Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one that wonders why the only qualification for becoming a commander is gold related?

I would have though a thorough understanding of how WvW works would have been better metric of who is fit to lead. Since the game tracks everything a player does why not make time in WvW, objectives completed. etc, the things that unlock commander?

Maybe things have gotten better since the first days when I tried WvW but the lack of true leaders really put a hamper on coordination and the “noise” in the map chat is barely useful. Regardless, here’s hoping for more qualified squad commanders because we need them!

Mostly large guilds with people to lead will be the first ones getting them. That kinda makes sense.

What gets me is they are per character, not account bound. That’s just silly.

I’m not a huge fan of achievements being the sole deciding factor of who becomes a squad commander either.

However, someone earlier posted the idea of making it so that you have to get signatures or something from people in order to become a squad commander. That’s an idea I could get behind.

Gathering signatures would be a great idea, although it’d have to be a large number and at moderate sum of gold.

Fact.5908:

Gathering signatures would be a great idea, although it’d have to be a large number and at moderate sum of gold.

Bribery. anyone can get signatures.

Jellal.5470:

Fact.5908:

Gathering signatures would be a great idea, although it’d have to be a large number and at moderate sum of gold.

Bribery. anyone can get signatures.

I thought about that as well. Could be that you need so many signatures that bribery wouldn’t viable. Or, as a compromise, signatures + achievements. Although I still don’t like achievements, that would place a bigger roadblock to those who want to be a commander.

Jellal.5470:

If the squad leader is incompetent then people won’t follow for long.

True. But how much damage is done before everyone figures out their commander is an idiot?

And when you are logging into WvW for the first time how do you know you not following an idiot everybody else is ignoring?

I guess the same can be said for real life armies but at least you know that those commanders didn’t just buy their way in.

Commander Icon is working as intended besides that it needs to be account bound.

Who cares, you don’t like the person with the blue dot, then don’t follow the person with the blue dot.

I second that it shouldn’t be purely gold based.

Something like 100 gold, 200 medals (i mean, a weapon is more expensive than that, so people shouldn’t qq) and maybe votes from a number of players?

A lot of people got rich from flipping on the TP when it opened, does that make them qualified to lead in WvW?

I don’t want to be bombarded by “Vote for me for Commander”! I agree that just being able to “buy” the icon is problematic as well. Some combinations of gold and proof on the battlefield I think would be appropriate.

You can always report them for spamming

Squad Commander costing 100g is just ridiculous. You have to pay to create a subpar version of a raid which is just standard grouping in all other games.

There’s a plain fully obvious solution to stop people spamming the map with squad commander icons;

Only show the icon when the squad reaches 10 or more members.

Simple.

Planetside had the right Idea.

You would gain Commander EXP while you were a leader of a group only. And would gain exp based on what that group did.
So you knew that a Commander level 5 (the highest you could get in Planetside) has lead many groups, and achieved alot.

This sort of system gets rid of gold costs, or people who can just play 12 hours a day, as it requires others to actually group with you, and face it, if you suck people arn’t going to group with you for long

IMO, this could be easily added to GW2 to help us identify true commanders, the ones that actually lead the troops.

-Ky

In GW2 it’s not even easy to see who the party leader is, much less if there are any leaders at all. People can just /join anyone in the party to request a party join.

per char is ok, not per acct

JemL.3501:

per char is ok, not per acct

Why? Leaders are leaders, why should we need to purchase another book to play on an alt?

100g is too much. I’m not saying I have a solution, just requesting some more thought is given to this issue by the powers that be please!

I disagree with 100g or the near $600 in gems you’d have to spend to get the medal, but it is better than the common comparison. Trust me I know! I was a server first grand marshal in WoW Summer 2005. Other players were in awe at the title & gear, as I was disgusted how I wasted three months farming tens of thousands of player kills in hillsbrad foothills.

I guess I just can’t think outside of the box on this subject, cause I can’t think of a good alternative. Many of my favorite commander + team games, like natural-selection or battlefield 2, always have a commander that players know is skilled based off past experiences playing with. However in GW2 I have a difficult time believing these commanders obtained their rank doing anything other then farming blood or scales from level 5 monsters, or worse, received gold acquired from the karma exploit. Either way it doesn’t show their prowess as a battleground tactician.

I know that for my own server, we’ve donated to get the skill tome to someone whose consistently acted as a strong leader. Sometimes, leaders just…well, lead and you know who they are.