Guild Wars 2

I’ve had some thoughts percolating for awhile now for some things that would make WvW Commanders better, and it’s really come to a head with all the issues we’ve seen on TC with seige griefing lately. I didn’t see these exact ideas already posted in the CDI thread summary from December, so here goes:

The big idea: Commander ranks.

There was much discussion over the fact that 100g is not a great gateway to being a commander, but I don’t think the previously proposed solutions (wvw rank, etc.) are helpful. I think an “entry fee” is fine, and after that you prove your skills as a commander to gain commander levels and access to more powerful features. There don’t have to be too many – 3-5 I’d say. As far as how you move up, some ideas I thought of were:

- Net score gain from maps you’re commanding, or better, an advanced stat like PER in basketball.

- Popular vote. People who run with you can “vouch” for your tag, and can devouch if they want to remove their support.

- Total number of X (where X is "Successful defenses, keeps taken, etc.)

Higher levels get a distinct icon, so you can quickly see whether a commander on the map is experienced. This helps prevent tag trolling as well, as experienced tags would be unlikely to step on each other and the experienced tag would be easy to spot. If you switch servers, your tag rank resets to baseline. Abilities you could gain along the way could include:

- Ability to set tag priority – e.g. “Defense,” “Havoc,” “Main Commander,” “Bloodlust,” “Map Hopper”
- Ability to move friendly seige (i.e. it can’t be destroyed but can be shifted within X yards)
- Ability to remove friendly seige
- Ability to dequeue upgrades (money goes back to the person who queued it)
- A PBAoE “presence” that prevents seige deployment by other players within X yards of the commander

Obviously most of these are very powerful and should only be available to the highest rank of commanders. But given sufficient requirements for the ranks, I think you could ensure that those who attain it are very dedicated to their server and after many hundreds of hours of leading, umpteen objectives taken, tens of thousands of ppt gained, etc. they would be unlikely to turn heel and start trolling with them. If they did, losing “vouches” alone should quickly drop them out, but otherwise there would have to be some kind of report system.

Full disclosure, I am not a commander, so this is mostly my conjecture on what would make a commander’s life easier. I tried to say away from “game changing” new abilities or features that would make an even greater disadvantage to a map without an experienced commander (or any commander at all), but simply provide tools to address common griefing problems and commander quality-of-life issues. Bottom line is, we need to have some way to address the very real griefing problems in WvW without causing a problem of equal-and-opposite magnitude. So rather than have to rely on an ineffective report-and-ban system, better to allow the communities to fix the problems themselves, and put the tools in the hands of people who have proven their investment in the server’s success by their time and their victories.

I’m interested to hear what other people, especially commanders, would add to this framework. What criteria would you use for the ranks? What other abilities would be useful?

Ooh, another ability I just thought of:

- “Protect Supply” Stop supply drain for X amount of time, or at a certain threshold (Maybe could be tied to your guild claiming the structure). Also, could be used to stop camp drain when trying to upgrade.

To go along with that:

- “Declaim Structure” to prevent people from claiming something and not applying any buffs.

Decent suggestions. But they haven’t even addressed basic grouping and organizing that were requested almost 2 years ago. The same requests that were overwhelming brought up in the commander collaborative thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Collaborative-Development-Commander-System

I don’t see much of the stuff you suggested ever being implemented.

Commander ranks… why it won’t work
Whenever you introduce a system which displays player skill to other players that system gets abused when players choose who to party with or follow. This is part of what made groups in World of Warcraft so hostile. Veteran players don’t want to spend time bringing new players up to speed. They use things like linking achievements and inspections as gates to determine if a player is as skilled as they say.

Adding a visible commander rank will work the same way. Lets say you’ve newly bought your commander tag. You’ve tagged up and started leading pugs on eternal. Capped a camp or two. Suddenly “Commander General Sephiroth” shows up with his rank 400 commander and tags up. Those pugs following you disappear in a heartbeat and flock to the more experienced commander because “we’re sick of losing we want karma train”. You have no one to lead just like that. You won’t get experience that way. This will happen constantly with commander ranks. This is why I oppose such rank systems. I don’t need ANET telling me who I want to follow. My server doesn’t need that. We’re all trying to win. I’d rather my server have more commanders available to follow than 3 celebrity commanders and noone else.

Commander abilities
The abilities that come with leveling a commander should be there by default and toggle-able.

• Tag priority: I’d like to designate my tag for a role. This is a keeper
• Friendly siege move: As fun as this would be it is very open to trolling
• remove friendly siege: Same as the above.
• Dequeue upgrades: Open to trolling too but would be very useful. This should return supply used on the upgrade to the tower/keep stockpile with the current capacity limiting if there is more supply than can be stored.
• PBAoE anti-siege presence: OMG yes, but let me turn it off too. Sometimes I need others to throw siege for me (guild catapults mainly).
• Declaim structure – Only if the owner of the claim does not have any buffs running. If claim owner has majority of guild within the objective then the declaim fails.
• Protect Supply – useful too.

lioka qiao.8734:

You have no one to lead just like that. You won’t get experience that way.

I expect more that from that moment onwards, everyone is running in the zerg with commander lamp switched on, assuming that the system assigns exp to any commander in area, as there is hardly any other criterion to determine the “real” commander.

I cannot switch my lamp off, I need to level my commander will be a frequent sentence in that setting

All we need are colors. And maybe a second Icon choice. Main commander Blue as always. Secondary commander can tag up with another color for his patrol. That should be very easy in the system we have and I don’t se it taking that much to do.

Then with a little more work there could be a secondary Icon for patrols to use. A star or something that could be colored so you could have a main group with the Blue commander and 3 small patrols with a captain each with a different colored star icon.

Then your could have a lot of people on at once and you could have 2 big groups with a red and blue commander and 3 small patrols each with a captain and a color. This would make it easy for players to see on the maps where their groups were at all times and you could find a group when you mapped in. As there would be multiple icons to choose from.