Guild Wars 2

Reisinger.4203:

I’m a bit confused as to how this is going to work now – if we purchased a commander tag right now (for 100g), do we get the four colours after the patch comes in?

Regardless, it’s good news that the 300g per colour plan was revised!

Unlock the blue commander tag on a single character right now for 100g (plus 250 badges of honor) and after 9-9 when the feature pack is implemented all current and future characters on your entire account will have access to using the commander function, along with the additional colors. Wait to purchase it until after 9-9 and it will instead cost 300g. It is recommended that you unlock it now while it is still at 100g even if you will not have need for the commander feature immediately so you save 200g over waiting until a future date (after 9-9) to purchase it.

StinVec.3621:

Reisinger.4203:

<snip>

Unlock the blue commander tag on a single character right now for 100g (plus 250 badges of honor) and after 9-9 when the feature pack is implemented all current and future characters on your entire account will have access to using the commander function, along with the additional colors. Wait to purchase it until after 9-9 and it will instead cost 300g. It is recommended that you unlock it now while it is still at 100g even if you will not have need for the commander feature immediately so you save 200g over waiting until a future date (after 9-9) to purchase it.

Thank you!

Look at all these “thank you”s for this kitten, lol the WvWvW playerbase just got Iceberg Slimmed.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Ragnar.4257:

Ragnar.4257:

Inb4 this was a calculated ‘leak’ so they can then ‘generously’ change the decision to show how ‘in touch’ they are with WvW players.

Say what

I’m just going to squash this rumor right now. Before the strong negative feedback received after the interview at gamescom, every intention was for each color to cost 300g. Pending QA, that version was ready to ship for the feature pack.

When the flood of feedback came in, there was a flurry of emails working out the best course of action, and in the end Zach and Tyler worked the weekend to make sure this change could be made on time for 9/9.

Hi, Mark. If you or another employee have a moment, can the exact cost of the Commander’s Compendium following the 9-9 feature pack release please be clarified?

As it is now it costs 100g plus 250 Badges of Honor to purchase the Commander’s Compendium.

I know most people drop the BoH cost due their relatively easy acquisition, but all recent discussion of the increase in cost to 300g (triple current gold cost) has not included whether the BoH side of the cost is also tripled.

Q.
Is the additional Badges of Honor cost also tripled from 250 to 750, just as the gold cost is tripled from 100 to 300?

I would appreciate a clarification on the change in total cost to the Commander’s Compendium following the release of the feature pack.

As always, thank you for everything you and your colleagues do.

Thank you Anet!

Thank you so much to you all and especially to Zach and Tyler, it is truly, deeply appreciated.

Thank you for not going through with one of the worst ideas you’ve come up with yet. We’ve been saved.

If you want to have a gold sink, put it where there is gold. PVE. WvWers are a broke lot.

John Corpening.9847:

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to clarify that we did indeed change our plans based on your feedback. What was said during the interviews at Gamescom was correct at the time but after listening to what you had to say we decided to make a change to the feature be in line with what you felt was a more balanced approach to the change.

Thank you very much for your feedback and we hope that you enjoy this upcoming change.

Thanks,
John

I cannot adequately express my gratitude and appreciation at this. I was disappointed that what seemed to be the obvious implementation of this idea wasn’t happening but now I’m so glad that y’all have heard our pleas and made these changes. Thank you!

Ok so it aaaaaaaall about flooding devs with stuff! Its time for SAB banana protest in devs yard rith now:-P

John Corpening.9847:

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to clarify that we did indeed change our plans based on your feedback. What was said during the interviews at Gamescom was correct at the time but after listening to what you had to say we decided to make a change to the feature be in line with what you felt was a more balanced approach to the change.

Thank you very much for your feedback and we hope that you enjoy this upcoming change.

Thanks,
John

Thank you soooo much!
If you want to burn some gold just give fancy signs to the gemstore like dragon commander tag, skull etc
Btw there is a lot of potential in wvw community, just give us something what we want for gemd. Example siege models, race changer (let us change race in the myste as finishers) and so on

I actually wouldn’t be against having to pay 200 gold to unlock all the colors, unless you have 3 or more tags.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Before the strong negative feedback received after the interview at gamescom, every intention was for each color to cost 300g. Pending QA, that version was ready to ship for the feature pack.

When the flood of feedback came in, there was a flurry of emails working out the best course of action, and in the end Zach and Tyler worked the weekend to make sure this change could be made on time for 9/9.

While I’m glad to see that the community feedback was listened to and that it was changed, I’m still a bit disturbed that it ever made it so far in the first place. All the way to “ready to ship”? That means someone or several someones thought the per-color pricing was a good idea. And to me that’s an indication that at least some of the developers and/or decision makers have been rather out of touch with the community for WvW.

This incident is a great example of why communication is import – and thus why the community has been concerned at the lack of it. It’s not just about players feeling entitled to information. When done right, communication could help ensure or at least double-check that new development is going in a direction that makes sense for this game mode. Even just some posts of high-level long-term visions, or perhaps some non-committal “what if” discussions, would go a long way towards that.

In this case, if months ago there had been a post from someone at ANet asking “what if commander tag colors were added but you had to pay 300g for each?” then the same kind of feedback would have come up. However that could have been done before any development time was spent, and thus would have saved everyone some stress and wasted effort.

I have a question. A long time ago back towards launch I purchased a commander tag for one of my toons. Since then I have deleted the toon that had the commander tag, it was painful to see that gold wasted, and recreated the toon. So my question is, hope an anet dev can answer this, will I need to buy another tag before sept 9th or will the system be able to see that I have purchased one before. Either way is fine, I’d just rather not waste another 100g.

Thank you, ANet! I’m honestly quite surprised that you changed this so quickly, but so glad that you did. Major props to the two devs that put in overtime to make sure this could happen. This is a massive improvement for WvW. <3

Thank you for putting in the extra work to correct this. It really would have undermined the whole point of different coloured tags if there was an accompanying gold sink. This will facilitate raid organisation in both WvW and PvE, which will be great for the health of the game.

Thank you for listening to us, Anet. This is the change we needed, and it certainly helps restore some faith in the game’s future.

I say its great you listened to feedback for that I say thank you. My favorite thing about this is you were honest with the community. I think as people play games longer they start to get sick of the P.R aspect and the everyone could be better off with such honesty.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

StinVec.3621:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Ragnar.4257:

Ragnar.4257:

Inb4 this was a calculated ‘leak’ so they can then ‘generously’ change the decision to show how ‘in touch’ they are with WvW players.

Say what

I’m just going to squash this rumor right now. Before the strong negative feedback received after the interview at gamescom, every intention was for each color to cost 300g. Pending QA, that version was ready to ship for the feature pack.

When the flood of feedback came in, there was a flurry of emails working out the best course of action, and in the end Zach and Tyler worked the weekend to make sure this change could be made on time for 9/9.

Hi, Mark. If you or another employee have a moment, can the exact cost of the Commander’s Compendium following the 9-9 feature pack release please be clarified?

As it is now it costs 100g plus 250 Badges of Honor to purchase the Commander’s Compendium.

I know most people drop the BoH cost due their relatively easy acquisition, but all recent discussion of the increase in cost to 300g (triple current gold cost) has not included whether the BoH side of the cost is also tripled.

Q.
Is the additional Badges of Honor cost also tripled from 250 to 750, just as the gold cost is tripled from 100 to 300?

I would appreciate a clarification on the change in total cost to the Commander’s Compendium following the release of the feature pack.

As always, thank you for everything you and your colleagues do.

The badge cost will remain the same at 250.

Thank you very much. I appreciate your taking the time to clarify that aspect of the cost for me.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

in the end Zach and Tyler worked the weekend to make sure this change could be made on time for 9/9.

Thanks Zach and Tyler

Zach & Tyler, thank you for sacrificing your weekend to fix this for us. It really means a lot to not only be assured that the devs are listening, but to know that you immediately worked on the change to ensure it made it into the FP. You guys deserve a batch of cupcakes and a case of red bull. <3 For now, you have our gratitude!

I still disagree with this new change if i may say.

Gold should have never been a factor in the price of a commander tag, but rather Badges of Honor. I know many full time WvW commanders that are poor as hell with WvW being so unrewarding, they often ask for siege donations just to be able to command effectively.

I personally dislike having every schmo with extra gold lying around being able to buy a commander tag and run around like an imbecile in WvW while full time WvW’ers have a huge uphill battle should they choose to purchase a tag to help others out.

Commander tags should cost 5k Badges of Honor for each color.

Just my 2 cents.

Hi Mark I also have a question.

What is your stance on squads? Currently it feels like a needless system as you cannot see how many members are a part of that squad nor can you see their health bars even with simple UI. Are there any changes in the works to this system also?

Thanks!

How about this question – I’m super glad that this plan was revised – however, I have worked very hard to get the THREE tags I currently hold…. Can I get my gold back?

I now have 200 gold invested in something that I neither care (about multiple colors) or need if they’re going account bound. I could have used that to buy the excessively overpriced cultural tier 3 (Rare) skins. : /

Well done anet.

Heironeous.4928:

How about this question – I’m super glad that this plan was revised – however, I have worked very hard to get the THREE tags I currently hold…. Can I get my gold back?

I now have 200 gold invested in something that I neither care (about multiple colors) or need if they’re going account bound.

Sitting here with the same question on my tongue. Maybe it’s been touched upon elsewhere, but I’ll add my voice here none the less.. it’s 3:39am. I too have purchased Commander tag for 3 of my characters. With the changes now making them account-wide, that is indeed 200 Gold that I did not need to spend. I would quite honestly like to get this Gold back.

Even if the new implementation of the Commander tag is/was to cost 300 Gold, and I technically having spent 300 Gold on three tags are at a match for the new costs, that isn’t a fair solution to this. Not at all. There are people right now, armed with this new knowledge, buying a single Commander tag, for 100 Gold, that will become account-wide once these changes goes live. That’s a bit unfair, is it not? Just because I was an early adopter, I get shafted out of 200 Gold that others that knows about these changes right now aren’t?

I do hope you have some sort of compensation in mind for this. I love the change of it becoming account-wide. I love the implementations of colors. I don’t like if I am to be out 200 Gold when Jimmy Commandsalot that just bought a Commander tag today, gets to have these great changes for a third of the cost, 100 Gold. I want to be treated fairly.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Ragnar.4257:

Ragnar.4257:

Inb4 this was a calculated ‘leak’ so they can then ‘generously’ change the decision to show how ‘in touch’ they are with WvW players.

Say what

I’m just going to squash this rumor right now. Before the strong negative feedback received after the interview at gamescom, every intention was for each color to cost 300g. Pending QA, that version was ready to ship for the feature pack.

When the flood of feedback came in, there was a flurry of emails working out the best course of action, and in the end Zach and Tyler worked the weekend to make sure this change could be made on time for 9/9.

<3 Again, thank you.

The other change would not have given us the functionality to use the tags properly in WvW and to assign roles to them, through player consensus.

Only certain WvW Commanders would have been able to afford certain colors, and trying to give them roles would have been chaotic and messy.

Thanks for listening finally!

Honestly, if you consulted the community before we could have avoided all the WvW community outburst. 300g for each colors was just totally wrong.

Anyway, glad it’s all cleared up.

Now, about new content: We need to make EOTM part of the WvW rotation until new maps are made. This surely cannot be that complicated to do? can it?

Because I see red posts here, that almost a year I seen so many red posts.

Dear Mark,

do you plan to adjust commander funcionality? I am just because of supplyinfo.
Do you plan to little bit increase range of supply info?

Example: commander drops 2 rams on bay south gate, people build them, commander call for stack, but he cant see guy on rams. If he step to one ram, second is out of range.
Increasing /supplyinfo to at least 450 would be great option.

Thanks for your answer

Absconditus.6804:

Heironeous.4928:

How about this question – I’m super glad that this plan was revised – however, I have worked very hard to get the THREE tags I currently hold…. Can I get my gold back?

I now have 200 gold invested in something that I neither care (about multiple colors) or need if they’re going account bound.

Sitting here with the same question on my tongue. Maybe it’s been touched upon elsewhere, but I’ll add my voice here none the less.. it’s 3:39am. I too have purchased Commander tag for 3 of my characters. With the changes now making them account-wide, that is indeed 200 Gold that I did not need to spend. I would quite honestly like to get this Gold back.

Even if the new implementation of the Commander tag is/was to cost 300 Gold, and I technically having spent 300 Gold on three tags are at a match for the new costs, that isn’t a fair solution to this. Not at all. There are people right now, armed with this new knowledge, buying a single Commander tag, for 100 Gold, that will become account-wide once these changes goes live. That’s a bit unfair, is it not? Just because I was an early adopter, I get shafted out of 200 Gold that others that knows about these changes right now aren’t?

I do hope you have some sort of compensation in mind for this. I love the change of it becoming account-wide. I love the implementations of colors. I don’t like if I am to be out 200 Gold when Jimmy Commandsalot that just bought a Commander tag today, gets to have these great changes for a third of the cost, 100 Gold. I want to be treated fairly.

You were. You got exactly what you wanted. You knew that commander tags might become account bound, yet bought them anyways. The money wasn’t “wasted”. You spent it and got what you wanted. We have to make choices, and that means guessing at what’s going to happen in the future. Do you complain that you bought an ipad 2 a year before the ipad 3 came out, and then go to apple saying “it’s not fair, I want a refund” or do you realize you got use out of the ipad before the new one came out, and you got exactly what you paid for?

Maybe this has been already answered, but is there an official word from Anet about those who have purchased and used more than 1 commander books on their other toons on the same account? I read something about refunds for those who purchased more than 3, but the first 3 you are out of luck because you were dumb enough to have overpaid? Also, the refunds appears to be only 100g for each in excess of 3. I guess that’s Anet’s way of being fair? Those commander icons aren’t just popular in WvW. I seen plenty in Lion’s Arch.

Becka Williams.4978:

You knew that commander tags might become account bound, yet bought them anyways. The money wasn’t “wasted”. You spent it and got what you wanted. We have to make choices, and that means guessing at what’s going to happen in the future. Do you complain that you bought an ipad 2 a year before the ipad 3 came out, and then go to apple saying “it’s not fair, I want a refund” or do you realize you got use out of the ipad before the new one came out, and you got exactly what you paid for?

Not everyone had the foresight and crystal ball that you have to see that everything that Anet does will become account bound. If that was the case, everyone will hold off buying stuff.

Comparing apple to commander tags is completely different. One is tangible and one isn’t. Not even worth comparing. Besides, I never own an ipad and no intentions to ever own one.

SleepingDragon.1596:

Becka Williams.4978:

You knew that commander tags might become account bound, yet bought them anyways. The money wasn’t “wasted”. You spent it and got what you wanted. We have to make choices, and that means guessing at what’s going to happen in the future. Do you complain that you bought an ipad 2 a year before the ipad 3 came out, and then go to apple saying “it’s not fair, I want a refund” or do you realize you got use out of the ipad before the new one came out, and you got exactly what you paid for?

Not everyone had the foresight and crystal ball that you have to see that everything that Anet does will become account bound. If that was the case, everyone will hold off buying stuff.

Comparing apple to commander tags is completely different. One is tangible and one isn’t. Not even worth comparing. Besides, I never own an ipad and no intentions to ever own one.

actually that is a fair comparison. If I buy 3 oranges today at $1 each, then next week the price changes to 3 oranges for $1 total, it’s not the fault of the orange seller. As far as being tangible, your in-game gold is just as intangible as your in-game commander tag.

Your real world money is just as tangible as your real-world iPad(or oranges, whatever)

On the reversal they should never have made the decision in the first place. I’ll be impressed when they start listening to players on stuff like the WvW seasons and siege.

Thank you for listening to our feedback and making this change, ANet. I’m actually going to drop 100g on a Commander tag tonight.

I do hope you have some plans in place for those who have purchased multiple Commander tags and would like a refund though. They should not be penalised for their devotion to the game and being a Commander across multiple characters.

I think that the refunds for anyone that has more than 3 commander tags are awesome…. if you have 2 or 3 already (like myself), then you have already paid full price or you got a 100g discount on the new price point (and you’ve already gotten to use it!).

Keep in mind, if you want to talk about “fair”, one of the things they could have done instead is refund all commander tags @100g each and just charge the 300g for an account bound tag, so every single person pays the same price for their account bound tag…

Also, it is incredibly refreshing to see ANet not only using community feedback, but for someone to drop by the WvW forums to let us know that they read what we had to say and actually cared about it… Thanks guys!

awesome, i heard about this with the 300g per color thing and my first thought was ouch. then i read some well thought out posts about how terrible it actually was for wvw so im very glad that .

SleepingDragon.1596:

Becka Williams.4978:

You knew that commander tags might become account bound, yet bought them anyways. The money wasn’t “wasted”. You spent it and got what you wanted. We have to make choices, and that means guessing at what’s going to happen in the future. Do you complain that you bought an ipad 2 a year before the ipad 3 came out, and then go to apple saying “it’s not fair, I want a refund” or do you realize you got use out of the ipad before the new one came out, and you got exactly what you paid for?

Not everyone had the foresight and crystal ball that you have to see that everything that Anet does will become account bound. If that was the case, everyone will hold off buying stuff.

Comparing apple to commander tags is completely different. One is tangible and one isn’t. Not even worth comparing. Besides, I never own an ipad and no intentions to ever own one.

I always guessed they’d become account bound, and there wasn’t enough utility for me, so I didn’t buy it till recently (yes, because the price is going up). However, I bought them before they announced the changes to color, because I didn’t care about the colors. The op presumably saw value in buying 1 for each of his three characters that he wanted to have commander tags. Then, sometime later, anet announced they’d go account bound. And now he feels like he wasted his money. Why? He has buyer’s remorse, but presumably he got SOME value out of having 3 commander tags. When’d he buy them? If they were bought a week ago, I’d have sympathy. If they were bought a year ago, less so. You make your choices, and take your chances. That’s what everyone does. Sometimes you choose wrong. That’s the chance you take when you make a choice.

John Corpening.9847:

I would really like to direct the thanks to Zach and Tyler both of them came in over the weekend to make sure the change got in on time in order to stay on schedule with our QA test plan. I greatly appreciate the work the team put in to make this happen on this short of a time frame.

I appreciate that you could work this out. I imagine it must have been a jungle of bureaucreacy/office diplomacy with your economics and monetization department.
The only thing, now, I can object to with this update is that you advertise it as “big”. It’s not. Yeah, it’s a good update (now), but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, it’s far from enough to save WvW from decline, especially if this and the trap is all WvW gets for the next 6 months (I wish I was being sarcastic with this assessment, but feature packs do only come twice a year). Not to mention people expected far more than just color tags with the commander system. Take a look at your old CDI.

The outcry against the 300g/colour tags was huge. Here, we see the media suggested changing that decision, too. With good explanation.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/08/19/flameseeker-chronicles-taking-command-in-guild-wars-2/

I have bought multiple tags for my characters and now I am told that a player that has bought just 1 has saved hundreds of gold compared to me. Is this fair? How about you return us the gold we have invested since now it is Account Bound? Thanks for reading.

Kudos for listening and for putting in extra effort to be responsive.

You heard the people sing.

Again a poor in game add…. seriously, change of commander tag, very very very max dev time 1month all inclusive…. for 4 colors and a new way to buy it…..

Wahou that’s an awsome add !!!

Anet stop deal some bullkitten content, stop just see Chinese market

Thank you for listening to us on this one. Really. Thank you. Still uneasy about other things, but this was a great show that you are hearing us in some way.

It’s a nice change seeing multiple red responses around here, please keep it up.

Nate.8934:

actually that is a fair comparison. If I buy 3 oranges today at $1 each, then next week the price changes to 3 oranges for $1 total, it’s not the fault of the orange seller. As far as being tangible, your in-game gold is just as intangible as your in-game commander tag.

Your real world money is just as tangible as your real-world iPad(or oranges, whatever)

umm… you just follow-up with a bad comparison to someone else’s bad comparison? Reason being if I buy 3 oranges today at $1 each and price change in 1 week to $1 for 3, you better believe it. I’m getting my refund back. I never let any company or anyone rip me off that way. Even if it’s a nickel which I spent time to get a refund on. It’s more to do with the principles involved. I have gotten a refund on a watermelon because of $1 change within 2 weeks. So yes… many items are refundable. :-)

As for Anet doing that buy now for 100g to save 200g and not care about the ones who bought multiple tags, the best thing for them to make it fair for all is implement a 300g price tag all around for changing from soul bound to account bound. Those with 3 tags gets merged into 1 new account bound version. Those with more than 3 tags gets a refund of 100g each. Those who got 1-2 tags needs to fork over that 100-200g to upgrade it to account bound. Personally I see that as being the fairest option.

SleepingDragon.1596:

Nate.8934:

actually that is a fair comparison. If I buy 3 oranges today at $1 each, then next week the price changes to 3 oranges for $1 total, it’s not the fault of the orange seller. As far as being tangible, your in-game gold is just as intangible as your in-game commander tag.

Your real world money is just as tangible as your real-world iPad(or oranges, whatever)

umm… you just follow-up with a bad comparison to someone else’s bad comparison? Reason being if I buy 3 oranges today at $1 each and price change in 1 week to $1 for 3, you better believe it. I’m getting my refund back. I never let any company or anyone rip me off that way. Even if it’s a nickel which I spent time to get a refund on. It’s more to do with the principles involved. I have gotten a refund on a watermelon because of $1 change within 2 weeks. So yes… many items are refundable. :-)

As for Anet doing that buy now for 100g to save 200g and not care about the ones who bought multiple tags, the best thing for them to make it fair for all is implement a 300g price tag all around for changing from soul bound to account bound. Those with 3 tags gets merged into 1 new account bound version. Those with more than 3 tags gets a refund of 100g each. Those who got 1-2 tags needs to fork over that 100-200g to upgrade it to account bound. Personally I see that as being the fairest option.

so you want to take tags away from the poor as kitten wvw commanders if they cant shell out another 100 or 200g?

thats just great.

This can also be a move to decrease the amount of gold flowing around in the game, wrapped in a feature pack.

Take a feature, tweak it a little bit, and then announce a significantly (3x) higher price. Also provide a grace period while the item can be purchased still at the original lower price. Anyone who can afford (either via gold or gems) and thinks he can use the tag later on for any purposes, will consider buying it just to avoid a bigger expense later (given the price difference is high enough).

So 1.) lots of gold potentially removed from the game and 2.) if these people need BLTC items later on, they might buy gems instead of converting from gold. Also with less gold circulating, overall prices could potentially go down a bit, helping the game economy.

Of course I’m just theorycrafting

Becka Williams.4978:

You were. You got exactly what you wanted. You knew that commander tags might become account bound, yet bought them anyways. The money wasn’t “wasted”. You spent it and got what you wanted. We have to make choices, and that means guessing at what’s going to happen in the future. Do you complain that you bought an ipad 2 a year before the ipad 3 came out, and then go to apple saying “it’s not fair, I want a refund” or do you realize you got use out of the ipad before the new one came out, and you got exactly what you paid for?

Excuse me? How would I or anyone else know Commander tags might become Account Bound? Practically nothing, even as short a time as just a year ago, was Account Bound. I doubt ArenaNet themselves knew Commander tags would become Account Bound at that point.

In what non-crackerhead way can you even compare it with a revision of an iPad? Please explain how you in real life, have access to multiple “characters” that you can move your consciousness from and to? How Apple can make the iPad change colors, but not only that, without a single cost to them within the universe of which the iPad exists, make it so that it magically duplicates itself across these “characters” that’s all you. You’re comparing something virtual, to something real, in a way which it does not relate one bit. ArenaNet are Gods within their universe. They can do whatever, whenever. If they want, they can make it rain goats. They can make one item into multiple items. Pigs can fly. And within this universe, this costs them nothing. In the real world, sure, it costs them development time and money, but Gold doesn’t pay for that.

So why should you, armed with this new knowledge and certainty, get to have this for 100 Gold, just because you now know that it is coming and are spending your money now in order to save yourself from needing to spend an extra 200 Gold later? Why am I supposed to get treated differently, within a game, a virtual world? The only reason anyone has bought multiple Commander tags, is because it wasn’t account-wide, because it was something considered a very useful thing, and as you play, you tend to swap your main character. Even you will do that at some point.

Comparing something in a virtual world, where the cost of refunding Gold will cost them practically nothing, to something in real life.. please.