Guild Wars 2

Hi All,

So I am on SBI (our battle is not going well but that’s really not what this is about) and last night I switched around between all three fringe battlegrounds (HoD, JQ, and SBI) when I saw one needed more help than the other. I generally avoid Eternal Battlegrounds just because there are already plenty of people waiting to get on there and I prefer getting in without a wait time.

2 of the battlegrounds I ended up on, I think HoD and JQ, had 2 and 3 commanders, respectively. One would think this would allow us to split up and attack multiple fronts….not so much.

The commanders were generally all bunched up in the same place, causing every player to bee-line straight for that one location. You can see how that is working out for us as we are currently in third place.

Just remember, if you have a commander icon turned on (can you turn it off?), try to go where the other commander is not. Draw people to more than one location and turn the 100g to an advantageous marker rather than a swarm summons.

Additionally, use the command abilities to call people to certain areas that would be strategically advantageous. We can all see your commands and many of us would follow them gladly.

You should be near the back of your forces, only fighting if you need to, watching the battle, watching the rear, and using your “outside combat” freedom of vision to direct the battle where we need it to go.

You should not be getting badges, killing enemies, or setting up/operating siege. Be commanders, not soldiers with fancy ecto hats.

Also, if you can turn off the icon and you are not planning on leading people actively, please do so. Nothing is worse than seeing a group of people following a commander who isn’t doing anything significant.

Heh, just like i would see situation on my server…

Like 15 commanders so far, many of them completely not capable of commanding people, running around with turned on Blue arrow, doing puzzles while we try to defend/attack something and need people. Instead of helping, many of them actually harm servers coordination. And i don’t really see a possibility of changing this, there’s no hope.

Commanders should be voted on by the public.

The servers rematch every week anyway Commanders should be voted on a weekly basis. Have a set limit to how many Commanders there can be and just let the players vote on who they want to lead them and follow.

They should also have leaderboards so you can see who the Heroes are of your World. Also a player progression ranking system.

WvW in its current form is not thought out very much. I mean why would they make Commander status something you can buy in the first place?

King Hardcore.7065:

Commanders should be voted on by the public.

The servers rematch every week anyway Commanders should be voted on a weekly basis. Have a set limit to how many Commanders there can be and just let the players vote on who they want to lead them and follow.

They should also have leaderboards so you can see who the Heroes are of your World. Also a player progression ranking system.

WvW in its current form is not thought out very much. I mean why would they make Commander status something you can buy in the first place?

Sorry but i disagree. Commanders will be pretty usefull in future PvE events (atleast they are ment to be usefull in PvE too), and not only in WvW so voting is pretty bad idea.

I’d like to be able to vote down commanders.

I just want commanders to be more commander-esque. I guess they could cost 500-1000 badges or something since those can’t be shared and are only gained through personal achievement in WvWvW.

Whatever the case, commanders need to act the role. They shouldn’t be fighting at all unless the kitten is hitting the fan. You don’t see Sun Tsu or Alexander The Great leaping into the fray and shouting orders between kills…

Judas.5432:

I just want commanders to be more commander-esque. I guess they could cost 500-1000 badges or something since those can’t be shared and are only gained through personal achievement in WvWvW.

Whatever the case, commanders need to act the role. They shouldn’t be fighting at all unless the kitten is hitting the fan. You don’t see Sun Tsu or Alexander The Great leaping into the fray and shouting orders between kills…

I wouldn’t respect a commander that sits on a wall all day shouting orders and taking credit for any objective taken by other players. Contrary to your belief of what the role should be, this is a video game where an officer is not exposed to actual death. He can command as a corpse if he wanted to.

Moreover, players will simply not respect you unless you demonstrate you’re a good player who can win a fight. Would you follow someone who gets beaten by an upleveled level 30? This is a video game, and you only get respect if its due. Can you assume simply asking players to go in front of you to die as you run away will make them ever follow you again?

P.S. Sun Tzu was not a military officer. He was a philosopher.

commanders never led soldiers directly into the fight itself? news to me.

The biggest problem with commanders is that they are woefully uneducated as to what their role is supposed to be. They purchased an icon and the ability to create a SQUAD. People can join this squad, and they now have the squad chat option. They are not great military leaders like Alexander the Great.. they can’t be, they aren’t qualified. Squad leaders (nearly every military in existence) lead from the front, and actively participate in combat.. That’s their job. Their job is not to sit in the back doing nothing while shouting out orders and glorifying in their own self importance. Anyone who’s been in the military will tell you that you can’t expect to have your subordinates do what you yourself can not.

Ehmry Bay has this problem. I actually saw one particular commander literally say in team chat that everyone needed to do what he said because he was a commander. He then went on to educate us by saying that his guild mates were “really good leaders” and that everyone “needed to obey them". This is the same commander that wasn’t even level 80, and would sit around doing nothing simply repeating what someone else said in a more authoritative way, or worse he would state the obvious about what needed to be done, “Okay everyone when the gate goes down, be ready to rush in!!!” The best part is he would take credit for the success of operations that were actually the achievement of the 90% of people who were there and knew exactly what to do without listening to an idiot with delusions of grandeur spewing nonsense over team chat.

If people used the commander icon like it was meant to be used, and had people join their squad (after numerous conversations I can tell you even the worst commander has fanbois and can get a few in his squad) and used their squad chat instead of team, it would eliminate many of the issues people have with it. This isn’t my personal opinion, it’s exactly how the commander status was designed by Arenanet, and the only way a server will be able function when eventually there are 20 commanders on every map.

As a military historian, actually, Alexander the Great jumped into the fray at every chance he got. He didn’t shout orders between kills because that would be pointless… And Sun Tzu may or may not have existed. If he did exist, he was a general and a philosopher. Whether he led from the front or not is of course unknown. If you’re going to use historical examples, please know your history.

That said, commanders should definitely turn off their icon when not leading (doing jumping puzzles primarily comes to mind). I also agree that commander should cost badges rather than gold. While commander is useful in PVE (Finding the zerg in Straits of Devastation is easily done with a commander there), it is primarily a WvW tool. Having commander cost badges would at least mean the player who has it has a good deal of experience in WvW. Doesn’t mean they’re still not an idiot and suck at leading, there’s no way to avoid having commanders suck. But at least they know how to get kills and find their way around WvW maps if they can afford spending badges to get commander.

I don’t see any problem with commanders leading from the front. They’re contributing more if they’re adding DPS as well as leading.

Don’t worry, Far Shiverpeaks have the worst commanders in the whole world.

I think commanders should be voted by their current server, and when they switch server, should be voted again by the new server..
I know it is a crazy idea, but at the current state the commander book can be purchased by everyone, would it be a pve carebear or just a troll, 100 gold are easy to farm with a little effort farming DE in chain..
The commander should be someone who can organize masses and big numbers under the same tag and for the same task but usually those commanders don’t even know the map where they are in and they are not even familiar with all the people that should be fight on their side..
then why not starting a votation that last a week? if the commander is an unknown player, he won’t reach the votes for his charge, if he is a well known player he surely will get the commander tag easily, what I mean is that a commander should be in good relations with people and people must trust him at all.

Squad Chat, Squad Chat, Squad Chat. I pray for the day people start using it. Whenever my small guild gets on, we make it a point to use the squad chat if we join a particular squad.

Cain.9724, I think the problem is your thinking only of a Platoon commander and not a Battlefield Commander role (AKA Generals who DO NOT lead from the front lines in modern days). I am on EB and I can say you need many levels of commander. Platoon, Squad, and Battlefield level if you want to win. And I know that a few with the rune on EB are qualified to lead as they are ex-military/police. One issue I wish they would do with the Commander Rune is make it transferable for a guild in case one commander is not on another can use it. WvW isn’t Arathi Basin and you can’t just randomly zerg everything. If you don’t want to listen to some one who is trying to organize all the squads then that’s your choice but don’t put down people who are trying to step up and help everyone out.

I have spoken to all the commanders on Ehmry Bay, and we respect our players and other guilds enough to send whispers and request help. Even if another commander makes tactical mistakes or is inherently hostile, I am still inclined to work with them and foster comradery.

You do not transfer to another server and suddenly tell their players to “Obey” you as a commander. That is simply the worst thing you can possibly do and was the only time I’ve lost all respect for someone in this game. As a commander, you treat the player base with respect and act as someone who can teach them overtime how to become better. You don’t claim you’re the reason they won, ever. The victory is theirs unless you fielded 90% of the players. If I suddenly claimed in team chat that I alone was the reason we’re winning while your own guild selflessly helped achieve objectives without spamming team chat, I’d assure you that you’d lose respect for me.

Jamaz.9837:

As a commander, you treat the player base with respect and act as someone who can teach them overtime how to become better. You don’t claim you’re the reason they won, ever. The victory is theirs unless you fielded 90% of the players. If I suddenly claimed in team chat that I alone was the reason we’re winning while your own guild selflessly helped achieve objectives without spamming team chat, I’d assure you that you’d lose respect for me.

This may be how you are but, realistically, there is 0 reason why anyone should listen to a commander or be ‘taught’ by one. A commander is nothing more than another player like anyone else who happened to obtain 100g somehow and spent it on a book.

Being a commander is a decorative title.

Enigma.7948:
Strange, because the game allows you to buy (keyword: buy) a title that then allows you to create squads, (keyword: squad) and the game does not allow you to organize above that level. There’s no denying the icon is useful, you’re pretty much going to get a zerg at your location as people love being part of a zerg. The reality is, there is absolutely nothing to show that you know what you’re talking about and everything I’ve seen points to the contrary (i.e. your commander was bragging about taking a fortified keep at 3am on a borderlands map as if that isn’t done by random people many times a night..)

Your analogy is flawed, generals do not go to the battlefield and give orders, nor are they self-proclaimed generals.. I am also in the military and trust me.. 99.99% of people in the military are not qualified to lead, that’s why there are separate officer, nco and enlisted ranks and that still isn’t saying much since the military is designed to operate on mediocrity (I have no idea what being in the police would qualify you for..).

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you’re in that same guild as the commander I’m speaking of and feel somehow entitled to have people listen to you when you open your mouth. How can you possibly defend a statement like “everyone should obey us”. There’s a very specific reason that a player has to join your squad on their own and you can’t force them.

I have zero problem with people helping out and stepping up.. hundreds of players do it all the time. They are the ones that are actually winning objectives because they share relevant information, request assistance before it’s too late and accomplish tasks. The problem I have is how every time someone disagrees with a “commander” they act insulted, as if they are somehow above reproach. Instead of responding and answering an argument logically their guild mates rush to their defense saying, “you’re not a team player, how dare you point out the flaws in our logic, you must hate your server”. When people start acquiring WvW achievement titles you will actually see who knows what they are talking about versus groups of people who pooled money together and then demand mindless obedience.

Don’t get me wrong, there are several very good commanders in Ehmry Bay and they all have one thing in common.. they already have a solid group of players who accomplish things for our server. It’s almost as if they are.. leaders with their own squads, go figure right? I also know they coordinate amongst themselves and have meetings to discuss what they can accomplish together.. that’s stepping up, stepping up is not filling team and map chat with your own self importance.

Houdii.2563:

I heard HoD is currently funding bad players on JQ and SBI with gold to create terrible commanders that lead your zergs to failure. Discuss.

The new plan is to packup and send them these xRx guys. The greatest commanders and guild ever! problem is i dont think they will leave until SBI is first though…and with them leading i cant see it happening now that we have them on henge.

Fort Aspenwood had one commander sitting AFK in Eternal BG at Mendon’s Gap for about an hour two days ago. He kept his commander tag on, of course, and people were running there thinking something was going down. Awesome stuff.

Judas.5432:

Also, if you can turn off the icon and you are not planning on leading people actively, please do so. Nothing is worse than seeing a group of people following a commander who isn’t doing anything significant.

The problem is that there is simply no other way in-game for multiple groups to coordinate. Until that issue is resolved you will have guilds or groups of people putting commander pins up who aren’t leading.

It’s the lack of flexibility that causes to many pins…. simply no other option.

EDIT: whoa, I didn’t notice that Ahmrill necro’d this thread from 4 months ago and that I’m arguing with nobody

This is my experience as a commander leading groups of randomers in tiers 4-6. I tend to put my badge up during off-peak times (3am – 11am), because often there aren’t any other commanders about on my server at that time. I leave it off during the peak times to let the more experienced commanders backed by guilds do their job effectively.

People who have never tried it can’t understand how difficult it is to successfully command. I have yet to meet a commander who was not shocked when they started at how difficult it is to get people to tightly, quickly and efficiently follow them, no matter how good they are. Making comparisons with Sun Tzu or Alexander the Great, or any general you care to mention is pointless. Generals can usually rely on their subordinates to carry out, or at least attempt to carry out, their orders. Not so with random gamers. The only way to get a force of randomers to jump out of a keep and push the enemy away from the wall is to do it yourself. As a commander you can ask nicely a 100 times, scream yourself hoarse for half an hour and still only a few will pay attention, and those few will trickle over the wall and get themselves killed, but the second people see your blue icon moving forward they’ll pile in right behind you. This is precisely why my commander character is a tanky warrior with a shield, so I am always able to be waving the blue-dorrito flag out in front and not downed every 3 seconds.

It’s a little different for commanders with strong guilds behind them who are all on teamspeak. They really can rely on their followers to follow orders quickly and tightly, but it just does not work that way when you’re leading randomers.

If you insist on making comparisons to real life military, then the commander functions more on the lieutenant/captain level rather than the level of a general. A commander who just sits in a keep throwing out orders is very quickly going to be ignored by everyone.

Similarly, people complain that commanders don’t try or are unsuccessful at “tactics” like sneak or flank attacks, coordinating two forces to pincer the enemy, etc etc. They assume their commanders are stupid people who are only capable of marching from one objective to the next on the map.
Let me tell you that, in most cases, this is not true. Infact, most commanders have tried to do these things, and quickly realised that they are simply impossible for a force of randomers who aren’t communicating by teamspeak, or even in the same language. There are always people in your group who insist on auto-attacking every gate or animal in their path, so sneak attacks without orange swords are usually out of the question if your squad is randomers.
Randomers find it very hard, for some reason, to stay tight on the commander, so if you try an do a flank attack in the style of a dedicated guild (balling up, maneuvering to the rear and smashing through), instead what you end up with is roughly a third staying tight on you, a third spreading out from you so as to be not very useful but still vaguely following your path, and a third completely ignoring your path and just running directly at the enemy, getting themselves very quickly wiped, weakening our force, and blowing the element of surprise.

Continued….

Continuing….

An example for you; imagine you’re commanding on EB, you’re green server and you hold SM. Blue have Durios, Umber, Bravost, QL and Langor. You want to secure Durios so they can’t upgrade it and start trebbing SM. You’re standing in SM with a reasonable size force gathering around you, but you lack supply. A good plan would seem to be to dive at Umberglade or Danelon to get supply up, put up orange
swords on Langor or Bravost, but not try to take them because they’re fully upgraded and covered by mortars/cannons from the keep, to distract the enemy, and then quickly get back to Durios and ram it down before they know what’s happening. This is the sort of thing you expect to see from your commanders I assume.

So you explain your plan to your group, and it seems to meet with approval. I can guaruntee that on your way to Umberglade or Danelon, about a third of your force will break off and start auto-attacking the gates of Durios or QL. Then you start your distraction at Langor/Bravost.

Someone who didn’t read the plan will drop some rams/catas, wasting your gathered supply, and when you fall back to go to Durios, again a good third of your force will either not notice you moving away or will ignore it and keep auto-attacking the gate or skirmishing with the enemy. You arrive at Durios with maybe a half of your original force and not even enough supply to get a second ram up. This is the point where people start to blame the commander.

This is why commanders leading randomers often don’t try anything more advanced than head on attacks/defences. What I described above is hardly the battle of austerlitz, it’s just 3 simple steps; grab supply, put up orange swords somewhere else, dash back to real objective. But it will result in a divided and confused force.

Now with a WvW guild of 20, all on teamspeak, the result would be a little different. But rather than crediting the WvW guild with a successful manoeuvre, they credit it to the commander leading that guild and say that that is a “good” commander, while the commander who tried it half an hour ago and failed because his force of randomers didn’t follow the plan is a “bad” commander.

I realise at this point that I may sound like I’m whining to try and make up for my failings, and you may be assuming that I’m the type of commander who spends all their time kittening in team chat. I’m not, I’m just trying to give people some perspective of how it is no simple task to get a force of randomers to do anything other than stand in front of a tower and auto-attack until either they or the
gate is dead. It is simply unfair to compare your commander to Sun Tzu, given the tools they have to work with.

As to voting on commanders, I can see this working on top tier servers with massive guilds, and I can see it working on prime time. But on my server, in tier 4, there are only a few commanders who have that level of respect, and they’re mostly on in primetime. During off-peak hours we rely on not-so-well known commanders to provide a rallying point for the 15-20 or so players that make up the late-night shift. I get the feeling that in that situation voting would simply leave us with no commander at all. Even a bad commander is better than no commander at all, simply as they provide an easy point for people to congregate at.

I see that voting would be a better system when you have experienced and well known commanders online for people to vote in. But those players are not always online, and I worry that voting would leave the lower servers with worse, not better, organisation during off-peak hours.

I would also point to Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California and Boris Johnson as mayor of London. Voting favours those who are vocal and well known, not neccesarily those who are best. That said, I absolutely agree that the system needs to be changed, or in 6 months we’ll have as many commanders as players.

Ragnar.4257:

It’s a little different for commanders with strong guilds behind them who are all on teamspeak. They really can rely on their followers to follow orders quickly and tightly, but it just does not work that way when you’re leading randomers.

There are always people in your group who insist on auto-attacking every gate or animal in their path, so sneak attacks without orange swords are usually out of the question if your squad is randomers.
Randomers find it very hard, for some reason, to stay tight on the commander, so if you try an do a flank attack in the style of a dedicated guild (balling up, maneuvering to the rear and smashing through), instead what you end up with is roughly a third staying tight on you, a third spreading out from you so as to be not very useful but still vaguely following your path, and a third completely ignoring your path and just running directly at the enemy, getting themselves very quickly wiped, weakening our force, and blowing the element of surprise.

This is almost exactly the same issues we’ve had. Our guild does run in VoIP, and even then it’s hard to do some tactics without a visual marker. Say you are running with 3-4 guild grps, you can ambush quite successfully by placing groups in certain positions and baiting with a single group. It’s MUCH easier to setup groups using the commander and squad waypoints that everyone can see. But putting the pin up draws random people who defeat the plan.

There simply needs to be tools in the game to allow multiple group coordination and communication that doesn’t put up a big blue dorito saying “everyone come here and ruin our sneak/stealth tactics!” The easiest solution is keep the current C&S system and allow you to turn off the pin without disbanding the squad.

Before you can manage a battlefield you have to be able to issue clear commands
In order to improve communication when in a leadership position here are the basics on giving a clear commands. If you are relaying information on a battlefield situation such as supply status, or enemy location you can be specific but you are not directing. With a command you are directing. This is significantly different from a request.
The structure of an effective command is as follows: person action location time.

Examples of ineffective commands
Hey come here!
Attack Speldons!
Rally on me!

Each of the above commands do not include your current location, who the command is directed to or a specified time.

Man the siege!
Fall Back!
These commands leave out the location, time, and person. These commands have assumptions on time and depend on visual contact to verify or obey. Because no person is specified the task may not be executed. This same principle can be applied to individual command and small unit commands.
Examples of effective and necessary individual commands
Dr Acula place a ram on the left side of anz door now
Or for a unit
AOD man the water gate siege in the next 30 seconds stay there until I give another order or you are wiped

Fuzzywuzikins lead your group to Pangloss now and setup two arrow carts behind the supply point and two ballistas in front of the supply point then remain on station to defend
Gold take your group to DR Borderlands to support the attack on hills and return once that attack in complete

You can issue a command clearly and to great effect but you must have the knowledge base first. Know your people or at least the leaders of the people on the map. Look at the people following you. Learn their names. There may be 200 people that play on your server in WvW regularly but once you know 30-50 of them by name and the guild leaders as well you will be better able to issue specific commands.

Good comanders have “leadership.” It is a quality that not everyone is capable of. Knowing what to do and leading others to do it are two entirely different qualities.

One tool successful leaders usually have, not in this game btw, is the ability to boot players from a group who detract from the groups success. This is called disipline lol. Anet has decided to take this tool out of anyones hands in WvW. They have also decided to not allow a commander to select the players on his team. No commander can truly be successful without these abilities.

This happens to be why many of us are so happy the free transfer deadline resulted in an immediate and almost complete exodus of “zergers” to just a few servers. Why the happiness? They are now gone and not on our servers any longer lol.

Now, many commanders and players are likely to have more success and more fun, but with fewer players.

Commander is a PvE achievement, i.e. it never guarantees skill no knowledge about the game and WvW more specifically.

On the contrary, most of commanders I met were utterly terrible. That’s why everyone makes fun of them.

It’s best to talk to your servers Alliance about the Commander Issue. Hopefully they will be willing to comply

@ the OP:

You might get a better reaction by posting it on the SBI forums.
(If you did, then good, I hope yall work it out and such, if you haven’t it might be a good idea.)

Judas.5432:

Hi All,

So I am on SBI (our battle is not going well but that’s really not what this is about) and last night I switched around between all three fringe battlegrounds (HoD, JQ, and SBI) when I saw one needed more help than the other. I generally avoid Eternal Battlegrounds just because there are already plenty of people waiting to get on there and I prefer getting in without a wait time.

2 of the battlegrounds I ended up on, I think HoD and JQ, had 2 and 3 commanders, respectively. One would think this would allow us to split up and attack multiple fronts….not so much.

The commanders were generally all bunched up in the same place, causing every player to bee-line straight for that one location. You can see how that is working out for us as we are currently in third place.

Just remember, if you have a commander icon turned on (can you turn it off?), try to go where the other commander is not. Draw people to more than one location and turn the 100g to an advantageous marker rather than a swarm summons.

Additionally, use the command abilities to call people to certain areas that would be strategically advantageous. We can all see your commands and many of us would follow them gladly.

You should be near the back of your forces, only fighting if you need to, watching the battle, watching the rear, and using your “outside combat” freedom of vision to direct the battle where we need it to go.

You should not be getting badges, killing enemies, or setting up/operating siege. Be commanders, not soldiers with fancy ecto hats.

Also, if you can turn off the icon and you are not planning on leading people actively, please do so. Nothing is worse than seeing a group of people following a commander who isn’t doing anything significant.

Commanders should be in the back? Puh lease! Even when I’m commanding, I’m one of the first into the enemy zerg. I run in there with my little asura thief and get all kinds of crazy on the enemy.
It’s the most effective way to get your people to break up an enemy zerg and is a psychological blow to the enemy.

If your people don’t see you willing to take a risk to defeat the enemy, why would they? they’ll just sit on the outskirts and slowly get pushed back by the enemy cause no one wants to risk dying.

To be frank, as opposed to Tripp, if you don’t like it get a tag for yourself and do it your way.