Guild Wars 2

The ‘Commander’ abilities suggest some kind of skill in leadership and tactics, but at present they are a sign that the people that have them either:
a) Milked their guild members for money.
b) Have no life and just farm all day.

To most people 100 Gold is a huge amount of money, and hardly anyone has a large guild to exploit, over 12 hours a day to grind Orr, and/or is stupid enough to bot.

Though, the people who DON’T do these things are often the ones highly suited to being Commanders.

Commanders should be elected by the players of their World, not dictated by unfair circumstances.

My proposal:
~Have a point tally of a sort, that players entering WvW can view and use to vote for the person that they want to be one of the multiple elected Commanders for their world.

~One vote per person.

~The multiple people with the most votes to their name gain the right to become Commanders.

~Players can change their vote to another person, so new Commanders can be made should the current ones become inactive or turn out to be not as good. A players vote gets reset at the start of the next World match-up.

~A player who is a Commander for an extended period of time will eventually become ineligible for the Commander role for a while.
This would be so the Commander line-up changes occasionally (the same people doing it all the time can become a bit stale), and to give other people the chance to become Commander and prove themselves. Also to aid the point below.

~Limit the amount of people from the same guild than can elect the same player to be a Commander.
This would make it harder for the big guilds to just get their own way anyway, to help stop the big guilds on a World from effectively declaring sole ownership of the ‘Commander’ ability, and give the normal population more of a say of who they want to follow.

Advantages:
~Due to the dynamic nature of such an election system, we would be able to elect new Commanders for when there are none currently in WvW, so we would be able to have someone with Commander abilities on the battlefield at most times, even outside of peak ‘Zerg’ hours

~Give the Worlds that currently have very few Commanders a fighting chance.

~It would help solve the ‘Mega-zerg’ problem.
A World being able to give Commander abilities to multiple people that are most voted for would mean more Commanders on the field, so there will be more ‘mini-zergs’ which would spread the players out more as they will have more ‘Oooh, shiny blue thing!’s to follow, instead of just one which is where the unstoppable and somewhat game-breaking ‘Mega-zergs’ are formed. Of course they will need to come together some times to take certain difficult objectives like keeps.

~An idea would be to have the amount of Commanders made in this way scale based on the amount of people currently in WvW. Again, this would help spread people around the map more.

~It would help with the ‘Player Culling’ issue (were large zergs don’t appear on-screen until they are already dancing on your corpse), for the reasons explained above.

~It would solve the following issue.
If nothing does change and the current system continues, then a whole new problem will arise as time goes on as WvW will end up with what will seem like everyone being a Commander, and the ‘Commander’ ability will lose its meaning and worth
More and more people will eventually become a Commander, due to the natural process of time going on and more of them coming into use, then by probability, more bad Commanders will arise.

Disadvantages:
~Might get abused by large groups of people banding together to influence the voting poll.
If this does happen, things will only end up like how they are now with the big guilds, so we will be no worse off than before.

~Commanders will just join together to create a ‘Mega-zerg’ anyway.
Same as above, will be no worse than what is happening now.

Like anything this will need testing/tweaking before it becomes safe to add to the game.

If nothing does change and this continues, then a whole new problem will arise as time goes on as WvW will end up with what will seem like everyone being a Commander.
More and more people will eventually become a Commander, due to the natural process of time going on and more of them coming into use, then by probability, more bad Commanders will arise.

TLDR; WvW Commanders should be elected by the people of their World, not bought.

If you agree that Commanders should be elected, then please show your support.

Some kind of acknowledgement from ANet would be awesome too…

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

The ‘Commander’ abilities suggest some kind of skill in leadership and tactics, but at present they are a sign that the people that have them either:
a) Milked their guild members for money.
b) Have no life and just farm all day.

c) Bought 100g from Arena Net (by buying gems and then using the black-box “currency exchange”).

Hi my name is Sceptus, and I support this message.

Keep Commander, but allow Commanders to run for Captain. This way only the top 3 Commanders in each world can earn this position and they are voted on by the players. I know for kitten sure the people I would not vote for on JQ.

Account.9832:

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

The ‘Commander’ abilities suggest some kind of skill in leadership and tactics, but at present they are a sign that the people that have them either:
a) Milked their guild members for money.
b) Have no life and just farm all day.

c) Bought 100g from Arena Net (by buying gems and then using the black-box “currency exchange”).

I was going to add that to the list, but thought that nobody would be stupid enough to think that spending around £183 on Gems to convert to Coin is a feasible method.
Seems I was wrong…

So… the people that multi-box, now instead of simply botting to make easy money, they can influence the rally icons on the map? No thanks. I would rather the capital democracy where people can fundraise for icons now, then the easily exploitable one with a voting system. Heaven forbid, you get 6 commanders that are bots and new commanders can’t get on the screen or have squads formed.

Scorpio Shirica.1286:

So… the people that multi-box, now instead of simply botting to make easy money, they can influence the rally icons on the map? No thanks. I would rather the capital democracy where people can fundraise for icons now, then the easily exploitable one with a voting system. Heaven forbid, you get 6 commanders that are bots and new commanders can’t get on the screen or have squads formed.

Influence the rally icons on the map? What do you mean? How can that help botters?

Bots won’t overtake the rest of the player population, so they will not be able to occupy all Commander slots, if any. Also you seem to be forgetting that WvW is an open PvP zone, they would get hunted, hence why there are no bots here at present.

There would be little to stop a “play-to-win” guild from buying many accounts, placing them on your server and have them voting for their own account commanders. To list all the ways this could be exploited would take me a long time.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a “Trusted Commander” type of thing, where once they have enough votes it changes the icon to a different color. Keep the commander icon/title purchased, but allow the community to discern their worthiness.

There will probably be the need for it to terminate and have to be re-voted every month or so to not cause an issue if the account is sold/transferred.

So the biggest guilds will have all the Commanders?

With voted Commanders how do you purpose to have 24 hour coverage on a server? The big guilds will only vote for their people, but their people might not play early in the morning.

I think by multi-box he means people that have multiple accounts that they play, not bots. For instance I have an account, my wife has an account, my oldest son has an account. I could vote for the same person with all 3 accounts even though my wife and son do not play WvW.

With

Yea it is frustrating to see one commander say one thing then another say something totally different and it is followed by 3-4 trolls and a lot of confused people. The Title should be something earned, not something bought.

I’m of the opinion that Commander book(s) should be a guild upgrade that costs substantial amount of influence and gold. It shouldn’t be available from generic merchant just for gold.

Yea it is frustrating to see one commander say one thing then another say something totally different and it is followed by 3-4 trolls and a lot of confused people. The Title should be something earned, not something bought.

Commanders may disagree with each other and I’d say that’s normal. But you’d better off on a voice with your Commander of choice. Outside of well organized voice-enabled teams it’s just a marker that attracts random forces on the map to make them somewhat of a mountain river stream instead of boiling pot. Also regarding confusion, good commander may not turn his buff on if he sees enough commanders already on the map to control situation.

Scorpio Shirica.1286:

There would be little to stop a “play-to-win” guild from buying many accounts, placing them on your server and have them voting for their own account commanders. To list all the ways this could be exploited would take me a long time.

“play-to-win” or “pay-to-win”?
Assuming you meant the latter, if you think that they would buy that many accounts (more accounts than the normal WvW player population) just for the sake of voting for who they want their Commander to be, you are deluded.

Here’s a thought…

Don’t follow a commander if you don’t like or appreciate their tactics (or lack thereof).

Having some silly “majority” rule is one of the most terribly twisted ideas out there for a “fix.” Hey 500 member non-WvW guild over there, come vote for me for Commander please. Thanks!

+1

But in addition, I think commanders should be elected for let’s say 7 days, so if someone sucks he loses the title. probably gets permanent, when you get elected several times.

I don’t see a problem with big guilds that can vote for their commander. They have the manpower so why not have a leader?

Big doesn’t mean good, that is the problem. There could be smallish WvW guilds that know the maps and the tactics to win however, they would lack votes because they are small. There could also be very large mostly PvE guilds that only show up in WvW to finish their monthlies yet they have the man power to vote in a commander. Not a good idea.

unleashed.8679:

I don’t see a problem with big guilds that can vote for their commander. They have the manpower so why not have a leader?

Thing is, they already have. Commander book is not something that helps to organize “manpower” inside guild. It’s a guild resource that helps it to act on WvW as a vanguard of some bigger force.

Oh, and one more important thing. Being guild upgrade (or rank that becomes available after upgrade) it should be property of the guild and not be soul bound.

This is just a way more optimistic idea. This voting system can be exploited many ways.

Yes, i don’t like getting commander tag for 100g too, actually i hate it. It’s so unfair for experienced players who knows tactics and strategy. At the moment, commanders are not experienced WvW players, they are just PvE players who farms a lot. Some person goes and farms money, then comes in WvW and takes the zerg from there to there. People doesn’t care if that person is experienced or not. They just want some organization and follow the tag. Most commanders don’t even know where to put a treb, I tell them where to put.

Talking about the voting system, it MUST NOT be even an option. It doesn’t just solve the problem, but brings more problems like exploiting. It would be even worse. At least there is no exploitation in existing system.

What should be done is making an achievement system for commander tag. People must earn it with their experience they get in WvW, not with their golds. People must need to complete that achievement to get the commander tag. This way, only those who are experienced and plays WvW so much would become commanders.

Buying commander tag for 100g is bad and unfair, but voting for it is even worse.

Achievement system would be as prone to exploitation as voting system I’m afraid. Devil is in details. What’s your idea of fair commander achievement system?

Simple. Make a WvW commander title with a red icon, and have it cost badges of honor as well as gold.

Allowing players to buy Commander status for gold was a horrible idea by ArenaNet. I wish a new way would be implemented and ArenaNet would refund the 100g for everyone who bought their title.

Elected? It reeks of democracy. Commander should be achieved regardless of the popular vote.

The reason it costs 100g is so that ANet can make a living. That’s the only reason to be honest. It’s not perfect or anything but it’s quite OK. If you play on 1 server for longer time you already can decide whom to follow and whom not to. Bad commanders existed even in real life and if someone wants to have a bit of fun being a commander – why not? He payed 100g for it. On competitive servers people will know whom to follow anyway, and on non competitive people should be glad someone is a commander (it’s better than no commander).

But if you want elections and democracy – in every democracy a commander is the one with the most money behind him (he wins the election). He might be completely clueless, but he’s still the commander because he got the money.

—

Anyway, people payed 100g, let them enjoy the time.

I apologize in advance for words that may sound harsh or belittling. They are not intended that way. They are meant to strongly illustrate the error of the underlying premise of the OP.

The OP is clearly biased against people who have money or who are in a large guild. I, personally, find the suggestion to be offensive that, if someone has the book because his guild bought it for him, he somehow “milked” the money from them and, therefore, clearly automatically undeserving of the title. No. It could not possibly be that they freely chose to pool their money to buy the book for someone in whom they already had confidence as a leader. You know, almost as if they voted for him to be their leader. No, he clearly bilked those poor retirees out of their money like some Wall Street scumbag. WE ARE THE 99%!!! OCCUPY GW2!!!!!

There simply is no need for a cludgy, bloated mechanism to “level the playing field” for Commanders. Almost no one bothers with /squad chat and most communications occur in /Map and /Team. That means it is virtually pointless to join a squad, and I would guess that the majority of people don’t bother. They simply follow the commands in global /M or /T chat they feel are worth following. Since most comms occur in chat available to everyone, and everyone is free to follow whomever they want, including those who [gasp] don’t have an icon over their head, even that icon is of extremely limited value.

Either way, the OP is disingenuous about making this an election. Elections are about free choices, but he automatically disqualifies people who have been elected before (for a time), meaning even if you want a specific commander, your vote doesn’t count. More importantly, however, if you are in a large guild, and enough of your fellow guildies have already voted, guess what? Your vote doesn’t count. Both of these provisions are born of his blind prejudice against large guilds. See, if you belong to a large guild and/or you have the confidence of a large number of people, your vote shouldn’t count or you should be disqualified from leadership if people keep supporting you. Ironically, it is leadership that no one is obligated to follow anyway.

For the purposes of full disclosure, I am not in a particularly large guild and I have never had more than 3 gold on my character in the entire time I have been playing (i.e., since early access). I am not inclined to farm for 100G, and I do not have the book. So my perspective is not of one from a large guild or one who has money falling from my pockets because I have so much.

The OP’s suggestion also means that, if you and your friends or guildmates want to invest in the book so that your choice of leader is visible to you on the map, it doesn’t matter. You can’t obtain the book because the OP has decided that your choice of your leader is unimportant. The only leader you get to follow is the one the server chooses under rigged election rules. It doesn’t even matter that no one has to follow your choice of leader if they don’t want to. You and your friends or your supporters don’t have the right to form a squad of your own and have an icon you can follow. The 99% have spoken! Like kindergartners, we are all winners and we all get a chance to have a ribbon.

No thanks. This is a bad solution for a non-issue. Don’t want to follow someone who is a commander? Then don’t. Want to be a commander or want someone you have confidence in to be a commander, then get off your butt and earn the money or get enough people to agree with you and pool your money to buy the book. There is no need to have a cludgy, bloated mechanic that is a bad solution to a problem that does not exist.

What if Anet introduced a tier system. As in, something of higher rank than that of a commander? Possibly incorporate the voting system in this manner.

If so, refund the commanders gold.

ok refund the gold

I agree with making it cost a substantial amount of influence and each guild can only have one. If you want to change to another person as Commander it should be another substantial influence cost.

Theres a few different ways to do this I guess but with the current system I fear we may end up with 30+ commanders on a map at some point lol. Hopefully I’m wrong

So just like RFOnline? In RF every week you vote for a race leader and 8 council. The race leader is obviously the one with the most votes and the council is determined are those with the most votes after the leader. The council are then appointed by the race leader to certain teams(sub-leader, strike, defense, support) In order to be nominated you needed to be in the top 100(iirc) of points gained(kills) that week. The race leader gets a bunch of extra buffs/abilities and the council get some as well. Off the top of my head the race leader was able to put messages in the middle of the screen, change the tax rate, huge radius constant AOE buffs, and use nuclear weapons. The buffs they get were substantial, something like 30% attack and 30% defense with council giving slightly lesser buffs.

That system was definitely better than the current system, in fact a lot of the RvR stuff in RFOnline is better than the current system. Allow the leaders to tax vendored/AH stuff and have that money go to a war fund for buying siege. Have timed events like RF’s chip wars that allow access to rare resources. ArenaNet can really expand WvW to be incredibly in-depth and fun but I doubt they will because it needs to be casual friendly.

This really isn’t an issue right now, for a multitude of reasons.

I suggest you stick with one server, and play WvW a lot more regularly.

I promise you this problem will solve itself, from your personal perspective.

EDIT: I like commas.

How about having guild commander icons where the guild votes in who is the commander of there guild and all of there guild members will see this icon. At the same time i would like to see guild alines where 2 or more guilds can team up using there commanders to lead both groups.

A voting system is a nice dream but the sheer logistics of voting for a few people on a vast server? – How do we even get to know everyone to make an informed decision?

The paying for it system is equally bad of course. As someone correctly pointed out it’s easier to buy commander through mastery of PvE than WvW, which is counter intuitive. As a day trader I have enough gold to just go out and buy a commander book right now (I don’t plan to, I’m still new to WvW and I’d just be getting in the way calling myself that), someone in a previous guild of mine is soon to become a commander by harnessing the combined wealth of their guild even though they could scarcely command a team through AC story mode without having their hand held.

While WvW’rs who’ve done it for months often lack the funds to become a commander… perhaps use the WvW achievements as a basis for eligability

Commander should have required 10,000 wvw emblems with the option to have up to nine sponsors each offering 1,000 emblems.

Im a commander, and to be honest I dread to think what your servers are like if you worry about this.

I enter a zone. see whats happening. Decide if i will use it, or simply not use it. Various reasons dictate the decison. Including what other commanders are on the map, if i been asked to run the commander icon or not, if i trust the players i have seen on the map, how many of my guild i have with me … etc etc etc.

It is not hard for people to learn who are the good commanders, and who are the bad ones. If you dont like one, dont follow one. If it the only one there then it may attract people to them and affect the server ability to do well but if they are as bad as you think then no noe would follow them anyways as they wouldnt want to waste their time doing nothing.

Infact, I have been in zones where there actually 5-8 commanders on the map, and yet only 2 of them turn it on in order to not confuse the situation. So clearly it comes down to server attitude, rather then a commander issue.

For me, commander isnt a status symbol though. People know me with or without it switched on and I will discuss strategies with the current commander based on the situation and we come to a conclusion on what is best based on what we all think. But then I also ask my guild “ok folks, what do you want to do now” whilst we out in WvW as even though they funded my commander tag, I have it for THEM and not myself. Just makes things easier for us when we have a larger number of us out, or the server needs a more focused run on the map thus activating the blue zerg creator button

Being rich does not make you a good commander,
But having a lot of cronies vote for you does not either.

A popularity contest is worse than gold driven commander titles.

Tbh i’d rather they just changed it to cost 1,000 badges of honour or something. A post a few above is right, you’re system is bad.

1) Why not keep re-electing someone who is good? Why should they not be able to be commander after so long…?
2) Why do you disqualify so many guild member votes? Typically it is people in these guilds that know more about the game. Note the word typically.
3) It’d make the whole WvW thing lag like hell.

I dislike your system massively to be honest. It’s radical democracy, which has never in the entirity of history been an effective way to govern. Don’t you dare bring up Athens either, radical democracy there made many a poor decision in the second Peloponnesian war.

Commander Version 2.0: ( Phase 1 )

Actions while icon is active:
1. What has s/he done for me lately last 24 hours.
2. What has s/he done for current total time on current map in WvW (example the last 2 hours they been running around taking objectives.
3. What has s/he done for the past WvW week match.
4. What has s/he done for their career in WVW while icon is active.

Basically we need a “wvw leaderboard” for those with commander icons with what they have done while its been active.

Something in game and out of game.

Phase 2 would be some type of vote/reward/achievement system of the best commanders in game to get different icon on map.

If phase 1 gets done then work can be done on phase 2 to scope out the details.

What can be done today:

I recommend in the interm you setup a server forum or website for you server community to sort out who the best wvw leaders are, till ANet provides something solid. Get schedules out of what Map they frequent and play time etc.

For now the only person stopping you from knowing who the wvw leaders is you even without icons you can help lead and cordinate or get on VOIP and communitcate tatics and objectives you are working on that day.

or… wait for it…. wait for it… they could make everyone show up as a green dot on the map and not have commanders at all.

Commanders are useful, if they’re good, but a voting system would be even more broken than the current “Buy the magnet”

I think they only need to add a option
" to turn off the blue mark on commander that u dont want to see on your monitor"
and that’s it

The easiest and fairest way is to keep the 100g Commanders (blue icon) and add Guild Commanders (greed icon) and Guild General (red icon ).
Each guild can have 1 Commander per 50 members and is accessed by Politics Level 5 at the cost of 1,000 Influence (1 hour build time.)
Guild Commanders are Voted for via the guild and Guild members can not vote for themselves, the person elected holds this post for 7 days.
Voting auto starts 24 hours before WvWvW rollover, plus runs for 24 hours and does not need to be activated, this way leaders can not stop the voting a week later other than not build one because they didn’t get the vote themselves, should they not queue a Commander up because of this then the members will most likely act with their feet.
A Guild General only gets the post if he has been elected 4 times in a row and holds this post for 4 weeks, only one General per guild is permitted, should more than one player reach this status then the player with most WvWvW time will get the post, this includes Generals that are already in the post, should a player reach this status and a general already be in place yet they have more WvWvW time, then they supersede the player whom has the posting.

I imagine anyone who’s spent 100g on that book has some interest in leading to some extent. I’ve only seen one or two troll commanders on Maguuma, and each had logged on for like a minute and left. Nearly all of our commanders are competent and encouraging. I’ve seen some commanders who are simply naturally good, and others who weren’t embarrassed to take suggestions and have become good. They pay in time on top of the book since the moment they pop that icon it’s go time. If I want something more precise, I’d get some people on a small voice comms, but as long as people are willing to put that icon use, I don’t mind using it as well.

Ashes.6418:

A popularity contest is worse than gold driven commander titles.

Join the feudalist revolution!

Punny.9210:

I think they only need to add a option
" to turn off the blue mark on commander that u dont want to see on your monitor"
and that’s it

Currently the game shows commander icons even in PvE, all the way across the map, and even if the “commander” in question is in your block list.

I dont get this. This will not change a kitten thing and get you good commanders, the average pug in WvW is an idiot and will just vote for the commander that yells the loudest.
In a way the 100g is already something where crowds fund for their commander of choice, and must be so sure they are willing to commit ingame currency for it.

And how do you vote for a commander, how do you know he’s good? After seeing him in action? Well, whats the difference with the current system. If you WvW enough you will know who is a good commander, which guilds produce good commanders, and which commanders and guilds are terrible.

If you cannot make that distinction on your servers WvW, then you need to play more.

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

Commanders should be elected by the players of their World, not dictated by unfair circumstances.

I support this message!

Simply rubbish.

Yes there are inherent problems with the commander icon, but having a voting system which would mean that smaller guilds would not be able to have a commander is not a fair way to go about it.

As for larger guilds that do 20 hours plus like ourselves, we need multiple commanders otherwise the commanders would have to be pulling 8 hours shifts + each everyday. Which would be far from ideal.

In this game there are bound to be a few bad apples due to how a commander’s icon is achieved so the “field soldier” can’t just blindly follow orders, he has to make up their mind on whether the commander is worth following or not.

Largely I’ve come across worthy commanders because most people who invest 100 gold, no small sum in this game, into the rank do try to make the best of it. The ones who got it for aesthetic purposes rarely try to lead due to better commanders being around.

The orders and strategies don’t always have to be so intricate, as long as the commander is willing to invest into attack/defense.

here’s the best and least exploitable solution:

every player can personally choose one other player to “highlight” at any time. for that player, this highlighted person will show up as a gold commander icon.

this choice is purely personal, your highlighted player only appears for you. you can change your highlighted player at any time.

so if you have someone you think is good to follow, highlight that person and follow them. it also means that small groups can form on the fly, someone can just announce in chat, “I’m forming a squad, follow me!” and people can highlight him by right clicking his name in chat and selecting a menu option.

it’s quicker and more streamlined than the party/squad system.

it also means other peoples choice of commander can’t be forced on you. whether by vote or by gold. and you can’t force your choice of commander on anyone else.

of course, this mostly devalues the existing commander system, but oh well. it still has a place doing what it does now, having map markers when people don’t know you.

Commanders are elected. 100g just buys you the icon.

You missed an option

c) Had members of their guild / server fund the icon through donations

This seems to pretty well satisfy your bolded requirement, “Commanders should be elected by the players of their World, not dictated by unfair circumstances.” After all, it’s how I got my cat-herding symbol, so it has to happen somewhere at least.

The people who got their icon through a) or b) typically aren’t in WvW anyway; they’re in Lion’s Arch showing off their pretty blue thing.

There are very few commanders in the game that solo’d their way to 100g to buy it. Let’s be honest here; commanders are already elected; by their guild or alliance.

100g gets you an icon, nothing more.