Guild Wars 2

MadRabbit.3179:

To be honest, as a commander, if I had some way to just kick you off the map, I would just do that rather than call you out.

Why the hell should everyone listen to Commanders just because they paid 300 G for a tag?
Until Commander tag’s are earned not bought, Stick that tag where the sun don’t shine.

I would like to point out the block and move on does not apply to this. As mentioned before there may be multiple people, or a squad member doing the invite as the option allows for open invites. Unless it is the squad commander is the one inviting, blocking does nothing.

I’m going to reply to this, so it is long and long-winded.

MadRabbit.3179:

DS is really sensitive to scaling, so not being in a squad makes it difficult to get the initial headcounts to make sure the lanes are even.

Not that hard to count people near you at the start, and to politely ask that some people go elsewhere, etc. This was all done before the squad system was changed, and even still after.

Once you hit the towers, most commands issued by commanders are done in squad, because you are coordinating between two groups in two different locations. Not being in squad makes you suspectible to not hearing orders and messing it up for everyone.

You have to understand if you use a zerg clockwise rotation stragety in the towers, with optimal groups, you are still mostly going to hit each preserver spot just as they respawn. There is little margin for error.

Even after the squad change, often another person would tag up, or they would use the apple, to do the champions. Besides, It isn’t exactly difficult to know where the zerg is. It really shouldn’t be difficult to go on a merry-go-round, smack a single mob, and avoid being overwhelmed by adds. This was done countless times before the new squad became an actual thing. And it isn’t like squad chat somehow magically makes people listen and pay attention when they otherwise never paid attention to /say or /map

Having 5 people not in squad who aren’t listening and go with the boss group means 5 less DPS for preservers and the boss getting scaled up. The group will just inevitably fall behind as more and more trash mobs build up and eventually drop a preserver. That is a huge set back and recovering from it is difficult, particularly when you are dealing with people who aren’t in squad and just flat out not ignoring.

And being in squad doesn’t prevent that either. One of the few DS’s I ever saw have issues, were caused entirely by the people that were in squad. The tag had moved a handful of people to a subsquad and told them to do the boss. It was a disaster. After that person tagged down, someone else took over, an apple was used for the boss group, and everything went fine. My not being in squad had no effect on any of that. I rarely do the bosses, anyways.

Lot of people are just looking to fly under the radar and get carrie in events while they just autoattack and talk about cats with their BFFs. You can’t do that anymore in HoT and you are potentially sabotaging the experience of everyone.

Being in squad actually still makes that easier. You have 25 or 30 people in squad, easy to hide amongst them, and do exactly what people did before. It isn’t exactly hard to follow a zerg and press a few buttons, people still spam everything. I see that behavior just as much as always did. Of course that means cc’s aren’t available when they are actually needed. Squads have not changed that one bit. I have no issues even while going around with the zerg mindlessly killing preservers and avoiding dying. If I do die, so what? Waypoint and run back. Even the tag dies at times so it isn’t like dying means anything. Except when the tag dies sometimes people tend to scatter.

Don’t want to CC a break bar? You just added 10 minutes to the matriarch fight in VB or caused the vinetooth in AB to fail.

You act like one or even a few people somehow cannot possibly know how to use cc’s to break a bar, and that somehow magically a squad can do so. The funny thing, when I have done matriarch, i’m typically one of the few actually doing cc’s. Which of course means the bar does not get broken. Are there others doing it too? Of course, but no where near enough. Far too often I’ve seen people reviving the dead as well, which is a recipe for disaster in HoT (didn’t need a squad to figure that out). You know, the same things that have always happened, and that squads do not ‘fix’.

Don’t want to join a squad? You just scaled up the DS event and caused a preserver to be dropped, because you weren’t able to hear the commander’s orders.

Not being in a squad has no correlation to whether or not my presence has any effect. Joining a squad isn’t going to change how events scale (by the way, when the 2 events pop while doing the lanes, and the tag goes to the one that is sensitive to #‘s, guess which one can get scaled beyond possibility of completing? If I see the tag go that way, I’m most definitely going the opposite. Squad won’t be able to save those situations if everyone follows the tag, will it?

Don’t want to listen at all to commanders, even in map chat? You just popped an ocotovine before everyone was ready and potentially caused everything to reset.

Wow, I didn’t know that somehow being in squad makes everyone somehow do exactly as they are supposed to during that, and that it’s all those evil people not in squad that are the ones that make it fail.
Seriously, whether or not people are in squad will not make them listen or pay attention anymore than they did before the whole ‘gotta be in squad to do anything’.

To be honest, as a commander, if I had some way to just kick you off the map, I would just do that rather than call you out. If I am trying to lead something for the benefit of everyone, I am not going to jeopardize it for the sake of people who don’t want to contribute. I dislike having to use public shame as a tool, but what other alternative do you have when people just don’t want to do what needs to be done even after repeated polite messages?

Glad to know where you stand. It’s amazing how at times I and others have done as much, if not more than, players in the squad, yet we are the ones ‘not contributing’ and if someone in the squad isn’t listening to the commander, it’s those not in the squad at all, that know precisely what to do and are doing it, that are actually at fault.

Here is some shocking news then. Seeing what a commander says isn’t necessary. Commanders aren’t even actually necessary to do anything in the game, not even WvW, except that a number of people want a tag to follow and will leave if there isn’t one. Commanders are just other players that spent 100g or 300g. In fact at times it’s commanders that are doing things “wrong”, which itself is actually subjective, like throwing time warps on Gerents, as well as most mesmer wells, before the Gerent scaling was changed. Of course I’d have to agree having a breakbar you aren’t supposed to CC is a bit messed up, but hey, I didn’t need to be in a squad to learn that it’s more ideal to not cc it. Of course that still gets spammed in map chat quite often so I guess that point is moot.

So to sum up the tl;dr version, being in squad doesn’t magically make you the best player? Mind blowing!!

Report anyone that harasses you for harassment.

Just because someone paid 300g for a commander tag it doesn’t mean they’re in any way qualified to command you to do anything. Commander tags are a stupid, broken system in the first place for exactly this reason.

Anyone giving you grief for choosing not to join a squad on a public map is just on a power trip and feels that their 300 gold entitles them to order people around as they please. What that tag actually means is you have the ability to invite people to follow you, and tools to more effectively lead those that choose to do so.

Putting on a commander tag doesn’t make you the boss of anyone. People that choose to join your squad choose to follow your instructions. People that don’t aren’t obligated to do so.

Furthermore, people are not obligated to contribute to the map meta. There are a lot of other things going on on the maps. If there aren’t enough people around targeting the meta, then the meta doesn’t get completed. This doesn’t mean commanding gives you a sovereign right to draft everyone you see in to your command structure.

PvE commanders are, more often than not, completely useless. The meta events are designed in such a way that maps can (and do, regularly) complete metas without any commanders at all. The difference is that in one case someone has elected themselves “boss of the map” and in the other the whole map is organically cooperating as a group of equals through map chat. The maps themselves tell you where to stand, and what to do. Commanders are superfluous.