Guild Wars 2

Been reading forums for quite a while and haven’t found a post related to commander badges which I found useful. This fascinates me since nowadays there are so many commanders running around, maybe not on every WvW map, but you’re sure to find at least 2 on any Lion’s Arch Overflow.
My first question/complaint: I do have a commander badge on 1 of my characters which happens to be a thief… now initially my idea was that you needed mobility and swiftness to stay ahead of your zerg. This worked out quite well in lower tier where you could get away with pew-pew’ing from the walls, in T4 upwards though, I found thief an extremely ineffective class in WvW let alone being a commander. In case any of you don’t know already the commander badge is character-bound (money-drain). I feel so bad having both a warrior and a guardian at lvl80 and not being able to use my well earned blue dorito while I’m on them. Is there any reason for the badge to be only applied to 1 single character other than the fact that now people have to buy it again if they find themselves in a similar situation. I understand gems are cool and also that you can buy in-game currency for real life money, but I know I won’t. Instead I’ll just spend less time enjoying the game and more time farming, which I though was not the point of GW2. Hell I’ll even feel guilty because I know a few people who are more than worthy for the badge but they are too lazy to farm. Why not implement a system where you can switch the badge to any of your alts that’s over lvl11? I would even pay a little extra just to get the badge transferred to my warrior.

Second thought: since this is ‘Guild’ Wars I thought why isn’t the commander badge function connected to the guild system? My idea is to make a separate title called “Guild Commander” shown by a gold dorito/badge and only visible for people who represent your guild. This could cost 50k influence and require lvl5 Art of War research for example.
It could have all the functions of a regular commander’s badge only you’d be able to oversee the guild squad members’ whereabouts and supply count, etc. This would help the confusion caused by big guilds and random commanders and would also ceise the “show-off” factor which currently affects most ‘commanders’.

I have a few other ideas, but I want to make this open. Anyone with a better idea or an addition to mine please feel free to add. And of course if there is a way to solve my problem I am excited to know about it.

I have the same thought about a guild commander’s badge. Guild leader and I were discussing this this last week. We had the same thought, make the badge gold. I like the idea of the Level 5 of Art of War as the tie in. Maybe open up the option on the rank setup?

The main reason this is a good idea, is that the guild I am in normally runs two teams in WvW at some points. And we inevitably get split. This would be a great help! This would only show up in WvW.

I like the idea of a symbol for the guild raid leader that can make a a group greater than a 5 member party.

It will also help us not waste the targeting symbol so we can use it for its original function and not targeting our leader.

Also ideally we can assign a lot more symbols. So we can put targets on members that do specific functions and those have a different shape than the Dorito and maybe different colors as well. Not a lot just 2 or 3.

I think this is a great idea, I really hope Anet, considers this as an upgrade to guild system in the near future I would also recomend taking it a step further and making it work in pve. Our guild loves doing jumping puzzles and zone clears in groups larger then 5 and even with voice chat it can be difficult to follow around each other if on more then 1 team this would be a great help.

DanyK.3842:

Second thought: since this is ‘Guild’ Wars I thought why isn’t the commander badge function connected to the guild system? My idea is to make a separate title called “Guild Commander” shown by a gold dorito/badge and only visible for people who represent your guild. This could cost 50k influence and require lvl5 Art of War research for example.
It could have all the functions of a regular commander’s badge only you’d be able to oversee the guild squad members’ whereabouts and supply count, etc. This would help the confusion caused by big guilds and random commanders and would also ceise the “show-off” factor which currently affects most ‘commanders’.

Forms of this have been suggested since BW1. Some way to have commanders and squads private/public or have a commander that can only been seen or used within the guild.

Our guild has fast moving roaming groups that hit camps and cut off players moving to defend objectives. It’s the playstyle most of our guild likes. Whenever we put the pin up to coordinate our multiple guild grps we start getting tells with people complaining “why is the commander taking camps” or “why are you taking camps you should be taking <insert obj here>.”

We end up NOT using the only in-game system to coordinate multiple guild groups because of confusion and negativity in WvW. There is NO reason not to have a private or guild only commander/squad system in GW2. Do a search there are a ton of threads suggesting or asking for this, it’s a shame Arenanet is not listening or doesn’t think it’s important.

As a commander and guild leader I personally LOVE this idea. Having the ability to reward dedicated players with innovative strategy and leadership skills with a “guild” pin would be a BEAUTIFUL addition. I’ve also always been a fan of the idea of Commander pin’s being “Account Bound.”

Maybe, keep commander pin’s as they are but institute a more advanced, account-wide “Commander” achievement that is gained through WvW.

For example, the requirements could be
-1 character based commander pin on one of your characters
-100ish keep captures
-150ish tower captures
-200ish supply camp captures
-5k downed enemies
-5k supply used for repairs

Of course, these numbers are me just spitballing, but if something like this were instituted, it would make the “account” commander one of the most desirable achievements in wvw simply because of its difficulty to achieve.

Also, as it would be more difficult to gain, it would ensure that such commanders had a solid base in wvw and didnt simply farm (or buy) gold for their pin.

What do the rest of you think of “achieving” an account-wide “pin” possibly with more features than a standard pin?

I just want to have some kind of in-game way for our multiple guild groups to see each other on the map. Either a special “guild commander” or use the current commander & squad system but with a /private feature so only those people IN the squad can see the commander pin and you have some control of who can join.

It’s ridiculous in this day of MMO’s to not have a private system for over 5 people to group and coordinate in massive WvW environment. The current commander system does not work for our guild when you can’t control the people in it or the visibility.

Blue Dorito…Nice… lolz

But adding up…
I agree that there must be other ways to earn Commander Icon..
but a recent post states they are working on it if i m not wrong

Kellnor.5428:

For example, the requirements could be
-1 character based commander pin on one of your characters
-100ish keep captures
-150ish tower captures
-200ish supply camp captures
-5k downed enemies
-5k supply used for repairs

Believe it or not I actually brainstormed through this concept with a few of my guildies some time ago and got to this conclusion: While achievments give some indication to your WvW activities the idea of a commander in my head is someone who dares to take the lead and can successfully coordinate a team, be it 5 or 55 people. I know some people who have 10 times what you listed there and yet I know they would never be able to put themselves in front of a zerg and make snap decisions based on numerous different factors. You can be one of the guys in the zerg and get all those achievments while someone with great mind and perception can be using a well paced treb to take out enemy siege and forts and yet gain nothing (besides the keep/tower captures). Unfortunately as of right now I still do not know of any way that proves to be a real test for upcoming commanders. Let’s hope the brains behind Guild Wars soon come up with some changes to the commander system, which they so far neglected.

Fire.4302:

I agree that there must be other ways to earn Commander Icon..
but a recent post states they are working on it if i m not wrong

I didn’t think this was even on the Dev’s radar. Do you remember this post or have a link to it? I’d love to see some kind of Dev comment that they are even planning to do anything to improve the commander and squad functions. It still frustrates me that there is no way to group privately with more than 5 people in a modern day MMO.

There has been a ton of feedback on the current commander and squad system and it’s lack of features but I haven’t seen a single post or comment from Arenanet about changes forthcoming. I understand they have been focusing on the culling issues, but flexible grouping mechanics should be up there as well.

DanyK.3842:

I found thief an extremely ineffective class in WvW .

Read this, LOL’d, and closed the thread.