Guild Wars 2

Can we start reporting commanders for AFK’ing at events until some people clear the pre. I mean.. isn’t that what the whole commander tag is for? for taking charge?

I mean, I know people consider it a vanity item, but if you let people continue using it as such there will never be a good purpose. some events like the centaurs and the shatterer have 3-6 commanders waiting at the base while you have to be lucky if someone does the pre. In most cases they are done normally, but only after a few people go and check up why the pre isn’t finishing

ppl love some drama i swear. / shrug

IPhyton.2348:

ppl love some drama i swear. / shrug

I know I may be barking at a dead tree, but if we completely mute the problem we’ll be sure it never gets better

We already have auto-kick for inactive players in some game modes. Maybe commander tags should get an auto-untag feature that automatically deactivates their tag when the commander is afk for a certain length of time.

Ayakaru.6583:

Can we start reporting commanders for AFK’ing at events until some people clear the pre. I mean.. isn’t that what the whole commander tag is for? for taking charge?

I mean, I know people consider it a vanity item, but if you let people continue using it as such there will never be a good purpose. some events like the centaurs and the shatterer have 3-6 commanders waiting at the base while you have to be lucky if someone does the pre. In most cases they are done normally, but only after a few people go and check up why the pre isn’t finishing

Commanders really aren’t expected to do anything in GW2 are they? ;-) The reality is that in most PvE the commander tag is nothing more than a rallying point. Commanders are more important in WvW, where if you’re incompetent you’ll quickly be labeled so and no one will follow you.

Ayakaru.6583:

Can we start reporting commanders for AFK’ing at events until some people clear the pre. I mean.. isn’t that what the whole commander tag is for? for taking charge?

I mean, I know people consider it a vanity item, but if you let people continue using it as such there will never be a good purpose. some events like the centaurs and the shatterer have 3-6 commanders waiting at the base while you have to be lucky if someone does the pre. In most cases they are done normally, but only after a few people go and check up why the pre isn’t finishing

Why not just tag up and go do the pre?

And maybe the commander knew that there was a group of people doing the pre and such did not feel that he was needed there. Because that could have caused a lot more people to show up for the pre, scaling up the event and it would end up taking longer than had he not gone to the pre.

That maybe he had his tag up at the event to lure people in to where the main event was because he knew the pre was getting taken care of.

There’s also the fact that not all people with a commander tag up are actually acting as commanders. Some guilds like to use commander tags as ID devices during events so that they know where everyone is.

Commander tag is very useful in a lot of ways especially in a party or in dungeons but as a leadership role it take the right person to be a true commander. Anets made a big mistake when they made the commander tag a purchased item with in game gold. it should have been some system in place to earn it. The maps are getting to clutter with commander tags with to many people with the tag that shouldn’t have it, its turn into a status symbol more than what it was intended for. There need to be a system to limit its use.

For some things, the tags should stay away from the “pre” because it will scale it up. Keeping a tag at a rallying point IS the better place for the pin to be. Just my 2 cents…

Feirlista Xv.1425:

Commander tag is very useful in a lot of ways especially in a party or in dungeons but as a leadership role it take the right person to be a true commander. Anets made a big mistake when they made the commander tag a purchased item with in game gold. it should have been some system in place to earn it. The maps are getting to clutter with commander tags with to many people with the tag that shouldn’t have it, its turn into a status symbol more than what it was intended for. There need to be a system to limit its use.

What kind of system do you propose to limit the use of commander tags?

commander tag – i want to put nominal effort into getting a tag for laziness, attention, taking donations, and running from point A to B preferably with a broken profession/build and sometimes point C to gank apposition with complete disregard of whether it’s a slaughter of either side.. oh, and afk ulgoth pre Like a Boss

cheshirefox.7026:

commander tag – i want to put nominal effort into getting a tag for laziness, attention, taking donations, and running from point A to B preferably with a broken profession/build and sometimes point C to gank apposition with complete disregard of whether it’s a slaughter of either side.. oh, and afk ulgoth pre Like a Boss

I can be getting donations while I afk at events? Hot kitten !

I agree that there are bad commanders, and other people who don’t even try and literally just wear the tag as a vanity item. But I also think part of the problem lies with (almost) everyone else.

OP I am not saying this is what you were doing, but most players get this weird tunnel vision attitude when there’s a commander on the map. Even if they know where to go and what to do and know the commander isn’t doing it (or is doing it badly) they still flock to the tag and wait to be lead where they already know they have to go, or complain that they’re not being lead there.

This happened a lot during the Marionette fight back in Season 1. There was plenty of time to get people into each path just using map chat, but even if people were saying over and over again that path X needed more people and someone else was saying path Y had too many and some should go to X no one would move unless someone switched a tag on and walked from Y to X.

But it happens in other situations too. The strangest for me was when I saw a group of people yelling at a guild because they’d seen a tag on the map, assumed it was a farming train and gone to join then found out it was a guild leader showing people where to find their bounty target. Instead of going back to what they were doing they started yelling at the commander (and then their whole guild) for doing the ‘wrong’ thing.

Admittedly sometimes it can be hard to tell someone is a bad commander right away. I’ve wasted a good 15 minutes in WvW before realising we really are running in circles because the commander doesn’t know where to go. But once you’ve realised you have a few options: go somewhere else, tag up yourself (if you’ve got one), ask someone else to tag up or simply ask if the group can change tactics.

In the OP’s example the obvious approach if you see a group of tags at the Shatterer’s spawn point and none at the pre event is to ask in map chat if anyone is doing the pre. If they say yes then you can just wait. If no one answers or they say they need help then go and do it yourself. You don’t need some random other player who happened to pay out 100-300g to give you permission.

ppl tag up there because it doesn’t harm, it make no sense to tap up at shatterer or any of the old worldbosses.

GreyWraith.8394:

We already have auto-kick for inactive players in some game modes. Maybe commander tags should get an auto-untag feature that automatically deactivates their tag when the commander is afk for a certain length of time.

This is a great idea!

When it comes down to it, Commanders aren’t breaking game rules by being tagged up and afk and shouldn’t get punished for something like this. Doing something as simple as auto-untag when there’s 5/10 minutes without any activity is a perfect solution: the afk commander doesn’t get complained at and people don’t waste their time by grouping at an afk tag.

Although commanders should know what they’re doing, they don’t necessarily have to and don’t have to follow some “unwritten commanding law”.
I’ve always wondered why people run straight to a tag in a random pve map and then complain if it’s not what they expected. Just ask if you’re curious, I see too many people waste their own time and rage about it.

That being said, it’d be great to have an option (as a commander) to toggle an event you’re leading so that people on the map could see. For example, as a commander you’d be able to right click the event in your area and select “Toggle Event/Toggle Event Chain”. Players would then see the event you’re leading below your name when they mouse you on the mini-map.

Plenty of good reasons to tag up, even if you’re not moving. I’ve seen a number already mentioned here. In my guild we use our tags a lot for GMs, so that the 100 or so members joining for the activity can more easily identify if they’re on the right map (megaserver workaround) and then figure out exactly where on the map they need to gather (bounties).

I don’t use mine much, but I’ve tagged up by request on occassion just because people really wanted to follow a coloured dorito around and there was no one else to do that job.

I don’t pay attention to the markers on my map anymore unless I’m looking for something really specific. How others choose to use their tag really doesn’t bother me.

I have to say I’ve found the tag a real boon. I seldom switch it on, but here’s how I’ve been able to help people thanks to having it:

- made a squad for an RP gathering where we had non-guild guests in the scene who needed to join the ooc commentary.

- tagged up on my mesmer when offering portals to JP tops so people could quickly find where to stand.

- tagged up in Labyrinth to form a nucleus for the zerg (only after checking there were no tags up already, and declaring in Map I was merely a magnet). Any time I did that, in a few minutes we had a good crowd and once even took down the Lich (despite my going wait stop wait bad plan … I was wrong!).

- Today I found myself in a quiet map in SW. A few of us decided to make it an events map, we taxied folks in, and I tagged up in Indigo just to show there was stuff happening there. I don’t think we lost Indigo in two entire rotations (maybe once?), though Silver and Gold was a pita that went nowhere.

I couldn’t have done any of that if I had to do a ton of WvW or other leadership things to get the tag. I’ve seen very responsible organizational use of the tags in large group areas like the Labyrinth and Silverwastes. Let’s blame the fools who follow a bad tag rather than the tag system itself, hey?