Guild Wars 2

With how many more blue triangles have been popping up lately, I really have started to wish we could vote to remove tags from habitually bad commanders. Something like 1 gold to vote and 100 votes = tag stripped, and they can pay 100 gold again in a month for a new tag. The cycle repeats either until they learn or run out of cash, or the server populace does. Also, you are capped at one vote a month on top of the cost to keep abuse to a minimum.

They still get a chance to learn and become better without having the blue tag attracting enough numbers to them to overcome their bad decision making and reinforcing bad habits.

Anything that is put in the hands of the players like this is just going to get abused. It’s really the only way to deal with bad commanders because ANet shouldn’t have any say in it, but it just won’t work.

No, if you think that commander is bad, just don’t follow.

problem solved.

so if 500 people vote for 1g you lose your legendary? I like it

As said above – the potential for people to just troll someone else is too high with such an implementation. Being able to block particular commander tags (for yourself only, mind) would be an infinitely better solution.

It’s not infinitely better that the only commander tag on a map can keep a significant portion of the manpower for your side tied up wandering aimlessly in enemy territory without actually trying to take anything or defend what you already have, or even engaging the enemy, but rather endlessly re-stacking and fleeing in an ineffectual zerg ball.

We can’t fix the fact that for some reason a large number of people turn their brains off and mindlessly flock to the nearest blue triangle, but we could fix whether or not there is a triangle on the map for them to flock to.

Quite frankly; managing to kitten off a hundred people enough to make them pay to spend their only vote against you within a set time period pretty much means you may not need to be running a tag.

That’s a fantastic idea! Also, the Commander would be given the option to perma-ban kittened followers for 1 silver.

A simple solution for this is to click on the commander you want to follow and select, “Join Squad”. A function highly underused, but very useful, as it blocks out all other commander tags, and provides a commander with his/her own squad chat where they can speak freely.

As for the proposed solution. That’s just an awful idea due to the fact that Anet would potentially stealing money from players due to the currency system that lets you trade gems for gold.

Don’t need Anet to install more artificial handcuffs when it’s such an easy fix by you having the will power to just not follow them, hard concept I know.

Commanders on each respective servers earn their reputations, good or bad.

Remember this one commander a month or so ago fighting on the bridge on the way to Hills getting easily flanked over and over resulting in the group getting wiped. After the 2nd wipe he was at the spawn point and typed in map chat, “Hey!, where did everybody go?” hah!

If you have a bad commander, call them out on it repeatedly and find someone else to lead. People will stop following them.

If you have a zerg following a bad commander around, who is the worse player? The commander or the people who think the commander is bad, yet still follow them around?

Roe.3679:

If you have a bad commander, call them out on it repeatedly and find someone else to lead. People will stop following them.

If you call players out on map chat, all that’s gonna do is cause a lot of unnecessary flame wars and chat drama. Best thing to do is Shaddap and just not follow the guy/girl. He/she will soon get the message.

Commanding pugs in not an easy task and that must be appreciated, for this reason I’m against this idea.
The only thing that kitten me off is when they actually don’t command, in other word when they move around without giving any order in chat (I don’t even talk about using TS, thing that would be mandatory on our server).
As soon as a commander is doing his best it’s OK for me, every commander was once inexperienced and even the best ones sometimes make the wrong choices and loose battles.

A better solution would be to simply tag up yourself and make people follow you.
They have paid as much as you for their tag, they have the same right as you to use it when and how they want.

I keep a list of commanders I follow. Good & Bad. Obviously I under no circumstances follow the bad ones and go out of my way to follow the good ones.

At least you are never stung twice by a awful commander.

Daze.6914:

Commanding pugs in not an easy task and that must be appreciated, for this reason I’m against this idea.
The only thing that kitten me off is when they actually don’t command, in other word when they move around without giving any order in chat (I don’t even talk about using TS, thing that would be mandatory on our server).
As soon as a commander is doing his best it’s OK for me, every commander was once inexperienced and even the best ones sometimes make the wrong choices and loose battles.

Pretty much the situation I was venting about. Only tag on map, no useful directives issued, and tactics that seemed to have no point whatsoever. Would have been better off with no tag, as people were following it instead of defending what we had. Calling them out on it would have been pointless too (people playing that bad typically don’t listen even if you sugar coat it); and not following them just meant my team and I were stuck flipping camps in enemy territory with 2 enemy zergs looking for easy meat.

Edit: and it was someone that has been on the server for quite a while, so they should know better. I cut newbies a large amount of slack. This person was not as such. Nor was it aberrant performance on their part.

lordkrall.7241:

A better solution would be to simply tag up yourself and make people follow you.
They have paid as much as you for their tag, they have the same right as you to use it when and how they want.

Not paying 100 gold to zerg herd. I know kitten well I do not have the patience for that; but I also can recognize bad orders/tactics when I see it.

Overkillengine.6084:

Not paying 100 gold to zerg herd. I know kitten well I do not have the patience for that; but I also can recognize bad orders/tactics when I see it.

And maybe you should not ask for the ability to destroy it for other commander then, since you clearly don’t even bother doing it yourself?

They can get it back in a month even if they actually managed to simultaneously tick off an overwhelming amount of people under they system I proposed. Their ability to command is hardly destroyed, and possibly enhanced by giving people enough time to forget their name while they were on time out.

A far more ethical solution than having an kitten contest with a bad commander to try to wean the zerg off of them long enough to accomplish something.

So, a 100g grief? ah.
So maybe I’d need to get mine voted off (I have two and one of them since last year). Like one day I was on EB, but only two people helping me take targets. But 100 players following the other commander on the map. He led them all up to the top of the castle then he started to shout “jump!” and they jumped. In the time it took for them to jump from the top of the castle and hit the ground dead at the bottom, they could have had enough time to vote my tag off. Sounds promising…

Ideally, you’d have to pay (enough) to vote and have a one month cool-down on voting to act as incentive to not waste it for the lulz.

The funny part about this thread is people have no problem with an informal mutiny that costs nothing and basically renders the offending commander ineffective….for an indeterminate period of time.

But they have an issue with an official mutiny that you have to pay to partake in that would only would last a month.

Terrible idea, griefers would welcome this.

What a marvelous idea.

Now when a large wvw guild decides to migrate to a low ranked server to build their own little kingdom, not only can they ignore the pre-existing community, they can simply throw some gold to eject all the current commanders.

very well thought out.

That’s wasting a lot of money on the hopes that the large guild outnumbers the pre existing community.

Edit: in fact, they’d almost have to outnumber the entire existing server to have that work out; since the existing community would have to pay a comparative pittance to oust their commanders in return.

The commander issue isn’t too big of an issue where I am. That said, I do think there should be a way for people to vote to suspend the tag for 24 hours.

Overkillengine.6084:

That’s wasting a lot of money on the hopes that the large guild outnumbers the pre existing community.

Edit: in fact, they’d almost have to outnumber the entire existing server to have that work out; since the existing community would have to pay a comparative pittance to oust their commanders in return.

if a 500 man wvw guild with say… 25% or higher daily member activity were to move to fc… our population during whatever time that guild is active would be dwarfed.
and the servers we face would be dwarfed too.

but idk if such a guild exists even in high tiers. dont usually hear about anyone fielding 125+ people at once, usually more like 50. even fielding 50 would be pretty ridiculous.

its not like its hard to outnumber t6-t8.

…i wont even start on how silly i think OP’s idea is. just that its bad.

I would prefer a more positive approach. Something like, multiple commander tag tiers and the ability to upgrade a tag with lots of badges and votes from the players on the server. If you transferred, the tag would be downgraded to base again.

That way, you can see which commanders are supported by the server as good commanders.

style.6173:

The commander issue isn’t too big of an issue where I am. That said, I do think there should be a way for people to vote to suspend the tag for 24 hours.

Yeah, not even 5 minutes. It can be a tool to grief guilds as well. So you have a guild with two or three full groups and they are running with some tags in WvW (and even guild missions) since squads don’t mark other players (fail). In the end, no one would have tags, which I think is the motive behind the thread. I see no issue with commander tags, and if the people complaining would just sell off their mats they are farming for a legendary weapon, they would have the gold to get one themselves.

Better solution would be to make the 100g commander tag a PvE only tag, but the WvW tag has to be bought with badges. Like at least 5k badges since they’re so easy to acquire if you’re active in wvw.

There does need to be something done about these pve commanders coming into wvw and thinking they are hot kitten and mess everything up. Idk if this is the solution to the problem.

I saw a suggestion about wvw commanders having purple tags and pve the blue tags, seems like a good idea.

I make sure to call out the bad commanders on my server so people know. I mostly roam anyway so the bad commanders dont directly effect me.

You know who can run the maps Just follow them

That’s why people like to know the own servers rank I guess. You can see the enemy ranks but not your own party.
Most commanders on FoW that I played with I have no problems with.

Maybe be atleast veteran to allow you to wear the commander tag.

We have 1-2 commanders on our servers who joins our bl and eternal with tag on and just runs around doing nothing but dying (running into enemy keeps and sm alone with a few pugs) dosent answer to whispers or chat and also likes to kill all golems solo by just running them into zerg and keeps 1by1…

Really funny, thanks devon.

98% of commanders suck and only rely on outnumbering their opponent. The only use they have is concentrating your forces on a single location so that all the PvE zerglings don’t have to think for themselves. Coincidentally, most commanders don’t seem to think either. The amount of times I have seen commanders throw down 2-3 rams on a gate that is defended by 3-4 superior arrow carts is astounding, as if they are just “making sure” that tactic won’t work before resorting to something equally kittened. After trying 4-5 different things they finally get the wall / gate down due to sheer numbers and all the PvE lemmings cheer for them in /m because they got their ore / bags / fragments.

..You guys do know that is takes waay too much time to talk in chat (esp in the heat of the battles) and thus TS is used.
.. Fighting the top wvw servers needs things like TS.. Live with it and stop btching about it.
Dont like TS (etc) … Just keep a close eye out on the commander tag.

You can also join the commanders squad which hides the other tags if people have it.. But I feel the pain when theirs only one and their total kittene .. :/

Talyn.3295:

I would be happy with just an option to right click ignore them, so that they stop showing up on my map. Lord knows we have enough “Bank” commanders as it is, honestly this kitten tag was way to easy to get

Just this, commander tag means nothing.

It’s just a bought item, nearly everybody could afford to buy a commander tag now, and I see loads of them all over the place when they are not even needed.

It isn’t really a problem. The poor commanders (read inexperienced) tend to only show up off-prime-time when ANY commander is better than none.

In prime time they rapidly lose their following to any good one that shows up.

People should stop telling others what to do. They paid the same for gw2 as you. Not following is always a option or join a squad if you don’t want to see the tag. Also i wouldn’t mind that instead of commander costing 100g it could be 100g deposit. The current system is really not alt friendly.
A lot of people use commander tag to just organize their guild in pve.
This change with all the elitist wvw guilds would do more harm than good.
For-example i built one golem in bay. Then everyone in this wvw guild were telling me to leave the golem, 30-40 different people pming me for me to get lost. Some of them were pretty bad. And this is after i pay 100BoH on a golem that i wanted to drive. I ended up just destroying it myself i didn’t want these guys to use it.

tom.7468:

People should stop telling others what to do. They paid the same for gw2 as you. Not following is always a option or join a squad if you don’t want to see the tag. Also i wouldn’t mind that instead of commander costing 100g it could be 100g deposit. The current system is really not alt friendly.
A lot of people use commander tag to just organize their guild in pve.
This change with all the elitist wvw guilds would do more harm than good.
For-example i built one golem in bay. Then everyone in this wvw guild were telling me to leave the golem, 30-40 different people pming me for me to get lost. Some of them were pretty bad. And this is after i pay 100BoH on a golem that i wanted to drive. I ended up just destroying it myself i didn’t want these guys to use it.

So you wasted 100 supply just so you could toy around with a golem for a while?

Gab Superstar.4059:

tom.7468:

People should stop telling others what to do. They paid the same for gw2 as you. Not following is always a option or join a squad if you don’t want to see the tag. Also i wouldn’t mind that instead of commander costing 100g it could be 100g deposit. The current system is really not alt friendly.
A lot of people use commander tag to just organize their guild in pve.
This change with all the elitist wvw guilds would do more harm than good.
For-example i built one golem in bay. Then everyone in this wvw guild were telling me to leave the golem, 30-40 different people pming me for me to get lost. Some of them were pretty bad. And this is after i pay 100BoH on a golem that i wanted to drive. I ended up just destroying it myself i didn’t want these guys to use it.

So you wasted 100 supply just so you could toy around with a golem for a while?

I was going to use it but it was the attitude that bothered me.

I think it’s funny that people are allowed to pay gold to misuse an organizational tool that does affect everyone else in the zone (even if they try to ignore it) but the affected people are not allowed to pay gold to have the tool nullified.

Overkillengine.6084:

I think it’s funny that people are allowed to pay gold to misuse an organizational tool that does affect everyone else in the zone (even if they try to ignore it) but the affected people are not allowed to pay gold to have the tool nullified.

Earlier in the game it was only affordable by guilds, maybe the cost needs to go up to make guilds more wisely choose who to give tags to? But that’s only a bandaid solution and not always right, especially for smaller guilds. It’s a tough nut to crack, you should change your outlook. Also, I think there’s a lot of blue dorito jealousy out there causing some of these complaints. Personally I could care less how many tags are on a map. It changes nothing and affects me in no way. Except wvw, but even there, I mean, you got to start somewhere.

TL:DR
Chillaxe

Mob rule yay.

Anyhow, I have a free solution to this. You see there’s this thing slightly below the top of your head that allows you to do stuff and also decide on whether or not that blue symbol is worth following.

If you can’t do that, you get exactly what you deserve.

See there’s all talk about terrible commanders, but what about those terrible followers that can’t follow simple directions, wipe, blame everyone but themselves and come up with silly complaints like the one in this thread?

Just allow the tag to be disabled. As for the rest well, you can join the squad of a commander you do want to follow and it removes the rest from the map.

Thoughts on what is good and bad commanding, what is good and bad tactics, what is good and bad strategy, and in fact what you should even be trying to accomplish while playing WvW…. vary widely!

And rule by anyone willing to cough up 100 gold is somehow morally superior?

And yes, I could afford a tag. So it’s not just sour grapes. I can already tell you I’d make a bad commander; but that does not mean I want another bad commander to be inflicted on an entire zone either. And that’s what happens when they are the only tag in the zone; in the time it takes the zerg to figure out that following them = bad, an unrecoverable amount of crap can happen.

So ignoring them at an individual or squad level does not help make something happen within a tenable timetable.

Argue the point instead of resorting to ad hominems or non-solution solutions. I am glad to see at least some were mature enough to disagree and at least offer an alternative system to enforcing some sort of accountability for commanding.

And the particular situation that hacked me off was a commander that thought directing our forces to wander aimlessly north of SMC in enemy territory was a good strategy; without ever really trying to effectively take and hold anything; much less defend or reinforce what we did have; and retreating the second the enemy zerg showed up; even though we had at several points prior wiped them off the field with less forces that that commander had at their beck and call.

And I wouldn’t have been bothered had they been attempting potentially viable strategy and just failed. Sometimes kitten happens. But what I witnessed was not that. Nor was it isolated behavior from them.

If they didn’t want to accomplish anything, they should have just dropped their tag. But hey, they paid 100g, so they get to derail an entire zone.

/facepalm.

if you don’t like seeing other commander, just join squad to your favourites…..

tom.7468:

Gab Superstar.4059:

tom.7468:

People should stop telling others what to do. They paid the same for gw2 as you. Not following is always a option or join a squad if you don’t want to see the tag. Also i wouldn’t mind that instead of commander costing 100g it could be 100g deposit. The current system is really not alt friendly.
A lot of people use commander tag to just organize their guild in pve.
This change with all the elitist wvw guilds would do more harm than good.
For-example i built one golem in bay. Then everyone in this wvw guild were telling me to leave the golem, 30-40 different people pming me for me to get lost. Some of them were pretty bad. And this is after i pay 100BoH on a golem that i wanted to drive. I ended up just destroying it myself i didn’t want these guys to use it.

So you wasted 100 supply just so you could toy around with a golem for a while?

I was going to use it but it was the attitude that bothered me.

dude wvw is a team based game and u gotta see that every bit of supply can be important. toying around in agolem is seen as trolling and spying. and acting like a child because someone tells u not to fool around by destroying it, has no place in a competitive environment.
commanders wanna protect and cap objectives, so its very understandable that they are demanding. our commanders will yell at u too as we are actually serious about this. with the supply of that 1 golem u could have built 4 guild catas to take an entire keep, 3 flamerams, 2 supperior flamerams, 1 treb, 3 ac’s, 2 ballistas or simply have taken a tower or even unguarded keep. so yeah i would have yelled at u too. we had people kicked out from guilds due to siege griefing issues.
u could have fun joining a roaming group or a havoc team if u dont like following the commander. my guild for example doesnt zerg and we can cap a ton of objectives. 5 people ninjad smc from a tier 1 server with 2 golems we built.

and i bet u took the supply from the keep. also taking it from a camp is 100 supply less for the groups that are actively pushing objectives.
wvw is not a playground unless u have a decent ppt and if u wanna roam(…or during tc’s dolyakparade XD)

Overkillengine.6084:

And rule by anyone willing to cough up 100 gold is somehow morally superior?

Hmm, I didn’t realize commanders could take control of your characters…

They aren’t ruling anything. There’s nothing to say you have to follow them. Nothing happens to you if you don’t.

And yes, I could afford a tag. So it’s not just sour grapes. I can already tell you I’d make a bad commander; but that does not mean I want another bad commander to be inflicted on an entire zone either. And that’s what happens when they are the only tag in the zone; in the time it takes the zerg to figure out that following them = bad, an unrecoverable amount of crap can happen.

So ignoring them at an individual or squad level does not help make something happen within a tenable timetable.

You should be able to judge a commander within a few minutes given their reactions, positioning, movement, communication, and the general flow of the map.

The thing is it can be disagreeable on who’s bad or not. Sometimes they can be having an off day, or make mistakes, or simply outplayed.

Argue the point instead of resorting to ad hominems or non-solution solutions. I am glad to see at least some were mature enough to disagree and at least offer an alternative system to enforcing some sort of accountability for commanding.

A ad hominem is when it’s the sole argument to discount your point.

My point is that mob rule is bad and then individual players need to take responsibility for themselves. Bad commanders get shunned and ignored anyways; good commanders get tons of followers and gifts. It works already.

Anyhow, I already have seen enough commander abuse by armchair commanders, and to put such power in their hands is unacceptable. I would find it completely unacceptable if even one useful commander was badly affected by it for any amount of time.

But let me discuss matters in a kind fashion. If bad commanders do so much damage because the mindless zerg follows them, I don’t see how it makes any sense for the mindless zerg to have this kind of power.

The wasteful and destructive diverting of manpower happens even if I personally do not follow them.

It happens even if you call them out on it, and just starts a pointless kitten war that accomplishes nothing.

And people who don’t know better yet will still gravitate to the tag instead of evaluating the map on their own like they should be.

The ad hominem remark was my response to the people who couldn’t be bothered to come up with anything better than “ur just jealous”.

And as I have repeatedly clarified, there is a vast ocean of difference between being outplayed and what I was observing. Being outplayed meant you were still contributing, and taking reasonable steps towards accomplishing a goal.

Right now our only option is to hope that eventually a bad commander gets shunned enough to no longer have a meaningful effect on a zone. Until then they are still doing damage and serving as a bad example. How is this good?

So I proposed something. Granted, I do not think the average zergling should just be handed the power to ruin a decent commander out of the box, so I also attached some limits and a hopefully non trivial cost to keep abuse to a minimum.