Guild Wars 2

Do people think that Commander Seal(s) should be removed from the game entirely [as a solution to getting rid of the zergs]?

The thing about this “tool” is that it is the quintessential reason behind zerging in both WvW and PvE (not sPvP, because people with commander seals on there just get laughed at). People gather on the Commander, groups conjoin with the Commander, and objectives are steered by the Commander.

I personally think it’s time that these things can go “bye-bye” in lieu of something better and less map-wide. A tag specifically for Guild Leader would be a good start in coordinating guild members within a single map that only those members [who are representing at the time] can see.

The simpler solution is to go back to the olden ways of just calling out locations of where people want to gather together, if they’re so going to, in map chat. Parties are also a great way to keep up with multiple people, though limited by the number 5 that it is.

Thoughts?
Suggestion?
Ideas?

P.S. Special Note: Please don’t bring any egotistical trolling/flaming wars into this thread about “Commanders on power trips” and “jelly non-commanders w/out 100g”. This thread isn’t about that and is more about possible solution to the zerg problem.

Because you personally don’t like it, you want it nerfed?

If you think commander icons should be a guild-only thing, then I’m grateful you have no influence in the development of the game. Commander tags are very useful in WvW.

I understand they have a point in WvW but in PvE they should be disabled.
The only time they could be useful in PvE is during a guild event, in which case the guild leaders should be able to enable their own Guild Commander Tag.

No.

Not only will removing Commander Tags remove their intended utility, it is not a solution to the zerging problem at all (if it is even a problem). Zerg can happen regardless of whether there is a Commander Tag there or not. All people need to do in FS is shout “Where is the zerg?” and then follow the zerg train.

It’s the only really expensive thing worth buying, other than cultural armor (and gems, at launch, when I was able to get three characters slots off what I made by leveling to 80).

Over the past few weeks, in both the Pavillion and the invasion events, I’ve run with commanderless mobs more often than not. Open map chat, “Where’s the zerg?”
Removing commander tags won’t change that.
If zergs even need to be stopped. (I think they’re fine as long as everyone is polite and non-abusive.)

They shouldn’t be removed. They are useful. Anet should, however, allow users to show their support for specific commanders, and to affiliate themselves with a specific commander while said commander has his tag active.

For example, if Smooth Penguin was a commander and I agreed with his/her methods of leading, I would be able to somehow upvote their leadership abilities by adding my name to the list of supporters. Alternatively, if Penguin started to lose favor, I could remove my support (not picking on you Penguin, just an example).

Also being able to team up with a commander in WvW would be helpful. Give commanders different tag colors. This would allow for larger groups to follow orders from a commander based on their tag color, allowing for multiple groups. Sure, you can mouse-over a commanders tag now, but with two or three on the map, it’s much faster to just look for the green tag and go to it. (To work properly, this would need to be invisible to opposing servers in WvW, and would add some difficulty for spies in communicating to the enemy).

The fact that anyone with plastic can go and buy a commander tag automatically defeats the purpose of it. I could go and buy a commander tag, but everyone knows pretty kitten well I’d be a horrific leader, if not the worst ever. Being able to show support for your commander would give a small amount of viability to the persons trustworthyness (even though this could on some levels be gamed). Having multiple colors for tags would allow for WvW and PvE groups to split up and work more effectively.

tl;dr: they shouldn’t be removed, but improved

Personally I think their usage has been fine thus far.

In my experience in WvW commanders have been doing a decent job overall of leading large groups to at least try to accomplish some things. Even the bad ones.

In PvE, all it really does is give players a point of interest.

In either case it’s up to players following these tags around.

I will say that in PvE it shouldn’t be removed for the sake of replacing it with guild only tags as Guild Missions aren’t just for guilds as ALL guild missions thus far are PUBLIC. Any player can complete parts of any guild mission and these tags help with a little direction. They really aren’t that different than someone calling out a waypoint and giving direction through mapchat, party chat and whispers.

If your problem is with the zerg, the way things are tags wouldn’t change a thing. It’s not hard to find out where a zerg is heading once you learn the routes and god forbid you ask someone.

It was intended as a money sink for WvW as PvE has icy runestones for legendary items. The game needs more money sinks. Not less.

I am actually for having different colored tags, but not because a blue tag usually has a zerg with it. I’m for different color tags to serve different purposes. Small squads should get one type of tag. Guilds should have their own in house tags for guild only events.

In wvw though, since the maps are so small…probably wouldn’t make a difference.

People want to show off prestige in wvw. I get that. I would definitely be for having badges awarded to players to show off accomplishments (much like the star for world complete) to other players. Ranks only being able to be shown to adversaries kind of diminishes my want for them. I want to be able to show that to everyone all the time.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like the perks of ranks…specialist in certain areas.
My 2cents anyway.

No, it’s fine as it is. Why do people want to remove zerg farmers? Why the heck is it too bad to farm in this game? I don’t understand…

My only complaint about a commander tag, whether they’re good or bad, is that when they log in and stand directly on a waypoint, and they don’t move, I can’t click on it, only their name.

Other than that, if they bother you so badly, don’t go where they are. Simple, really.

Would making tags automatically turn off in cities like LA be better?
I don’t know about you but it can be an eye sore when you’ve got AFK commanders all over the city minimap.
That being said I don’t mind too much, I’d rather the devs focus on other more important content rather than something as small as commander tags.

No.

I think the game would be a lot better if people minded their own business. Though blocking tags and whatnot would be fine.

Hint: If you join someone’s squad, it renders all other tags invisible.

Commander tags only encourage or enable zerging for those inclined to zerg. If you do not want to zerg you can choose to not follow a commander.

I am concerned that this topic comes down to someone who doesn’t want to zerg asking that it be made more difficult for others to do so.

Neural.1824:

tl;dr: they shouldn’t be removed, but improved

+10000000000000

Yes they are very useful!
It’s quite logical that the only way to resolve this issue is add a option to the game, where we can see them, or not!
Like the one they add related to instrument music…we can listen them…or not! Quite simple and all ppl happy!

Draconicus.7564:

Yes they are very useful!
It’s quite logical that the only way to resolve this issue is add a option to the game, where we can see them, or not!
Like the one they add related to instrument music…we can listen them…or not! Quite simple and all ppl happy!

I’m not happy about that, on my server I was known as the famous midget trumpeter, now people will not hear my beautiful music and I will not get tips.
How am I supposed to go home and feed my midget children? And quell the rage of my abusive midget wife, how?!?!?!?!?

i would like to see an option for a global/squad/party/guild tag

having to ctrl+t on the leader for a target tag in a party/guild is a bit annoying when you want to run separate from the main com tag

don’t get rid of the tags, they need to be heavily improved.

He’s trolling. I know it.

Commander tags are something that were out in game TO bring players together in a large force to accomplish tasks. The zerg is part of the game, as already stated by ANet.

Commander tags were very lazily slopped together by Anet. The tool set is beyond shallow / uninspired.

The only reason I even bothered buying one was so people could see were stuff was going on in PvE.

I’d really like to see something like permanent drawing on the minimap with different colors (an eraser tool aswell for obvious reasons), and a /commanders channel for each zone. A PROPER raid party were I can see at least 4 other squads on the map and a /raid or /warband were all the squads under my “command” can talk to each other.

These small changes would make commander 10000x better and honestly should of been in the game from the start.

Zepidel.5349:

I’d really like to see something like permanent drawing on the minimap with different colors (an eraser tool aswell for obvious reasons), and a /commanders channel for each zone.

Unfortunately commanders are also players, so that means you have some griefers underneath them who will draw some very nice pictures on your map (and don’t erase them at all). Not to mention the /commander-spam you open yourself to..

Commander icons need to be reviewed and improved, but certainly not removed..

Commander icons are a real problem in the game because anybody can just buy one. That means that the commander doesn’t necessarily have any about clue what he is doing. A troll can truly interfere with the progression and outcome of events in both PvE and WvW by simply putting up his commander icon and lead all of the drones around by the nose doing counter-productive things.

I think all commander tags need to be taken away from players and their 100 gold investment refunded. Then they should be made available based on merit. They should be every bit as difficult to acquire as a legendary (but without the rediculous ability to just buy one on the TP), requiring a great deal of experience in the game to get.

There should be two types of commander tags, one for WvW, and one for PvE. They should only be displayable in their prospective areas. No tags should be displayable in cities. Individual players should also have the option to not display those tags on their map and mini-map.

Tribio.8531:

Zepidel.5349:

I’d really like to see something like permanent drawing on the minimap with different colors (an eraser tool aswell for obvious reasons), and a /commanders channel for each zone.

Unfortunately commanders are also players, so that means you have some griefers underneath them who will draw some very nice pictures on your map (and don’t erase them at all). Not to mention the /commander-spam you open yourself to..

Commander icons need to be reviewed and improved, but certainly not removed..

Your not forced to stay in their party…? Only commanders would see /commanders?

what are you even on about

Pins should be far more expensive, because everyone and their grandmother can afford one, but also give some sort of bonus for being the commander like some sort of squad siege bonuses or something like that

Personally I find commander tags easy to ignore.

If you’re not interested in what they’re doing, or you think they’re doing a bad job you don’t have to follow them. You can go and do your own thing.

The people who do mindlessly zerg after the commander would do that anyway, they’d just be spamming map chat in the process.

Zepidel.5349:

Your not forced to stay in their party…? Only commanders would see /commanders?

what are you even on about

1. You mean squad, not party.. And squad chat is the least used channel of them all.. So only showing the drawing of the commander to people in his squad? Well, he can make some nice drawings for him/herself then..

2. I’m a commander, so griefing commanders in commander-chat would bother me..

no, do not remove the tags, rather, anet should change the way they are acquired.

Tribio.8531:

Zepidel.5349:

Your not forced to stay in their party…? Only commanders would see /commanders?

what are you even on about

1. You mean squad, not party.. And squad chat is the least used channel of them all.. So only showing the drawing of the commander to people in his squad? Well, he can make some nice drawings for him/herself then..

2. I’m a commander, so griefing commanders in commander-chat would bother me..

1. …what? i cant understand ur syntax, are you suggesting a commander might draw phallic symbols all over the map? Then I’m pretty sure people would leave his platoon/whatever you want to call it.

2. If you cant handle criticism / dealing with trolls then you probably shouldn’t be a commander.

Zepidel.5349:

1. …what? i cant understand ur syntax, are you suggesting a commander might draw phallic symbols all over the map? Then I’m pretty sure people would leave his platoon/whatever you want to call it.

Indeed, that was what I was suggesting.. :-)

And since you mentioned that only people in the commander squad can see the drawing, and I counter by saying that the squad is rarely used.. So most of the time as a commander you are on your own in the squad (although there is a zergball behind you following every move), making the drawing on the map not that effective..

Zepidel.5349:

2. If you cant handle criticism / dealing with trolls then you probably shouldn’t be a commander.

Constructive criticism I can handle very well, I love to get that.. Trolling, I can handle also.. Report + Block.. However, map and team chat can be quite strange when you start blocking commanders.. :-)

The OP has a moot point, since the ANet devs have already said they won’t be removing the Commander Seals since folks already paid a lot of money for them.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some new functionality did get added to them, or if guilds with enough reputation gained access to an ability to have their leaders show up as a different color hat/symbol on the map.

Frankly, the only way that would increase the overall competence of commanders is if they were voted on some how. That is never going to happen because the game just isn’t set up for that.

Nageth.5648:

Frankly, the only way that would increase the overall competence of commanders is if they were voted on some how. That is never going to happen because the game just isn’t set up for that.

This. Making it cost more might (briefly) reduce the number of commanders but it wouldn’t make them any better. And if anything it would increase the probability of people getting it as a symbol to show off that they used to have 100g. (Or however much it would be raised to.)

The only way you could restrict it to people who know how to use it and will do so responsibly is to change it to a system where other players have to nominate you to become a commander and you need a certain number of nominations to get it.

And even then you’d probably have loads of people getting their friends/guildmates/other people who want to be commanders to give them free votes so they can get it to show off.

You also have to allow for the fact that different people have very different ideas of what a commander does and what their icon is for. Some people do treat it entirely as a marker to say “the/a zerg is here”, others expect the commander to actually lead them (and if they’re the commander they expect to be listened to). And within that they want/expect different levels of instruction. You’re never going to get everyone to agree on what commanders should be doing and how they should do it so trying to force them all to do the same thing is counter-productive.

Hope you know that if you join a commander’s squad, it will hide all other tags in the zone.

There would have to be a set number of commanders so it wouldn’t inflate and be used as a status symbol. The commanders being able to deputize people (Lts or whatever) would potentially help deal with increased responsibilities during big events. But yeah, not going to happen because it would have to be a huge system to work at all (basically, look at Eve).

DeumReaper.5821:

Hope you know that if you join a commander’s squad, it will hide all other tags in the zone.

The problem is the competence of the commanders. Not the number.

Happyfool.8951:

no, do not remove the tags, rather, anet should change the way they are acquired.

I have to agree with this. Such things should need to be earned, one should have to prove leadership. Not simply purchased. 100g does not a leader make.

I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad ones… and some of the bad ones I would like to string up and beat like a pinata…

azureai.9764:

The OP has a moot point, since the ANet devs have already said they won’t be removing the Commander Seals since folks already paid a lot of money for them.

I wouldn’t be surprised if some new functionality did get added to them, or if guilds with enough reputation gained access to an ability to have their leaders show up as a different color hat/symbol on the map.

My question was a gauge of player opinion about the current zerg-state of the game and how, based on my opinion, the Commander Seals contribute to it. It’s to see whether or not others agree with that being the case, and to see if removal is a solution to the issue or if there are other solutions to be had. With that affect, it is in no way “moot”.

See below with an explanation of the same issue with the voting system. Larger guilds becoming the main thing, while smaller guilds pushed aside; no matter if the smaller guilds have a far superior commander than that of the larger guilds or not.

P.S. It wouldn’t be to hard to remove all commander seals from the game and send in-game mail with 100g to everyone who has had them. Or, even refund like 50g, which is 50% considering that players have made use of them (or none at all considering that they’ve been used).

Nageth.5648:

Frankly, the only way that would increase the overall competence of commanders is if they were voted on some how. That is never going to happen because the game just isn’t set up for that.

The assumed issue with that is the guild politic shenanigans that’ll go on with it. Part of a large guild? That guild leader will REQUIRE you, the member, to Up-Vote every designated Commander (including the leader him/herself). Even if they’re a horrible commander, in a guild of 100, they’ve already got 100 Up-Votes just to start. It’ll be less about popularity and more about how many more guild members you can “persuade” to Up-Vote.

Another thought on this, though, would be to instead have Commander’s Rank/Achievement Score (for WvW and PvE respectively) right next to their tag name. This would indicate how much dedication, time, and effort that particular Commander has put into the game. The higher the Rank/Achievement Score, the more knowledgeable that Commander is likely to be about the game.

Ex.
There’s two Commanders on a map. One Commander in the northern part has 6,000 Achievement points. The other Commander in the southern section pops up in the map chat telling everyone to “on my pin!”, this Commander has 1,500 Achievement Points. Which one should players follow?

Take that example above, and replace Commander A with a “General” rank for WvW and Commander B with a “Soldier” rank for WvW.

yes, remove them and give me back my 100g, worst waste of money ever

The voting system could not be a one person one vote system and it would have to be anonymous otherwise, yes, there would be shenanigans to get bad people into power.

I disagree that we can use achievement points as a proxy for competence. It has the exact same problems as using gold as a proxy. It is very easy to get a high amount of achievement points and have very very little experience doing the job. For instance, I have quite a few achievements points. I am under no delusion that I’d be a good commander. I have no idea how to manage open field combat in WvW let alone allocate resources. And I don’t really pay enough attention to meta events in PvE to understand the intricacies in enough detail to lead a group of people well. So I like the game and play it so I have achievement points but I don’t have the competence to lead people because I don’t practice it (there is no achievement for leading people well in this game).

Commander Seals should be replaced with Commander Walruses.

They should be merit based and the merits should be dependent on the game mode. A good WvW commander isn’t necessarily a good PvE commander and vice versa. All those that bought a commander tag should be refunded, but they should be something more than just spending money. In WvW the current method of buying the tag is fine, over time players come to learn to listen or ignore certain commanders, in PvE not so much.

So they should be a different requirement for PvE in other to display it. It should cost 200 gold, certain achievement threshold AND they should be different types of commanders.

Guild commanders, assigned by the guild master used influence to buy it. Only seen by guildies. works in both PvE and WvW.

WvW commanders: 100g (getting gold is harder in WvW than in PvE, certain amount of WvW achievement completed + certain amount of tokens, usage by all members of the account and or requires certain WvW skill points to unlock). Only works in WvW. So being a commander would be a skill line on the WvW skill traits and will require players to dump points into it if they want to be a commander.

PvE commanders: 200g, certain achievement treshold usable by every toon on the account.

I feel like these 3 options will cut down on the amount of noise commanders, while not punishing guilds that need it for organization purposes.

I watched half the zerg follow one commander over a cliff running to an invasion event in Fireheart the other day. I lolled. I don’t know if he did it intentionally as a troll but the blind follow-the-leader mentality needs improvement not the commander system. Most are great. The good ones do not just show the tag for prestige anymore. It can be a lot of responsibility. I know a few who bought one early on and now regret the choice because they soon learned they were not good enough to be good leaders or no longer wanted to be bothered all of the time .

No. Those tags really help in the right hands. For example in an invasion yday, we had no commanders and the entire group was in discord with everyone shouting out random locations. On the other hand, you also have invasions where you can clearly see who’s an actual commander and who’s really not, as you got 3 commanders following another commander.

So, don’t remove them, but make it such that you need to earn them through a more appropriate system than just gold.

The only thing I’d like to see gone on commanders is when in main cities, all other commander tags are just fine.

I think commanders should be able to form raid parties but not able to display tag on map. Let me elaborate my idea:

There should be more ranks in wvw hierarchy, like generals and sergeants. And chain of command, which could be solved with specific chat channels or map signaling viewable by certain ranks.
So say sergeant can form 10 ppl raid, while commander can enlist certain number of lower ranks and communicate to them. Same way generals could lead huge armies with help of commanders to coordinate them.
This could break one motherzerg concept and enable smaller groups to successfuly communicate and coordinate on map, possibly opening new dimension in wvw warmachine.
Ranks should be earned with wxp so most dedicated wvw-ers would naturally have highest ranks.
We have castles and siege machines, only thing we are missing in this war are ranks and more coordinated warfare instead of loctuses moving across map and devouring things.

edit: it is slightly off-topic but i got inspired while reading this thread so i just let it out here

Well, there went those 100g’s…

Wxp is a terrible indicator of command ability, as that’s best earned by… zerging.

Truth is, no matter what arbitrary criteria we use, there will be problems. A commander can prove themselves… by commanding. There is no other way, and it’s up to each individual to decide to accept this person as a leader or not.

Respect is something no amount of gold can buy and it certainly cannot be determined via any checklist. Every experienced wvw’er knows the commanders that are noteworthy on their server. There are certain commanders that I know are worthy because I’ve fought alongside them and have seen what they can do. I don’t really give a kitten what other people think they deserve it or not.

It’s already fine the way it is. Everyone else can put up or shut up.

ArchonWing.9480:

Wxp is a terrible indicator of command ability, as that’s best earned by… zerging.

Truth is, no matter what arbitrary criteria we use, there will be problems. A commander can prove themselves… by commanding. There is no other way, and it’s up to each individual to decide to accept this person as a leader or not.

Respect is something no amount of gold can buy and it certainly cannot be determined via any checklist. Every experienced wvw’er knows the commanders that are noteworthy on their server. There are certain commanders that I know are worthy because I’ve fought alongside them and have seen what they can do. I don’t really give a kitten what other people think they deserve it or not.

It’s already fine the way it is. Everyone else can put up or shut up.

Thank you for this. I personally organized Gate of Madness for WvW around launch and, with the help of some volunteer commanders and a loaner Mumble, we were able to bring the server up 4 whole tiers until several guilds left due to incompetent pugs. I still command today, and many of these ideas would leave me in the dust as I’ve only achieved a WvW rank of 76 due to the fact that I DO NOT ZERG. I zerg to level alts. Once I reach 80, however, on those alts I go back to running havoc which I find far more enjoyable than spamming 1 in a mess of zerg. I’ve made it a point among commanders on my server that you don’t earn a tag by buying it. People won’t acknowledge you. You earn your tag by being a successful commander. I’ve let many new commanders join my party and tag up while shadowing me to show them the ropes while the zerg believes that they’re the ones commanding to give them a good start, and I refuse to do this with anyone who won’t give WvW their 100%. If you’re a troll commander, half of the server is already blocking you and you might have 3 pugs follow you at any given time.

For example, last night we had our server’s biggest troll commander tag up and run around getting our pugs killed on RESET NIGHT. As much as I hate this behavior and wish that they never had a tag, I cannot do anything (that’s not against the rules) about it. We made it a point to ignore that commander and went about our business. He ported back to spawn to do what I can only imagine is cry because his troll failed. This is the human factor which controls who is and who isn’t a commander. I can approach any commander on our server on any of my characters and say, “Hey, it’s Ferrum.” and they’ll know exactly who I am because I’ve earned my tag. Putting in precautions to avoid letting people command is silly, and the way commanding is earned shouldn’t be changed. If I’m in LA and I see a commander with their tag up, I ask them to tag down out of courtesy because we on GoM don’t appreciate vanity commanders. I usually get a , “Sorry, forgot to tag down. Thanks!” and we go about our business.

Point is, you have to take care of things yourself. Don’t wait for ANet to solve your problems, because they’re here now and they aren’t something ingrained into the game. The commander system is fine, other than the fact that we may want some more quality of life perks to help us command.

It’s not how you get your tag, it’s how you earn it and what you do with it.

Dunno, i honestly beleve that expanding command chain and giving people more ranks to follow would bring some depth to wvw. As it is now, its usually mega zerg running around and few small uncoordinated groups operating on map. And few roamers on top of that.
What that means is, usually one keep attacked at a time, one camp fliped for supply (and 70% of zerg cant even resupply), so you can either attack one objective with zerg or defend one objective, and its same on opposing side.
I think things would be alot more fun if we had more coordinated groups acting, creating a feeling of war with armies clashing on different places at same time, some pushing into enemy teritory, some defending keeps, others bringing in supply to fronts etc. Its my vision of perfect wvw, and probably just a pipe dream.

I certainly think it would make WvW better, but I get too much use out of my tag in PvE to part with it willingly.

If zerging wasn’t the game’s intent, this might be a legit request. However, as the game revolves entirely around zerging and grinding mobs for loot- the OP’s request is obviously something nobody wants.