Guild Wars 2

This is a petition to add a General or world leader tome to be purchased for 1000 badges to the game. This is in addition to Commander Tomes.

Why you might ask?
Commanders are in abundance on nearly every server. The majority of the issues that people have with commanders in the current state is that there is no way to tell if the commander knows anything about PvP or not. I love the fact that commanders can create squads and it’s great for the good of the realm but something is lacking.

What would a General get?
Generals should be given an arrow similar to Commanders. Make it purple or whatever color just anything different. Generals should be given their own chat channel in WvW and the ability to stand out amongst the rest of the crowd in team and map chat.

Why 1000 badges?
This ensures that the General is someone who has actually PvP’d a LOT in this game. Someone that can be trusted in WvW and someone you truly want to listen to when they call out orders. Commanders are great hubs to form parties and groups on, but that doesn’t give us a set leader we can trust to follow.

This works great in addition to Commanders and doesn’t devalue the investment that those players have made towards their tome. Please post any other suggestions and support for this. It would be great to see true PvP leaders that stand out against the rest. I would gladly follow anyone with a General Title and follow their suggestions.

So you just want to create an additional grind on top of the current one that is plagued by many of the same issues as the old system?

No thanks.

not a bad idea but not a good one, since you can get lots of badges from jumping puzzles you dont have to know anything about WvW/PvP to gain one thats the bad side to it. if it was to get done then it would have to be like 10,000 or something insane.

you can get about 100+ badges a day on average all depending how long you spend in WvW so overall would mean nothing. after a while you know who the good and bad commanders are. some got it as a fashion icon more than anything else

also if your join a squad you can chat in /squad

Please let us block commander icons before we start to get more of them for the sake of WvW getting messy and in PvE for the ‘look at me’ stamped on their foreheads.

No, just make the commander purchasable with 1000 badges or 100 gold. Anyone who has played enough WvW to EARN the Commanders title easily has 1k badges, unless they are using them on full invader gear(which is silly unless you’re a warrior/guardian tank)

Right now a person who has just done pve to 80 and done a ton of dungeons or Trading post manipulation can enter WvW for the first time and have the commander title.

Make them earn it, not pay for it.

Just by playing a lot of WvW and getting loads of badges you do not neccessarily become a great leader… of course you do not become a great leader by having 100g either, but this is not the right way of fixing the problem…

Oh and, yes, I do have >1000 badges…

-Bloodsteel

1000 badges is far too few. I have over 2000 badges (that’s a low estimate due to all the siege I’ve bought) and I’m not even close to the more active players in my guild.

it really should be a voted position but i dont really know how they would go about doing it, it’s just my 2 cents on the matter

I can see them doing this in future tbh. Commanders will be like ‘squad leaders’ whilst Generals will assume their current role as a shot caller. Probably like 100000 badges or something. Something to do with WvW anyways. Its all natural progression.

TheReign, I call shananigans on your over 2 k badges claim. I have 12k kills and don`t have nearly that many. I estimate the drop rate to be 5% atm. Mind you I miss a lot of badges do to pushing TL off our map

The warrior in our guild with 16k kills has been averaging 1 badge per 3 kills consistently since launch.

SoPP wrote about blocking commanders… How about we get the option to block the commanders as we wish and keep those we want? That way if someone clearly is not fit to lead, block him/her. A cost of 1k badges really is nothing in the long run. Just on Saturday alone a guildie of mine got 550 badges.

Brome.7036:

TheReign, I call shananigans on your over 2 k badges claim. I have 12k kills and don`t have nearly that many. I estimate the drop rate to be 5% atm. Mind you I miss a lot of badges do to pushing TL off our map

I’m sorry you don’t get as many badges as me, but it’s true. And as I said, 2k is a low estimate.

WvW badges are a horrible way to judge commander/general abilities.

Successful commanders need the following qualities:

1. Willingness to invest time and energy into learning the game, reading a lot, watching a lot of videos, gathering good troops/guildmates dedicated to doing the same.

2. Strategically reviewing the situation constantly, changing and influencing a massive group of players to adapt to those changes. I’m looking at the map more than anything.

3. Chrisma, communication skills and ability to use different tools for communication (VoIP, Waypoints, Whispering, Map Chat, Streaming)

4. Understanding the zerg. How they think, how they play, what they want and how you can “influence” them into doing what you want.

5. Taking initiative to lay out siege. Upgrade keeps. Because most people can’t be bothered, don’t have the money, or don’t know if its the correct thing to do (and I must say, must people who lay down siege do it at the wrong place/wrong time and its even more detrimental than not laying it down).

6. Patience and ability to teach new or inexperienced players how to play. WvW has very different rules and keys to success compare to other game modes. Killing players is generally the last of my worries as a commander, other players do that, I make sure they have the key elements prepared to do so.

7. Dipolimacy to communicate with different guilds on the field (generally, every commander/guild leader have egos, big or small, everyone thinks they’re boss and will ignore the big picture until someone can persuade them to do otherwise).

8. Remaining calm under stress, heavy fighting, flaming, trolling, generally the stress of people not following your instructions immediately because they’re playing a game for entertainment.

I have not stepped into PVE since level 80, all WvW for the past 25 days. I only have 300 badges. I am my server’s first commander, the leader of the first and still only hardcore WvW guild. If it were up to badges, I would still not be a commander. Meanwhile, glass cannon elementalists I know all have over 1000+ badges. They’re great at what they do, but that doesn’t mean they can lead.

None of these things requires badges, infact, as a commander, I practically never attack anything except strategically significant targets (cannons, siege weapons, etc.). I’m always typing, talking, map, typing, talking, map, typing, talking, map.

TheReign, you are from Team Legacy on Eredon Terrace, kudos to you but you are 0.001% of the population. If you were the benchmark, the entire game will have about 10 commanders throughout all servers (and they would all be on the top 6 servers). Not every server is so dedicated to WvW, and it is these servers that need a commander the most. To be honest, I’m sure ET/HOD/SBI/JQ major guilds would all do fine with or without commander icons on the screen.

Not “general”, that’s way too generic. Call it Field Marshall and make it available for people who accumulate 10,000 kills.

I think the commander title should be reworked a lot. Now they set up a 100g fee as “this should be the effort of at least a guild” in order to buy, while I saw a lot of screenshots of people sitting on 700g+ without having put a single step in WvW to fight.
The commander, general, field marshal, should be awarded based on how well he/she performs on the field of battle (not necessarly killing enemies) as Jedahs pointed out.

I think a “voting” system should be in place and should be like this:

• each time I see a good player (max once a day/week) I can “promote” that player
• I can “promote” as many player as I want (max 10/20 a day/week)
• The top 5/10 players promoted for that day/week has the commander title for the next day/week.

Problem with that Hald is you have guilds that have 700 plus members that will all vote the same person to be commander.

Uh….. if you do WvW regularly, you probably already know who are the good and bad commanders anyways. If you don’t like them/think they are bad, just don’t follow them? Seems pretty simple to me. Yes, others will still follow them, the ones that don’t know but if there’s multiple commanders on the map, just follow the one(s) you know aren’t dumb. Whats the point of “blocking” them? so that you and only you can’t see the blue dot on their head? The one that you can totally ignore?

I don’t think “blocking” means silencing them, especially since you can block them already. I believe it’s blocking the annoying icon floating above their heads.

Lol worst idea ever!! Getting 1000 badges is sooo easy!! After 2 months there will be like 10 commanders on one map or more… and how do u imagine it will work than?

Hakato.9650:

Problem with that Hald is you have guilds that have 700 plus members that will all vote the same person to be commander.

Yeah, but people could vote others too, balancing this issue.

1000 badges would only take a couple days to get, maybe a week, tops…
Plus there’s no way that 10 badges are the equivelant of 1g, either.

Alpha golem = 1g or 100 badges, so
Commander = 100g or 10,000 badges.

That sounds much better.

Also, the monetary option is by far the better one; most decent commanders get their title via donations, which means that they’re usually well liked, and that they have to be reasonably good at what they do. Even if they just straight-out buy it with their own gold, and they suck at being a commander, it still functions as a very effective gold-sinc.

I’d rather get my badge gear, and then spend my badges on siege schematics while earning gold; not the other way around. WvW is also about coordination and teamwork, grinding badges is something we do entirely on our own.

make it 1 million badges if that prove to be hard enough to be a worthy commander….

This is really a bad idea. 1000 badges? I can farm 200+ in a day. Atleast make it 10000 and 100g, then it’ll be worth it. Though I do agree on the part where kitteny commander that doesn’t know what to do, but with the blue icon on everyone just follow him.

One commander in HoD(Noble Baby) did this and make everyone follow him so he can farm the karma needed.

Fact of the matter is no matter what price or quantity you put on it, it is still available to anyone. We have all seen good ones and horrible ones.

I personally would like to see like a level based system where people who lead squads get like leader levels as they continue to lead groups they can get awarded titles and what not. Thereby it is still available to anyone, but people who follow the bad ones once will be less likely to follow them again thereby they wouldn’t ever obtain field general or whatever

@mangarrage

That will never work. Most PUGS will like to join the karma train, instead of defending/attacking a keep. HoD lost half of their strength when that kittening commander is on, taking half the players on Eternal Battleground following him on a karma train.

thats just what guild wars 2 needs. more terrible players with icons and terrible plans.

Spend enough time in your server environment and you learn which key commanders are worth following, and which ones aren’t.

If my guild doesn’t like a particular Commander because we’ve seen that they are poor at leadership and shouldn’t have the tag, we just don’t follow them. Easy fix.

Sokar Rostau.7316:

I don’t think “blocking” means silencing them, especially since you can block them already. I believe it’s blocking the annoying icon floating above their heads.

Join the commander of your choosing’s squad……the rest are blocked after that.