While I think there is a good argument for this, we haven’t discussed it enough yet for me to say if we would or would not want to go this route. We are looking at the commander system generally, because we think it can be improved upon, and as part of that discussion we’ll almost certainly look into how you become a commander.
You become a commander using social influence and you stop being a commander when you lose that influence. It doesn’t matter if you have a blue chevron or not.
There is no currency in the game that can adequately replace influence so in lieu of that, gold is the next best alternative, because it is fungible. It is not account bound, can be exchanged between players and pooled. You can donate gold for a commander icon to someone who has influence, even if they have no money because lets face it – if you play WvW often enough to be influential amongst your peers, you will have no money.
Every other currency exchanged for a commander icon is better achieved by farming that currency – world exp, badges of honour etc. You dont want or need a farmer to be a WvW leader.
At this point I believe that the tools necessary to command effectively should be democratized. I think the commander book should be available for free so that everyone has the tools necessary to coordinate teams larger than their own party. It should not be persistent. You buy the book from an npc for zero gold and you have the commander “buff” for 24 hours or until you log out. It should be available from npc vendors in major city hubs in pve zones so that pve players may structure groups for Orr shrines and so forth. It should have the following functionality (where applicable) in both pve and wvw:
1) squad supply count;
2) squad chat;
3) squad based targeting (for calling spikes);
4) the ability to draw on and ping the minimap so it is viewable to all members in the squad (to quickly articulate direction of travel and key objectives);
5) the ability to “paint” parties in your squad a different colour (other than red) so in large scale fights they can more easily identify members of their own party and their position in relation to one another. Players within that party see their own party member names in that colour instead of blue. Everyone else in the squad is gold/yellow.
6) the ability to assign parties to squads and (via a /chat command) to see the integrity of parties assigned to your squad. I have always wanted to know who in my team is maintaining their party (if they are even in a party, which they should be) and whether they are actively replacing party members that drop. It makes it easy to call up parties to assign tasks – “can green team move to NE supply, get 10 and move to East Keep? Pink team will meet up with you at NE sentry point”
7) a toggle option to see other commander icons when you are already in a squad.
8) a toggle option to make your commander icon invisible to everyone who is not in your squad, so that private (guild) groups can use an icon without it disrupting what other people on the map are doing.
If a stupid number of players run around WvW and LA with their commander icon visible to the whole map, then that is a problem for players to deal with themselves. At some point, people broadcasting commander status need to think about whats good for all the players on the map above everything else. Players who do this and use the leadership tools with discretion will gain influence and other players will be more inclined to follow them. Players who misuse these tools – who are more interested in notoriety and personal acknowledgement, will quickly develop a reputation for being poor leaders, in much the same way it goes now.
This is not a problem that anet should have to fix. It is a problem that players should have to fix and if they are incapable of doing so, they are incapable of participating in any large organisation of people in the accomplishment of a task for the common good. That is their loss.
