Guild Wars 2

Focus of the thread is to highlight solutions to some of the difficulties commanders may have trying to manage their players.

This thread assumes the usage is for all types of command, whether they be voip/text/ or anything in between/combination of those. For the most part though we will assume that all the players involved use all types of communication available when they command.

1. The map: We need to be able to put markers directly on the map screens. Currently we have dedicated 4 markers we can use on this map screen (attack/defend/rally/wp), but those are very arbitrary and this list needs to be expanded. The 1-8 object and 1-8 terrain markers can only be applied ingame, yet they showup on the map. There should be a way to put these symbols directly on the map from the map screen….this would allow you to highlight positions and objectives more easily to your squad without you having to physically “go” to those locations first.

2. Markers: Correct me if I’m wrong (I was) but you are unable to delete the markers once they are placed without deleting ALLLL of the markers. The only way around this is to go to your map and manually click markers to disable them. This process is clumsy/distracting though when you are fighting ingame. Additionally any object markers placed on targets now “disappear” if the commander moves too far away from them….this needs to be fixed. The get around is to appoint lieutenants and have them put squad markers on stuff that they are near….but even they need to stay near them for them to stay. Honestly we could also use ‘more’ markers, but I realize if this seems unreasonable. A final suggestion is to make some of the markers less arbitrary. For example the first green marker could be a more easily read “rally here” type of indicator rather than some random symbol among 7 other random symbols.

3. Chalkboard: You ever notice how you can draw white lines on your minimap? You ever notice how the tag is able to draw lines that “everyone” can see? I propose a markup overlay for the map that commanders can utilize should they choose. Basically, enable a chalkboard overlay on the map of everyone in the squad. Commanders/squadmembers may disable this overlap in their map at anytime. And the commander/lieutenants can draw attack plans all over the map so people have a physical copy of the plan in question, and anyone joining the squad can immediately know what is going on. One of the limits of teamspeak is the lack of physical plans, everything is just words that are easily forgotten, misheard, or not heard at all. Physical plans are key to commanding large groups of people.

4. Tag colour/symbol roles: Was another thread on this. But the idea is that tag colour specifies to the role the tag wants to play on the maps rather than some arbitrarily
chosen colour to identify its person. A followup to this is the ability to choose slightly different tag symbols so players can more easily identify role based on shape of tag rather than colour.

5. Tagging down: presently you can either hand the tag to some1 else, or you have to leave the squad in order to get rid of it. THis isn’t cool at all. I get the intent is to keep a tag up at all times…but this isn’t the right way to go about it. We shouldn’t have to leave the squad and rejoin just to tag down. This also is at odds with tag culture which is deserving of its own thread but I’ll leave it out atm (devs limits tag functionality so they function in a specific way, but how they are ‘actually’ utilized by the playerbase is very different and at odds with the intended usage).

6. CLosed/Tagless squads: First off, closed squads perpetuate a feeling of exclusion harder than any invisible squad will. Whoever is working on this mode needs to seriously re-examine ‘how’ they are trying to foster inclusion to all players on the map….cause its having the opposite effect. Heck I can make an entire thread of ways to make them game “actually” inclusive to all players and it could be shipped out to the community in a day’s time rather than 2 years. Closed squads shouldn’t exist at all imo. They should be tagless if they are going to be closed…OR they should be a special symbol squad like its listed in (4).

…… Continued below There are 6 more suggestions in the list (ttl of 12) You have to wait 30 minutes though since flood control only lets me post once every 30 minutes regardless of any number of posts I make and char limit is 5k.

7. Squad messages: Squad messages are extremely important ways to communicate the role and communication types the squad is using. That said it is EXTREMELy disturbing to me that they: a. have a very small character limit; b. do not have a dedicated tab to input your voip address or your role type that your squad is doing (havoc, zerg, defense, roamer); c. can not be saved or edited/inputted by leiutenants or anyone other than the commander themselves. 2 tabs are needed: a static tab (with 4times the char limit) that is displayed 1 time upon joining and found in the party tab for future viewing. Then a dynamic tab that has the current system and char limits, that is used to post/update needed roles/new squad needs/etc

8. Squad Broadcasts: the delay in the messaging of these is too long. By the time you type “retreat” and have it display across everyone’s screens at least 3-4 seconds has passed. All I ask is that you speed up the message display times by 1 second or so, especially for longer messages. It should also be noted that longer messages can go to 2
lines and this makes the message itself very clumsy and hard to read.

9. Preset command functions: The ability to have a number of present and easy to utilize text commands is something commmanders desperately need. We cannot make text binds without risking compromising the TOS (i.e. Hit a button and you type “get on tag” automatically). All I propose is a simple system, most games use an apple iphone type wheel thing where you drag u hit a key….it flies up on ur screen and u drag ur mouse in the pie section of the circle that has the command you want to display. Even a simple array of 4 commands would go a long way. And the ability to bind these in controls to separate keys would be a huge asset. You can even let players develop their own bind. Just enabled in controls 4 keys players can press and a way for them to input what custom message they want those keys to display. This can be commander specific and specific to the squad/party chat tabs…..OR it can be its own new tab like squad broadcasts. We can even have display symbols on the screen that indicate what the commander wants you to do. For example: a yellow flashing hand can come up in the top right of the screen when the commander wants you to exert caution. A flashing array of arrows pointing to a tag symbol in the middle can signal a “rally to me” command. THis isn’t rocket science here….its not meant to be difficult o r hard to understand. Its basically taking the minimap pings….making them slightly bigger and displaying them ‘somewhere’ on ur squadmates screens.

10. Minimap pings: These are stupid as can be. They need to be longer in duration or they need to be removed. Nobody can see them until after they are gone. They make a sound? sure they do. But by the time you notice the sound….look at the minimap they are already gone. Increase their duration up to 10-15 seconds in duration should be
good. AND ALSO FIX THE MINIMAP GLITCH WHERE PANNING YOUR MINIMAP IS REPLACED WITH THE DRAW/PING COMMANDS! Currently the only way to fix it that I’ve found is to waypoint…..otherwise everytime I try to pan my mininmap I cant and a bunch of random pings go all over my squadmates mminimaps.

11. Theres a little command listed under control+y. Most people don’t know it exists, its not even in the wiki, and i can’t remember the name. It’s a targetting command like control+T except it springs a chat command and a temporary symbol ingame. If you use it on a downed players it says somehting like "commander has marked “ted” for resurrection", if you target an enemy unit it says "Commander has marked “enemy gold plated toad” for attacking". This is a very useful tool imo. However it is underdeveloped. A very easy solution is to increase the amount of time the symbol that crops up (it has 2-3 custom symbols ingame that pop up above the targets head) to at least 5-10 seconds. Presently they only last for about 2 seconds and people barely have time to see it much less figure out what these “marking they’ve never seen before” actually means. Further specifics should be added when you use it on a supply depot, it should spawn a symbol that lasts for a sufficient amount of time to indicate you want people to resupply. Heck there could even be a way to hold down a key or something that enabled the symbol to stay until you say otherwise.

12. Subgroup specific colours: Subgroups should be very distinct and specific colours by default. Having 2 indistinct shades of blue is absolutely ridiculous and needs to be rectified (not everyone has 20/20 vision and sees colours the same way). Group 1 is your standard blue as it is currently. Ex) Group 2 yellow dots, group 2 purple, group 3 orange, group 4 black, group 5 green…

Cant post the rest, forums horrible. will post rest later ‘mbe’

You can delete ground marker by place it again on same location (or double hit alt-* to place marker on new location and instantly remove)

Cerby, please send your CV to ANet and replace the actual person in charge of WvW development…

Man some of those things would REALLY be amazing to have.

These are really good suggestions. Arena net should defi itely implement some of these ideas especially invisible tag! invisible tag is needed and its a must!

+1 Good ideas! As a commander, I’d like to see these implemented.

I’ll toss up the last section which I failed to post originally

Also note (since I can’t re-edit section 2):
-11. is called alert targeting, under targeting in options
-12. Another good point is it allows players to immediately join a colour coded subgroup to indicate the role they want to play. Commanders won’t have to waste 5-15 minutes sitting in spawn asking EVERYONE what role they wanna play. It means you can immediate enter the gamemode, and know what kind of combat strengths/weaknesses you have available to utilize. This is a HUUUUGE quality of life fix. However, It assumes that there is a meta pertaining to what subgroup conforms to what role (the ui ‘could’ include a written meta ingame so everyone is on the same page, and Commanders must specify insquad any specific changes made to it if they desire. Or what colour means what, can be left to the community to apply/adopt subjectively…although that would enable quick updates with meta changes, it is very finicky and confusing to many).

Possible problems:

The idea with the most potential is number 3, the chalkboard, since it’s very easy to write out a plan of attack in a way that EVERYONE can understand that defies all language and communication barriers (believe it or not, people who don’t speak your language play on your wvsw world).

That said it’s very easy to abuse a chalkboard by drawing lewd things and lewd words. To have something “ingame” that promotes this is something most game makers like to avoid for obvious reasons. In actuality though….it’s just as lewd as chat can be….it’s just as lewd as voip can be. There are bad apples in every gamemode. Whether you choose to follow the commander or not should be based on what kind of behavior you support to begin with. The lewdness problems are already an issue currently though even without a chalkboard. Like I said though: we can already draw lewd things right now…just they disappear quickly. The benefits far far farrrr outweight any possible abuses in this system.

HOWEVER, an easy way to outright avoid lewdness is to make the chalkboard a clipboard where you drag certain premade symbols onto the map to create a battle plan. This has two benefits: 1) it allows consistent/fast/easy understanding of each battle plan (people drawing with their mouse generally isn’t legible lol). 2) It completely destroys the lewdness factor that would otherwise impede the idea. Best to imagine symbols you find on any drawing tool or symbols in word processors. For example you get a premade ‘arrow’ (——>) you can modify in limited ways (expand/turn/stretch/minimize), and you can place this on the map to indicate a rough route from which to traverse the map.

And like I said: don’t follow the commander if you don’t support their playstle….having more options in general on the UI for commanders enables more and different tags to provide easier alternatives. Presently you are stuck with whatever tag is on the map…..the improvements to the system would promote diversity in tag behaviour and healthier communities in general, encouraging more people to tag up for different roles rather than feeling forced to resign yourself to a blob mentality.

Keeping the GUI from inhibiting new players

I encourage a system where new players to wvsw get a simplified ui to start, and later it advances itself to the full ui (or you can manually change to the full ui in options at anytime). Such a system would enable increased “helpful hints” to be displayed to the new players….which is something that is sorely needed to get more players into the mode. Simple onscreen tips like “you can join a commander tag by clicking here; joining a commander tag enables x,y,z benefits to players” etc would help attract and retain new players. There is no need to keep everything in the game so simplistic that both advanced and new players are miserable. I just gave you another easy way to make the game both “easier” to understand for new players, and “advanced” for veteran players to play effectively. Wvsw makes very little logical sense as it is. New players, regardless of their backgrounds are going to be scratching their heads ALOT at how things work. Let’s give them ways to get into the mode as fast as possible. And let’s give commanders a way to facilitate this integration of new players with the old (pretty much all the 1-12 ideas in the OP).

And thankyou everyone for the positive support, generally my ideas are not held in high regard…but there are reasons for that.

One of the best posts made on this matter