Guild Wars 2

Hey all,

Arkelis from Crystal Desert here. After reading quite a few threads about bone-headed Commanders, wouldn’t it be nice to know what you may be getting in to before a siege in WvW?

I propose we have a ranking system for Commanders – something to distinguish a talented individual. Of course, how would one go about doing so?

Any time a group takes a point and the commander is present (any Keep, Supply Camp, or SM), all of those who gain credit for taking the point are given the option to ‘Commend’ or ‘Not Commend’ (click a button) should they wish.

Edit 2 from ‘Adaneshane’:

’Perhaps … have a % favorable/unfavorable…..
Each favorable vote vs unfavorable vote would be rounded to a total “satisfaction” score. So if you had to choose between a commander that had a 50% positive rating vs one that was 85%….you would know which one tended to produce favorable results.

Anyone with at least a bronze contribution to the event would have to option to vote positive or negative. (much like the current system used on sites like e-bay really)’

Edit 1:

A supply camp could be worth, say, 5 points. A keep, 8 points. SM, 10 points.

To address the ‘size’/zerg issue with skewing data, a % would be taken of how many members chose to commend their commander(s).

Example:

A group of 15 people take a keep. 75% of them commend their commander – he gains 75% of the ‘8 commendation’ points for that Keep.
A group of 50 people take SM – only 30% of them commend their commander. The commander only gains 3 points for taking the SM position.

After a certain number of ‘commendation points’ is gained from taking points, the Commander could be ‘promoted’ with a little star, or some other sort of indicator that over time would let the good commanders be easy to spot and easier to follow. The more stars, the more experience and commendations, thus the better the player.

By only having a ‘commend’ option, experienced commanders can rack up the stars while the bad commanders don’t necessarily look bad; just inexperienced. Until they earn our trust and respect they simply look like a new commander.

What do y’all think? Let’s get an idea together and if enough support it on the forums, it could become a possibility.

TLDR: Let’s implement an ‘star/satisfaction’ system for Commanders doing a good job in WvW – waddaya say?

Let’s hear your ideas!

So the most active commander – is the best commander .. doesn´t matter on the actuall skill again? (sorry, had to put it up )
.. if you change it to the “vote” system – then it´s gonna be like .. either “the pop start” commander, or political campaigns – will start occuring.

( and I apologieze for not presenting constructive criticism, but only the negatives .. even if the idea to solve it is nice – I don´t think an actuall solution exists )

As the poster above me said, there may in fact be no good solution to this problem, short of organizing your own server community site and creating some sort of “upvote” system there.

The idea you propose has a major flaw.. the best Commanders aren’t always the ones leading a huge zerg to take as many points as possible. If you were only able to commend your commander when a point is captured, the ratings would be skewed and basically pointless when trying to measure their actual skill level and effectiveness. Plus, it’s not uncommon for 2 or 3 commanders to participate in a single capture. Would they all be commended for that? How do you know for sure who really did all the work? What if they warped out right as the gate fell in order defend a supply depot in the backfield, because a good commander doesn’t care about rewards? What if a commander spends 3 hours breaking down the walls of SM and exhausting enemy supply, and then a different commander sweeps in and takes credit for the actual capture?

Bonehead commanders are easy to spot.. remember their name and avoid grouping up with them. If you’re a WvW regular, it’s not hard to keep track of the good ones and the bad ones.

allways.9270:

So the most active commander – is the best commander .. doesn´t matter on the actuall skill again? (sorry, had to put it up )

I wouldn’t necessarily say ‘best’ – the goal here is not so much to have a “this is the best commander in the game” so much as “this commander is a 5 star commander ranking; this other one isn’t yet”

And when it comes down to it, the commanders that play more often and succeed more often are honestly usually better commanders; they have more experience. I don’t not mean to downplay more ‘casual’ commanders (do those exist?), because as long as they play, and take points, and get commendations from their fellow players, they can also gain ‘star rankings’

You do have a valid point though.

Most severs have some sort of server wide communication weather it be ts vent or mumble and a server website. U can get on these and find out who the commander are that r in communication with the each other as these tend to be the better one but not always. If nothing else you pick a commander who is actively giving orders in a respectable manner and try to follow them ( if u join their squad u won’t c any other commander). A group that acts as one even if the tactics are poor will usually do better than a group that does what ever everyone feel like. U can always try another commander next time and after a while u will c which ones r good

Grit.9061:

a major flaw.. the best Commanders aren’t always the ones leading a huge zerg to take as many points as possible. If you were only able to commend your commander when a point is captured, the ratings would be skewed and basically pointless … it’s not uncommon for 2 or 3 commanders to participate in a single capture. Would they all be commended for that?

The commend option would be just that- an option you could choose to ‘submit’ or simply ignore any time a point is taken. All commanders within the ‘participation zone’ (which determines if you gain rewards) would become an option for a player to commend – being that they could commend all 3 commanders if they wished.

As far as the ratings being skewed, I am not sure I have an answer to that. Commanders that work with larger numbers of players are not necessarily doing more work or better work than a commander of a small squad; but I bet that the smaller squad will commend their commander, while the mindless zerg may not. What if it was a percentage? eg. “Out of the 30 members that took this point with this commander, 75% of them commended him – thus XX amount of commendation points were received”. Would that help?

On my server we had a commander that just got the title so he could run around farming karma and experience while he and his guild leveled up. He never commanded anything, avoided fighting. By your system he would have a lot of stars and not be worth following at the same time.

I think we are over thinking the issue, imo. In past games you followed who was worth following based on how they performed in the game. The blue icon does not mean you have to follow them, and in all honesty I have a couple commanders on block.

What we should do is separate out the ability to form squads to either a guild rank or just allow anyone to create a squad. I never understood why this game had a limitation like that other then maybe as a gold sink? This way the icon is just that, folks can choose to follow or not based on that person’s reputation in game just like we always have.

People need to pay attention and take the time to learn who is worth following.

A commander tag means you had 100 gold…that is it. Anyone who thinks following a commander simply because he has a commander tag deserves to follow a tool around and get killed.

Many of the best people I found to tag along with weren’t even commanders.

Niim.9260:

On my server we had a commander that just got the title so he could run around farming karma and experience while he and his guild leveled up. He never commanded anything, avoided fighting. By your system he would have a lot of stars and not be worth following at the same time.

Maybe I wasn’t very clear with my OP; the system I was recommending would only have the commander gain commendation points if their group/squad that took the position with them decided to hit a ‘Commend’ button. If the commander didn’t help, or didn’t do any work, or did a bad job- people who took the position would simply not click the Commend button, maybe click a ‘No Commendation’ button instead

Niim.9260:

On my server we had a commander that just got the title so he could run around farming karma and experience while he and his guild leveled up. He never commanded anything, avoided fighting. By your system he would have a lot of stars and not be worth following at the same time.

I think we are over thinking the issue, imo. In past games you followed who was worth following based on how they performed in the game. The blue icon does not mean you have to follow them, and in all honesty I have a couple commanders on block.

What we should do is separate out the ability to form squads to either a guild rank or just allow anyone to create a squad. I never understood why this game had a limitation like that other then maybe as a gold sink? This way the icon is just that, folks can choose to follow or not based on that person’s reputation in game just like we always have.

I wish I had read this before posting. I completely agree with this.

I think the OP has at least identified an area for improvement. It really is a shame that the commander rank wasn’t tied to achievements from the beginning. Would like to see it really mean something.

Perhaps, rather than a growing rank system. Just have a % favorable/unfavorable…..
Each favorable vote vs unfavorable vote would be rounded to a total “satisfaction” score. So if you had to choose between a commander that had a 50% positive rating vs one that was 85%….you would know which one tended to produce favorable results.

Anyone with at least a bronze contribution to the event would have to option to vote positive or negative. (much like the current system used on sites like e-bay really)

Adaneshade.2409:

Perhaps, rather than a growing rank system. Just have a % favorable/unfavorable…..
Each favorable vote vs unfavorable vote would be rounded to a total “satisfaction” score. So if you had to choose between a commander that had a 50% positive rating vs one that was 85%….you would know which one tended to produce favorable results.

Anyone with at least a bronze contribution to the event would have to option to vote positive or negative. (much like the current system used on sites like e-bay really)

I actually really like the sound of that… I’ll add it into the OP thank you

Adaneshade.2409:

Perhaps, rather than a growing rank system. Just have a % favorable/unfavorable…..
Each favorable vote vs unfavorable vote would be rounded to a total “satisfaction” score. So if you had to choose between a commander that had a 50% positive rating vs one that was 85%….you would know which one tended to produce favorable results.

Anyone with at least a bronze contribution to the event would have to option to vote positive or negative. (much like the current system used on sites like e-bay really)

I think an issue could potentially come up with the term “favorable results”.

What exactly constitutes favorable? Has a commander done everything in his/her power to, say, defend a tower against overwhelming odds, where outside is a zerg 30 strong and all the commander has is 10 players to work with? A lot of times that will result in a lost tower, just because of a lack of manpower. But just some random player won’t think of it that way. It’s possible that any lost objective will result in a “wow, this commander sucks. He/she just lost that tower/keep/camp”. I’ve seen plenty of players say “why did we just let them take that camp?” when we were in the process of defending a keep.

So in terms of a rating system, what’s a “favorable result”? How do you rank a commander on how good of a commander they are by something that’s as fickle as any player’s opinion?

Don’t get me wrong, I think this commander system is atrocious in its current implementation. 100 gold (which isn’t so difficult to farm) and you can lead a zerg. It’s just that in that light, where the individual player is untrustworthy, it seems also a bad idea to leave a commander’s reputation in the hands of people that may or may not know the dynamics of WvW, a zerg, numbers, or importance of one objective over another. Maybe one commander’s unlucky enough to only be available when their server’s population is low compared to that of their current matchup, and maybe another has the upper hand in numbers whenever they’re on. Then, they’d be rated by an inexperienced player as “this commander lost all of our land” or “this commander got us all this land”, when in theory, the outmanned commander may be the more skilled/experienced one.

Any rating system of any kind for a Commander sounds kinda’ <insert feminine hygiene product>ie. Everyone has different ideology of what a Commander should be. We all share differing goals in WvW even. For some, it’s not about points or rating at all.

Though I have to say… 100G is incredibly hard to farm. Unless you’re referring to hiring some Chinese workers to do it for you. Otherwise, you did not farm that on your own. Let’s be honest here….

The only solution is to find time to play for extended periods during all of your server’s time rotations. Doing that exposes you to all of your commanders and potential commanders, and it provides you with a better feeling for how your server plays and operates.

There’s no need for a ranking system if you’re gathering personal experience with them.

I cant be the only Commander who would quite like a political aspect to Commander, with a personal banner or a figurehead which they can carry or place during battle.
Like personal traits that that banner has and its effect on the surrounding zerg.

Part of an issue is players who aren’t commanders.
Ran into it today. There were a few of us trying to ninja take Hills, and we asked everyone to not run in, and aggro guards after the outter wall was down. One player went ahead and did.

His quote:
“If you had a commander tag on I’d listen”

3 of us there were commanders, but had our tags off due to
1. ninja attempt.
2. Trying to not pull people off another commander attacking BG Garrison.
I repeated his quote as to why he didn’t listen so we all turned our tags back on, and told him to cap quaggans. (He did even since he said he’d listen if we had commander tags on.)

Voting for a commander would be nearly pointless, because it’d be a popularity contest.
The fault doesn’t just lie with commanders though, some of it lies with militia as well.

Agreed with many before me. Voting would be pointless as even in the best scenario possible, it would be 2/3 leadership or skill and 1/3 social factors.

I do like the idea though, and perhaps a rating system could be developed based on squad survivability, engagement type, and engagement outcome, but only when the commander tag is active.

This might already be possible, but commanders would have to be able to kick people out of squads to prevent trolling, and I don’t think it would affect their true rating. Even if you faked the rating by choosing the best players, if people can’t get into your squad, they probably should be weary about following you.

Additionally, the rating system shouldn’t have any achievement or benefit to it, other than showing off. I think this rating system would be fairly accurate of a commander’s lead, and can even be used strategically when planning coordinated attacks among commanders. Better rating would have better outcomes, give them the more difficult targets.

Nice idea…. didn’t read the whole thread so maybe this was mentioned, but if they gain points for taking something on the map, they should also lose points of failing to defend it.

KyleQuest.4639:

Though I have to say… 100G is incredibly hard to farm. Unless you’re referring to hiring some Chinese workers to do it for you. Otherwise, you did not farm that on your own. Let’s be honest here….

This depends on what you do and how you play. I make around 1g an hour and I’m a med student, so I’m casual except immediately after exams. I get in about an hour every day, which is enough for a dungeon or two short ones. Sell everything and make ectos and you can surpass 1g an hour by running AC or CoF for the first time that day. I started the game mid-September and I’m sitting on 75g net and about 30g worth of ectos on the tp.

The only problem with this is simply stated as follows: You can’t please all of the people all of the time.
All zergs contain people that all have an opinion on what the commander should do and if they don’t do as they say, that commander sucks. My honest opinion on a rating system is to NOT have one. All it will do is put more pressure on someone who only wants to enjoy the game. If it gets to much, they will only turn of the icon and refuse to lead. That is not the point of the commander tag. Are there bonehead commanders? Absolutely. The simple answer is, well, allow me to quote Grit.

Grit.9061:

Bonehead commanders are easy to spot.. remember their name and avoid grouping up with them. If you’re a WvW regular, it’s not hard to keep track of the good ones and the bad ones.

As long as we’re also suggesting ideas for commander options,

I’d very much like commanders to be able to kick people off of siege even if it’s not their own siege.

There are a few reasons to do this:
1) If siege needs to be killed and can be with a piece of siege, but the current user is trying to kill players with it instead and is not listening/can’t understand
2) If the current user is not using it on the correct wall/gate that’s closest to being down or the easiest to get to and is not listening/can’t understand
3) There are probably other reasons to do this, but I can’t really think of any right now

The first two things are quite frustrating, for example when you know you could have saved the Cliffside tower with that ballista, but the user was busy trying to kill players with it rather than killing the three rams at the door.

Of course, this could lead to troll commanders?

But I don’t know if any troll is willing to pay 100g just to kick people off siege for the lulz.

This is the same saying zerg commanders are the best… while all they can do is just take the zerg and cap stuff to lose it 5 minutes later.

@Shadowscamp: i wish comm could do stuff like that though like u say would lead to troll comm prolly, its sad that ppl aim for ppl instead of siege knowing we could save that tower and others even go afk on sieges >.<

Im sorry but most people have their preferred commanders. People ignore other blue tags and follow their preferred commander. A vote system wouldnt be fair. A huge guild could vote for their commander on a map and they could suck. Also If you paid 100 gold the CC that you WORKED for you have that right to use it. Do what i do ignore other blue tags or use them to your advantage and make them do tasks by being a map waypoint.

-Miss Terribad

Too many trolls and other malcontents play mmos for the community to police itself. If it wasn’t like that I might agree.

Make commander book thingies cost badges and gold. At least that way if the book costs 100 to 500 badges you’ll know that someone has at least played WvW.

We’ve got a wonderful commander on my server who harasses anyone that disagrees with him to the point of telling people to go kill themselves. Hoping one day it will be removed or he’ll be removed from our server completely.

Tortun.5946:

Make commander book thingies cost badges and gold. At least that way if the book costs 100 to 500 badges you’ll know that someone has at least played WvW.

We’ve got a wonderful commander on my server who harasses anyone that disagrees with him to the point of telling people to go kill themselves. Hoping one day it will be removed or he’ll be removed from our server completely.

There is a block feature in this game just to let you know and your server as well. Its not that hard to promote that idea too.

I have indeed been telling folks. I’ve also been telling folks to join squads and only follow commanders who they trust and know get results.

I don’t have comms and I’ve led assaults using /say just because the numbers have happened to be around. although yesterday I had an awkward moment, was trying to get daily done, saw a crud load of dots on the map behind me, I stopped and about 60% stopped too… Had to tell them I wasn’t doing anything special… Awkward moments lol

Raincrow.1840:

Nice idea…. didn’t read the whole thread so maybe this was mentioned, but if they gain points for taking something on the map, they should also lose points of failing to defend it.

Sometimes a strategic retreat is better than fighting forever. In every way, this system would serve only to encourage sub-par commanders to continue not learning while causing the better commanders to ignore the system and do their thing.

That’s already mostly the case — bad commanders always want to command regardless of what’s going on or how many badges are on the field; while better commanders know when it’s appropriate to step back. This would just make the first group worse/bigger.

The literal only solution is to play more and gain more experience in regards to who commands on your server and what they’re like. There’s no system that can automate or substitute for experience.

too long of a post, but easy fix would be allow each user to toggle commander’s icon visibility based on a list, kind of like your in-game friend’s list. Because for every good commanders out there, there are twice as many bad ones running around. Allowing the user to only add the commanders’ names to their own list will avoid seeing bad commanders’ icons on their map view.

ANet should never just let the icon be a purchase only option, it should be more tie to the server community, like the wvw players can vote for other individuals to promote to commander status, thus allow those players be able to purchase the icons.

Tortun.5946:

Make commander book thingies cost badges and gold. At least that way if the book costs 100 to 500 badges you’ll know that someone has at least played WvW.

We’ve got a wonderful commander on my server who harasses anyone that disagrees with him to the point of telling people to go kill themselves. Hoping one day it will be removed or he’ll be removed from our server completely.

Maybe you weren’t proposing that as a solution, but I’m pretty sure he has 500 badges.

Idea of gw2 commanders and party leaders

I believe there should be some kind of ranking system simply to show that a one commander has had more experience then another.
However I believe that the idea that a player “like system” would not be a good idea. I can see how it could work…..but really it would simply be pointless with a lot of possible problems that would ruin it.

I think that they should build on the mechanic of being a commander as well.
They should add a lot more commands. Such as build flame ram in this location, go get supplies. Stuff like that.

Also I think that there should be a small exp bonus to whoever compleatly the command. Not a big exp boost as that would have problems with “boosting”. Instead it should simply be something to motivate people to follow trough with the command.

So for an example. I am a commander and I know that we will need a couple arrow carts to deal with a couple of enemies approaching. I put down a couple of “build arrow cart” commands down on strategic locations, and anyone that has an arrow cart would see that we would need his/her arrow cart there. Anyone that puts down the arrow cart at the location(s) would receive “order followed” exp.

Things like this would greatly help in organization. it would make complexity simplicity in ways that things could be done easily and simply when in the past it would take a great deal of “texting” in order to get things done.

Before I continue allow me to say that I have a whole new idea that is similar to commanders, and yet differs.

Right now the party system is cool and simple. But yet it has its flaw in that people wouLd separate, and in other words not act As a unit when in complex situations.
This is not as much as a problem in world events as in dungeons. But it is a huge issue to the more common party’s.

I believe there should be something added that would cost around 10 gold that would enable “party leader”. The party leader would have a few commands that would enable a party to be much more organized and effective. Especially in wvwvw. They would have commands like regroup on location, and if given my way. The ability to command different classes to use specific team helping abilities. These commands would appear by the player with that skill in the party section of the HUD.
BUT these unique commands would only appear if the player has that skill equipped, and not on cool down. This would allow players to keep there unique playing style yet allowing them to help there team in the eyes of there leader. Also like my idea for players following orders from a commander would receive a very small amount of exp so as to motivate people to follow the command.

Now back to the commander idea I had. Ok we all know that a squad led by a commander does not have any indication of the welfare of the players within the squad. Simply because it would be difficult to show all 50 players on the HUD. Instead I believe that players should be sorted in to party’s, and that the commander will see up to his/her right the max 10 partys(5×10=50(max squad number) people)
Instead of showing all the individuals it will simply show both the location or that party as well as the average health(morale) of the party.

Then there are specific commands for the individual party’s at the commanders disposal. Such as move to this location. Defend, attack. It will also help organize people so that you can see the different groups of people. In other words if you have a good commander people will not bunch up in to a zerg very often.
This way the commander could achieve much more without the need to even type a word. It would be similar to any of those war simulation games such as “supreme commander”.
I also think that the commander should be able to see enemies in a different squad within an area close to one of the party’s under his/her command on both the mini map and the world map.This would allow stratagy for more interesting battles between 2 or more commanders.

Well that’s my idea. I suppose I will post this on a different thread when I get the chance. Seeing as this is a very interesting idea