Guild Wars 2

Judging from the price of items you can buy with badges of honor: 1 badge roughly equals 1 silver. That would mean that the price of the commander book would be 10000 badges.

I would argue it is easier and faster to get 100 g, than 10000 badges.

I think the original idea of commander title is that it should be expensive. And that many people would contribute gold so that one of them could become a commander. This happened in my guild. I got donations and loan to get my commander title. I have paid it back.

By the way, if you have a lot of skill points, you can convert into gold by crafting the Anomaly = the best-looking focus item in the game. I did that to pay back my debt. You need 250 skill points, 100 mystic coins and 250 ectos. You get about 50 g profit. If you craft two Anomalies you get the commander title with just few minutes of work (assuming you can borrow the money for the ectos).

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Anomaly

Many people have complained that the commander title can be obtained too easily. E.g. those who farm dungeons can obtain the 100 g in mere 10 hours of CoF p1 farming. Thus you see people who are showing off their commander title even when they are not actually meaning to lead anybody.

Suggestion:
Change the commander title so that it still costs 100 g or 10000 badges, but also requires certain basic level of WvWvW achievement points e.g. minimum of 40 of them. WXP is a bad idea, because WXP is character bound. Now if a veteran of WvWvW who already has a commander title for one character, he would need to grind enough WXP to unlock commander title for his alt character. Thus WvWvW related achievements are better, because they are account bound.

Half your post is about how easy it is to get 100g if someone really wanted to grind for it in PvE. I know 100g would be fairly easy to get if i grinded something for 2 hours a day for 5 days. But thats not the point. Just because grinding out 100g (or receiving gold as a gift/loan) is easier than collecting 10,000 badges doesn’t mean that getting Commander with gold should be the only option.

My point is that Badges of Honor are a major currency in WvW, even more so after the March patch. Other than random mobs, anything you kill has a chance to drop badges… invaders, lords, guard, mercs, etc. You get badges from JP chests, event chests from Overgrown Grub and Arboreal Spirit, and even map completion. Its hard not to do something productive in WvW and not get a badge for doing it. And they are used to buy everything in WvW: armor, weapons, trinkets, and siege. But you currently can’t buy Commander with it. That should change.

I disagree with having to have a certain WXP rank to purchase it though. Lots of people play multiple toons in WvW like myself. My main is my Ele and i’m always at the front of the pack diving into the enemy. But i also play my mesmer who has far less time in WvW than my Ele. I use her when i want to use more tactics in taking keeps, using portal to help move golems and sneaking people in and our of places. When i’m in the mood to play tactically, i’m more inclined to want to “command” people than i would with my Ele. If the option to buy a Commander book with badges after the next major patch, I’d probably get it on my mesmer. WXP shouldn’t dictate someone’s experience at being a “good commander”. Nothing stops a noob from having a high WXP by traveling in a zerg train 100% of the time, which just happens to be the main tactic my server faces in WvW now. It’s WXP grinding at it’s best, and boring. But anyway…

Another good reason to let people buy a Commander Book with Badges is that no matter how you get the 10,000 badges (farming JP’s, hanging in zerg trains, etc), it takes ALOT of WvW hours to get it. Unlike gold which can be bought outright with real money. If someone puts in the that many hours to collect badges, they should be allowed to buy the book regardless of that toons current WvW rank. Its about the person’s ability to command, not the character’s. The person put in the time and effort and should be able to decide which of his toons he wants to command from.

Agree. Doing well at PvE has no relationship to doing well in WvW.

I agree. It makes no sense to be able to literally buy yourself the rank of Commander. If it were won by trading Badges of Honor (I’ll leave it to others to quibble over the exact number), at least it’s proof that you’ve spent some significant amount of time in WvW and have met with at least some success. I know it’s not a perfect system for “proving” you know how to strategize and organize people, but it’s sure as heck a lot better than simply being able to farm the “dumbest” currency in the game. They way things are now, you can make Commander without even knowing what WvW is.

Deniara Devious.3948:

By the way, if you have a lot of skill points, you can convert into gold by crafting the Anomaly = the best-looking focus item in the game. I did that to pay back my debt. You need 250 skill points, 100 mystic coins and 250 ectos. You get about 50 g profit. If you craft two Anomalies you get the commander title with just few minutes of work (assuming you can borrow the money for the ectos).

Um… what? Why on earth would you do this, when you can just sell your Ectos on the trading post? They sell for about 22 silver each.

Unless I’ve done my math wrong, 250 × 22 silver = 55 gold. Why are you burning 250 skill points and 100 mystic coins on this?

Fyrebrand.4859:

Deniara Devious.3948:

By the way, if you have a lot of skill points, you can convert into gold by crafting the Anomaly = the best-looking focus item in the game. I did that to pay back my debt. You need 250 skill points, 100 mystic coins and 250 ectos. You get about 50 g profit. If you craft two Anomalies you get the commander title with just few minutes of work (assuming you can borrow the money for the ectos).

Um… what? Why on earth would you do this, when you can just sell your Ectos on the trading post? They sell for about 22 silver each.

Unless I’ve done my math wrong, 250 × 22 silver = 55 gold. Why are you burning 250 skill points and 100 mystic coins on this?

I didn’t have those ectos. I borrowed them from a guild mate. He got paid back during the same day when I sold the Anomaly. And for your information: I still don’t have 250 ectos. Besides skill points are easy to obtain. I still got well over 100 skill points on my engineer, well over 200 on my warrior and so on. All my level 80 characters have plenty of excess skill points. And since I am not interested in getting a legendary, why not to burn some skill points?

Special K.8143:

I disagree with having to have a certain WXP rank to purchase it though. Lots of people play multiple toons in WvW like myself.

You must have horribly misread my suggestion. I told that using WXP would be a BAD idea. WXP is character bound, which is a stupid thing in itself. It doesn’t encourage people to use multiple characters in WvWvW. Once again Anet designers to encourage monoculture instead of versatility.

I suggested to use WvWvW achievement points, which are account bound. Thus e.g. if you have been capturing hundreds of enemy towers, defended your keeps, slapped dolyaks etc. you will have more WvWvW achievement points for ALL your toons.

I disagree with having to obtain any prerequisites beyond having the 100g or 10,000 Badges to buy the book.

The WvW lacks a good “commander interface”.
Buying an item that is supposed to signify an ability to do something well is wrong in the first place.
If you want to be good at anything, you have to practice.

I would like to see the whole commander system redesigned:
In WvW, clicking on a tower, or whatever can be captured/defended/etc, would bring up a small interface with several tactical options.
Clicking on either of these would issue an event which players could decide to join.
The aftermath of this event would then accumulate “commander experience” to the player that triggered the event. How this is calculated is of course debatable.

Now, this would of course generate a lot of spam if everyone started tons of “commander events”, so there would have to be some sort of “commander tryout” cap.
Perhaps this is where Badges or wxp would come in to play, or simply a voting system by the current players in WvW.

Then again, once you done some rounds in WvW, you tend to be able to sort out which commanders do a good job.
Also, commanders have different playstyles, so you might favor some over others.

Still, I don’t like the concept of buying “status”.
We have schools after all.

Deniara Devious.3948:

I would argue it is easier and faster to get 100 g, than 10000 badges.

Not without going to PvE. It’s not that hard to farm 10000 badges in WvW, actually. I got my 500 for the legendary rather quickly, and that was before the droprates have been increased, without AE tagging and I don’t play much.

Kruttmusa.8364:

The WvW lacks a good “commander interface”.
Buying an item that is supposed to signify an ability to do something well is wrong in the first place.
If you want to be good at anything, you have to practice.

My suggestion has nothing to do with how useful the current state of being a Commander is. I simply think you should be able to buy it with badges of honor. If you want to discuss how good or bad the Commander tools are, take that to the WvW forum or start your own Suggestion thread on how you would like it to be changed.

To start with Commander is not just for WvWvW it is also used in PvE like my guild dose during guild missions we will have are commanders lead groups to go after set targets so we do not have spams of chat in guild chat!

So having to have WvW rank or what ever is no good!

Again Commander in a hole is being worked and made better so am sure when they make commander more useful there will be more ways to get it from WvW side of the game

Why not make a grouping system worth buying with anything. The C&S system is the worst multiple grouping system I’ve used in 5 years. There is simply no way in game to organize more than 5 people unless you are zerging it.

They need to make the system more flexible before changing how you get it.

It should not be 10k Badges, that’s crazy to many. That’s not promoting being a “Commander” but a Zerger. Because being a good WvW player has more to do than bags and badges. Though with this upcoming patch, Anet is dumbing down play even more. So maybe it is…

DeWolfe.2174:

It should not be 10k Badges, that’s crazy to many. That’s not promoting being a “Commander” but a Zerger. Because being a good WvW player has more to do than bags and badges. Though with this upcoming patch, Anet is dumbing down play even more. So maybe it is…

I wouldn’t mind the Commander manual being less than 10,000 Badges. But when you work out the math on what badges currently buy, each badge is worth about 1 silver. So 10,000 badges = 100g (give or take, a very rough estimate).

And this thread isn’t about debating how you get the badges and whether or not how you get them makes you a good commander or not. This thread is about whether or not we should be able to buy the Commander Manual with “X” amount of badges. Badges are a form of WvW currency and since you can use them to buy armor, weapons, blueprints, etc, you should be able to purchase the Manual also.

I wish the WvW rank could be account wide. Then purchasing the Commander title with a rank requirement seems more reasonable. Of course some badges and some gold as the OP mentioned before would be needed for the purchase.

I’d go for Commander being a rank if WxP was account bound, retroactive, and able to be obtained by more than just killing/defending. Building, upgrading, repairing, and refreshing all matter in WvW too.

I don’t like the current implementation of commander: it allows anyone to get the rank, there’s no cheaper guild-only version, and it’s one-size fits all. I’d rather see ANet change the mechanic almost entirely, so that it’s closer to Trait manuals: you have to earn your way up to commanding larger groups.

However, I like the OP’s idea that, while ANet ponders what to do about squads and commanders, that they offer alternative ways to get it:

• WvW badges (obvious choice since commanders are mostly used in WvW)
• Influence (nearly as obvious — this would benefit middle sized guilds who want it for coordinating g-missions).
• Laurels — why not? you can already convert laurels into gold by e.g. buying unidentified dyes and selling them, so this would cut out the middle man.

Sure, why not?

I don’t think ANet needs to worry about the loss of gold sinks: although 100g is a lot, there are tons of people who will never spend coin on the title.

Also they can keep the non-coin prices outrageously higher (e.g. 100g buys 50,000 influence, so maybe the commander tag would be 100,000 influence).

The idea sounds more than reasonable: for something that’s (mostly) aimed towards WvW, it’s rather odd that you cannot get it with the format’s currency (badges).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t like the current implementation of commander: it allows anyone to get the rank, there’s no cheaper guild-only version, and it’s one-size fits all. I’d rather see ANet change the mechanic almost entirely, so that it’s closer to Trait manuals: you have to earn your way up to commanding larger groups.

However, I like the OP’s idea that, while ANet ponders what to do about squads and commanders, that they offer alternative ways to get it:

• WvW badges (obvious choice since commanders are mostly used in WvW)
• Influence (nearly as obvious — this would benefit middle sized guilds who want it for coordinating g-missions).
• Laurels — why not? you can already convert laurels into gold by e.g. buying unidentified dyes and selling them, so this would cut out the middle man.

Sure, why not?

I don’t think ANet needs to worry about the loss of gold sinks: although 100g is a lot, there are tons of people who will never spend coin on the title.

Also they can keep the non-coin prices outrageously higher (e.g. 100g buys 50,000 influence, so maybe the commander tag would be 100,000 influence).

Using Influence to get Commander would be horrible. Everything that Influence buys benefits the guild as a whole, not just one person. If a guild leader or officer spent 100k-500k to buy themselves something, thats like slave labor. Instead, they can ask for gold donations as a requirement to join their guild or something. I’m sure there are some HARDCORE guilds out there that do that, ask for donations for various things PvE and WvW related. If everyone in a 200-300 person guild donated 33-50 silver each, Bamm! Thats 100g for a book.

Laurels is just another form of gold. No reason to have more than 2 major currencies used to buy a Commander book. In PvE, the major currency is gold. Used to buy 99% of EVERYTHING except some Mystic Forge components and a few other things. While you can’t buy dungeon related things with gold, you can buy the items with the same stats off the tp. In WvW, its badges.

And as i said before, you shouldn’t require someone to get to get any kind of WXP rank or whatever before being able to buy the commander manual. Why you say? Cause you dont want noob commanders? Simple solution then… Don’t follow them. If someone is being stupid, do not follow them. There are lots of stupid commanders on my server and we all know who they are and ignore them. We know who are the good ones and we listen to them. If you don’t like all the Commander badges on the map because the stupid people refuse to turn them off? Join a squad. then you only see the badge of that one commander.

You can’t measure how good or bad someone is as a commander until after they have purchased the commander book and try to command.

There are people out there with WXP rank of 150 already. Doesn’t mean they are or would be good at commanding, they just like to zerg everything. And someone with a low rank might be AWESOME at commanding.

So, another patch that has made some changes to WvW and still no option to use badges to buy what could be considered the highest profile item in WvW which is the Commander Manual. Can’t be that hard to add the option to the vendor. I don’t want blue prints, or invader armor/weapons, or your stupid traps. i DO want the option of buying the one WvW item i want with the WvW currency i am saving. Please add the option!!

OR—-

Add the option to let us SELL Badges of Honor to the vendor for 1 silver each. LOTS of people complain about the lack of money making in WvW. This would solve that problem.

Just allow “private” squads… that will fix the problem. Half the “bad commander” pins on a map are simply people trying to use the ONLY grouping system in GW2 for over 5 people.

If we actually HAD a way for more than 5 people to group without popping a visible commander pin or had guild only commanders things would be much better.

Running together in separate 5 person groups, marking one person who’s leading and using a 3rd party voice program is not an adequate substitution for a private squad.

I agree to this idea. Buying a manual with badges instead of gold would actually prove that commander knows what he is doing and is worthy of such a title.

But A-Net has to keep the gold flowing so it should be something like 30 Gold + 1000 tokens.

I think the commander title should be more PvP/WvW based. Anybody with 100 gold can buy a commander title, but that doesn’t make them a commander at WvW, it makes them either a) a commander at gold hoarding or b) a commander at buying a lot of gold. Being a commander takes leadership skill and we know that the best leaders are not the ones who can spend the most money. I agree with the OP that we should make the Commander title badge based and not gold, otherwise we detract from what the Commander title is supposed to be… a Commander.

Totally agree. Golds doesn’t have anything to do with the ability in leading armies, it is just wrong the idea that you can BUY the commander rank.

It should be paid in badges or better in WvW Exp points.

I agree with this post. I have enough gold to buy the book to give me commander, but I have no clue about how world versus world works in general. It would male much more sense to have someone earn the commander ability with several thousand worth of badges and not gold.

Gold is relatively easy to earn for those who invest for a living, such as myself. In my server we have a problem were there aren’t enough commanders when we are losing.

We don’t need no stinking badges

Or rather commander be bought… It could be earned… Like a Title. ? Just a thought.

I like the earning idea.

Oliver.4017:

Or rather commander be bought… It could be earned… Like a Title. ? Just a thought.

Personally, I believe you should have to “buy” the Commander Manual with currancy. You play the game. You “earn” gold or badges. Then you have to decide, do i want to buy this small thing or save up for this big thing? We all know what gold is for. Badges are the same way. Spend a few badges for blue prints, or save a little more for Invader Armor, Weapons, or Trinkets. Or do I want to “grind” out for a Commander Manual. You have to weigh your choices for the item you really want, because you are buying an item. An item that is currently not that useful, but will be getting better, hopefully.

But i had a new idea and edited my post above to include it.

6/15/2013 – new idea

Add “Commander Badges” — Just like the current Dragon Bash event going on, you trade 1,000 Zhaitaffy (4 stacks) for 1 Jorbreaker. Why not do that with Badges of Honor? It’ll make collecting and storing them easier for people to grind for their Commander Manual. 10 Commander Badges and the manual is yours, which again, is 10,000 Badges of Honor.
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Anet didn’t care for this since release – do you think they care when it’s already too late?
There are so many “no commander for gold” suggestion threads and there was no official response at all…