Guild Wars 2

Same feedback we had in BW1 and no significant changes to the commander system. I could go into detail, but just do a search for the multiple feedback and suggestion threads covering these forums.

We also need need the ability to have /private Commander Icons. Only people you invite to the squad can see the commander icon. Our guild has commanders as it’s the only in-game way for multiple guild groups to coordinate and communicate with each other.

I’m using the commander for our guild, yet I have multiple tells in /whisper and /team asking what to do, where to go or getting nasty messages because I’m not leading properly.

That’s the point… I don’t want to lead the entire borderlands map. I just want to coordinate my guild…. allowing you to have a /private squad would allow just my guild to see it and remove unnecessary commander icons from the battlefield.

Commander icons are pretty much FOR leading the entire borderlands map. If you want to wear the badge, be ready for in influx of followers. You dont need a badge to lead your guild. Really IMO if you’re not interested in leading anyone outside your guild, you shouldn’t tag up. It creates tons of confusion/

I agree completely, tagging up creates tons of confusion if your not actually planning on leading the zone.

Well that’s the problem… when we have 3-4 guild groups people get scattered over the map. We use ventrilo and all available tools in-game for coordinating and they are not as effective as when our 3-4 guild groups use the commander and squad system. With no grouping system over 5+ people they either need a raid system or change the commander and squad system.

Easiest solution – Allow commanders to make squads public or private, now guilds can coordinate better without disrupting zone leaders or adding icons to the zone. Adding this option makes more sense than adding an entire new raid setup.

another terrible commander.

Commanders should be able to make groups bigger then 5 mans and there should be less rankings that are for guilds only.

Commanders can have 25 in a group shows up as 1 color
Captains (guild rank) can have 10 or 15 in a group and shows up as a different color
regular 5 man groups another color
solo’s keep them as light blue

lol Vespers.. I never said I was a good commander, nor that I wanted to be a zone commander. I simply want to use the most efficient and effective in-game tool to help our guild organize when running multiple guild groups.

Commander and Squad system happens to be the ONLY way to do it. Hence my OP… when are we going to get some updates and more customization for the system. All this stuff was suggested back in BW1 forums….

Is there a feature to toggle the icon currently? They could tie into somethign like that, make a “status” similar to your afk status thing only apply it to the icon, maybe something as simple as a color change.

Having a badge to follow makes it 100x easier to follow within your guild. Our commander is our stack point mid fight, and having to have a target assist on him insteafd of an enemy to keep the rally point is a major inconvenience. We should be able to toggle it for guild only, or have a less expensive guild commander tag.

Commander icon has been designed to lead your entire server.

If you don’t, you’re doing it wrong!

2 solutions: if you only want to lead several party of your guild, do not use the commander icon and ask one member of every party to target you and press ctrl+t. This will put a big red target icon on top of you that only the members of your guild will see, not anyone else.

But if you wanna be the most efficient for your server, when there is no other commander on the map where you are playing, you should activate your commander icon, gather up everyone and strike big objectives like towers or keeps, while your guild group should be roaming to capture supply camps and kill dolyaks.

Is anyone in this thread reading his original post?

He’s asking for a better system to manage his guild/alliance.

The only mistake he’s made here is title his thread with the word ‘commander’ in it, now all the social commentators have come out with their expert opinions -.-

The commander system works great for 3-4 guild groups running together. The issue here is everyone expects you to lead the the zone. If there was another system in-game that worked as well as the commander for coordinating guild groups I would use it… unfortunately there is not.

Being able to toggle squads “public” or “Private” seems to be the easiest solution for everyone. Guilds can run private squads and the commander is only visible to people in the squad. Public commanders and squads are visible to everyone on the map and commanders would be leading by choice.

A couple of you guys said I’m doing it wrong or a terrible commander…. but I’m not trying to lead the zone, I’m trying to lead our guild’s members the most effective way. Every player or guild has a different idea of what “fun” is… to our guild it’s running as a unit. More customization and flexibility is needed for commander and squads… it needs a little attention and love from the devs.

Edit: Changed the topic to reflect what I’m suggesting a little better.

Here is what I say to it: Let them kitten and moan about ‘not leading the zone’.
On your own part, you should expect random people to come with you because of the icon. Just do what you are going to do.

Though, I’d recommend you not wear the icon while PVEing the Wolves, Bears, Moas, Centuars and Skritts.

I’ve got tough skin, having people harass us for doing our own thing doesn’t bother me. But it happens to other players and guilds as well, it causes a negative atmosphere at times simply because guilds want to coordinate together more efficiently…. that being the commander system.

We need more customization with the commander & squad system to suit player and guild play styles better without causing grief and nasty comments in game. If they want to make a guild commander using the guild upgrade system and influence.. great! If they want to make commanders toggle either /private or /public…. great!

But something is needed…..

I think the whole idea of Commander should go the way of the orbs.

Though I do promote the idea of larger parties, 20-50, that keep track of players’ locations.

Look at simply rallying together with 3-4 guild grps…

- With commander up I can call “rally” in /squad and place a marker on the map to rally at.

-With just 3-4 groups running together without commander I have to call rally in ventrilo and use a local landmark that hopefully everyone knows where I mean, and where I am.

Which is more efficient? As long as it’s easier to use the commander & squad system we’ll use it… which will cause some confusion with other players and commanders seeing us on the map.

The way I see it is, if you’re a Commander, you’re leading everybody.
If you wanna lead your Guild, leave the tag off and I’d expect they’d still be able to find your location via Guild chat or vent.

Commanders lead the zerg. Leave it to Guild Officers or something to lead your small Guild forces.

That’s the point…. people are using the commander tag and NOT leading everyone, and people will continue to do this. Until there is a way for more than 5+ people to group and communicate… people will use the commander to do it because it’s easier and more effective than simply running 3-4 groups together in ventrilo/teamspeak that can’t share waypoints.

It’s really easy to say don’t turn on commander unless you are leading the zone….but people will do it anyway. And I see those people getting attacked or flamed in game. Until there is an alternative option in-game for multiple groups to coordinate more effectively this flaming is going to continue.

I just want commanders to be able to change their tag colors so I don’t get confused when 10 people want to show off their tags at once. I just need to see the few effective ones.

I believe once you actually join a squad only your squad commander is visible. A good way to remove the clutter. Of course half of those tags are probably just guilds trying to stay together in multiple groups.

Ahmrill.7512:

I believe once you actually join a squad only your squad commander is visible. A good way to remove the clutter. Of course half of those tags are probably just guilds trying to stay together in multiple groups.

I understand the join squad thing but I’d like to stay out and know where more than one commander is at a time, but I don’t need to see every commander icon. It’s better if I can just set my guilds two commander to red and yellow and be able to disregard the others.

There has been so many great suggestions and feedback since BW1 to make this system better. Unfortunately it just doesn’t seem to be a priority at this time, which is a shame as it’s causing flaming and harassment for some guild and players. I’ve actually seen someone using this for multiple group coordination and after being scolded for not leading properly he just logged.

You got what you paid for.

lol.. apparently. Let’s use the ONLY in game system for coordinating guild groups so people can get harassed.

Yeah, it’s another unfinished, poorly fleshed-out system… just like 90% of the stuff in this game, it feels like.

Fact is, simple-minded people can’t think for themselves and all they can do is follow the pretty blue object. So, in a case like yours, where you aren’t willing to lead everyone, they don’t know what to do and freak out.

I think the way you are using it is fine. If people ask you and you tell them you are just leading a guild unit, they should say “ok” and move on.

I’m amazed at how much trolling you have received in this thread already. It just goes to show that the mindless zerg player can’t fathom any type of strategy or coordination beyond the entire team running in a giant circle chasing the blue arrow.

I don’t think Anet knew what they wanted to do with the commander system. It’s like they started to implement some type of system then just stopped after putting in the tome.

It NEEDS to be more flexible…

more feature is good, i agree with OP
i usually do guild run with 30+ member and its hard to coordinate when there’s more commander in map.
when our guild commander flare his icon, crowd started joining and make cross sword wherever we go.

I agree that there is needed some more tags. Not only Commander, but maybe Guild Captain or something.
Or just make bigger parties, so more than 5 players can join. It is really annoying that guild can cap towers, can start guild bonuses but cannot make bigger parties?Or just make guild members visible on map as orange dot. You are differencing guild members from regular server members. So this should not be difficult.

I’m actually surprised at how many people feel a need for improvement for commander and squads, but seem ambivalent about voicing their opinions. The inability to group with over 5 players with some control over the makeup of the group still astounds me.

Hoping some love is given to commander and squads the next big update. Be nice to see something from a dev too!

Ahmrill.7512:

I’m actually surprised at how many people feel a need for improvement for commander and squads, but seem ambivalent about voicing their opinions. The inability to group with over 5 players with some control over the makeup of the group still astounds me.

Hoping some love is given to commander and squads the next big update. Be nice to see something from a dev too!

I am here to crush your hopes but you wanted to hear something from a dev.

From this interview: http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=31615&storypage=2

“Q: Currently, the party size in Guild Wars 2 is limited to five. With new content arriving for guilds to do together, I asked Colin if this meant that larger groups would become an option.

A: It’s something that we talk about a lot, certainly larger party size comes up in World vs. World sometimes, it’s not something we’re actually working on right now, but it is something we’re discussing: what systems would we potentially put in place to support this if we wanted to do it down the road? Currently, we’re not working on anything like that, but if we find that with the addition of the system, or as World vs. World continues to evolve, if we need to add systems like that, we’re certainly open to looking at them."

I think with TS3 you can set squads and with different push to talk keys talk to different sets of folk. Plus party leaders can always draw on maps and set waypoints (and hopefully they know landmark names). I don’t know how useful that is to you since my guild’s only been split in two and that’s complicated enough for me, haha.

Thanks for the link Styx, it’s the only thing I’ve heard discussing commander and squads.

Personally I’m not looking for a brand new grouping system, just a slight tweak of the current one. The problem is: Activating the commander pin for the purpose of organizing guild groups only results in negativity and harassment at times in WvW. It’s happened to our guild and I’ve seen it happen to other guilds. When you use the commander pin, people expect you to lead the whole zone, or the other commanders think you are trying to “erode” their leadership. Even when we announce we are activating our pin for our guild or camp taking only…. people still spout negative comments in /map and /team.

Why should people get harassed for using the best in game system to organize multiple groups in WvW?

Simplest solution: Keep the current commander and squad system with one change. The ability to change Commanders from /public to /private. Commanders that are flagged /private are not visible to anyone on the map, except to those players in the commanders squad. You reduce the amount of commander pins causing confusion, and you allow guilds and players to be more organized… and have more fun.

Yadad.6925:

Commanders should be able to make groups bigger then 5 mans and there should be less rankings that are for guilds only.

Commanders can have 25 in a group shows up as 1 color
Captains (guild rank) can have 10 or 15 in a group and shows up as a different color
regular 5 man groups another color
solo’s keep them as light blue

I agree. With the exception that there shouldn’t be a limit to how many people are in the commander group.

WvW needs another tier to organize though, and to be honest I wouldn’t mind paying some gold for it.

ANET has made this really fun game mode, and hasn’t given us enough ways to organize our people. It usually works out fine due to most of the guilds having a 3rd party mode of communication(teamspeak,vent,mumble,raidcall), but some functionality should be built into the game.

Sort of in a similar vein (long stretch, but whatever) I want the ability to choose whose commaner tags I display.

Player A, B and C are all commanders. Player B is a donkey. Please let me know hide his commander icon on my map. I just want to see the commander icons for commanders I think do an okay job (or at least haven’t sucked so bad I want to hide their icon).

From the same interview I did like this question/answer:

“Johanson went on to explain the dangers of ramping up party sizes and what effect it could have on the game.

‘One of the strengths of Guild Wars 2 is that the UI is really clean and streamlined, it’s not overwhelming, it’s easy to see what’s going on, so one of the challenges we’re going to have is we don’t want to lose that capacity to easily look at the screen and understand what’s going on. We really don’t want people to spend their time looking at the edges of the screen watching progress bars move up and down in all directions. We want them drawn to the middle of the screen and watching the action and watching the things that are going on in game. So if we did a system in the future that lets you see more and more of what’s going on, we have to build it with those things but keep in mind that we don’t want to just cover the screen in UI everywhere.’"

I think they definitely need to add raid parties as an option in this game. It would make coordination so much easier. Like or not, many people do use the commander icon as a means to rally only their guild and adding raid parties would eliminate the urge to misuse the big blue tag.

styx.7294:

From the same interview I did like this question/answer:

“Johanson went on to explain the dangers of ramping up party sizes and what effect it could have on the game.

‘One of the strengths of Guild Wars 2 is that the UI is really clean and streamlined, it’s not overwhelming, it’s easy to see what’s going on, so one of the challenges we’re going to have is we don’t want to lose that capacity to easily look at the screen and understand what’s going on. We really don’t want people to spend their time looking at the edges of the screen watching progress bars move up and down in all directions. We want them drawn to the middle of the screen and watching the action and watching the things that are going on in game. So if we did a system in the future that lets you see more and more of what’s going on, we have to build it with those things but keep in mind that we don’t want to just cover the screen in UI everywhere.’"

That’s just it… I’d be happy with NO new UI changes… just allow private commander pins and squads. It would actually REMOVE the clutter of multiple commander pins and allow people and guilds to use the play style they prefer while still coordinating better as a guild.

This is a simple change opposed to a whole new raid frame system… just allow private squads!

Porky.5021:

Sort of in a similar vein (long stretch, but whatever) I want the ability to choose whose commaner tags I display.

Player A, B and C are all commanders. Player B is a donkey. Please let me know hide his commander icon on my map. I just want to see the commander icons for commanders I think do an okay job (or at least haven’t sucked so bad I want to hide their icon).

Right click on the commander you want to follow, select “join squad” and all others commanders icons will not be shown on your map anymore.

i think one of the tricks here is to not put PUGs at more of a disadvantage.
communication changes really need to help pugs communicate so that even experienced players can join in the fray and work effectively with eachother without getting flattened by medicore groups with better communication.

Joining a squad needs to not make other commanders icons disappear. I realize they did this to probably help newbies stay only with their commander, but it really lessens your ability to understand what is going on, and where, on the rest of the battlefield.

I simply do not understand why people are so obtuse and against a request for better in game organisational tools. Having a single answer in the form of a commander icon which lacks even the rudiments of proper command structure is simply ridiculous.

We already have a guild upgrade category devoted to War, why not extend that system to add power and structure to the guild heirarchy to allow the research and assignment of deeper command to that tier allowing guilds to tailor their party and raid accordingly?

Why is ArenaNet so insistent on creating a gold sink for every facet of their game? Can someone come up with a substantiated argument against better UI and in game tools please as this is the only game I’ve ever played where people argue against it.

I agree there is alot they could do with the commander icon and there are a few changes I’d love to see, the first change I would Like to see is a change to the way it’s obtained it should never have been purchasable with gold, second I’d like to see a “status” of icon option like, active to all, active to guild members only and active to party members only I doubt this will happen anytime soon but it would help elevate stress on those who want to lead a small group or just their guild with out kitten off the map commanders or just have different color tags, blue for map commander , red for guild commander, green for small group commander. Third I’d just lime to see all /squad members on the map when you join a commander it should show all the members in the squad on the map like it does when you join a party except the dots would be a different color and still show the character names when you hovered over the dot.

Maybe it’s it’s just me… but I can’t get over the lack of flexibility. For a game that promotes large scale PvP with tactics and server coordination… they don’t give you the basic tools to group properly depending on play style.

Commander and squads are simply the ONLY way to group more than 5 people, and using them for small or medium forces has caused harassment and negativity at times. It’s hard to create a small rapid strike force when an additional 50 people follow your pin and attack everything you pass, and complain you are not leading the “right” way.

MarzAttakz.9608:

I simply do not understand why people are so obtuse and against a request for better in game organisational tools. Having a single answer in the form of a commander icon which lacks even the rudiments of proper command structure is simply ridiculous.

We already have a guild upgrade category devoted to War, why not extend that system to add power and structure to the guild heirarchy to allow the research and assignment of deeper command to that tier allowing guilds to tailor their party and raid accordingly?

Guild upgrade would be great, anything to help organize guild groups better in PvE and WvW. WvW especially as using the commander system causes tension at times if you don’t plan on leading.