Guild Wars 2

DevonCarver.5370:

I have a couple of other things I’d like to mention. I don’t think we’d want to focus the commander on the guild system. It could be that I’m wrong about that, but it feels restricting to say you can’t be a commander, or a full-fledged one, unless you are in a guild of a certain size. How would people feel if, instead, there were some additional unlocks you could get as a guild commander that only displayed to people in your guild? Maybe if you are in guild only mode on your tag you have some additional tools?

@Devon: I just like to add something to this paragraph i quoted u on, sounds great. However, I may of mistaken what u said, but im under the impression that once u already have a commander tag u can use it in guild to select visibility to guild members only? which sounds great but i hope this will be available to “all” guild members with commander tag and not a select guild officer/leader rank. There are many occasions that when our raid leader logs off we still run together and take turns in leading for added experience and the ability to still play together. And in many guilds the raid leader and his 2nd, isn’t necessarily of guild officer/leader rank.

Im also in favor for the quick fix while w8ing for a long term project, dont know if in addition to what u already categorized as a quick fix, would u be able to implement a system that would allow commanders to visibly see squad members on map as u do party members on a map? in say a red color or something to identify them at a distance whilst u send them off as a little strike team or something.

Nike.2631:

morrolan.9608:

I think this mischaracterises some of the aggravation of the posters in the past 24 hours or so on this thread, which is due to Devon stating that they only want to consider quick solutions and implying that issues which would take more work to implement will not be considered.

Now see, I didn’t get that at all. I saw more of a ‘we can do quick fixes and then take an extended break from the topic or we can do major overhaul in the time it takes to do a major overhaul (which can include many of the smaller features).’

Which was answered a bunch of times with “we want both.”

‘That ’OR’ statement in there wasn’t optional. Pick One.’

“We still want both.”

((Tears))

If he said they will work on implementing some quick wins immediately and they will continue looking at the more resource intensive issues on a longer term basis I wouldn’t have a problem and I doubt most would.

And there’s “we want both” again .

I was specifically answering your point about players wanting it NOW, not on wanting both. If I had a choice though I would say major overhaul over quick fixes, regardless of the fact that it will take a while.

I would say though, and I said this earlier in the thread, that from a PR point of view quick wins are a good idea. Just not at the expense of long term improvements.

Nike.2631:

morrolan.9608:

I think this mischaracterises some of the aggravation of the posters in the past 24 hours or so on this thread, which is due to Devon stating that they only want to consider quick solutions and implying that issues which would take more work to implement will not be considered.

Now see, I didn’t get that at all. I saw more of a ‘we can do quick fixes and then take an extended break from the topic or we can do major overhaul in the time it takes to do a major overhaul (which can include many of the smaller features).’

Which was answered a bunch of times with “we want both.”

‘That ’OR’ statement in there wasn’t optional. Pick One.’

“We still want both.”

((Tears))

If he said they will work on implementing some quick wins immediately and they will continue looking at the more resource intensive issues on a longer term basis I wouldn’t have a problem and I doubt most would.

And there’s “we want both” again .

quick fixes then an extended break would be great imo.

i think most of our current complaints are based on things that can be quickly fixed. we want a better raid ui, but i think we can make do between tag icon variety and VOIP.

we dont know whats wrong with a raid ui that we dont have and the current one is so rudimentary that it needs to be fleshed out majorly before we can say anything about it besides “this sucks”. but this thread already has a lot of good brainstorming as a starting place for the eventual overhaul.

gidorah.4960:

while you are probably right i think people want more resources put into commander redesign than devon’s pet project wxp for new golem mastery or whatever he is making that players didnt ask for. I think everyone assumes the wxp was something to tide us over till they did the big work on the bigger problems but all we get is more wxp and no progress on the big problems. well this is one of the big problems and it deserves more resources than it is getting.

Ok, while designing in a vacuum is good exercise, lets step back and look at the reality of how development assets get assigned.

We can have a bundle of quick fixes. Lets pretend those can be built, tested, and brought to live in February. Outside of WvW, where the game does battle as just one of myriad entertainment possibilities, what do we get? We get 1 paragraph in the cavalcade of bi-weekly release descriptions. A screenshot of a map with a rainbow of icons, woo-hoo. Maybe we get a live stream that mentions it in passing. In game we get happier players, but also some actual negative response because its a tiny upgrade that “those idiots should have put in at launch, duh!”

Or in May we see ‘Commander 2.0’ hit. Its The Central Headline for that bi-weekly release. There’s a full blog that points to how the CDI process lead the Developers to make “major changes based on player input”. There’s news articles scattering out into the web how GW2 has ‘done it again!’ setting the standard for other games to live up to. Those changes include a plethora of QoL improvements (the entire February package has been folded into it) and several larger advances in commander abilities and responsibilities. One bundle more meaningful than two smaller patches.

Where the small changes are concerned, the same work gets done either way, but the presentation of that work serves the welfare of the game vastly better. We won’t die from enduring an extra couple of months of what we have now (as long as communication from the Devs is good…), but throwing out changes in dribs and drabs is squandering their impact. Especially with new games so close on the horizon. I’d rather see the game on war-footing, forcing the other studios to race to keep up, than feeding the competition guidance one easily absorbed nugget at a time…

insanemaniac.2456:

Quick fixes then an extended break would be great imo.

I’m not completely adverse to that strategy either. Most of the critical improvements are easy to extract from this thread.

A quick, targeted, potent upgrade is a great play for retention.

A larger, sweeping, playing field-defining expansion is a great play for attracting new players.

The only way we should be privy to ANet’s needs in those categories is by observing what they do, not by being told in advance what they want to do. On the PvE side there is a lot of demand for a new expansion over rapid upgrades. If anything, I find it interesting that the balance of desires within the WvW boards is so inverted.

Nike.2631:

Where the small changes are concerned, the same work gets done either way, but the presentation of that work serves the welfare of the game vastly better. We won’t die from enduring an extra couple of months of what we have now (as long as communication from the Devs is good…), but throwing out changes in dribs and drabs is squandering their impact. Especially with new games so close on the horizon. I’d rather see the game on war-footing, forcing the other studios to race to keep up, than feeding the competition guidance one easily absorbed nugget at a time…

probably because i prefer function over form and action over talk i really don’t care about how functional improvements are presented and if it is done in small batches or big. It also sounds like devon isn’t willing to drop his pet projects and direct his resources to fixing wvw’s big problems which is something the wvw community was ok with under habib.

brittitude.1983:

Cactus.2710:

chestonu.8059:

Cactus.2710:

Certainly the CDI on population imbalance was totally pointless, for pretty much the same reasons. Absolutely nothing … not even a summary of key items to explore … has come of it.

Let’s keep this On-Topic to Commander System, please. Complaints about other areas of the game belong in those topics, not here. Thanks

Ahh .. you mean the one that was locked over a week ago. Gotcha …

But in any case I wasn’t trying to derail this thread. I was simply replying to Conner’s comment that we weren’t getting much encouragement that this thread would lead to anything actionable on the commander system either. If you believe otherwise, what specifically would that be?? Please quote the dev response that supports it, because here’s the “collaborative” dev response that sticks out for me:

“If you are expecting to see any of the things we have discussed happening quickly, you should adjust that expectation. Some of it could, but the simple fact that we are discussing it here is not a promise to that effect.”

Here you go:

DevonCarver.5370:

4: Together we will share and evolve design philosophies which will impact how we develop the game moving forward.

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d say there is significant room for improvements of functionality as well as the possibility that a completely overhauled system would better serve the needs of the WvW community and the PvE community.

DevonCarver.5370:

Okay, so before we get too far into this discussion, here is something else to think about:
Would you rather see us make some number of small improvements in the short term and larger changes long term or just tear the whole thing down and start from scratch?

To be a bit more specific, we could probably do something like multicolor markers without too much work, although it is not a given, but that would likely be the extent of things for a long period of time.

DevonCarver.5370:

It is important to us that when we introduce new UI elements we have fully fleshed out their place in the rest of the game UI.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I think overall this discussions will help shape the feature and backlog list of things to do with commander which could lead to many ideas here spawning improvements. As for time frame thats not really what this thread is for so I’ll dodge roll that question.

DevonCarver.5370:

We’d rather build one system that can work for both areas of the game for the sake of clarity.

Perhaps the largest question I still have, how would everyone feel if the only changes to commander were the smaller scale ones? The other stuff is super interesting and has a lot of promise, but is also a major task and one I can’t make any guarantees about.

DevonCarver.5370:

It also means that through that discussion we get a better sense of the best versions of many of the things we intend to work on at some point or ideas for changes that can be made to existing parts of the game.

DevonCarver.5370:

The guarantee is that we will discuss the design of them as a community to better inform our decisions. That means, in many occasions, we will end up doing almost exactly what gets discussed.

I hope all these help dispel the idea that nothing will come from this. I believe that based on reading everything the devs say that they are actually optimistic and want to know what we think.

Let’s move on.

Cute. You realize that he didn’t say anything specific, don’t you? There isn’t a single thing in his comments that reflect any of the player suggestions thus far.

I do believe that some of the devs at Anet want to hear what we think, but I’ve seen nothing to indicate that the ones responsible for WvW actually intend to do anything about it. Anyway, I’ll drop out of this altogether until I see something more positive from ANet. Let’s get back together in three months and compare notes, OK? In the meantime, carry on the good fight.

Cactus.2710:

I do believe that some of the devs at Anet want to hear what we think, but I’ve seen nothing to indicate that the ones responsible for WvW actually intend to do anything about it. Anyway, I’ll drop out of this altogether until I see something more positive from ANet. Let’s get back together in three months and compare notes, OK? In the meantime, carry on the good fight.

What you want is a promise of a timeline. They cant give that, because their bosses haven’t approved it yet. This is a company, and like any company, there’s a decision making process that they themselves do not control. Stop asking for what they cannot promise, because…well… they can’t. It’s not their job to do so. They gather the info, send it up. It is considered, maybe tweaked, decided on, then approved. Then work begins, that work takes a certain time, then it is rolled out.

Now, as for what we the players want, that’s what this is about. Info gathering. Talk to the players, get a reaction. Maybe get some good ideas. It’s brainstorming, the very first stage, not final cut update development that you seem to be looking for.

I for one am content they even ask us. Many game companies don’t even bother to ask the players anything. You get what you get, and you will like it. ANet is making an effort, you just might not see the fruits of that effort for a few weeks or months.

TL;DR: You expect too much (promises), too soon (now). Learn to be patient, and good things will happen.

I just got here and want to quickly reply to a few of the staff questions:

/supplyinfo is used regularly in any group I’ve been with. /squadinfo is not, because nobody expect the entire zerg to have joined on tag. I’ve never seen the waypoint markers used at all; making them visible to the entire map might help.

I’d rather the commander system not provide any direct benefit to the commander (to the extent that finding your own character on the screen via a self-visible tag is something that someone might benefit from) to avoid lots of people running with tags for their personal (rather than team) benefit. Similarly, I’d prefer to avoid anything that aids spammers, so perhaps disabling suppression when, e.g., the commander’s in a squad with at least 5 other players (more than could fit in a single party) would be good. (However, suppression is definitely a problem I’d like to see fixed.)

Looking at the negatives to being a commander, we do frequently know who the enemy commanders are, even if they’re hard to find in a crowd. Commanders get focused plenty as it is; I don’t imagine that making it easier to grief them by displaying the tag to the enemy is going to make the game more fun.

A guild-only visibility switch would be great; I don’t mind militia tagging along on guild training nights, but others might, and the militia might not always get the experience they were expecting.

chestonu.8059:

Cactus.2710:

I do believe that some of the devs at Anet want to hear what we think, but I’ve seen nothing to indicate that the ones responsible for WvW actually intend to do anything about it. Anyway, I’ll drop out of this altogether until I see something more positive from ANet. Let’s get back together in three months and compare notes, OK? In the meantime, carry on the good fight.

What you want is a promise of a timeline. They cant give that, because their bosses haven’t approved it yet. This is a company, and like any company, there’s a decision making process that they themselves do not control. Stop asking for what they cannot promise, because…well… they can’t. It’s not their job to do so. They gather the info, send it up. It is considered, maybe tweaked, decided on, then approved. Then work begins, that work takes a certain time, then it is rolled out.

Now, as for what we the players want, that’s what this is about. Info gathering. Talk to the players, get a reaction. Maybe get some good ideas. It’s brainstorming, the very first stage, not final cut update development that you seem to be looking for.

I for one am content they even ask us. Many game companies don’t even bother to ask the players anything. You get what you get, and you will like it. ANet is making an effort, you just might not see the fruits of that effort for a few weeks or months.

TL;DR: You expect too much (promises), too soon (now). Learn to be patient, and good things will happen.

Nonsense. I don’t expect a timeline and I’ve never asked for one (check my previous messages). What I have repeatedly asked for is a summary of the key player suggestions that the devs feel fit their vision for the future direction of the game … WvW in particular. If they say that something seems like a good idea but will take an indeterminately long time to implement, so be it. If they say that something else simply doesn’t match how they want the game to be played, so be it. If they say that they like a suggestion and intend to investigate it further, great. At least we’d know what their specific opinions were.

So far both of the WvW CDI threads have involved players offering lots of ideas and lots of discussion without any dev response regarding which ones they think make sense or not. It’s not collaborative if the only thing we get back is not to expect much from the process. Instead, it has been just a one way flow of thoughts, from players to ANet. Nobody has the slightest idea what is potentially going to happen from now through the foreseeable future. How is that in the slightest "collaborative?’

I’ve played this game since launch and patience hasn’t bought us anything, but yeah, I’m getting really tired of complaining. Which means, of course, that I’m also getting really tired of caring one way or the other.

Those of you asking for major raid UI overhauls are going to be sorely disappointed and tbh GW2 was never build with such things in mind so it is no wonder Devon says that would require a step back and rebuild to come up with something that fits into their design esthetic.

While it is true if they spend the time to give us the small much needed fixes sooner it is less likely they will be wiling to go back and dismantle everything they built to make something entirely new, I’ve also seen a lot of more elegant solutions those raid UI wishes that could serve the same purpose without the clutter and maybe a little less functionality. Those are the kinds of solutions ANET should be pursuing for the long term, not something that forces them to reconsider their entire game design. Now if ANETs choices on the main functionality of their game do not work for individuals then there are a lot of other games that do have those types of tools that you can play. Please don’t try to make GW2 into WoW 2.0

Think outside of the box and come up with more of those less than obvious solutions. ANET could help us with this by more clearly presenting their vision for the game when creating these topics to try and keep us focused in one direction but I appreciate their wililngness to discuss all options. I am sure this thread has been very useful to them and I look forward to seeing their summary. Cheers,

DevonCarver.5370:

The point of this initiative is not to create major projects but to discuss the basic principles behind the design of our game with you all.

One of the basic mechanics we’ve seen spreading through the game lately is purchasing ‘exotic’ skills with large numbers of skill points.

I wonder if that could be applied to the core Commander functionality: you buy it with 200 skill points (or there abouts). That’s a purchase on par with a Bloodstone Shard. That gives you a cost that can be met with both WvW and PvE activity, and on the PvE-side doesn’t segregate it behind a ‘Big Guild’ barrier. I’d even suggest that with the various trains running out ther in both WvW and PvE, you might benefit more from having a deep ‘skill point sink’ than you do from the Commander books serving as gold sinks.

It might even be funnier if “Commander” was a utility skill you could slot on your bar. Maybe a class-universal Signet (or we could throw Engineers a bone and have it be a class-universal kit… ). Putting it on the bar enables your map tag, clicking it lays down some extremely visible signpost (like casting a banner, only more visible). As with all tradeoffs, losing a utility slot from your build means you need to get a proportionate benefit back. But at least the scale of Utility-benefits is fairly well understood.

I’m still thinking that if the squad UI is currently so poor and the effort to build one that mimics other established models is so demanding, then maybe focusing on the squad functionality is less promising that looking at improving on the reality we have: that Commanders mostly guide un-linked groups of individuals.

SIGNET OF THE WARLORD
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Blue map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 5% wxp bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards gates, walls, & lords (radius 2000; 20 second duration; 90 second cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE RAIDER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Red map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 10% out of combat speed bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards dolyaks, guards, & mercenaries (radius 2000; 15 second duration; 1 minute cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE WARDEN
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Yellow map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces your supply and coin cost to purchase camp, tower, keep, and castle upgrades by 10%.
Active. PBAoE Rez up to 10 NPCs (120 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 10 targets).

SIGNET OF THE SIEGEMASTER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Dark Grey map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces supply cost of incomplete siege build sites by 20% (radius 1500; max 10 targets; does not stack).
Active. Heals fixed siege sites for 50% of their base health, golems for 10%. Also refreshes all unoccupied siege decay timers. (90 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 15 targets; does not stack)

If you have multiple Commander Signets slotted the color displayed is based on the Signet in the lowest numbered slot (i.e. 7 trumps 8 & 9, 8 trumps 9).

Nike.2631:

SIGNET OF THE WARLORD
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Blue map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 5% wxp bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards gates, walls, & lords (radius 2000; 20 second duration; 90 second cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE RAIDER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Red map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 10% out of combat speed bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards dolyaks, guards, & mercenaries (radius 2000; 15 second duration; 1 minute cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE WARDEN
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Yellow map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces your supply and coin cost to purchase camp, tower, keep, and castle upgrades by 10%.
Active. PBAoE Rez up to 10 NPCs (120 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 10 targets).

SIGNET OF THE SIEGEMASTER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Dark Grey map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces supply cost of incomplete siege build sites by 20% (radius 1500; max 10 targets; does not stack).
Active. Heals fixed siege sites for 50% of their base health, golems for 10%. Also refreshes all unoccupied siege decay timers. (90 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 15 targets; does not stack)

If you have multiple Commander Signets slotted the color displayed is based on the Signet in the lowest numbered slot (i.e. 7 trumps 8 & 9, 8 trumps 9).

Why would you think this is a good idea? A new player coming into the game ends up on your server and turns out to be the best commander since Alexander the Great and it’s like “Hey, awsome gameplay and tactics but as you are new you can’t have commander functionality for at least another 3 months, awfully sorry man, but you HAVE to get all those skill points first”

A good commander get’s the job done by making more right than wrong decisions not by how much Wxp, skill points he/she has or how long he/she has been playing the game.

As it stands, buying a commander tag is either a good investment or a waste of 100 gold. The person behind the tag has that choice, making it some sort of achievment is never going to make a bad commander good.

1) Flexibility of commander icon visibility

See “mock” screenshot attached – when you turn on your pin, you select if it’s publicly visible, only visible to your guild or even just to your current party. Add more options if needed, e.g. alliance, if you got that feature coming up at some point so that guilds can do coordinated raids without needing 2 guild commanders.

2) “Cosmetics”

With account-bound WXP coming, “cosmetic” details to the commander pin

Let commander choose colour of their pin, but also adopt a feature like naval military where ranks carry weight even for the commander. People can see if they want to tag up with the Diamond Legend commander out there who’s got all the ribbons, or the Scout rookie who just bought his pin and is fresh to WvW (extremes)

3) Commander Panel/UI
Give the commander more helpful tools to quickly give him/her the info they want, whether it’s supply_info or such. Having to stack up and type /supply_info seems very tedious, why not give them a mini panel like the Party UI that is available while your pin is active – where you can see this info (or at least click a button to issue that and other relevant commands).
Of course, thinking of more attractive options now, how about some mini-map where you can add markers of where (& who) your scouts are, for your own record.

Just some thinking about quick wins and features that could be valuable.

When I am commanding a random group in WvW and use map chat to give orders and directions sometimes my message get blocked due to excessive messaging.

tichai.4351:

Why would you think this is a good idea?

I spelled that out in the post before it: because there’s in game-precedent of opening up abilities with skill points. In fact sPvP is incorporating it, and I’d have said that’s a format that a LOT more about jump in and play than WvW is…

A new player coming into the game ends up on your server and turns out to be the best commander since Alexander the Great and it’s like “Hey, awsome gameplay and tactics but as you are new you can’t have commander functionality for at least another 3 months, awfully sorry man, but you HAVE to get all those skill points first”

First off, even Bobby Fischer had to learn chess before he could be the Master. There isn’t a human on Earth so talented that a little experience won’t improve their performance. Second, maybe the number is high, or maybe we have different experiences with amassing skill points. If skill points are my goal I don’t see 200 taking more than a couple weeks. I think ‘Alex’ can stand a couple weeks learning his way around before taking up the reins of leadership. And I also think a modest hurdle saves us from a growing problem of tag-spam.

On the subject of how well the Commander feature works:

1) I like it a lot. I recall playing DAoC and running frontier groups with 50-100 ppl. You had some nice facilities like being able to organise people into battlegroups and each group having its own chat. However, the commander system in GW2 is better.

2) I don’t think squads work too well, as people often don’t join a commander. I’d like to see commanders having unrestricted /team or /map chat

3) It would be good if there was a /command channel so that commanders on a given map could coordinate using it. Enabling multiple commanders would help erode the “one big zerg” tactic that make the game a little bit less exciting than it could be.

4) For a similar reason, I suggest commanders on the same map could have different coloured icons (first commander blue, second green, etc.). This would allow servers to develop more complex tactics like blue commander is siege offence, green is defence, red is ruins, etc.

On the subject of who can be commanders:

1) WvW command should be based on WvW experience. You should get commander title when you hit a certain WvW level. If you still want people to buy it, then just unlock something that can be bought at that rank. This would indirectly serve your idea that being in a big guild should count for something, as big guild membership enables faster WvW leveling in a couple of ways.

2) PvE and WvW command should ideally be separated. Ability to command PvE does not necessarily make you suitable for WvW command and vice versa. Create a “WvW Command” and a “PvE Command” feature, and each can only be activated in the relevant environment.

Although I’m probably reiterating past points made, I’ll give my two cents.

Short term expectations:
-Variety of icon colours
-maybe icons perhaps 3, for pug zerg, defense, small strike team can differentiate
-larger /say and supply info radius
-chat suppression tweaked
-promotion of using squads, making it easier to join, perhaps making it override /team chat since /map is used just as much

Mid term goals:
-Chat macros for /say, stack up, build siege on me, stack might/swiftness. Waypoint. Pretty much a half dozen or so macros that are needed in a pinch, defense related don’t need macros. They also could still require the commander to press enter in case they want to add a word.

Long term goals:
-Guild upgrades for commanders. Includes toggle to hide tag, squads becoming invite only allowing non guidlies to run with the group and see tag. Leuitenant tag linked to squad.
-Perhaps an overlay text option available for commander commands

What I do not want:
-Wow like raid features, it just doesn’t fit into gw2s interface IMO, the focus should be on the game itself not on a ui window besides health. Part of the game is not seeing behind you unless you physically do it.
-health status of squad, relates to above. Pay attention to your group.
-realtime supply counting and player counting. It should all require input of the command a macro window for commanders can help instead.

What can be done to improve the current system in my opinion:

1. More accessibility:

-Make it account bound

-Make it obtainable in some other way, for example with karma or badges of honor; giving more options to players is always good.

2. More variety:

-Different colors and icons

-Let the commanders give a name to the squad, to have less confusion and make it easier for players to understand what is happening on a wvw map; this will be a great help for coordination between different groups as well (example: offensive/defensive squad, melee/ranged squad)

3. More functionality:

-A squad panel where you can see name, level, class of the players inside and total supplies;

-Some way to give basic commands directly in game, like there is in many MOBA games; for example “attack”, “defend”, “hold”, etc… you could use for this purpose also an improved minimap drawing system and improved waypoint markers since they are already in the game and can create great sinergy all togheter.

About what have been discussed:

WXP Abilities: I think that the commander system should be only one, permanent, account-wide upgrade, that people can obtain in various ways by playing the game.
What I want to make clear is that I would not like to see introduced a vertical progression system, that will create “better” and “worse” commanders based only on some numbers.

Message suppression: I agree that this is a real problem for commanders and should be addressed somehow.

Nike.2631:

SIGNET OF THE WARLORD
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Blue map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 5% wxp bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards gates, walls, & lords (radius 2000; 20 second duration; 90 second cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE RAIDER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Red map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 10% out of combat speed bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards dolyaks, guards, & mercenaries (radius 2000; 15 second duration; 1 minute cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE WARDEN
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Yellow map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces your supply and coin cost to purchase camp, tower, keep, and castle upgrades by 10%.
Active. PBAoE Rez up to 10 NPCs (120 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 10 targets).

SIGNET OF THE SIEGEMASTER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Dark Grey map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces supply cost of incomplete siege build sites by 20% (radius 1500; max 10 targets; does not stack).
Active. Heals fixed siege sites for 50% of their base health, golems for 10%. Also refreshes all unoccupied siege decay timers. (90 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 15 targets; does not stack)

If you have multiple Commander Signets slotted the color displayed is based on the Signet in the lowest numbered slot (i.e. 7 trumps 8 & 9, 8 trumps 9).

If this route is to be taken. Then there should be a 100 gold purchasable commander utility slot. Add a signet for open world pve commanding and it may just fit into gw2s gaming style

Cactus.2710:

I was simply replying to Conner’s comment that we weren’t getting much encouragement that this thread would lead to anything actionable on the commander system either. If you believe otherwise, what specifically would that be?? Please quote the dev response that supports it

Cactus.2710:

brittitude.1983:

Here you go:

Cute. You realize that he didn’t say anything specific, don’t you? There isn’t a single thing in his comments that reflect any of the player suggestions thus far.

You are correct, I did not feel the need to reiterate the three summary posts Devon has written. I was responding to your request for dev quotes that provide encouragement that this thread will lead to something actionable. Since we are still in the process of providing and discussing ideas, I think it is premature to expect anything more than what we have currently.

Nike.2631:

I’m still thinking that if the squad UI is currently so poor and the effort to build one that mimics other established models is so demanding, then maybe focusing on the squad functionality is less promising that looking at improving on the reality we have: that Commanders mostly guide un-linked groups of individuals.

i really can’t disagree more. there is not much more fun in wvw than fighting a well organized enemy with your own well organized force. It is worth putting the resources into making the commander system the best it can be even if it is hard.

DevonCarver.5370:

Would the commander system be functional enough with more markers, guild only tags, less suppression, better supplyinfo, and possibly additional marker shapes?

Nike.2631:

’we can do quick fixes and then take an extended break from the topic or we can do major overhaul[..]
Pick One

I want to say quick fixes, but the (awesome) quick fixes suggested by Devon above don’t address the tag visibility functionality problem which is at the heart of the matter, for me.

I have to, therefore, reluctantly say, “major change over long time, please”.

Our guild groups want to run tags, but we’re running with targets because tags are borked. One fix for this might be the ability to assign a tag on an ally like a target marker. This seems relatively quick and easy and shouldn’t take up huge resources (right guys?).

If this happens to be easy, then I change my opinion to fully quick fixes, please.

1: Tagcolours or symbols for different commanderroles:
As example I present Ancient Roman military ranks more or less describing the roles.
Centurion, for zergs
Decurion, guildgroups
Decanus, small raid party/campcappers

2: Commander visibility: Party/Squad/Guild/Map only

3: Chat suppression not applicable to tagged up commanders

4: Simplified chatcommands: for example instead of /supplyinfo use /si

5: Automated supplycounter for all players in a 400 radius and a playercounter.

DevonCarver.5370:

gidorah.4960:

probably because i prefer function over form and action over talk i really don’t care about how functional improvements are presented and if it is done in small batches or big. It also sounds like devon isn’t willing to drop his pet projects and direct his resources to fixing wvw’s big problems which is something the wvw community was ok with under habib.

Chris has called you out on things before, and now I’m going to do it. This is not acceptable for these threads. You are not engaging with the discussion, you are not proposing solutions, you are instead using this as an opportunity to berate me, my team, and the studio for the direction we are taking the game. You are making serious extrapolations about things with little to no actual information. The decisions we make in terms of what projects to work on and when they get released are made with the interests of the game as a whole and the studio as a whole. No one person is working on “pet projects” as you term it, we are working on the game.

Please be respectful to all of us and contribute to this discussion, if you are going to continue to post in this thread.

on the one hand, im happy the mods arent deleting these posts and infracting/banning gidorah for it, because a post like his got me a 2 week ban, deletion, and a 1 hour posting limit.

on the other hand, im sad that this is what youre taking time to respond to instead of about what ideas you (dis)like, have(nt) thought of, or if youve played games with useful raid UIs and have some inspiration from them, etc.

i actually really like the idea of a skill point cost for commander tag… if theres anything wvw does really well, its that it hands out experience left and right and we dont exactly have much to spend those SP on…

but the drawback, i think, is that ever since champ bags started dropping, people have been swamped with extra sp. sp as a currency is becoming similar to what karma was before dailies/monthlies were switched to luck.

gidorah.4960:

sounds like i hit a bit too close to home then

So if devs agree with you – they are wrong because they drop big important projects, and if they disagree – they are wrong because they are hiding it? So, basically, from your point of view devs are always wrong?

Nighthawk.6453:

gidorah.4960:

sounds like i hit a bit too close to home then

So if devs agree with you – they are wrong because they drop big important projects, and if they disagree – they are wrong because they are hiding it? So, basically, from your point of view devs are always wrong?

not sure i understand what you are trying to say. It might be better if you can quote where i said anything you are trying to imply i said so i can respond properly i am just confused by this.

insanemaniac.2456:

on the one hand, im happy the mods arent deleting these posts and infracting/banning gidorah for it, because a post like his got me a 2 week ban, deletion, and a 1 hour posting limit.

on the other hand, im sad that this is what youre taking time to respond to instead of about what ideas you (dis)like, have(nt) thought of, or if youve played games with useful raid UIs and have some inspiration from them, etc.

if it makes you feel better in the last cdi i had 4 posts infracted and deleted just for asking where the wvw dev’s where. and i completely agree he should be responding to the suggestions of players not constantly telling people not to expect them to actually work on anything in this thread it leaves a bad impression.

gidorah.4960:

sounds like i hit a bit too close to home then

No, it sounds like you have nothing to contribute and are trying to hijack a constructive conversation with destructive slander. If you can’t follow the rules, please don’t participate.

DevonCarver.5370:

Rules
1: This initiative is all about discussion.
2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.
3: Anger and emotion will have less impact than intelligent discussion.
4: Together we will share and evolve design philosophies which will impact how we develop the game moving forward.
5: Aggression and disrespect to a fellow community member or developer will not be tolerated, and in the extreme could lead to the shutting down of the initiative.
6: The teams primary focus is work toward the development of GW2 and therefore posting of discussion and commentary may not be as frequent as you like. Please do understand that the initiative is taken very seriously by us all and that we will be reading the discussions and joining in as often as it is possible to do so.

gidorah.4960:

insanemaniac.2456:

on the one hand, im happy the mods arent deleting these posts and infracting/banning gidorah for it, because a post like his got me a 2 week ban, deletion, and a 1 hour posting limit.

on the other hand, im sad that this is what youre taking time to respond to instead of about what ideas you (dis)like, have(nt) thought of, or if youve played games with useful raid UIs and have some inspiration from them, etc.

if it makes you feel better in the last cdi i had 4 posts infracted and deleted just for asking where the wvw dev’s where. and i completely agree he should be responding to the suggestions of players not constantly telling people not to expect them to actually work on anything in this thread it leaves a bad impression.

how about you stay on topic so he doesnt have to respond to your off topic post.

Devon what we need right now is not complicated. We want muti-color icon, selected ppl can only see icon and better info for supply etc

Commander Icon visibility is half the job of a Commander. The Other half is communication. I propose Commander Icon visibility functions should match up to communication dialogue functions. i.e. Map Chat red dialogue visibility matched up with Red Commander Icon whole map wide visibility, Say Chat green dialogue visibility matched up with Green Commander Icon local map area visibility, Guild Chat gold dialogue visibility matched up with Gold Commander Icon universal guild member visibility, Party Chat blue dialogue visibility matched up with Blue Commander Icon universal party member visibility.

A player can turn on a character commander tag once and by clicking (checking) a dialogue tap in the dialogue menu the corresponding Commander Icon should show up on map according to its function.

Nike.2631:

SIGNET OF THE WARLORD
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Blue map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 5% wxp bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards gates, walls, & lords (radius 1200 ; 20 second duration; 90 second cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE RAIDER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Red map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 10% out of combat speed bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards dolyaks, guards, & mercenaries (radius 1200 ; 15 second duration; 1 minute cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE WARDEN
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Yellow map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces your supply and coin cost to purchase camp, tower, keep, and castle upgrades by 10%.
Active. PBAoE Rez up to 5 NPCs (120 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 10 targets).

SIGNET OF THE SIEGEMASTER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Dark Grey map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces supply cost of incomplete siege build sites by 20% (radius 1500; max 10 targets; does not stack).
Active. Heals fixed siege sites for 15% of their base health, golems for 5% . Also refreshes all unoccupied siege decay timers. (90 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 15 targets; does not stack)

If you have multiple Commander Signets slotted the color displayed is based on the Signet in the lowest numbered slot (i.e. 7 trumps 8 & 9, 8 trumps 9).

I like this idea for a few reasons:

1. It provides a new way to get a commander tag that should be easily obtainable by players with experience in the game. While it isn’t account bound, I think 200 SP is less burdensome on payers with multiple characters than 100g. I also think that it is a good way to create a time barrier to entry in being a commander without being more time consuming than getting 100 gold (unless using IRL money, which probably doesn’t produce the best commanders anyway).

2. It is an outside-the-box suggestion, that even if isn’t feasible, may spark something that is feasible. Although, I do like it and think it is an interesting way to use what is currently in the system to create something more robust.

3. It provides multiple ways to strategize using commander tags other than the obvious current choices of offense, defense, havoc, scout, etc, but allows these to be used for these as well.

There are some things that it doesn’t address though.

1. There needs to be more PvE passive/active signets. There are quite a few points made in regards to how helpful it is in many situations.

2. A public or private setting should be allowed for those that would prefer to run this way. Especially for those in guilds that would like this option.

My suggestions:
Signet of the Commander
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Blue map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel).
Active. Hides tag from map (Active for 10 minutes, 60 second cool down).

I would also like to see it be mutually exclusive, so they can’t stack. I would prefer them to be an Elite set of utilities, so that only one can be active. I don’t think that having the ability to buy three signets should give you that much gain.

I also thought you were being overly generous, Nike, in some of your passive and active capabilities. I changed some things to a level where it may be more acceptable in my opinion. I have to think about what I want to a commander to do and balance it out with what I would rather the enemy can not do.

After reading the majority of this thread I believe the simplest way to go would be as follows.

Keep the current blue dorito and the method of getting it as is. This would function in both PvE and WvW as an entry level Commander and it is all that is really required in the PvE environment of the game.

Add a new gated system to WvW which would give

A Star shaped Icon for Guild Commanders. Gate this to the level of of Guild upgrades that the guild has achieved. As each new level is reached the icon color progresses bronze-silver-gold for example.

A Moon shaped icon for field Commanders, multi guild. Gate this to the level of WvW achievements that the blue icon Commander has reached in WvW. Again the same color progression.

With each gated milestone the number of people under the Commander increments as does the functionality. Better supply info, sub Commanders and squads, etc.

If done this way each increment can be built and added to the game in stages both with the Guild and the Field Commander systems. It would not have to be added all at once and each module would be flexible enough to make any future changes required to balance things. It also keeps the 3 systems, the current blue icon, the Guild system and the WvW field Commander systems separate and easier to manipulate.

There has been some talk about squad max size and suggestions how to increase max squad size if there is a limit. This talk originated from Isaiah’s post:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

How big do you expect a squad to be?

To answer this:
-I would expect it to have no limit
-I would hope for ~20 player limit

Expectation is because everything in game for the moment is made for large scale and limiting squad size would be serious limitation for game. It would also cause problems if server doesn’t have enough commanders etc.

Still I would hope for ~20 squad size. This is because now logical unit for WvW is a) guildgroup b) everyone without guildgroup = zerg. If we were to have raid UI or other squad size limitations we might end up with something between a and b.

I would like to toss same question for devs:
How big do you expect a squad to be?

Vi Au.8341:

gidorah.4960:

insanemaniac.2456:

on the one hand, im happy the mods arent deleting these posts and infracting/banning gidorah for it, because a post like his got me a 2 week ban, deletion, and a 1 hour posting limit.

on the other hand, im sad that this is what youre taking time to respond to instead of about what ideas you (dis)like, have(nt) thought of, or if youve played games with useful raid UIs and have some inspiration from them, etc.

if it makes you feel better in the last cdi i had 4 posts infracted and deleted just for asking where the wvw dev’s where. and i completely agree he should be responding to the suggestions of players not constantly telling people not to expect them to actually work on anything in this thread it leaves a bad impression.

how about you stay on topic so he doesnt have to respond to your off topic post.
…

I disagree that he isn’t on topic. The type of desired action many of us wanted from the devs has been severely lacking with this entire initiative.

Most would agree that the purpose of the initiative was to improve the game and communication between player/devs going forward. It seems painfully obvious with the outcome of the previous CDI as well as this one, it is simply just a smoke-and-mirror PR stunt, throwing the players some small insignificant fix, while they march forward with their planned core ideas, doubling down on the same tactics that brought them to start the CDI.

The optimist would say they are simply hitting the “Low Hanging Fruit”. The easy to fix items, while waiting for the larger ones. They could be partially right, but the tone from the Living Story CDI as well as Devon’s own tone within this thread is essentially, No Major Changes will occur, ever. Just hop over to the living story thread, as almost every major concern was met with a Deal With It attitude.

That isn’t to say they shouldn’t make easy to fix changes, but these CDI should Definitely be about all changes big or small. If the “Nothing is off the table” line they spout is true, all forms of changes should be discussed and encouraged. From the simple change, to scraping the whole system/redesign.

Devon got snippy and personally upset, exactly because it hit too close to home. Hiding behind the forum shield of “you upset a dev, enjoy your ban.” is weak. The past year of development efforts for PvP/WvW speak for themselves. Combined with the recent comments on any sort of work that involves scraping/redesign, it is clear they aren’t looking for meaningful, permanent change, but rather a way to placate the masses until the next riot.

Edit: Fixed language issues.

First off please do not allow commanders to be capable of kicking any one as many would abuse this feature to make others conform to what they believe is how to play. I and a lot that are not in this forum would find that it would decrease our fun in the game in general, ditto for them to see your build. The commanders function is to bring players together as a whole and to focus where and when to go someplace that being said the easiest way to do this is
1. Various colored tags
2. Various shapes to tags
3. Less map suppression for chat
4. Larger radius for supply check

I am confused about tags being private. If you do not want to be followed except by a select few why bother getting one, exception Guilds those should be able to be both public and private. Last point when new people show up in wvw and someone tells them to get on a tag their should at least be a tag to see.

Also commanders do not need any buffs for them or their squad as it then allows an unfair advantage to only those in a squad on a commander.

I do understand that they may or may not be able to implement some if not all and I do appreciate the chance to have some input whether or not it gets used. And yes I have a commander tag.

DevonCarver.5370:

gidorah.4960:

probably because i prefer function over form and action over talk i really don’t care about how functional improvements are presented and if it is done in small batches or big. It also sounds like devon isn’t willing to drop his pet projects and direct his resources to fixing wvw’s big problems which is something the wvw community was ok with under habib.

Chris has called you out on things before, and now I’m going to do it. This is not acceptable for these threads. You are not engaging with the discussion, you are not proposing solutions, you are instead using this as an opportunity to berate me, my team, and the studio for the direction we are taking the game. You are making serious extrapolations about things with little to no actual information. The decisions we make in terms of what projects to work on and when they get released are made with the interests of the game as a whole and the studio as a whole. No one person is working on “pet projects” as you term it, we are working on the game.

Please be respectful to all of us and contribute to this discussion, if you are going to continue to post in this thread.

Side note: I support Devs calling out posters like this when they take cheap shots at devs. None of us know what goes on behind the scenes of the development process.

Has anyone spent much time playing Battlefield 4 or Natural Selection 2? Both of those games have interesting features in their commander systems. The feature that I think could benefit the commander system the most, at least in WvW, is an interactive world map that can be used to issue specific commands to specific people.

This functionality would only work if we had a better system in which to divide players into squads as has been previously discussed. There would also need to be a fair way to eject and replace this Map Commander if enough people believe that they aren’t up to par. (And it shouldn’t just be people from one guild who have a problem with the player!) The interface for this system could be reached by interacting with a map / commander’s table at each world’s starting hill or area.

This Map Commander could better control the deployment of siege weapons and upgrades by being the only one with the ability to drop them, or having the ability to suppress player’s ability to drop sieges or pick up supply in specific parts of the zone.

Battlefield commanders can drop supply, do scans, etc, and it would be neat if a GW2 commander could do something along those lines by creating dynamic events at specific locations on the maps. For instance, if the Map Commander of one world owns all of the mercenary camps, in addition to the usual functionality, they could do something along of spawn a dredge APC at a location, or send a team of ogres to fortify a tower.

Anyways, sorry about the format of this post, just was a stream of consciousness I wanted to drop in here in the short amount of time I had to post something today.

DevonCarver.5370:

gidorah.4960:

probably because i prefer function over form and action over talk i really don’t care about how functional improvements are presented and if it is done in small batches or big. It also sounds like devon isn’t willing to drop his pet projects and direct his resources to fixing wvw’s big problems which is something the wvw community was ok with under habib.

Chris has called you out on things before, and now I’m going to do it. This is not acceptable for these threads. You are not engaging with the discussion, you are not proposing solutions, you are instead using this as an opportunity to berate me, my team, and the studio for the direction we are taking the game. You are making serious extrapolations about things with little to no actual information. The decisions we make in terms of what projects to work on and when they get released are made with the interests of the game as a whole and the studio as a whole. No one person is working on “pet projects” as you term it, we are working on the game.

Please be respectful to all of us and contribute to this discussion, if you are going to continue to post in this thread.

Actually, you haven’t said which direction you’re taking the game, and that’s pretty much the point here … you aren’t actually responding to player suggestions. You’re simply collecting inputs and telling us not to count on any of them actually being taken to heart. I’d really, really like to know where you stand on anything that’s been offered here by the players. Collaboration is not one sided. We all had high hopes for these initiatives and we’re trying to be respectful, but to be honest it seems like we had higher standards and higher expectations for them than you did.

If this gets me banned, so be it. I can’t take things seriously if I’m not allowed to be honest.

DevonCarver.5370:

Implementing a system that is in other games, older games or not, that is not in our game at all is a very time consuming project. … Which isn’t a reason not to do it, but is a factor in determining when we would want to do those things.

DevonCarver.5370:

A summary of the last few pages:

1) It seems to be consensus that a system allowing commander unlocks for WXP wouldn’t be a good move.

2) A lot of people are interested in a sub-commander or lieutenant system of some sort. One that would allow for greater coordination and delegation.

3) There seems to be a general divide between people proposing a system far more complex than the current commander system and people who just want the system to have more clarity.
…
One thing that is coming up with some frequency is the idea of separating PvE commanders from WvW ones. It’s our goal to not have diverging systems like that. We’d rather build one system that can work for both areas of the game for the sake of clarity.
…
I don’t think we’d want to focus the commander on the guild system. …
Maybe if you are in guild only mode on your tag you have some additional tools?
…
Would the commander system be functional enough with more markers, guild only tags, less suppression, better supplyinfo, and possibly additional marker shapes?

This seems really clear to me.

Seriously, what more could the community ask for from Devs? He’s being QUITE clear here about what messages they’ve gotten from us, based on all the feedback from everyone so far. They also make it pretty clear about their intentions, what things they are not keen on, and what things they want more input about.

Now, maybe that isnt your personal message to them, but they hear things based on what is said, and how many people are saying the same things. 10 people saying the same thing is more powerful than 1 person with that “really awesome idea”. If it truly is awesome, 10 more people will repeat it. That’s how they tell what to listen to, and what not to.

I thought that was common sense.

Anyway, Just answer the questions, and stop asking for things they said they can’t/won’t/don’t-want-to do. They are open to ideas, but be realistic, and don’t take anything said here as if they are promising to do it simply because you asked for it.

They will do what they can, when they can, assuming it’s possible to do with the resources they have, and good for the game/company/player-base as a whole.

I want to personally thank ANet as a whole for being as responsive as they are to the players. You cannot please everyone all the time – but ANet listens a lot more than any other company I’ve seen. They always have.

Goel.9127:

Side note: I support Devs calling out posters like this when they take cheap shots at devs. None of us know what goes on behind the scenes of the development process.

I’d support it more if there had been more interaction/discussion with people on-topic accompanying it.

They’re spending time putting down hecklers when people who are busting their butts with images and concepts are left with no idea what might have been well received. I don’t particularly expect to get much interaction – I had my share in a previous thread. But there are a lot of people pushing forward ideas who haven’t gotten word one of feedback.

A simple “That’s interesting.” once in a while would do wonders for morale.

DevonCarver.5370:

So, let’s say we’ve handled the commander side of it for now and just focus on a squad system. If we added a system for squad management, what are the top 3 things you would want it to do? Examples: Show squad position, allow for orders to be sent to individual players, provide health status of all squad members, etc.

-Squad position
-Squad health
-Squad supply

That if mapdraw is mapwide, it it is squadwide then that instead of supplyinfo

DevonCarver.5370:

Summary of the past few pages:

General consensus is that the smaller bits that have been suggested would be enough to make the commander system much better for now and that it doesn’t require a complete tear down.

Outside of that there is a lot of discussion about the idea of a fully fleshed out squad system.

So, let’s say we’ve handled the commander side of it for now and just focus on a squad system. If we added a system for squad management, what are the top 3 things you would want it to do? Examples: Show squad position, allow for orders to be sent to individual players, provide health status of all squad members, etc.

This is a much larger project, but getting a sense of what people would want it to do can help provide bounds for the work.

Alternate costs for commanders tags (wxp, Guild commendations, Skill Points, Badges of Honor) don’t even get a bullet point?

I’d also point at all of the non-summary Dev posts in this thread for the last few days and ask one question: Is that really what you want to be the focus of your individual interactions?

-show all squad member positions on the map/minimap

-allow the squad leader to place up to 3(ish?) really large and visible banners or flags of various colors thru either ground target or clicking on the minimap

-provide a list (differentiating squad members in the current map from those not) such as:

party 1
commander
bob
joe
ashley
jinx

party 2
ariana
bill
chuck
sue
dad (lions arch)

party 3
joe2
lloyd
ron
steve (offline)

unpartied
harry
jared
fiona
louis
napoleon
mandelbrot
grandma (kessex hills)
grandpa (personal story map X)

more stuff on the list:
-a button to leave the squad
-a button to allow us to blank out all other commander icons
-a drop down menu when you click on a commander icon on the minimap that allows you to join that squad or blank out that tag
-a kick button to allow the squad leader to kick members
-total supply being carried by all in-map squad members

DevonCarver.5370:

…]

First of all, commanders need people in the squad, hardly anyone joins squads now.

• Mass invites, to get everyone around not in a squad to join you, with the command /massinvite. This sends a squad invite to all players within view, up to the squad max, or even to the entire map if there’s not enough people.
• Invited players won’t get an intrusive panel. They’ll get an invite similar to the party invite, but with a commander emblem instead a character portrait.
• Players won’t get invited from commanders they have blocked.
• Some sort of incremental bonus for joining a squad. For example, the commander gets a stacking effect every time they do a WvW event, that caps at 5 stacks. For each stack, the squad (but not the commanders themselves) get a +1% exp and karma bonus, a 2% WXP bonus, and a 0.5% magic and gold find bonus.

Then, commanders could use ways to check what people can do, and control who can join and who can stay in the squad.

• Add to the contacts panel a Squad section, to reuse the panel. The list will have all members of the squad with names, profession, WvW rank and supply.
• At the top of this list there will be a droplist to choose who can join your squad: Invite only, guild members, or anyone.
• Right clicking in names in the squad roster give options such as invite to party, invite to guild, kick from squad, block…
• Blocked players can’t join your squad.
• This list allows multiple selection, to do the same task with multiple players in the list at the same time.

And finally, a way to organize squad members in groups and give orders to those groups:

• Commander orders are given by alt-clicking the map right now. There should be a way to give a series of quick orders too: “Go get supply!”, “retreat!”, “charge!”, “wait here”, “follow me”, “destroy their siege”, “build this!”, “Take all supply here!”, “Don’t take supply from here!”, etc…
  • These could be added as the classic “Voice command” often seen in FPS games. If it’s not possible to record more voices for the player character (Nolan North is a busy guy), the generic PvP announcer could be used. The voice commands would work in PvE and PvP too, although some commands could be different (no need for an “empty supply!” order in PvE or PvP). Those that are the same would appear in the same location in the menu. One possible way to do this is a radial menu: Pressing a button shows a translucent circle on screen with the possible voice commands on its border. Click to pick the quick voice command.
• Sub-squads
  • Commanders would be able to appoint sub-commanders. To do that, they can right click on the health bar, chat name or name in the squad roster, and select “Appoint/Demote sub-commander”.
  • Once a sub-commander is appointed, commanders can select multiple names in quad roster and drag and drop them on the commander name, thus adding them to the sub-quad. Draggin a sub-commander into a sub-squad would not create a nested sub-squad, instead, that would demote the sub-commnder to normal squad member and add them to that sub-squad.
  • Sub-commanders have their own commander emblems and icons on the map that are clearly different to the commander icon (e.g.: smaller, different shape, etc). Only squad members can see sub-commander icons and emblems. Subcommanders also get an effect icon "Sub-commander: You have been appointed as sub-commander. Source: <Commander’s name>.
  • Commanders can drag and drop those icons on the map to give particular orders to those sub-commanders. For example, drag Sub-commander A’s icon to an enemy supply camp, release there, the “commander order” panel appears (the same one that appears with Alt+click), choose “attack” -> members of sub-commander A’s squad will see a commander attack icon in that camp, but other sub-squads and players not in a sub-squad won’t see that.

I’ve seen it mentioned a lot, and I just want to reiterate and show my support for it.

“Sub-squads
Commanders would be able to appoint sub-commanders. To do that, they can right click on the health bar, chat name or name in the squad roster, and select “Appoint/Demote sub-commander”.
Once a sub-commander is appointed, commanders can select multiple names in quad roster and drag and drop them on the commander name, thus adding them to the sub-quad. Draggin a sub-commander into a sub-squad would not create a nested sub-squad, instead, that would demote the sub-commnder to normal squad member and add them to that sub-squad.
Sub-commanders have their own commander emblems and icons on the map that are clearly different to the commander icon (e.g.: smaller, different shape, etc). Only squad members can see sub-commander icons and emblems. Subcommanders also get an effect icon “Sub-commander: You have been appointed as sub-commander. Source: <Commander’s name>.
Commanders can drag and drop those icons on the map to give particular orders to those sub-commanders. For example, drag Sub-commander A’s icon to an enemy supply camp, release there, the “commander order” panel appears (the same one that appears with Alt+click), choose “attack” → members of sub-commander A’s squad will see a commander attack icon in that camp, but other sub-squads and players not in a sub-squad won’t see that.”

This. It would make havocs a bit more viable, letting people know who is in charge of what, and the commander would be able to say “Lieutenant Jimmy, take your group to north and get sup” instead of “I need 5 people to get sup from north” and having none-everyone going. I’m not too great at writing, but just wanted to cast my opinion.

This is a compilation of ideas that I have adapted to work together for what would be a complete overhaul of the Commander system.(not all the ideas here are my own so credit go’s where credit is due(you know who you are))

The Tools of Command: Skills
An all new skill bar that is added on top of the current weapon skill bar that would contain Five new command skills linked to F5-F9 buttons. (none of these skills have cooldown or cast time, as the affects are visual only and are limited to the members of your squad).
F5 “Stack on Me!”
Skill Description: Call down a beam of light on you that persists for 10s or until you move and sends a center screen message to all squad members within 2000 range that says “Stack on Me”.

F6 “Attack That Target!”
Skill Description: Calls a large crossed swords icon on the skills target and sends a center screen message to all squad members within 2000 range that says “Attack That Target”.

F7 “Don’t Attack!”
Skill Description: Calls down a large stop symbol on the skills target and sends a center screen message to any squad members attacking the target that says “Stop Attacking!”

F8 “Build This”
Skill Description: Calls a large green check mark down on the target unfinished siege build site,
which persists until the site is finished or destroyed.

F9 “Don’t Build”
Skill Description: Calls down a large stop symbol on the target siege build site and sends a center screen message to any squad members building it, that says “Stop Building That”

The Voice of Command: Chat
Commanders should have there own chat channel that only they and Lieutenants and Scouts can use and has no chat suppression, but can be turned off if need be.

The Right Hand of Command: The Lieutenant
The Commander needs to have the ability to promote competent members of his squad to Lieutenant status (limited to one in ten members, above ten, in other words you have to have at least twenty members in your squad to promote a Lieutenant). Lieutenant status gives you a modified commander tag and accesses to the commander channel. This ability would be most useful for large squads (50+) as it would allow the commander to more easily split the squad and make simultaneous attacks against multiple targets, or preform pincher movements and attack Stonemist or a keep from two or more directions at once

The Eyes and Ears of Command: The Scout
The Scout, like the Lieutenant is a promotion the commander can give a member of his squad. Unlike the Lieutenant the purpose of the Scout is not to lead an additional squad, but to range far ahead of the main force and mark easy targets, evaluate defense’s, check time left on Righteous Indignation buffs and so on. As the Scout would not see much front line combat he should get rewarded for his services, so as long as he is not with in 4,000 range of the commander and would not otherwise get credit for the event, he should get a silver level participation reward for any event the commander gets credit for, as well as a special reward box for each captured camp, tower, keep or castle, that contained 3-30 Badges of Honor 1-5 loot bags, (the bags can contain anything that the loot bags dropped from enemy’s can, minus the badges), as well as the Fragments and Champ box from the castle, keep or tower lord.

The Soldiers of Command: The Squad
The squad function as it is now is next to worthless. For starters the squad has a cap of only thirty players, that needs to be changed to at least fifty players, to manage to control that many players the commander would need to set Lieutenants to control parts of the squad. So as you can see larger squad sizes wouldn’t necessarily promote zerging. Also to encourage people to join squads they should get a slight buff to WxP, karma and gold from events. (continued in next post)