Guild Wars 2

Daoc did it right. Group with pre-chosen class make up, guildies, and be rewarded for winning fights against other faction opposing guilds. This new prestige ranking system should be based off of killing other players. Keeps and camps should simply be strategy for having a backup (fallback) place when you start to lose a fight.

Zergs have a purpose….Making great videos of small mans dropping triple their number.

Commander tags should be earned with an outstanding number of personal kills. Anet makes it 25,000 kills…would eliminate 99% of the commanders. Interestingly enough 99% of the commanders are commanders based off of one fact…you can BUY the title.

Earn it.

While I think your sentiment is a bit off, I do agree that kills should be very important for progressing in whatever new system they add. If they make it so zerging is by far the best, or even the only way to progress, that’ll be a real shame.

Putting it on kills is terrible. Getting kills just shows you man a lot of siege or have a lot of AoE, neither of which reflect your ability to lead. It does say something about how much time you spent in WvW but might as well just tie it to time played then.

I think the 100 gold is better than kills (even if it’s not ideal) because usually multiple people save up the gold and buy it for someone and that at least shows that there are people who are putting their trust in you to lead them.

Actually, counting kills by itself isn’t awesome. Repairing, scouting, escorting dolyaks, running support skills, patrolling maps that aren’t yet contested by zergs, fighting losing battles to stall opponents rather than drop them, flipping camps/towers while their would be defenders are occupied elsewhere, these things (I’m sure there’s more I haven’t thought of) are probably more important than just racking up kills for yourself and shouldn’t be dismissed.

Styx,

That doesnt take as much skill/energy/or generate as much fun as winning a fight with a equal or higher skill based small man team. Clearly you don’t come from a gaming background like Daoc.

“Repairing, scouting, escorting dolyaks, running support skills, patrolling maps that aren’t yet contested by zergs, fighting losing battles to stall opponents rather than drop them, flipping camps/towers while their would be defenders are occupied elsewhere”

Easy mode man. That’s for players who just want to pass time. Sure it “helps” the overall picture. But here’s the thing, any skilled 5 man can do that and still win the fights open field. So devoting only to what you said is pointless if you can get the kills at the same time.

IMO, kills don’t mean anything. Many many zergers already have dozen of thousands of kills. It’s easy to Aoe the other zerg from walls or behind your own zerg. But I don’t think it makes them good at anything in WvW, except for leeching kills and badges.

But yes… it can’t be worse than allowing players to buy the title with gold.

Dylic, you should share your videos

Jscull, I feel like you are overvaluing the ability to fight against larger numbers. Yeah, it takes some skill and energy and is a lot of fun but it’s not everything there is to WvW. You need people to do other things and they need to be rewarded for doing them else they’re not going to get done. Leading zergs into choke points is useful but clearly not everyone can be doing it else this is just going to turn into a big camping fest.

And the 25k kills for commander makes so little sense. 25k kills would have made 0 sense 3 months ago and it will make even less sense 3 months from now. Kill counts are always going up.

This is indeed my first WvW game. My guild is about 5-10 actives at a time who usually fight against larger zergs but personally the skill I value most in a commander is reading a map and predicting what enemy forces are going to do. That’s really hard for the game to quantize and it does not at all up one’s kill count.

It is easier to get kills in a zerg vs zerg fight.

The commander icon should be re-done. Giving it for gold, kills, or any other thing that can be earned in-game won’t solve anything. It needs to require you at least have people following you for you to be a commander. Base it off a warband or raid type grouping system. You have a certain number of players in your war-band, you have the option of turning on your icon to allow others to see you. Of course if you are in the war-band, there is no group requirement, you will always see the leader’s icon. Make it a red color or something.

Eventually you could even take it a set further and allow those people that have been successful leaders to have a special icon, title, and some other rewards. Special commander armor skins would be cool or some mini-pet that doesn’t do any damage but looks like a flag barrier carrier their guild banner. When you see that icon or commander on the battle-field, you actually know he earned it because people followed him. I would also give those that earn titles access to cheaper siege weapons. Maybe even different styles.

Being a real commander in WvW is a pain in the butt. I think those that do it right and earn the respect of their server should be rewarded.

There seems to be some misconception by some people who did open world pvp in other games that individual skill will net the most kills or best ratio. What nets the most kills is mass organization, not individual skill, so that while a good 5-man group might be able to beat larger numbers some of the time, a coordinated 20-30 man group will consistently wipe a 40+ man zerg in 10 seconds flat. If you’re not convinced, just poll the people who have advanced the furthest in the Realm Avenger achievement and ask them how they play.

Of course, commanding has nothing to do with your ability to fight as an individual, it sounds like OP neither understands that nor what I have just explained.

Having held this conversation in The Anvil Rock Defender’s VoIP server some days ago, I came to essentially agree with what styx has said here, and fundamentally disagree with what Jscull says (including his sour attitude).

I’m getting misty eyed. Raven hold me plz

Jscull.2514:

Styx,

That doesnt take as much skill/energy/or generate as much fun as winning a fight with a equal or higher skill based small man team. Clearly you don’t come from a gaming background like Daoc.

“Repairing, scouting, escorting dolyaks, running support skills, patrolling maps that aren’t yet contested by zergs, fighting losing battles to stall opponents rather than drop them, flipping camps/towers while their would be defenders are occupied elsewhere”

Easy mode man. That’s for players who just want to pass time. Sure it “helps” the overall picture. But here’s the thing, any skilled 5 man can do that and still win the fights open field. So devoting only to what you said is pointless if you can get the kills at the same time.

so what your saying is that [PAXA] is bad, because the 2 weeks i fought against them…..the most ive seen them do is take a camp in an uncontested area when it was no where near the end of the tick timer. the vast majority of the time it was just spawn camping and picking off stragglers.

Seriously, maybe try to actually WvWing at some point.
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to stay on topic:

I think someone should have X amount of the WvW achievement points, X amount of kills, and pay the 100 gold. Its still not perfect, but it shows people have experience in the different facets of WvW.

Another solution is just not follow an unknown commander….a bad commander, who loses constantly…..will disappear quickly.

Anvil Pants.3426:

Having held this conversation in The Anvil Rock Defender’s VoIP server some days ago, I came to essentially agree with what styx has said here, and fundamentally disagree with what Jscull says (including his sour attitude).

I’m getting misty eyed. Raven hold me plz

Anvil Rock and Gates of Madness BFFs!

Jscull.2514:

Daoc did it right. Group with pre-chosen class make up, guildies, and be rewarded for winning fights against other faction opposing guilds. This new prestige ranking system should be based off of killing other players. Keeps and camps should simply be strategy for having a backup (fallback) place when you start to lose a fight.

Zergs have a purpose….Making great videos of small mans dropping triple their number.

Commander tags should be earned with an outstanding number of personal kills. Anet makes it 25,000 kills…would eliminate 99% of the commanders. Interestingly enough 99% of the commanders are commanders based off of one fact…you can BUY the title.

Earn it.

So wrong. Kills are the worst way to determine a valid commander.

Now I do agree with you that commanders need to do more than just pay 100 gold, but kills is definitely not the right way to go.

I had an idea on how to deal with the commanders which would work well if/when Anet implements the ranks. They should make something like 10
Enlisted" ranks that any number of people can hold at any given time, then another 5 “officer” ranks that are competitive (meaning that only a certain number of people can hold those ranks at a given time).

This would not give them any direct advantage in battle or gear, however Anet could make it so that the top 3-5 ranked individuals on the map at any given time have the option to have the commander icon above their head (if they dont want it, it would go to the next highest ranked individual).

This would also give the “hardcore” WvW’ers something to work forward to each week (if they recalculated the top players each week). They could make it reset/lower your rank for switching servers (or give rank bonuses in lower tiered servers to promote people spreading out across all servers).

The key to it would be to make sure ANet correctly identifies acts that contribute to a World success. Not just killing and flipping keeps, but defending an upgrading keep, escorting Yaks, etc. They could give you points based off how much time you spent in or near a keep while it was upgrading (assuming you were not idle), or time you spent near a yak, in addition to giving you rank for kills and keep captures.

Commander achievement should be unlocked when you hit a target of a combination of other achievmrnts.

Sacking
Defending
Escorting
Upgrading
Supplying
Building sieges
Enemies killed

Once all have been maxed out then the commander title and icon is unlocked. Paying for commander can breed many commanders people just should not follow as they are neither skilled or understand WvW.

Just for kicks though just put paid+multi achievments together.

You are correct OP, 100 gold is a joke. I could get 100 people to troll send 1 gold to an idiot and give you an unqualified commander. So +1

However; As stated kills alone aren’t enough. What we are looking for is ‘experience’ basically – battle fitness. Whilst not perfect – time played: assessed by both kill count AND other required WvW achievements (some listed above) which you as the player have achieved with others / personally, would be a way better method.

As it stands, we have 100g heroes – many of whom are both clueless and ignored. Yet they create confusion and annoy hardworking respected commanders. (pug/new players dont always know the difference right away – it can have a big effect)

It would be nice to have some sort of +1 reputation system for commanders too, so as to have some inclination of their on server ability. Different ranks perhaps, or something to reward the good ones. Still considering the current game design/ guild climate its useless to fantasize really.

KensaiZen.3740:

Commander achievement should be unlocked when you hit a target of a combination of other achievmrnts.

Sacking
Defending
Escorting
Upgrading
Supplying
Building sieges
Enemies killed

Once all have been maxed out then the commander title and icon is unlocked. Paying for commander can breed many commanders people just should not follow as they are neither skilled or understand WvW.

Just for kicks though just put paid+multi achievments together.

Yeah I agree with this. It’s hard to systematically quantify “commanding skill” but that should root out a lot of incompetent commanders.

If multiple commanders of varying ability are on the map don’t you think players will determine for themselves whom to follow? Too many commander tags, join the squad of the one you prefer.

Please explain where the problem is arising. Is it from too many useless commanders on the map diluting effectiveness or is it an kitten war between commanders causing these feelings?

In theory. In practice it can vary alot.

On my server we do indeed have the sense of entitlement/bickering between commanders. Generally though this is kept down by the sorts of things you mention + them wanting to maintain their own name and reputation.

The problem arises most commonly though when new players join wvw, casuals with varying hours come along, or anything in between.

Many people dont talk in this game, not the commanders issue no, granted. However many of these said individuals make up the so called zerg – simply following the blue tag for exp and karma. If you, like me are unfortunate enough to be on a server where this idle population represents alot of the active majority at varying times then you have a situation where tempers rapidly go southward.

Problem being that effective commanders need numbers. Any break in the command chain/hesitation can cost you a key fort, which is naturally bad for morale. Couple this with a persistantly low scoring/populated server and you end up with a loop cycle. Long term commanders cant possibly quickly identify themselves as worthy and as a result never get that chance. They either have to compete with someone who doesnt know what they are doing (and yes those people are followed anyway because of a tag) or forced to log because they become sick of a new commander popping up every few days and the cycle repeating.

I wouldnt mind if commanders had tiers or ranks to make them easily distinquishable. BUT having new people with zero idea being followed blindly by those who expect freebies from a tag and having them compared to those who make a real effort each week, is in my eyes insulting to those hard working players.

If people self policed like you said fair enough. Many places though this is not the case and its contributing to some servers repeatedly falling down from disjointed leadership when they shouldnt have to.

Command should be restricted to those who give enough of a personal kitten to do the job effectively, including what many of the good ones do atm – defer to a another commander when required by turning off the tag.

Currently we do have many with a superior attitude yes. Who would never have gotten the tag if any actual effort was required. No effort to achieve it = no care or value in it. Thats the bottom line I think.

KensaiZen.3740:

Commander achievement should be unlocked when you hit a target of a combination of other achievmrnts.

Sacking
Defending
Escorting
Upgrading
Supplying
Building sieges
Enemies killed

Once all have been maxed out then the commander title and icon is unlocked. Paying for commander can breed many commanders people just should not follow as they are neither skilled or understand WvW.

Just for kicks though just put paid+multi achievments together.

This is the best idea. Showing you have some skill and showing you really want it by making you cough up a big chunk of change. The pin should only work on WvW maps also – to stop all those glamour queens in Lions Arch devaluing the pin

If this change was introduced I would expect all commanders to be refunded 100g and have to get their badge again. This way those PvE commanders can choose not to get it because it only works in WvW.

ErraticFaith.9142:

In theory. In practice it can vary alot. (remainder snipped apologies)

Ah yes I can see where you’re coming from, it would be great to have some form of recognition for established commanders other than word of mouth. I guess I’ve been lucky to play on Desolation where we attained tier 1 for a few weeks, then server drama hit and we dropped tiers and players and have had to rebuild from the ground up.

By going through the process and having all the bandwagoners leave we’ve been able to maintain a strong core and good relations between most guilds and commanders on the server allowing us together with a few great transfers to fight our way back into tier 1.

KensaiZen.3740:

Commander achievement should be unlocked when you hit a target of a combination of other achievmrnts.

Sacking
Defending
Escorting
Upgrading
Supplying
Building sieges
Enemies killed

Once all have been maxed out then the commander title and icon is unlocked. Paying for commander can breed many commanders people just should not follow as they are neither skilled or understand WvW.

Just for kicks though just put paid+multi achievments together.

This exactly.
Kills are a joke, counting kills is way to easy.
The 100g is not that bad of an idea either if only it couldnt be bought (which there is now way to tell) since it would require the Guild as a whole to contribute to make people commanders.
I can get on my level 30 elementalist and AoE away and get more kills than say my Warrior who has less mobbing ability, but contributes just as much in a zerg (through shouts and banners).