Guild Wars 2

This is a repost of my thread from a few days back under suggestions, but it just got buried.

I don’t usually post anything on the forum but I feel like I just have to say this here and hope for someone at Anet to read this and perhaps even consider it. Also note that I do not claim this is the first time this has been brought up on the forum, I don’t know this since I don’t read the forum every day.

We all know that commanders in WvW are a “zerg” magnet, a function you can buy for 100g and apart from the feature of making a squad, pretty much useless.

What I am about to suggest is by no means anything new in the MMO world, but this doesn’t make it a bad thing and I think GW2 would benefit from it.

I suggest that the commander feature as is, would be a guild feature, without the blue icon showing on map for everyone, just viewable for the members of the guild.
In addition to this I would very much like to see a real commander feature, which offers special chat that pops up in the middle of the screen of everyone on the map, special icon that shows on everyones map along with the movement dots for lets say the last 5min.
Sounds a lot like the commander we have now, with a bit of tweaks right?
The main thing about this, would be that you couldn’t buy a commander status. One could gain it by doing well in WvW and would be “ranked” every week and the commander status would be given for the next week.
To do this, the game would have to rank people for:
– Taking & defending supply camps, towers, keeps etc. each giving a certain amount of points
– Reviving, building, repairing, upgrading etc.
– Dealing damage to other players could also be counted but would not be the main source of points to be ranked. Dealing damage with siege equipment would give the same number of points vs players or npcs, but more points vs buildings.

Maybe even more things that could be counted in the final score.

I think this would be more than do-able since the game already registers some of these actions. So please give it a thought, thank you!

Yup, I have also suggested something like this. its alot better for the sqaud leader to be more of a ladder based title.

My suggestion of how to gain it was a little bit different though. I personaly think it should be a voting system. Players vote for active WvWers for the next week/round to be squad leader. It would at least a little reduce the insults and encourage more competative leadership.

The reason why I think the deffending/attacking/repairing stuff wont work is: Like buying the sqaud leader book doesnt always make that player a good leader, grinding it doesn’t either.
A good soldier doesn’t always make a good leader.

I think the voting would only bring more anger, bigger guilds would vote for their “candidate” and if there were a list of people you could vote for it would probably show the ones with the most votes and a lot of random people would vote for them also.

A contribution over a set period of time is in my opinion the only fair way to go about it.
I also think that it would help with the “zerging” problem, cause a lot of people who play like that all the time and want to be the main commander would have about the same scores. So one would really have to do well to be commander, basically earning it with hard work, as it should be.

And I agree with the “good soldier doesn’t always make a good leader” part.

Yea I also thought that would be a problem. No system is full proof I can tell you that.

However to compensate there would be a system in place that voting for anyone who has been in the same guild for that week would have deminishing returns.

How this would work is that if any player (even if hes not in any guild) has been voted by 100 players of the same guild (Just an example) then for the first X amout of votes, they would count as a full “Point” then for the next X amount of players it would be reduced and keep reducing down to a cap. Also if the player who votes has joined or left a guild, he is both registered to his/her new guild and his/her old.

This means that any big guild that wants to take control of this system would have to have everyone who votes leave the guild and stay out of the guild until the next round, this would be a very risky move for even the most orginized guilds.

Another thing, Delicate information that could affect the outcome, like current votes would be hiden.

Just an idea, I mean you can always just merge the two ideas. Needing X amount of contribution to be considered to be placed onto the voting board.

Hmm.. but that would mean that a big guild that knew who the candidate is for the other big guilds could down vote them. That wouldn’t work out.
I still feel that contribution in a set period of time would be the best measure. I for one, would respect and trust a person who clearly earned it by doing good for the server, than a person who just got voted by the masses.

How about give the ppl who follow the commander something like a passive buff (while in range OR squad)…for ex 10% speed or 5% dmg or 10% less supply for sieges etc. That would motivate people to, not only come along, but also stay in a group.

That would be an even bigger zerg magnet, I say no to this :/

Not if the buffs are acceptable. Would u follow some random guy for 10% speed? or for a measly 5%dmg? or 10% less supply for sieges (which means 1 supply btw considering u have 10 max).

Only people who want to go in large groups will have an extra bit of motivation.

I’m not against your suggestions but Blue Icon works pretty well for me so far. It creates a bacon for randoms who don’t know where to go.

I don’t need an icon for my guild, we already have voice communication.

I think it’s fine the way it is. 100g may seem a little steep, but that just means that guilds must seriously consider who they give it to. If it were just another personal progression that everyone ended up with, it would lose all sense of meaning. It honestly doesn’t have that much effect unless you are a natural leader to begin with. Nobody outside my guild listened to me until I won them a few victories. I wouldn’t expect them to.

@Rebound I think you don’t understand that massive groups of people are what’s wrong.

@Kazim Yes the blue icon is great, it would be very similar in many ways as is. This “supreme” commander would be visible to everyone, while the commanders like they are now would be visible to guild/squad. This would help the zerging problem a lot, since I believe that it would pull away the people who see the guild icon from the icon everyone sees.
The “supreme” commander could also make marks on the map which would be visible to these guild commanders, and so have multiple battlefronts and a real “guild war” as it were intended.

Being a commander is not about being a good soldier but have the ability to command, rally people around. A player with best participation to WvW can’t necessarily be a good commander. I have the commander icon because my guild trusted on me, and I worked hard to gain that trust. No point/rank that I could gather up buy defending supply camps, or reviving team-mates would make me a better candidate to be a commander, compared to a guild full of people trusting and following me and my orders.

The problem with 100 gold is in 1-2 months map will be filled with wannabees that want to take attention. Currently if you want to be a commander you either need to spend ridiculous amount of real money/time, or a have strong guild behind you. Having a strong guild behind you is the only valid reason to show that commander deserves that icon. In the future it won’t be like that

First you need to be a good soldier to be a good commander.
With your logic, the 100g your guild trusted you with and the faith you received from them, makes you a commander of a whole server, wrong you’re a commander of that guild & squad.
I agree with the 1-2 month thing, should be funny when everyone is shouting “orders”, people asking “where the main commander zerg is?” etc. That’s another reason why WvW needs this.

There are already to much commanders out there who either don’t know how to handle certain situations or are just either doing it for the attention.
The main problem here is the price. Plain gold is way to easy for something permanent.

This is just my humble opinion but I might throw it out here.
What if the commander book was not permanent?
What if it resets every 2 weeks like everything else in WvW?
And for the price? I don’t know what would be a nice balance.
But for the sake of argument, let’s say 100 badges of honor, 20.000 karma and 5 gold.
Hell, even twice that amount would be fine by me.

The price is open for debate as I really don’t know what would be a great balance.
However, the addition of paying with badges of honor is a must imo.
Badges of honor are only attainable in WvW, so it makes sense that you’ll need that currency for the commander status.

These amounts are certainly doable for players who invest most of their gaming time in WvW, I think.

Another thing I would love to see is disabling everything commander related in PvE.
It really saddens me to watch commanders run around in Lion’s Arch while I’ve never seen them in WvW.

That, in my opinion, would take care of the wannabees and attention seeking commanders.
Another benefit would be that if you, as a player, we’re to buy the commander status and things don’t work out that great with your leadership capabilities you don’t have to worry much about it because it will reset automatically anyway.

We need better visual guild coordination tools, voice communication should not be a requirement to play the game properly.

What about members that are deaf? We have 2.

I always thought that the commander book should be purchasable using badges of honor. At least that way, it’s more of a measure of WvW skill than it is of gold farming.

You can make 100 badges, 20k karma and 5g in one day. That would just bring masses of “commanders” in WvW.

That may be, Octopus, but do not underestimate the power of the book having a 2 week limit.
And as I’ve said. I would be fine if it was double or quadruple said price.
I just gave those amounts as an example.

Any concept of a commander status being bought is a bad idea in my opinion. Having lets say the top 5 players gaining commander status every week with actually doing well for the server is just better, plain and simple. You can buy those guild commander statuses and be visible to your guild and squad all you want. But the idea of a person who bought a status that is supposed to lead is just, bad.

We could go further with your idea and say that for lets say 1000 or 2000 badges one could buy a captain status which would allow a player to be a replacement supreme commander when there aren’t any on the WvW map. Options are endless. Changes are needed.