Guild Wars 2

As it stands, anyone with 100g can purchase the Commander icon and display it at will. This feature is very useful not only in WvW but also in PvE. Large guild events, for example, are greatly improved by squads and the ability to locate your leaders on the map. However, I believe that this feature is missing a lot of it’s potential.

Currently, anyone logging in to WvW can easily open the map and look for a Commander icon. This is a great beginning, but unfortunately it seems to stop there. Your options, as a player, are to either pick a commander at random, join their squad and hope they don’t run you to your death or off a cliff or look for a name you recognize and know from previous experience to be a good commander and follow them.

My suggestion is to add options to the commander role. The commander would be able to change the color of their icon to tell anyone at a glance what they are trying to accomplish. Examples:

(Please excuse my poor quality images, it was just a quick job in photoshop to give the general idea)

Red Commander
[img]http://i.imgur.com/xMEN2H6.jpg[/img]
“I am primarily attacking, harassing, claiming and being aggressive”
Lets the player know that this commander will be targeting enemy occupied territory. This commander is on the move, claiming towers, supply camps and engaging other large groups in battle. They will need siege based on aggression; rams, golems, trebuchet, etc.

Blue Commander
[img]http://i.imgur.com/Mu6BkJU.jpg[/img]
“I am primarily defending.”
This commander is dug in at a location and working to defend it. Their current objective is to hold the ground their team has already taken. They will need siege for defense such as arrow carts, ballista, boiling oil. This commander may require more supply than Green or Red commanders.

Green Commander
[img]http://i.imgur.com/wr0JKyY.jpg[/img]
“I am roaming. Responding where I am needed, but my squad and I provide eyes on the map.”
This commander would be a bit more complicated to run well. They would need to be able to chat while looking at the map, see where all squad members are (not just near by) and be able to direct their scouts where they need to go. They could be responsible for yaks and making sure supply is successfully distributed.

Additionally, the icon displayed for a commander should reflect that specific commanders experience and success at command. There is already a system for rank in WvW and I suggest using a combination of this system and the success/fail dynamic event system to track a commanders progress and level their commander role in return. If a commander fails many events, dies often with their commander icon displayed or simply doesn’t participate in WvW (for example), their commander rank would not increase and their icon would remain the same. But a commander that is regularly successful at taking camps, defending keeps and skilled overall at commanding would be awarded with a ranked up icon (and possibly title? General? Major? Captain?) that other players could see and trust as a symbol of that commander’s experience.
Obviously there would have to be ways to prevent gaming this, such as being unable to turn off your icon if in combat or if you had it on when an event started it must remain on til the event is complete.

These suggestions would make it easier for players joining WvW to decide at a glance which commander to follow and what they can do to participate in that role. This would also make Commander a role in WvW that is not simply bought, but earned.

(I just typed the word commander so many times it doesn’t look right anymore…)

(P.S. As a non-commander, semi-selfish suggestion: please make people turn them off in town. There is just no reason for it to be there.)

Looks like my images didn’t work. Oh well. They were just colorized versions of the regular commander icon we see on the map today.

EDIT: Your images work fine for me! ^^

Interesting suggestion. I would like to see Anet consider this. Your “Commander’s Score” system sounds much like the one found in LOTR: Conquest. In that game, amount of kills by your zerg, yourself, friendly zerg deaths, and your own deaths are tracked.

As someone who almost always fights next to a commander in WvW, I would like to know who I am supporting before I end up dead because of poor map-reading and planning.

What I’m not so sure about is the “green” icon. Doesn’t that apply to most WvW commanders right now? I’ve been on 3 servers and actively played WvW on each (been on T1 to T7). I’ve fought against many more and all I notice is roaming commanders (both friendly and hostile). I think commanders need the freedom to do what they want and when they want, rather than be bound by a single role. You could solve this by making the tag colour quick and simple to change, but then it just goes back to the concern of having all “green” commanders running around the map.

Lastly, as a non-commander as well, I agree with your sentiment. I’m sure many people share this sentiment as well, but I don’t speak on behalf of those people – what matters is that this is a shared problem and there are a significant amount of others who think the same way. Turn off those tags in PvE. There’s a fine line between leading and just being full of yourself.

That is a nice suggestion you got there about the Red/Blue/Green Commander, but I would like to suggest some other things. The problem of WvW Commanders not knowing what they are doing is a big one. Also there is a big issue of having Choke and AOE spells when coming to big battle fights. If there could be some kind of chain in command that “ONLY” the Commander can appoint then it would be awesome. These Leaders would also have their own minimap Icons

Examples

Decoy Leader: Primarily used to give a person the ability to rally some people and take down a Camp or attack a Tower in order to draw away enemy forces from the main prize which would be a Keep that the Commander would be looking to overtake from the opposing server. This can also be used in order to gain extra help from other sources such as NPC bases that switch sides varyingly depending on who wins their allegiance first. This position can also serve as a temporarily 2nd Commander figuratively speaking. How so? Well, roaming zergs on the same server can group up with this Leader if the Commander happens to be too far away.

Scout Leader: Used to give players a person to rally to in order to scout enemy territory with and maybe take down sentries, roaming zergs, independent zerg groups, Caravans, and/ or enemy Camps as well. It can also be used to see what other servers are up to. This can also serve as an Alternative to what some people call “Skilled Small Groups”. Allowing them to do what they want or can in order to subterfuge the enemy.

Defense Leader: This is used for a person to stay watch at a certain Tower/Camp/Keep in order to notify the Commander when or if it is being attacked. Also again this person cannot fend off other server players by themselves in the immediate attack so there should be a party there also. This also gives a sense of purpose to someone who is just blindly standing watch over some Tower because no one else is and it is a prime target for the enemy.

These are only some suggestions; but even with these it still takes a whole lot of skill of how and where to set up ACs and Trebs in order to win a certain capture point. It still also takes great skill to lead not just one group but multiple groups to win the WvW map as a Commander.

These Leader positions are not supposed to be permanent titles like the Commander one. They are only temporarily for that certain Commander. These roles can be appointed to an indefinite amount of people, but should only apply to 1-2 people at the most. These positions can also have their own special chat like the Commander so that the people who are following them can see what they are doing

What this is supposed to accomplish is
-To have activity around the whole entire map and not just one area in the middle of the map.
-It is also supposed to be used to separate the good Commanders apart from the Poor ones.
-It will also separate good leaders from bad leaders
-It gives more strategy to the game rather than simply barging into some Tower/Keep with sheer numbers
-It can give the people someone else to follow if they choose not to follow the Commander per say.
-If the object of WvW is to have as realistic as possible, this would one step towards that

Wars are not won by sheer numbers of resources and manpower alone but how you allocate those things together to disarray the enemy.
Please reply if there are any other Problems with these suggestions

i had similar suggestion here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/commander-information/first#post2179989
when commanders will be able to edit short messages (and change color of their icon) it will be rly very useful and handy

It would be nice if PVE commanders could switch their tag to one that can only be seen by players from their alliance, or to a special community event tag, which informs players where they can find an event host.