Guild Wars 2

So the game is out for about a month and despite the limitation of gold farming from A-net more and more people start to get the commander which brings problems. At the moment the system works fine for most parts. One person has the blue square over there head and leads the pack. Most of the time there is a TS/vent etc. in which said person sits and talks to the zerg. But most just follow the blue square without caring about anything else. It is a random zerg magnet if you want to say so. As long as only one person has it there is no problem, even with two you will get away most of the time because the amount of players is still big enough to function and the confusion level of two commanders that know what they do is near to non.

However with more and more people reaching level 80 and gearing up it is only a matter of time until you will find random persons with little to no knowledge in WvW using the Commander-system. The system is capped at 5 players which is really nice but has several major flaws.
Let me elaborate:

First of all the limit. While having a limit is something very nice to keep the confusion level low, it has a major flaw a lot of people already saw. The commanders can be five random guy doing nothing and knowing little to nothing about WvW shutting down one way of communication for others that seriously want to lead a squad or zerg. Hymnosi did make a nice post about the topic of getting the commander on reddit.
For the most parts I agree with his point of view about getting the commander. It can’t be that a big WvW title can be achieved without making a step into one of the battlegrounds.
The point of the System is not to give five people a shiny blue Icon over the head, but rather to have some form of organisation for the people playing together.
WvW is at such a huge scale that chat and party systems can’t cover it efficiently.

Which brings me to the next point. The Commander-system does not do what it should do. Even given that only the right people use it and no troll try to confuse the people it does only provide a blue icon and chat channel. The icon does only let a lot of people see where the commander is , but it does not give him or the people following him any kind feedback. I do understand that WvW is war and informations are valuable, but cutting all short is a bit over the top. I do also understand why A-net does not want any kind of raid interface, but I come to solutions later.

Moving to the last problem. While the commander-system does cover the big scale action and the party system the small groups pretty well. All medium sized groups got the short end of the stick.
If I want to help my server and run around in a 10-20 man group I either have to form multiple party or turn my commander on. The last option will almost certainly cause confusion and even worse attract random players that will blow the cover of said group. Also it hinders the quick information exchange. Even with a using a Voice over System it is much easy to ping the spot for everyone then trying to explain.

Which leads me know how to fix the stuff.
Note that I am aware that all problems have multiple ways to be solved but those options are the ones I prefer the most.

I think that there should be a vote system coming with the compendium. Either to vote every time you want to turn the commander on or people should be able to give the commander title to people they trust. Of course this would mean that people that spend 100g on it and don’t get voted to be commander are kittened. But on the other hand everyone should be aware on what he spends his gold on. It can’t be that people can’t turn on their commander just because some others think they need that shiny icon above there heads. In the end commanders are supposed to be leaders for the servers and not shiny icons.

Which leads to the next point. We need to make the commander-system more usable. At the moment all it does provide is a shiny icon and a chat channel no one uses. The commander does not have any idea how is following him and who just happens to be running the same way.
I think the best would be to “upgrade” the commander.
Give him a interface ( viable via the hero panel) that gives him the basic informations who is in his squad, how many are still online of them etc. Also give him 3 basic ping’s that everyone in his squad can see. Something like “Look there!”, “Back out!” and “Attack!” would be more then enough and actually make the commander a commander and not a random zerg magnet.
Another quality of life change would be to colour the people on the squad so he would gain a visual feedback of what he is leading and what is running randomly around with him. This would give him a nice amount of control and allow him to spread informations quickly. Because lets face it there is no need to give out a global position information but not something the commander see near his squad. It is not like in war a commander would take his time and go to every solider and tell him there are enemy’s coming from the east.

Moving to the last point. The easiest and most efficient solution would be to make an extra compendium to form a small squad that works like his big brother with out the global icon.
This would be a huge improvement for organised play in WvW. And I hope that is what A-net wants to see because I can see Zergs in SC as much as I want.

Almost done let me give me some final notes to wrap everything up.

The problems may not be major at the moment, but I rather have them fixed before they get out of hand. Why let something get worse if you can fix it before hand.

To those are my 2 cents about the commander-system in WvW. Feel free to bring up other ideas how to improve it at the end we are all working together to make the game better.

Also I would like to ask the modes if they want to move this to just look it and send me a message to post it in another topic. Moving threads makes them die most of the time.

As a final note bare with every spelling and grimmer error on my side. English isn’t my first language.

TL:DR SHINYS? DO YOU LIKE SHINYS? SHINY! IF YOU LIKE SHINY BLUE COMMANDER ICON READ NOT SHINY TEXT

As someone who meets 4 mentally-challenged commanders every 5, i approve this thread.

As a commander i agree with all the stuff about upgrading it, giving a UI for commander (so he can see who is in the squad) and also a different colour on the map for people in the squad so both they and the commander can see whats going on and who is with them. Commanders also need a small Skill bar, with Squad notices such as “Attack”, “Advance”, “Fall Back”, “Regroup” (On Screen Notices… or very visible in chat box).

I also agree that some of the time commanders do badly and i think that a vote system should be implemented (But not in the way that you have suggested).
-> My vote system suggestion is that if a commander is doing very badly and is not helping WvW at that time, a player should be able to “Vote to Disable Commander” (in the same kinda way someone would report a player). If the a commander gets enough votes from different players in that WvW map, then their commander Title and role is “Disabled” for say…. 1 hour? which would for 1, increase the commanders willingness to do better next time, and 2, save the players from being lead by a bad leader.

:)

I have been critted for 9000 damage by Epic Wall of text.
<enter downed state>

I am one of those people that follow the blue icon. I assume they know what they are doing.

But I take orders from no man…

I think the commander role should be something earned as a merit for WvW envolvement. That means, maybe, after we have a ranking system of some sort, the 5 top players with the commander certification, could, if they want, enable their role while on a PvP map.

If one of those top 5 players don’t want for any reason to enable his commander role, the next one below him, with the certification would receive a notification asking if they wanted to enable his and so on.

@Berserker:
A very good idea. That would be way better then my idea I agree.

@cesmode It is not about talking order it is about him letting you know what he is going to do. If he wants to attack something and lets you know you will hit it and help sooner rahter then later.

@deriver: While the idea is nice supporty people would be pretty low in the rating. Atm people are not willing to suppprt( which also is a big problem) making a leader would just lead to even more dmg greed among the people.
How ever uf you could “upvote” players for ressing you, supporting doing a good lead etc. it would be fine

LaronX.8079:

@Berserker:
A very good idea. That would be way better then my idea I agree.

@cesmode It is not about talking order it is about him letting you know what he is going to do. If he wants to attack something and lets you know you will hit it and help sooner rahter then later.

@deriver: While the idea is nice supporty people would be pretty low in the rating. Atm people are not willing to suppprt( which also is a big problem) making a leader would just lead to even more dmg greed among the people.
How ever uf you could “upvote” players for ressing you, supporting doing a good lead etc. it would be fine

Alternatively, they should have made 2 requirements for commander, say… 50g and 250-500 badges of honor, this would show that a commander has played enough wvw to hopefully know what they are doing, and also is willing to pay a lot of gold to try and help organize the map to improve game play and user experience.

Like Beserker said, Commander should be EARNED, not bought. It is too easy for some fool with no clue what WvW is to buy enough gems with their parents cc to trade into gold and buy commander. It isn’t very unique or helpful to those servers competing in WvW. Badges of honor being the WvW currency, I think they should be the way to buy commander but, on top of that, maybe a sort of vote or ranking system to those who are actually contributing to WvW to be able to buy it so it isn’t just some fool who spent weeks on end to get an ego buff only to lead his team 5 miles behind enemy lines…

I may have misunderstood, but it seems to me that giving players the option to rate a commander and either vote them up if they like their leadership, or vote them down if they don’t like it would work better. Then the 5 commander limit could be limited to the top 5 rated commanders at any one time. Two additional functions that seem useful would be the ability to set rally points and objectives. Rally points would be a spot for players who have been killed to group up at before rejoining the fight so they don’t just straggle into a blood bath and get killed one by one, and objectives are self explanitory. Player ratings would be better than PvP performance because individual fighting ability and tactical leadership are not the same.

I’d like to see rally points in PvE as well where any player can call a rally point and only 1 would be allowed in a given area so if a group event goes badly and everyone dies the players can group up near the event and counter-attack in force.

My problem with Badges is that you also can get them without doing WvW. There are lots and lots of people that only come into WvW to do the jumping puzzle every day ( don’t ask me why people that don’t play WvW do a puzzle to get rewards used in WvW)

I agree with the need to fix the commander system. I think that the name color change (and hopefully map dot) for players in squad would be very useful. Also, I think that commanders should definitely be able to see a list of squad members.

I also like the suggestion of including badges of honor in the commander cost. Rather than having commanders be funded by bots, we could have commanders who have actually played WvW. I think the cost should be steeper than previously suggested – maybe 50g and 2000 badges of honor.

As for the voting system suggestion, I think it might be too over the top. The simplest fix for incompetent commanders would be to allow players to toggle whether they see commander icons on their map.

I hate that there are jump puzzles in WvW…. so many people just take up valuable slots on doing their daily puzzles, its destructive to the gamemode.

The amounts of stuff would b up to Anet, but i definitely think that the cost of commander should involve badges. I bought commander after about 1.5-2 weeks of playing (easy to make money on the TP at the start) and honestly the only reason i purchased it was because i loved the WvW gameplay but hated how unorganised WvW was. After buying it (possibly my servers first), things almost instantly got better, there was less random attacks and chaos, more defense, and we captured almost the whole map we were playing on. After a while when more people bought commander i started to notice that there was sometimes a bad vibe from other people when commanders entered WvW (which wasnt the case initially) idk if some were not good and lost the faith of the players… but people definitely turned against them. It Sucks, but was bound to happen with there being no way to judge a commander because buying it has nothing to do with WvW experience!. (the badge of honor addition idea could fix that a little).

Also yea a toggle visibility on/off function may work too.

LaronX.8079:

[…]
I think that there should be a vote system coming with the compendium. Either to vote every time you want to turn the commander on or people should be able to give the commander title to people they trust. Of course this would mean that people that spend 100g on it and don’t get voted to be commander are kittened. […]

The other thing is well is if they normally play a different character then switch to another, people may not recognise the name. OR you may have a VERY good commander, but they haven’t had a chance to prove themselves. How would this be resolved for “new” commanders? Could you do a “trial” system per say? E.g. First equip command title, then they get to lead, mark them as [NEW] or something, and that way players on your server can get a feel for how this commander is.

LaronX.8079:

Which leads to the next point. We need to make the commander-system more usable. At the moment all it does provide is a shiny icon and a chat channel no one uses. The commander does not have any idea how is following him and who just happens to be running the same way.
I think the best would be to “upgrade” the commander.
Give him a interface ( viable via the hero panel) that gives him the basic informations who is in his squad, how many are still online of them etc. Also give him 3 basic ping’s that everyone in his squad can see. Something like “Look there!”, “Back out!” and “Attack!” would be more then enough and actually make the commander a commander and not a random zerg magnet.
Another quality of life change would be to colour the people on the squad so he would gain a visual feedback of what he is leading and what is running randomly around with him. This would give him a nice amount of control and allow him to spread informations quickly. Because lets face it there is no need to give out a global position information but not something the commander see near his squad. It is not like in war a commander would take his time and go to every solider and tell him there are enemy’s coming from the east.

I thought there were options in the Commander thing to add Defend/Attack, etc? I recall seeing a video about it, or does it only show up for the Commander and not the Squad members?

But very good points. Different coloured chat would be cool – I felt bad for one commander who was calling out attacks, and no one responded/cared until another player said he was a commander. (At the end of the day, if an attack is happening, you SHOULD be responding, commander title or not)

Really though, a 100G title should have something like party interface – different coloured icons on your map, and seeing WHO is in your team.

Berserker.7425:

I hate that there are jump puzzles in WvW…. so many people just take up valuable slots on doing their daily puzzles, its destructive to the gamemode.

As a player who does the jump puzzle every day, I disagree. I do the jump puzzle, I get my blue prints (which have dropped blue prints) then I go and participate in WvW. I don’t mind spending money in WvW to hold our position, but it frustrates me when I’ve sunk x amount of money into upgrading a keep, it gets attacked, you call it, and people are sitting there “Fighting Champion/Veteran, etc”. I would rather do a jumping puzzle, get my blueprints that way to save money on buying blueprints repeatedly.

only thing I want to see is a commander status that means more than “i paid 100g and now i try to boss people around”. commander is meaningless atm.

We all agree, that commander’s interface is right now useless. I personally was considering to buy Commander, but after I had chance to speak with one I was dissapointed what he told me. Fact, that commander has only blue mark on the map and one special command sounds me not enough for 100g. So I’d like to add here a few ideas, how to improve commander, some of them was already mentioned here or on the other posts similar to this one.

1. Squad members should be seen across all map and they should have different color

Right now if I join into the squad I still can see only my party members and others are only green points and it shows only those ones, who are near my position. That’s why I think if every squad member will have same color (orange for example), commander

2. Hierarchy system Commander – Lieutenant – Rest of the squad
Squad has capacity 50 people in other words it’s 10 parties. My scheme is following: Commander have his party of 5 people and also he choose 9 other lieutenants. Everyone of these lieutenats have their parties and they are designated by Roman numerals (II, III, IV and so on) which leads to my next point

3. Commander’s interface
In World of Warcraft was great raid manager, I think this system would suits for the most. Commander would see player’s profession, how many profession of one type his squad have (like 5 warrior, 8 guardians, etc.) and who are the lieutenants. Also Commander should have ability to move with players to place them into parties where he needs them most. He should see how many supply his squad has, not through command line. This all would definitely save a lot of time.

4. Orders

As Commander you will spent some time looking at the map because you need to decide where your squad will go. Imagine this situation: You want to take tower and supply camp. Right now you will probably get the camp first and then tower, but enemy will see swords on the map and they will be prepared at the tower when you get there. Due to this you lost the element of surprise. Thanks to the orders you can sent 1 party to take camp while rest will siege the tower. There’s no need for many commands just simple Attack, Defend, Regroup(Resupply) and I would recommend to place them into the map interface. It can work like this: you’ll choose order, then party which you want to complete this order and then place it on the map. When you will be chosing party, window similar to when you are using waypoint will show up and you choose that party. Only this chosen party will see your order. And if you want to give orders to all of your squad, there would be choise “Select all parties”.

5. Different Commander color mark

If you have more than one Commander on the map, different color marks will help to separate them. Also if Commander write somethink to map chat, his mark will show as well so it will be easy to identify, which commander is writing.
(“mark; commander name: I need help at somewhere”)

6. Commander should be purchased for more than just gold

Right now Commander book cost only 100g, so sooner or later everybody could have it. I agree with that but also there should be 2 other things as well. One of them is Badge of Honor, because they are proof that you played WvW and you understand how are things going on there. I think 250BoH is enough. As the 3th thing you need for Commander book should be some special token, you can get only from other players not by yourself. And this token would be proof that people respect your leadership.

Note We also need group which is larger than 5, group of 20 people I think is enough.

In the end I want to apologize if there are sensences, which are hard to understand, that’s because English isn’t my native language a I know I still need work on that.
Also I’d like to apologize to those, whose ideas I used in my post, but that’s because I found them really useful.

Lukinos.2401:

Note We also need group which is larger than 5, group of 20 people I think is enough.

That’s a crucial thing to make WvW less zerg-based. As for now, most activities center around blue tag basing on rule “follow or die alone”.

Commander should have a possibility of managing his squad. Your concept of grading commanaders is a very good one. But I think it should be made this way:

1. Commander lvl 1- command max 2×5 squads.
2. Commander lvl 2- command max 4×5 squads.
3. Commander lvl 2- command max 6×5 squads.

Raids should consist of max 30 people. It’s a significant force+ it can be managed quite easily.

Now back to raid management:

A. Commander should have a raid window reflecting all his squads in 6 columns by 5 members each
B. Commander should have a possibility to assign people to columns by simple drag and drop
C. Placing a person at top of each column automatically makes it “squad leader” (squad leader is reflected on commanders map with large column number)

This option will break a zerg a bit. Commander raid will become more mobile and disciplined. Limit of 30 person will force people to join raids with room, instead of following the main zerg only. It should allow for more battles in open fields on a little bit lower scale, making WvW more dynamic.

I’d rather just get rid of the commander icons completely as all it leads to is zerg vs zerg from what I have seen. People blindly follow the little commander icons and don’t want to branch out on their own.

Cheers to the few who are willing to break free of that and go their own way.

But no, Anet will never get rid of the icons. I’m sure it’s a source of income for them as some will buy gold to get those icons. Of course it’s also a source of income for the RMT gang, but that’s another story.

My two cents: The commander tag itself should change based on the merit of the commander. The icon should be more outstanding for commanders who have captured more keeps,towers,etc. and less pronounced for those new commanders. Kind of like the paragon levels in D3. Truly experienced commanders should have big, flowery commander icons to show their merit.
Either that or hovering your cursor over the commander icon should give you details about their abilities (towers/keeps captured, supply camps/caravans captured), as well as some sort of personalized rating system where you can upvote or downvote commanders you like or don’t like.

Garathorn.7341:

Lukinos.2401:

Note We also need group which is larger than 5, group of 20 people I think is enough.

That’s a crucial thing to make WvW less zerg-based. As for now, most activities center around blue tag basing on rule “follow or die alone”.

Commander should have a possibility of managing his squad. Your concept of grading commanaders is a very good one. But I think it should be made this way:

1. Commander lvl 1- command max 2×5 squads.
2. Commander lvl 2- command max 4×5 squads.
3. Commander lvl 2- command max 6×5 squads.

Raids should consist of max 30 people. It’s a significant force+ it can be managed quite easily.

By that Note I meant groups, which would be used for exaple: guild actions like clearing zone, guild parcitipating in WvW etc. That’s my bad, I didn’t give solid explenation for that.

However you brought up excellent idea that Commander should earn levels and via that his raid size would by increased.

anonymouse.9053:

I’d rather just get rid of the commander icons completely as all it leads to is zerg vs zerg from what I have seen. People blindly follow the little commander icons and don’t want to branch out on their own.

That’s true, Commander system right now leads only to zerg vs zerg. So when isn’t any Commander on the map a lot of people don’t know what to do. I saw even actions like 10 people were attacking on reinforced keep gate only with mere weapons. And that’s why WvW needs some organization.