Guild Wars 2

Partial credit to Blueshield for making me realize this idea is actually worth exploring.

In WvW, what if players could see who the enemy commander is in a zerg? (Not on the map, just within visual range) It’s a small change that would have a huge impact on how zergs play. If you can see the enemy commander, he’s going to be focus fired. This would result in commanders having to fight from the center or the back. It would make the zerg more clumbsy in a skirmish, slower to charge on afterwards. Coordinated leadership would have to result from more communication and less having a shiny icon on the map.

You could go further than that by having commanders be worth more when killed.

You could go even further if you prevent a commander from activating his commander tag for a certain period of time after dying.

I’m not a die hard WvW player. I’ve done my share of time but I’m no commander and I’m on a low tier server. I’d like to hear how other, more serious WvWers would feel about the impact of this idea.

Makes sense to me.

Haha, you have just the same idea as I had a few weeks back. What if we can assassinate commanders as a mission and gain badges of honor for it. I’m not hardcore WvW player at all, neither, but it’s worth a try.

Support

As the OP indicates, I already supported this idea in another thread. I think this has a lot of potential to disrupt zerg metagaming without changing anything fundamental about the combat system.

Sirendor.1394:

What if we can assassinate commanders as a mission and gain badges of honor for it.

I think that’s an excellent idea. A context-based dynamic event should activate in the close proximity of enemy commanders. It additionally wouldn’t hurt to give commanders a 100% chance of dropping a Badge of Honor, on top of the standard loot table.

You can already see Commander Icon if you target the character, just like you can see attenuements if you target an Ele.
But the dynamic events on Commander kill is a pretty awesome idea ahah, even tho it seems pretty laggy for the commander, imagine, as soon as you turn badge on, you become a mobile dynamic event :S

sistox.9624:

You can already see Commander Icon if you target the character, just like you can see attenuements if you target an Ele.
But the dynamic events on Commander kill is a pretty awesome idea ahah, even tho it seems pretty laggy for the commander, imagine, as soon as you turn badge on, you become a mobile dynamic event :S

This isn’t about being able to see that they’re a commender by clicking through each person in the zerg until you find him. This about seeing a floating icon over their head when they’re close enough, just like all of the commander’s allies see as a matter of course. Preferably in red.

Until you’re the commander, and in every encounter, automatically, you are the constant target of all enemy players/zergs. So on, causing it to become unplayable for commanders because they always die. At that point, it stops being funny and crying posts on forums, asking them to remove this feature of the game, do not stop appearing.

Actually, having the commanders be constant targets would be good, IMO.

It adds a strategic element to the game (protecting the commanders), requires the commanders to be competent individual players (purely because they’ll be targets), and being targets will discourage players who don’t know what they’re doing from wearing the title just because they had 100g to waste.

Ultimately, though, I think the commander/squad mechanics need to be improved to make it worthwhile before they start adding things like this. The whole commander system is pretty sad right now.

Thinking about this further…

It would make it difficult for the commander to participate in the actual combat. You could counteract this by giving commanders a percentage chance to get credit for kills made by his squad.

Also, this idea would open the way to new tactics. Commanders would become very tempting bait for traps and ambushes.

Lukhas.1962:

Until you’re the commander, and in every encounter, automatically, you are the constant target of all enemy players/zergs. So on, causing it to become unplayable for commanders because they always die. At that point, it stops being funny and crying posts on forums, asking them to remove this feature of the game, do not stop appearing.

As a commander myself, I’m fully in favor of this feature. Being the primary target in hostile engagements is a small price to pay in exchange for dozens of players being your personal combat squad.

This isn’t about humor, this is about a way to change WvW dynamics.

I agree Blueshield. This would also (maybe) implicate that commanders get options to hire bodyguards or/and make more organized armies.
This is my idea: players occasionally get money drops from npcs and players. The commander gets 1 copper per kill in a certain area (for example, Hills, Bay etc.)
He can use this gold to hire other players and npcs as soldiers. The players would get a sum of money for their deeds. This would encourage actually following the leader commando’s.

Hold on? What if the commander doesn’t use the money for hiring an army?
This hiring is a contract, a game mechanism that makes a deal between the commander (who will now pay the soldier) and the soldier (who will let the commander gain on his kills).

! I’m not a commander myself, so don’t say I just want this for my own good. I just want WvW to be more than the irrational raging on of zergs.
Instead I vote for a better use of the “Squad”. In the squad, the commander would be able to appoint officers. He and these officers can coördinate attacks for his paid army.

What do you guys think?

Also, centuries ago, in war, soldiers would hunt down the commanding officer of the enemy army, who was usually easily distinguishable by a feather plume in their helmet or a crest on their shield. They did this as a means to speed up the take down of the enemy forces, and as far as I know, it worked rather well.

I have no qualms with being able to see an icon floating over the head of an enemy commander, but I do not think that tying achievements to the killing of said commanders would be a wise idea; it would open the door to a lot of abuse, harassment, and player griefing.

this a bad idea. because what if the commander plays a melee role. they would always be forced to play ranged. and thats a gameplay limit. limits arent fun.

Playing melee in a huge zerg vs zerg skirmish is incredibly dangerous anyway. Yeah, you couldn’t get away with playing a glass cannon melee commander very well, but the idea would be to shift the focus of the commander more to the tactical side.

In real battles, you don’t want your commanding officer leading the charge. If commanders feel like doing some risky fighting, they simply turn the commander flag off.

I think that this would just make it harder on everyone. Commanders would turn off the flag and then it will take more time to find who you are supposed to be following/assisting.

You could make it so commanders can only change their commander flag outside WvW to prevent toggling abuse.

Xriah.5743:

You could make it so commanders can only change their commander flag outside WvW to prevent toggling abuse.

That’s a point, some kind of toggling abuse prevention would be needed. I’m not sure that allowing it only outside WvW is the best answer though – if a commander needed to toggle for legitimate reasons once inside, he or she might (definitely would on many servers) have to queue to get back in (which can take easily over half an hour).