Ok, so this new squad system is quite frankly amazing. I love it. Sub groups, luitenants, shiney symbols, all great.
But theres been this really niggling annoyance that happens if the commander disconnects suddenly. In our guild we have a typical set up that if the comm disconnects, one of the luitenants takes over the raid. but there can be issues here. ( fyi, our server uses TS3 for the borderland communications, but not all PUGS join it out of preference.)
Last night was a great example. We were running a 50 man squad on WvW EB, the comm had 2 luitenants ( me and another guildie). Comm suddenly disconnects because he’s lost internet in his area and is no way gonna come back into game to command (no reflection on the game, purely a domestic internet issue).
we now have a dilema. There are 50 people in the squad with no commander tag, and the game has not figured that the leader has left for someone to tag up (this is a usual thing, and after 10 minutes the game figures it out so someone can tag up) But we are on EB during primetime, and there are 50 people without a comm.
so there are several things we could have done in the meantime;
1. get everyone to leave the old squad and join onto a new tag that needs to be made. but if you have 50 people that need to do this, and then get the comm and/or luitenants to sort out subgroups it is gonna take time. last night half the squad were formed of PUGS and wouldnt neccessarily know what the guild does in this situation. there are chances that objectives will be lost in the few minutes the squad is being sorted out, or the group gets jumped by the enemy cos everyone is focused on swapping squads.
2. wait for the 10mins for the game to figure that the original comm has left for someone else to tag up by popping a symbol over the sub-comm’s head. (and pray that the squad doesnt get trolled by someone sneaking in a tag-up) problem is, the symbols are not a dorito that everyone recognises as a commander on the map. (then we have to get people flipping TS channels letting other borders know whats going on)
I would like to suggest some changes/add ons to the squad system, and would like to hear peoples opinions whether this would work.
1. make a way in which the commander can assign sub-comm duties to luitenants. So, usually a commander would assign luitenant duties to someone they trust to sort out the sub-groups, so why not put a tick box for commanders to allocate luitenants to take over the squad in an emergency as a sub-comm? a choice tick box for the comms to say “i’ve DC’d and have no way of allocating another squad leader, but one of my luitenants have the coice to take over straight away”…. ok, so people are thinking “but luitenants could take advantage of this” again, it would be a choice for the commander to tick up one of the luitenants, someone that is trusted, and I’m sure not every commander will do this. but in the case of organised raiding, it would stop a lot of annoyances.
2. being able to choose what colour tags for commanders that take over. its plain annoying when people were following a blue tag (which our server usually indicates as an open invite raid) and then the next person that leads ends up using a red tag.