Guild Wars 2

With more and more commanders being born each day, it’s hard to differentiate the veteran commanders from the newcomers. Once you step outside your world’s World vs World maps, megaservers kick in and it’s even harder to keep track, with other world’s commanders you’ve never seen before getting paired with you in the same maps. Additionally, the commander tag icon has leaned over time to become another cosmetic upgrade, with the prestige associated to it being lost in the process. What was once a remarkable monetary sacrifice is now a still-expensive but more affordable purchase.

The commander system could benefit greatly from a new prestige system, that would give the most veteran commanders ways to distinguish themselves from his peers. Different colors could be an answer, but their primary purpose is to serve for organization, so them alone wouldn’t be enough, and could turn into something detrimental if their cosmetic value eventually overran its usefulness aspect. The key for this new prestige system are new commander tag icons.

—Image for suggested new commander tag icons and their corresponding fields of aptitude—

—From left to right: Classic, World Boss, Guild, World vs World, Player vs Environment, Final.—

Commander tags were originally intended to be used in World vs World, but eventually they started being used in Player versus Environment as well, to lead group of players across dynamic events and world bosses. Later on, their use diversified even more with the introduction of guild missions and the hardcore world bosses, both requiring high level organization.

Aside from differentiating veteran commanders from the newcomers, we also need to differentiate each commander’s field of aptitude. For that, each of the four major fields of use will get its own new tag icon. If a commander demonstrates his skills on the four fields, then he will be rewarded with another final tag icon, encouraging good commanders to improve at the other fields. These new tag icons would require a huge group effort, and only a select minority that works hard and has many other players supporting them would be able to acquire them. The main goal is to create a prestige system where these new tag icons are used as a reference of support, dedication and skill.

In total, we would have six different commander tag icons, divided in three tiers of prestige. You would be able to switch between the colors and icons using the pull-down menu of the party interface, next to the squad creation option.

Complete article below

Complete article:

1 Introduction

2 Commander tag icon suggestions

——2.1 First tier: Basic Commander

——2.2 Second tier: World Boss Commander

——2.3 Second tier: Guild Commander

——2.4 Second tier: World vs World Commander

——2.5 Second tier: Player vs Environment Commander

——2.6 Third tier: Final Commander

3 Summary

4 Other improvements

Here’s a small summary for those wanting a shorter text:

TL;DR:

• New commander tag icons, hard to achieve, require huge group efforts.
• Classic Commander: Purchasable for 300g, 30,000 badges of honor or influence plus guild merits.
• World Boss Commander: You need to kill 50 hardcore world bosses (Tequat the Sunless or Triple Trouble).
• Guild Commander: You need to complete all the guild missions at maximum level, and then spend 150,000 of influence, 350 guild merits and 120 guild commendations (20 weeks needed if you have none).
• World vs World Commander: Need to be WvW rank 600, capture and hold Stonemist Castle for 30min, be first world on points in the moment of the purchase, and pay 10,000 badges of honors plus 500 WvW Tournament Claim Tickets.
• Player vs Environment Commander: Need to capture the five temples of Ruins of Orr and the Gates of Arah, and then hold each one for 1 hour to unlock its trainer, who sells 1/6 of the upgrade, spending a total of 1,260,000 karma to upgrade.
• Final Commander: Unlocks once you acquire all the previous upgrades. Only for the most hardcore commanders.
• Doing currency conversions, gold estimation for obtaining all of the new tag icons, ignoring time and previous guild upgrades, and supposing everything would be bought, would be around 2800 gold.

Looking forward your opinions.

One word : STUPID AS HELL !!

No seriously, commander tags aren’t (mostly) things that are there to look nice/fashion, that’s things that are there to be used to coordinate and such.

So stop the silly stupid ideas that put a huge frigging barrier of entry to them….. you don’t remember the time where most small/mid sized guilds that didn’t had tp manipulators/people dropping hundreds of $/£/€ into gems or things like that had people that couldn’t command because they didn’t had the money for the tags ? Or couldn’t afford it on multiple characters ?

It’s exactly (in FAR WORSE) what you are trying to do and it’s stupid. Why the heck would you need to have killed 50 hardcore bosses to know how to command/lead a (part) of said kill ?

Why the Hell would you need to be in a guild with above 100 active people to be a guild commander and know what to do for your guild ? Why the Hell would you be required to have captured 600 times SM to be a good commander ? I know commanders who have even less SM captures than me and are great, they just don’t play EBG when they can avoid it, and so on and so on and so on.

Stop with the riduculously stupid ideas on commander tags already, it’s a gold sink (a pretty hefty one already) and it’s already enough.

Just adding another 300g for 4/5 shapes of the tag would be “acceptable” (even if it should be included from the start), everything else isn’t.

What tags need is a proper squad interface/tools, a system of “hierarchical” command (ie : the ability to have sub commanders in your squad, a (sub)commanders channel to discuss privately) a way to list and hide tags on the maps, and quite some other things, not stupid idea from people who are only interested in having something “rare”.

If you want something “rare” ask for a pin/button/whatever that does nothing outside of appearing over your head/map for the ridiculous amounts you are asking +10k gems a pop, and leave the commander tags alone to be used for what they are needed.

PS : I totally “love” the part where world that aren’t leading on points ever (outside of maybe 15 mins or so on reset sometimes) because they are in a place where they are weaker than the servers ahead, stronger than below, and facing the same servers all year long should be excluded from having the WvW commander tags…. It’s obviously because their commanders are bad as Hell they can’t lead, not because WvW is imbalanced and coverage/population dependant right ?

All your “ideas” are of the same vein, silly, bad, atrocious, worst possible thing you can think about, and i don’t even see how someone could waste time trying to come up with things THAT bad and find them even remotely “good” in anyway.
Anyone decent with a hint of what the game (and tags) are about should be ashamed to know there is even one GW2 player capable of coming with “ideas” like that…

While I agree with the overall point he (Filovirus.6258) was making. I do not agree with his delivery of said message.

WvW ranks mean absolutely nothing. Why? Because first of all you can buy ranks in WvW. So your rank doesn’t mean you actually did anything in WvW. Secondly, Scouts, siege builders/refreshers, and defenders get far less WvW Xp than others it doesn’t mean they aren’t just as good as the high level guy just different play style.

The colored tags are a step in the right direction. As far as setting oneself apart as a Veteran Commander, you server regulars should know who you are. If you can’t get them to follow you on a somewhat regular basis I would evaluate your commanding tactics. People are going to follow the ones they know and trust. So work on that to get them to follow.