Guild Wars 2

This has probably been bought up many times before in various forms but I wanted to get this suggestion off my chest as I feel that on the whole it is a lot less demanding for the developers than some of the larger requests to fix WvWvW. I think if such a change is implemented it would be stage one of making WvWvW a more organized environment and to a certain extent less zergy if utilized properly.

When a commander decides to pop their tag they get three options; Public, Guild and Party.

PUBLIC COMMANDER TAG

A public commander tag would be typically utilized by the map commander, militia commander or mixed group commander. This tag is viewable by anyone on the map. Anyone who opens up their map, whether they be militia or players from other guilds can see this tag. There should be no color changes / image changes for the public commander tag. It should stay as the current default blue dorito icon. Diversity in this tag would lead to a lot of confusion for the masses.

GUILD COMMANDER TAG

A guild commander tag would be gold/brown in color and have the guild TAG over them. This icon can only be viewed by OTHER COMMANDERS as well as your fellow guildies on the map. This allows for the militia commander to easily keep track of friendly guild groups and coordinate with them easier. It also gives the option for the guild groups (that currently use ctrl+T) to run by themselves but still avoid attracting the masses.

There should be no color or image changes for this icon either but it should definitely have the tag on display to differentiate between the various guilds. Here is a quick sample of such an ICON.

http://i.imgur.com/QgzXr0N.jpg

If the tag being displayed above the icon could lead to making the map extra cluttered, I would recommend instead to display the guild when you hover over the icon. For .e.g currently it shows up as Commander Theongreyjoy but for the guild tag it would simply show up as [ZN]Theongreyjoy when another commander hovers over the icon.

PARTY COMMANDER TAG

Again people might ask why does a 5 man group need a commander tag. The primary benefit of this is not for the five map party but for the main commander on the map trying to delegate tasks among various parties. This especially applies very much so to home borderland maps where lot of tasks have to be done by various individuals and parties to keep a smoothly functioning map. Zerging is often detrimental in this map. Having party tags will improve the macro-managing skills of the main commander. He/She can keep track of any experienced havoc squads and experienced camp flipping parties simply by opening their map. Instead of the commander always having to ask “Whose that at Lake tower? Is that us or server Y?” he can simply pop his tag and see that a havoc group is behind enemy lines trying to ninja that tower.

The only restriction should be that the party commander option is only allowed if the party is full at five members. Otherwise there is the potential of many people running their tags aimlessly with just one or two other people in their party. This would also encourage people to party more and work together.

The party commander tag should have a little bit more variety since parties often consist of members from various guilds etc it wouldn’t make that much sense to treat them like guild commander tags. I would suggest to have a completely separate icon as compared to the guild and blue Dorito.

CONCLUSION

Providng the commanders and the guilds tools to delegate easier in the form of diverse commander tags should over time lead to less dependency on the single blue dorito and therefore less zerging and blobbing. I expect initially people to actually be inefficient if/when this feature is implemented like any video game community to go crazy trying out the various tags and actually not helping the main commander at all.

However, when the ‘newness’ of such a feature is done quite a few servers will start applying them properly; for better macro-organization, better inter guild coordination, better party delegation which should lead to less zerging/blobbing meta.

This is a pretty slick idea. I’ve been of the opinion for a while now that there needs to be some sort of alternate tag. Squads seem like a solution but they simply aren’t. They’re not utilized enough.

Having a different tag with an alternate colour would allow for much better organization and communication!

Definitely support this idea!

I like it. I vote yes.

Absolutely – wonderful idea – I really hope the WvW team looks at this and implements…

Awesome idea – WVW team please please PLEASE take a look!

(p.s. also fix the skill lag! ty!)

Yes please!

We need some tools to help WvW be more than blob zerging.

This would be very nice!

Another good suggestion but I’d add one more thing. Creating a guild only squad should also be able to include people NOT in the guild. A private grouping system should be inclusive to all people regardless if they are in a guild or not.

Just as anyone can join a public commander pin then non-guild members should be allowed to be invited to a guild squad. Give us the tools and flexibility to create any type of grouping system and let the players or guilds choose what works best for them.

Its been all said before. I like your guild tag idea. But I do not like the 5 man group tag idea.

I love everything that was laid out here, especially the 5 man group idea. It would make group delegation soooooooo much easier.

Guild commander tag would make a huge difference towards encouraging medium sized group play instead of mega-zergs.

also it may encourage people to lead smaller groups if people than the whole map zerg

awesome suggestions ^^

Yes please, also feel free to bump my thread as well.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Different-Color-Commander-Tags-Private-Tags/first#post2395588

I’m not sure if this is possible yet since I’m not a commander but being able to rename the commander tag would be nice (e.g. “Golem Squad”, “Scout Squad”).

I already thought about this 2 days ago when this happened:
~100 players, 8 squads, 8 commanders and a lot of confusion. People simply didn’t know which commander is leading a certain squad which in the end made the fight afterwards pretty difficult.

sounds like another great idea to add to the pile. I am less sure about the party tag part just because it is more complicated but the first 2 and commander tag comment / editable tool tip option would be awesome.

Lanimal.6541:

This has probably been bought up many times before in various forms but I wanted to get this suggestion off my chest as I feel that on the whole it is a lot less demanding for the developers than some of the larger requests to fix WvWvW. I think if such a change is implemented it would be stage one of making WvWvW a more organized environment and to a certain extent less zergy if utilized properly.

When a commander decides to pop their tag they get three options; Public, Guild and Party.

PUBLIC COMMANDER TAG

A public commander tag would be typically utilized by the map commander, militia commander or mixed group commander. This tag is viewable by anyone on the map. Anyone who opens up their map, whether they be militia or players from other guilds can see this tag. There should be no color changes / image changes for the public commander tag. It should stay as the current default blue dorito icon. Diversity in this tag would lead to a lot of confusion for the masses.

GUILD COMMANDER TAG

A guild commander tag would be gold/brown in color and have the guild TAG over them. This icon can only be viewed by OTHER COMMANDERS as well as your fellow guildies on the map. This allows for the militia commander to easily keep track of friendly guild groups and coordinate with them easier. It also gives the option for the guild groups (that currently use ctrl+T) to run by themselves but still avoid attracting the masses.

There should be no color or image changes for this icon either but it should definitely have the tag on display to differentiate between the various guilds. Here is a quick sample of such an ICON.

http://i.imgur.com/QgzXr0N.jpg

If the tag being displayed above the icon could lead to making the map extra cluttered, I would recommend instead to display the guild when you hover over the icon. For .e.g currently it shows up as Commander Theongreyjoy but for the guild tag it would simply show up as [ZN]Theongreyjoy when another commander hovers over the icon.

PARTY COMMANDER TAG

Again people might ask why does a 5 man group need a commander tag. The primary benefit of this is not for the five map party but for the main commander on the map trying to delegate tasks among various parties. This especially applies very much so to home borderland maps where lot of tasks have to be done by various individuals and parties to keep a smoothly functioning map. Zerging is often detrimental in this map. Having party tags will improve the macro-managing skills of the main commander. He/She can keep track of any experienced havoc squads and experienced camp flipping parties simply by opening their map. Instead of the commander always having to ask “Whose that at Lake tower? Is that us or server Y?” he can simply pop his tag and see that a havoc group is behind enemy lines trying to ninja that tower.

The only restriction should be that the party commander option is only allowed if the party is full at five members. Otherwise there is the potential of many people running their tags aimlessly with just one or two other people in their party. This would also encourage people to party more and work together.

The party commander tag should have a little bit more variety since parties often consist of members from various guilds etc it wouldn’t make that much sense to treat them like guild commander tags. I would suggest to have a completely separate icon as compared to the guild and blue Dorito.

CONCLUSION

Providng the commanders and the guilds tools to delegate easier in the form of diverse commander tags should over time lead to less dependency on the single blue dorito and therefore less zerging and blobbing. I expect initially people to actually be inefficient if/when this feature is implemented like any video game community to go crazy trying out the various tags and actually not helping the main commander at all.

However, when the ‘newness’ of such a feature is done quite a few servers will start applying them properly; for better macro-organization, better inter guild coordination, better party delegation which should lead to less zerging/blobbing meta.

i would suggest it would be best if the commander tag can be bought + and some random hard quest to be completed before it can be bought. problem is a lot of people has money and just buys it, then on WVW they just freaking trolls around.

Make the two secondary options into one which shows tag to guild and group.

Suddenly you’ve optimized a seemingly complex system to a simple tickbox – public (ticked by default).

Late edit: Here, I fixed it with my mad kitten skills :p
Yes, Anet even censur the name of an editing program.
Its supposed to be a dropdown menu.

Anything that helps organize maps better and make them function within varying groups is a great idea. We need something like this.

What puzzles me is that we’ve been begging for something (anything!) along these lines since day 1.

Despite the frequent admission that it needs ‘looking into’ we get no action. Instead we get useless cosmetic presents, a list of laughable wxp ranks and minor ability upgrades for NPC/siege interaction. Oh, and endless PvE updates (Something about a ‘living story’ or some such.)

For some reason, this aspect seems to give Anet the shakes every time they think about it. It’s apparently so complicated and difficult, with such far reaching consequences that it’s better to do nothing than risk shutting down the entire revenue generating stream.

Contiguous.1345:

What puzzles me is that we’ve been begging for something (anything!) along these lines since day 1.

ANet hired a lot last since launch, but it appears those new employees are only now starting to fire on all cylinders, which is not uncommon ramp up time for complex software projects.

I think their ability to respond to issues like this is better now than it has been at any time since launch, so hopefully we’ll start seeing more frequent QoL improvements in WvW like this and other suggestions.

That said, /bump. Great idea, ANet please consider.

Dawdler.8521:

Make the two secondary options into one which shows tag to guild and group.

Suddenly you’ve optimized a seemingly complex system to a simple tickbox – public (ticked by default).

Late edit: Here, I fixed it with my mad kitten skills :p
Yes, Anet even censur the name of an editing program.
Its supposed to be a dropdown menu.

when you put it like that, it’s pretty disturbing how easily it’s improved and yet still….. nothing. i can’t really imagine that it would take them all too long to make, or it having any negative impact whatsoever. unless “everyone wants to be the dolyak” would count.

This definitely needs to be implemented. /bump

Here is my version of what is essentially the same request:

Urrid.4593:

Anet – please give us the ability to choose the color of our commander tag and the ability to make these tags public or private!

For colors we really wouldn’t need more than 16 colors to choose from but make the default blue tag clickable. Clicking the default blue tag when making a squad should pop up something very much like the dye palette menu. Pick your color and go!

To make a tag public or private just give the commanders a simple four digit passcode prompt that they can define by checking a box and putting in a four digit code.

Examples:

Putting up a private tag:

Create Squad —-> Check private check-box —-> Fill out four digit code “1234” etc. —-> dispensnce info to guild/map/party as needed.

Joining a private tag:

Joining a Private Commander —-> “This commander is set to private, please enter password” —-> PW: 1234 —-> Successfully joined commander’s private group!

If the commander wants to switch passcodes, they just have to drop tag and recreate their squad effectively “booting” its current members.

Changing commander tag colors:

Create Squad —-> Click default blue chip —-> Select new color from a simple palette.

Anet, if you do this, you will see a massive renaissance in how WvW is played that de-emphasizes massive zergs and encourages new, exciting, play.

now we just need to hire a ninja to infiltrate anet so that it will actually be put into the game. it’s such a easy to do change that would be monumentally important to the health of WvW overall. there’s really no valid excuse for it not to be included in the next patch.

That’s not the way it works.

Anet will have been having development meetings for months at which all the pro’s and con’s of all the ideas on the table will have been discussed in detail including projected timelines, costings etc.

Suggestions from the community will have taken a back seat throughout all that – simply because the players in general haven’t a clue what’s involved in implementing their ideas.

If we are very lucky we might get some sort of movement in the general direction of improving the command structure (It’s been officially mentioned as a possibility).

But as to specific ideas such as those presented here – forget it.

I support this idea.

T1 and T2 get pretty serious with commander tags. The community is tight and expects a commander tag to be on their TS. If your pinning and not communicating it is perceived as a disadvantage due to thinning of the herd.

Because of this fact, I will never own a commander tag. Prefer a more intimate style of play (@10 close friends). If guild only and party only were implemented I would indeed save for one.

People are running private squads already in the game WITHOUT any in game tools. It’s clunky and not nearly as effective as when we use the commander system….. but they will continue to run them.

They simply need to use a setup like Dawdler posted to take the frustration out of running multiple groups or guild groups together. Let the PLAYERS form groups and squads the way the works best for US!

Bump for support, allows for a much greater level of organization on the field of battle.

I /strongly/ support this idea :D

Muspilli.6273:

T1 and T2 get pretty serious with commander tags. The community is tight and expects a commander tag to be on their TS. If your pinning and not communicating it is perceived as a disadvantage due to thinning of the herd.

Teamspeak still doesnt help what you see ingame.

Here is another variant following GW2 standards somewhat more, including a color slider just for laughs (it could be a dropdown or color button as well). The entire choice section should probably be above the create button but I was being lazy and didnt move that.

Yeah I know, ANet doesnt care that much about player ideas and I am sure they could do a 10x better work with the GUI. But maybe someone see it and ponder “Hm, now when I think about it why isnt this in there?”.

I personally hate TS and refuse to use it. In my experience no one can ever hear the commander anyway and the TS is usually full of trolls and mindless chatter.
I would like the chat restriction ingame to be lessened so commanders can communicate properly through the game instead of having to go to outside sources like TS and vent.
That being said, I love the commander tag idea. /bump

Yup we all still desperately want this…

knock knock. Its called quality of life anet.

the “ignore it and it will go away” method isn’t going to work this time anet.

rather than different “Commander” TAG, just add more TAGs (Captain, Major ecc), each one with inferior prices and that will appear on a smaller portion of the map, so each individual can lead different sized groups to accomplish different tasks.

It’s another of the many things that should’ve been present in the game since day 0, beats me why there is only one TAG.

Grevender.9235:

rather than different “Commander” TAG, just add more TAGs (Captain, Major ecc), each one with inferior prices and that will appear on a smaller portion of the map, so each individual can lead different sized groups to accomplish different tasks.

It’s another of the many things that should’ve been present in the game since day 0, beats me why there is only one TAG.

to be fair, with the system proposed in this thread, they could name their squad however they felt appropriate. they could go by different ranks, or by specific assignments. so there would be a bit more flexibility. then again, any additional options whatsoever would be better than the single one we’ve had to deal with for the past 10 months.

Fully support, commanders are trying to be more agile these days and running with guilds is the easiest solution. A guild commander tag would be great and encourage smaller groups as well as greater non-WvW guilds to run better organized (even if they themselves don’t have a 100 gold commander).

I assigned an answer now. That is how I would personally like the system to be implemented

Smartcat.2130:

I personally hate TS and refuse to use it. In my experience no one can ever hear the commander anyway and the TS is usually full of trolls and mindless chatter.
I would like the chat restriction ingame to be lessened so commanders can communicate properly through the game instead of having to go to outside sources like TS and vent.
That being said, I love the commander tag idea. /bump

Commander needs to have priority when speaking, I am assuming TS has this capability, other VoIPs do….Essentially when he/she talks, it mutes everyone else. As far as the trolls, I local mute them, problem solved.

Mumble has priority speaker as well. The top tier servers do go the route of organizing more within their guild structure as well as within their VOIP etc to get results. However, until we get a few more simple in-game tools of delegation/organization in the maps the true potential of macro tactics will never be reached.

/bump
+1, brilliant idea

Yes! This would promote a more efficient use of squads instead of everybody piling into one zerg.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

Yes! This would promote a more efficient use of squads instead of everybody piling into one zerg.

Exactly this.

Nanyetah Elohi.4852:

Yes! This would promote a more efficient use of squads instead of everybody piling into one zerg.

Sounds simple but…..

We can’t even kick offline players or invite in WvW…. dangit let’s get some basically functionality and make social and tactical grouping a priority Anet!!!!!!!

I really hope this is part of areanets immediate plans for WvWvW. If implemented properly and given enough time for the playerbase to adjust; the playerbase themselves will blob less and therefore all the Q.Q about blobs/skill lag/poor server infrastructure will slowly dissipate.

For the guild tag what would probably work best is have the icon just be the guild emblem or have the emblem overlayed on the shape of the tag.

Also I’m not sure about the party tag, it would seem to me that this would simply produce a more cluttered map particularly around the main zerg. I would much rather see a private tag, one limited to say 10-20 people where instead of the members simply joining the commander invites the player. The tag would only be visible to other commanders and those invited to join the squad.

What we need are some basic functionality changes made. UI fixes that allow the UI to give us more options than “report” in WvW. Basic social grouping changes that allow ALL players to form forces they way they enjoy instead of being pigeon-holed in a zerg if they have more than 5 people.

Please stop with new WvW mastery lines and fluff in WvW…. at least until the commander and squad system is revised and the UI is updated. It’s functionality we want added… not fluff.

I agree with most of what the OP suggested.

As noted by others above, instead of a pure “Guild Commander”, something along the lines of a “Private” Commander that can invite more than just guildies to his squad would be appreciated.

Also, I wouldn’t mind an option for players WITHIN a Commander Squad to see other Commander Tags. Currently, unless you’re the Commander, if you’re in a Squad, you cannot see other Commander tags on the map. That… seriously does not make sense, especially for folks who do a LOT of scouting on the map. It is SO much easier to know where the Commanders all, call out locations, and note where our zergs our and moving towards. If in squad, we are blind to our own commanders’ movements. I don’t see why we can’t have a toggle that allows us to see other tags.