Guild Wars 2

Ok, now that we have the Commander tag colour thing cleared up…

Im a firm believer that the WvW community should try to get the most out of these tags. We shouted loud enough at Anet for the change to be made. Now its our job to use them in the best possible way rather than allow them to become irrelevant. I’d hate for them to just be used by the commanders as which ever colour is their favorite on a particular day.

There is obviously huge potential around how the coloured commander tags can be used. How does the WvW community at large feel about establishing an organisational meta around it right now? Should we set in stone what tags are for what, or should we let the aspects of their use evolve naturally over time? It could come to be that the Red tag on SFR means a different thing to a Red tag on Desolation. Would that be a problem? Should we establish it now so all servers can say “The red tag means this” to new players and maybe WvW can be more accessible overall?

We currently have a Blue, Red, Yellow and Purple tag.

There are obviously dozens if not hundreds of potential uses for these tags. But what are the most upfront and straightforward ones we could use? Red = offensive and Blue = Defensive seem reasonable. But is that something players would actually do? Being a defensive commander could be particularly boring on any given day. Might as well have everybody rolling red tags.

We could also use the tags to designate player roles on an individual basis. How cool would it be if every scout had lets say the yellow tag and you could see at a glance how many towers are currently being scouted. (lets face it most scouts have a comm tag i think?) Maybe we have a meta in which all scouts just automatically tag up yellow and go watch naruto on their second monitor while the gate is being rubbed infront of them. Maybe thiefs can pop a yellow tag which would basically say “I am scouting and following an enemy zerg here.”

Maybe all havoc teams have a player which runs a Purple tag and the ‘main’ offensive commander for the map can see and understand where camps are going to be flipped at a glance.

The possibilities are endless. I strongly believe there is potential for a meta-shift here. The addition of the siege disabler and the coloured tags is Anet trying to push us in a new direction. We have wanted it for a long time and they are trying to deliver. “Break up the zergs!” we have cried. More and smaller groups could be the way to go.

However, all this could potentially be confusing for new players. How do we do this in the best way? Maybe we just let whatever happens happen.

Please discuss =D

Here is a reddit thread discussing the very same thing.

I get your point, but trying to establish such a thing is simply not going to happen. Each server community is going to have to work it out for themselves. I’m betting on some of the lower pop servers, such as mine, we will just have commanders using whatever color they want just to differentiate from each other.

Commanders on low pop servers will often map hop, playing all roles from offense, defense, havok and pugmander. In these cases I would rather a commander pick a color so I can stick with them regardless of which map we hop to. Sure, I could join squad, but honestly I like to be able to see when there are multiple commanders on a map.

smithkt.8062:

Commanders on low pop servers will often map hop, playing all roles from offense, defense, havok and pugmander. In these cases I would rather a commander pick a color so I can stick with them regardless of which map we hop to. Sure, I could join squad, but honestly I like to be able to see when there are multiple commanders on a map.

This is a fantastic point. Commanders roles change constantly on the fly at any given moment through necessity. It could come to be that comms just use different colours so not everybody is blue and it ends up you start following the other commander because you waypointed and got confused.

If this turns out to be a stupid idea thats fine. I just think it would be cool if there was a structure to the tags rather than just ad-hoc tagging and explaining “By the way im the yellow commander today ill be purely focusing on hills.” Not that this would be a ‘bad’ use of the tag. Ad-hoc style may be the way to go.

I think a structure for commander tags would be great. It may be done on a per server basis but the more consensus the better I think. Fun to discuss it anyway.

I think a rigid system wouldn’t work though because as you mention there are many many possibilities.

Some of the one’s I can think of are:

• Attack
• Defense
• Coordinated groups like Hammer and Anvil
• Front Line/Back Line
• Havoc
• Map Hoppers
• West Side/East Side

Hopefully we players do use it to coordinate better and break up the zergs. Bring more strategy and tactics into WvW.

As per this thread on the reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2e3oyj/we_need_to_decide_which_tag_means_what_suggestions/
I think yellow would be perfect for guild commanders.

I reeealllyyy like the idea of scouts being able to use tags, mainly because I have tags on both of my characters and never get to use them :P. But I do also very much enjoy the reasoning behind it and the ideas you’ve given for other colours. As for cross-server uses for these new tags, I’ve noticed after being on a few different servers myself that culture actually changes depending on the server you’re from. For example, I spent most of my time on Jade Quarry, and on JQ they called tags “pins” (like a push pin that one might use on a war map), and although I was never on Stormbluff Isle, I had heard from someone that was on that server that they called out towers by their location not by their name, for example; north west tower under attack. It’s funny how little things like that change depending on the server you’re from, but I don’t think it’s a problem. If SFR want to use blue for offense and red for defense and Deso want to do the opposite, I can’t see it being a problem other than maybe confusing people who transfer. I personally really enjoy the “cultural” differences.. It gives each server it’s own identity. So for myself at least, I have no qualms with servers deciding what each tag means instead of everyone across all servers. But what ever does end up happening, it will be interesting to see what uses they have.

Sounds good… only on Mag in T2 it is uncommon to have a commander on any map much less two.

Red → offensive
Blue → defensive
Yellow → scout
Green → emo peace mode!

Only thing this will change is if more than 1 ppt guild or pugmander is on the map. Fight guilds don’t run tags because they don’t want the extra numbers or outsiders on them, that’s not going to change until they do guild only tags, which will probably never happen now.

Main pugmanders or guilds should run blue and purple tags, red should be for tracking enemy groups by the scouts, and yellow for havok teams. Which comes down to only being useful to commanders to track movements on the map, everyone else will go back to joining /squad to avoid confusion anyways.

Do you seriously believe any havoc group leader is going to pop a commander tag at all, let alone a “havoc” specific one?

We have enough cross server spies map-watching the commander tags, no havoc leader is going to give away his position like that.

Mian.1945:

Do you seriously believe any havoc group leader is going to pop a commander tag at all, let alone a “havoc” specific one?

We have enough cross server spies map-watching the commander tags, no havoc leader is going to give away his position like that.

In that case might as well just have 1 tag on the map anyways if you’re so worried about spies, so the colored tags are… pointless.

Maybe something like the following?

Blue – The Borderlands/EBG “Home” Commander. This Commander basically stays in this map 24/7 and is responsible for responding to threats against Keeps/Towers and launching assaults against enemy structures when opportunity allows.

Red – Roaming “Assault” Commander. This Commander moves from map to map as necessary. Their job is to launch attacks in enemy Borderlands and EBG, either to capture structures or to serve as a decoy to pull off heat from the Home Commanders.

Yellow – Militia Commander. This Commander is for those who are newer/more casual WvW players. Like the Assault Commander, they’ll bring the militia to wherever it’s needed most, providing greater numbers, but with less pressure. If no urgent action is needed, they’ll roam around capturing camps and paper Keeps/Towers, focusing on softer targets. They function both as support for the previous two Commanders, and as a more casual “zerg” for newer players to learn in.

Purple – Guild Commanders. These Commanders are usually on the map for their own guild purposes (which may be any of the above). Unless invited, don’t join Guild Commanders if you’re not in their guild.

Or I can just run a purple tag because it’s our main guild color, and I can completely ignore the yellow tag because I hate the color…. outside of that, I can just keep blue/red for when someone is already running purple and we need another tag on the map.

I don’t see this suggestion to have a set color for different roles actually being picked up by the general community… I don’t even see it becoming popular within each server.