because that’s all they want, a thing on the map to look special)
They could even introduce some other token if they really wanted, somehow related to WvW, if BoH aren’t good enough for some reason

There’s a whole page of WvW achievements. Just tie it to that and then put a (small) gold amount on it to stop everyone doing it.

So, for example, you reach tier 3 (or whatever) in every element of the WvW achievements, then pay 30G to unlock commander. Then you know they’ve played a lot of WvW (and many aspects of it), want the title, and it stops everyone throwing it on just because they’ve got the achievements.

No idea if that works, but I agree with the OP and think this might get around the problems with BoH.

Xerion.8014:

As Pumillion said if they are changing to 1000 BoH it would also freak me out.
If you play active WvW everyday and you go with the zerg you can have 1000 badges within 2 weeks. It can go fast so i think changing it to BoH isn’t a good idea either.

Try finding an replacement that equals 100 gold. In the end i think there is none. And for most players 100 gold isn’t easy obtainable. So they would rather spend it on there endgame then on buying a stupid sign above your head and calling orders in WvW :P

CrakittenestAuto.9108:

There’s a whole page of WvW achievements. Just tie it to that and then put a (small) gold amount on it to stop everyone doing it.

So, for example, you reach tier 3 (or whatever) in every element of the WvW achievements, then pay 30G to unlock commander. Then you know they’ve played a lot of WvW (and many aspects of it), want the title, and it stops everyone throwing it on just because they’ve got the achievements.

I think you both contribute to a main idea (Xerion pointing out the problem and CrakittenestAuto creating a solution), that is to use the achievements page to unlock the ability to command. However, I still think there should be a BoH price-tag associated with it.

As for the BoH amount equalling 100g, let’s put it this way: one alpha siege golem is a single gold piece, or 100 badges. 100(badges = 1g)*100(gold)=10000 BoH total. This may seem like an extreme amount but technically it fits.

• I have added this in accordance to Crash’s achievement idea. 1000 BoH will stick, but it’ll require some sort of prerequisite.

Let me preface this by saying that I agree that the Commander icon should not be purchased with gold.

However, the major issue with this is the impact it has on the legendary grind. You propose one thing that bothers me here. If JPs no longer award badge, the only plausible venue for a player to get their legendary without killing players repeatedly has been removed. You may argue that’s a good thing, but I feel that there’s no doubt that badges coming from those chests and then being used for legendaries is fully intentional on ANet’s part. Quite frankly, I agree with them there.

I’d much rather the solution be to not use badges at all for the Commander icon, but some type of WvW title. ie. You get a title that is the “Commander” title, and while worn, you get the icon. This Commander title could require T2 of every one of the other titles in WvW, or something along those lines. That way you know that everyone with the Commander title (and thus icon) is a solid and experienced WvW player. This also removes the issue of the jump puzzle from the equation entirely without damaging the process of obtaining a legendary weapon for anyone.

brokenserenity.4638:

I’d be happy if people couldnt use it to show off how much cash they have in towns, sure it’s usefull in orr and other areas where having that sort of ability helps you turn the tide but it shouldnt ever be visible in towns imo and there should be requirements other than gold added to the rank(perhaps a way to ensure your deserving of the honor of command or capable of leading).

It really irks me to continue to see this type of mindset.

I have a commander’s title. I turn it off if I am going into WvW because I do not have the title for the sake of leading in WvW. Squad chat is the only way that we have to establish cross-guild chat for our alliance. This alliance has existed for 7 years and even though A-Net hasn’t implemented alliances in GW2 it’s important to my group to be able to keep in contact. So, I wear my commander’s icon in town and believe me it isn’t to flaunt my wealth.