Guild Wars 2

Naga.1805:

Oh right, I remember that now. So if it is Swiss style, then the next match up in Silver and Bronze leagues will be based on how everyone finished this week. So all first place finishers will matchup, all second place will matchup as well as all third place?

Week 3 will then have the possibility of playing against a server that we met in week 1 or 2 right?

It is swiss style, that is correct. Certainly worlds might get matched up against one another more than once, but the nature of the matchmaking is going to minimize that, especially in conjunction with the 4 week timeframe.

This is a bug and we are looking into a fix presently. We’ll get it in as soon as we can get it tested and in a build.

Pinkamena Diane Pie.8054:

It has come to the point that as WvW has not received real updates since launch that we ourselves would not mind doing the testing.

I can appreciate that many people don’t like EotM, but don’t conflate a lack of updates that you personally like with a lack of updates. WvW has added a great deal of content and rewards over just the last calendar year.

Hopefully you will find more you like in future updates and we’ll continue to add to the game.

Chaba.5410:

Devon Carter…. Devon Carver… man, that’s not confusing or anything. /sarcasm

Only confusing if you thought my name was ever Devon Carter.

We are aware of the issue and working on a fix.

There are no changes to commander tags in this feature pack. In the future, were we to switch them to account bound, we would provide some notice ahead of time, as well.

We removed the keys as they seemed an unnecessary step. You will get a chest based on the placement of your world at the end of the tournament.

The mini boosters will remain soulbound for now. However, I think changing them to account bound makes sense. It may be complicated or may not affect ones that have already been earned though. We’ll definitely look into it.

DaMikenatr.7041:

I know we don’t really speak well of the CDIs at times, but they did make a post addressing how they understand the World Identity is too important based on player feedback, so I don’t know that they would change something in that direction. Of course all we can do for now is speculate.

To quell speculation early, that is not what we are doing. The announcement will have more info, but we are absolutely not getting rid of worlds and putting everyone into an EotM type system.

Each character will have access to the total number of points you have on your account.

So, if you are rank 100, and have 10 characters. All ten characters will have 100 points to spend.

Hey all,

I’m going to close down the thread, but I wanted to chime in with some general thoughts and just say how great the discussion of a lot of points has been.

1) I think there has been a general consensus that the Edge of the Mists is an interesting part of WvW, but that it is missing a number of the things that people most like from WvW.
2) Perhaps the largest of those things is the fact that the lack of world identity is a negative for a lot of folks.
3) We talked a bit about the idea of chokepoints and how they can be a useful tool if they are well integrated into the design and layout of the map and how they can easily be overused. People like some aspects of the bridges in EotM, but feel like they are too numerous and cause other problems. The concept of a tower guarding a canyon was more favorably received than the bridges.
4) There is a wide variety of opinion about waypoints. There seems to be a consensus that the amount of running in EotM isn’t great but that there might be some middle ground to be found.
5) There was a very wide ranging discussion about match times. I think we came to the consensus that there isn’t a consensus, see what I did there?, about if shorter matches would be good. I think there is some room to experiment, but it does seem like people feel there is value to the length that WvW currently runs.
6) Matipzieu KyA, ManaCraft, Kraag Deadsoul, Heezdedjim, and Yoh were some of the most prolific posters who also, in my opinion, put a great deal of thought into their responses and had a real solid back and forth. Thanks to all of you as well as everyone else who participated.
7) We bandied about some thoughts for changes to Stonemist and I think there are some interesting ideas, but several people raised the very real concern that we not make Stonemist impossible for smaller groups to capture.

Generally I think there was a lot of good discussion here. I think we talked a great deal about some very core issues that some of the proposals had as well as some things we could do to improve WvW overall.

I look forward to future CDIs and to hearing more of your thoughts about another topic. Thanks again for all of your thoughts and input. We really believe it helps us to make a better game for you all to enjoy. Please feel free to continue discussion of individual ideas in new threads.

Devon Carver

Twinny.9304:

Seen a lot here about removing dolyaks, i don’t understand this at all it gives smaller parties/individuals a job to do we need more of the small things like this not less of. Yes it could be redesigned a “little” better, but not removed.

By removing the small scale stuff your effectively making less for the roamers to do and forcing them to join the karma train which is increasing in size not decreasing it. We need more small scale stuff not less of it, to allow more people to break away from that train.

That is a good point. I think it is more important to think of if there is a better way to do both of those things. Right now, killing dolyaks is the way you disrupt supply and something you can do as a single player. What if we replaced the dolyaks with some other mechanic that didn’t have the problems dolyaks have, specifically the escorting issues, that still allowed small groups of players to disrupt supply? I think the key is maintaining that play while improving the mechanics.

Yoh.8469:

Personally I would prefer their removal, I don’t think they promote engaging gameplay, either attacking this defenseless critter or babysitting them.

I kind of like the idea that The Elder Scrolls Online has with their version of WvW, where outside key buildings there will be a number of smaller resource camps of three different types, each conveying a boon to the key structure.
Lumber Mills improve doors, walls, and overall hp of the structure.
Farms improve NPC’s I think.
And Mines, idk, improve siege I would guess.

I’d like to see something similar in GW2, where you had different types of camps, each could give supply passively like the Generators in EOTM, but also conveyed buffs to their respective towers and keeps, and when upgraded could make taking them exceedingly difficult.

Say if you owned an upgraded Lumber Mill, doors and walls of nearby towers and keeps auto repair, and if they were also reinforced, it would take a massive war effort in order to break them down.
This way if it is lost the impact is immediate and relatable.

This, too, is really interesting and could be a fun change to the system. Would it feel like the addition of an excessive amount of PvE if that was the upgrade system in each map?

Shriketalon.1937:

DevonCarver.5370:

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

What about a lattice system, similar to that used in Planetside??

Combine the Sentry Points and the Ruins mechanic into a series of small zones of control that dot the entire map. When someone captures a Supply Camp, it will automatically provide supplies to nearby structures if they are connected by a series of small zones of control, which use the current Ruins mechanic. In order to cut off a Keep and lay siege, an attacker must literally sever its supply chains by surrounding the keep and blockading its territory.

This opens up a lot more room for small scale skirmishes around a major objective and for defenders to help in small ways by breaking the siege and establishing a supply chain. Likewise, a zerg attacking a heavily defended area will actually need to establish a major foothold rather than relying on a single havoc squad performing the current supply chain dance. This change would mix very well with more Zones of Control (such as towers with additional gates blocking access to valleys, etc), and more elaborate keep mechanics.

I’ve included a crude example of a lattice below, though it uses an outdated map.

That’s a really interesting idea. I like the change it makes from the dolyaks to control of an area while still maintaining the feel of supply lines.

While I appreciate the discussion around the dolyak issue, it wasn’t my intention to refocus the discussion there so much as provide an example of a point.

To pivot from that discussion, however, would WvW be better or worse off if we removed dolyaks entirely and went with the setup we use in EotM or something similar?

I think there are good reasons to keep dolyaks, but I wonder if we might be able to solve many of the problems we’ve discussed here by eliminating that sense of the supply chain of battle? It might just have the effect of making supply far less limiting.

Would it instead work to go with a combination of the two and have a guaranteed minimum amount of supply from holding a camp and have dolyaks carrying the extra? I’m curious what you all think.

As for the discussion around how to more closely involve guilds it’s definitely something we think about and I think there are intriguing ideas in here.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

DevonCarver.5370:

It ultimately comes down to a similar issue to that with the dolyaks, which is that the game isn’t able to track who is escorting a dolyak unless they do something like kill another player which doesn’t usually happen. Until we fix that gap in the game’s knowledge of what is going on, we can’t accurately reward players.

This statement is confusing. At launch, an “Escort the Dolyak” event existed which rewarded karma on successful completion. That reward/event was removed from the game because bots were scripted to farm the event by following the yaks. The bots received the reward without having to engage in combat.

It was great fun while it lasted because real players could farm the farmers who either didn’t fight back or fought poorly. Was hilarious to watch 12 bots slowly walking along beside a yak only to be mowed down by real players.

Of course, this had to be removed from the game. However, historically, it appears the game is capable of tracking who is escorting a dolyak.

I think if you examine more closely what you just said, you can see the problem. The progress was being given to anyone standing around near the dolyak when it ended its path. That is hardly accurately tracking who helped it out. Without a good way to know who actually helped, we can’t provide adequate rewards.

There have been far too many proposals here for me to directly comment on each of them, so I’m going to try and take a broader stab at things.

Firstly, something that I’ve seen in more than one proposal and something that we just can’t do in our game, is the idea of consolidating maps or making larger maps. It is a problem on multiple fronts, but the most obvious issue is that we simply can’t fit more players onto a map than we already have, so even if we were to make a larger map, we couldn’t have a corresponding increase in the number of players on that map. Proposals that rely on that idea are simply untenable.

The discussion point, proposal, whatever you want to call it, that I think is the most useful in terms of designing WvW maps and gameplay is the talk about how to build objectives that feel like they make tactical sense. I think that it is something that could definitely be improved in a new map or with a major rework to the current maps. Having logical and tactical objectives, like a tower guarding a canyon, is something that I think would greatly improve WvW in terms of moment to moment gameplay and longer term tactical gameplay.

That somewhat feeds into a larger issue that is outside the bounds of this particular topic which is defending objectives. It is absolutely the case that we have a hard time correctly tracking defense and rewarding players for it. It is something that we’d like to address on a system level and something that we hope to have a solution for across the board before we do any piecemeal changes. It ultimately comes down to a similar issue to that with the dolyaks, which is that the game isn’t able to track who is escorting a dolyak unless they do something like kill another player which doesn’t usually happen. Until we fix that gap in the game’s knowledge of what is going on, we can’t accurately reward players.

Both of the above things are ways to substantially change the necessity of tactics in the game and to make WvW more about well-organized groups. That’s something we still aim for when we make changes to the game.

One final note about the CDI generally, I’ve said it before and will say it again, the purpose of these threads is to discuss design not to create a work order. What we discuss here is not a promise but an avenue for us to discuss our views on aspects of the game with you all. That means we challenge each others assumptions and hopefully come to a better understanding of what will make GW2 better. Some times that manifests in things we talk about being made and sometimes it manifests in us having a better vision for other things we are working on. I hope that correctly sets expectations about things here. Thanks for contributing as it makes us better designers and hopefully means GW2 will be better off in the long run.

titanlectro.5029:

Devon,

I’d be really interested to get your feedback on the following:
1) any proposals that stick out to you, and what you do or do not like about them
2) our answers to your questions

I realize that you are getting useful feedback from us, but it would be nice for us to get some more feedback from you also.

Let me take some time to organize my thoughts about that, but yes, that is a good point.

Firstly, I’d like to apologize for being out of this thread for so long, I’ve been reading your posts and think there are a lot of good points in here and just a lot of thoughtfulness in general. I do feel like the thread has kind of wound down, so I’d like to ask one more question and see if that brings up any more ideas.

Edge of the Mists has a whole host of differences from the WvW maps that we built before launch. One of those differences is the number of waypoints. Not only does each side only have 1 waypoint, but they can’t even capture and use the waypoints at enemy keeps. Do you think that the amount of travel that you have to put in makes the maps feel better? Does it feel like there is a consequence for dying and that you can whittle down an opposing force?

I’m curious what your thoughts are and if you think it would make the fighting better or worse in the borderlands and EB.

There will be the same three leagues as previously. No world can be lower than 9th place in a league. Everyone gets tickets.

Cuddlepie.8109:

DevonCarver.5370:

We are looking into the issue right now. Until we know more, that’s all I can tell you at the moment.

“nothing can be done”

It has been resolved, but there isn’t really anything we can do after a match has been running to provide recompense. However, we’ll at the very least look into what we can do to possibly have a system for that in the future. As well as try and sort out what exactly happened so it doesn’t happen again.

My apologies for the situation.

We are looking into the issue right now. Until we know more, that’s all I can tell you at the moment.

I wanted to pop back in to say I think it’s been really valuable to hear the input from you all about all these topics. We want to do what is best for WvW and that means hearing what you all have to say about a variety of things.

The discussion around community, world identity, etc. has been very enlightening. I also wanted to call out everyone who approached the discussion with an open mind. Whether you like Edge of the Mists or not, its valuable to discuss some of the concepts there and see if they are applicable to the other WvW maps. Please continue to discuss some of the topics we’ve broached here, but before the week ends I just wanted to say that I think it has been a good discussion and valuable for us.

As an aside, I just wanted to call out the posts from Matipzieu KyA, which are incredibly detailed and well-thought out. We really appreciate the passion and dedication that it takes to go to those lengths. We are reading them and looking closely at the things contained within.

I think there has been good discussion around the concepts of world pride and how the changes in EotM affect that. Let’s pivot to a different concept from EotM and how it could apply to WvW.

I’m curious what you all think about choke points as strategic ideas. I don’t think we’d ever want a map that was just a bunch of canyons, this isn’t Sparta or Thermopylae, but having areas that make it harder for large groups to get through if they are well-defended creates gameplay. Think of a tower that guards the only pass through a canyon, rather than bridges everywhere. Is that something that, in moderation, could provide for more varied and strategic gameplay?

For the purposes of the question, think in terms of building a new map from scratch, rather than retrofitting the current maps.

Malchior.5042:

Nike.2631:

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to pivot to something that Luna mentioned early in the thread, the idea of a more complex fight for Stonemist.

Would it make Stonemist feel too difficult to capture if the assaulting team had to capture and hold 3 capture points?
…
Do any of you think this version of Stonemist would be an improvement or does it not really make any positive changes in your mind?

It’s almost there.

What I would do is continue to have one critical point – the Lord’s Room. That location solely determines the outcome of the attack. But then I would add two (possibly 3) substantial defenses to the lord’s room. First, a Legendary creature that helps in the defense of the room. The second, a bunch of fixed, player-operable high quality siege equipment.

For each of these defenses you add another control point elsewhere in the castle. Seizing them removes the matching defenses from the room.

The point will always be to cotrol the Lord’s room, and an assaulting realm can choose to go directly for the throat. But doing so means eating a bunch of siege in the face and having to deal with something on the scale of a Giant, or maybe a High Priest of the Mists with an annoying tendency to rez the Lord up to once a minute until the Priest is wiped off the field.

Or the assaulting group can go contest these points and remove the additional obstacles for as long as they hold them. Hold the Chapel and the Priest de-spawns. Hold the Armory and the Seige Weapons become inert.

With the Priest/Giant/What-have-you being an NPC, it will present a challenge even if no defenders are present. While the siege weapons specifically require the defending server be present to use them.

Nike’s got the right idea!

Having different defenses in the Lord Room (or perhaps throughout all of Stonemist) that can be disabled by controlling the Armory, or controlling the Barracks, etc…

These kinds of elements introduce choice and conflict into the battle, so commanders can adapt the battle plan dynamically to accomplish the final goal of capturing Stonemist.

Also…as a sort of balancing factor to these extra objectives…what if they costed supply to build/maintain within SM? Now, the castle is more vulnerable when it’s a 2000+ supply depository that can treb any adjacent tower.

There are a number of ways to approach the issue, but I definitely feel Nike’s design of linking defenses to a key objective (similar to EotM defenses) is a good start for mixing up the battles inside Stonemist (heck, perhaps inside any keep).

What if, instead of NPC defenders, you couldn’t put siege down in Stonemist, but there were specific defensive siege pieces in critical areas that the defending team could build? Would that serve the same purpose?

A short recap of the first few pages of discussion.

There have been a number of interesting proposals of ways to take some of the things from EotM into the other maps. Scaling creatures have some supporters, verticality without it being excessive is a something that has also seen support. There is definite push and pull between people that feel like any changes from EotM would be counterproductive and people who think there are some good parts.

Probably the most contentious issue has been the talk of getting rid of world’s and replacing the system with just the three colors. I think there is some merit to the idea, although I believe the worlds have a lot of value. I’d be curious to know if the folks who argue against and world pride feel that way because of being on underperforming worlds or not. I also wonder if there isn’t some work that could be done to restore that world pride without completely overhauling the WvW system. Someone mentioned alliances, which I think would work fairly well. If the less populous worlds were grouped together, does that seem like something that could reinvigorate them?

From my perspective, the discussion around changes to the matchup length are interesting. I originally proposed 8 hour matches, but someone else suggested a version that I think would be really interesting which is basically that the weekend is one matchup and the weekdays are another. I’d be curious to hear what people think about that.

I also wanted to continue discussion about changes to Stonemist that might make it a more engaging place to fight over. I think a move to multiple capture points could make it a more difficult place to capture and add some variety to the way the fight plays out.

Interesting, I hadn’t considered using the 3 of 5 system there. Do you think that would really force groups to fight it out or would people just turtle up to prevent capture?

I wanted to pivot to something that Luna mentioned early in the thread, the idea of a more complex fight for Stonemist.

Would it make Stonemist feel too difficult to capture if the assaulting team had to capture and hold 3 capture points? Here are some of the problems I see with it.

1) It would encourage everyone defending to just blob up on one point and hold out as a group.
2) It could be so difficult to actually accomplish that it becomes nearly impossible to flip Stonemist.

However, I think it would be an improvement to the current rush the middle of the room scenario.

Do any of you think this version of Stonemist would be an improvement or does it not really make any positive changes in your mind?

I’d say there is a pretty strong sentiment against the idea of collapsing all of WvW into 3 colors, rather than the current world set up. Which I agree with. I think world pride and association is an important part of the way that WvW works currently.

Here’s a possible version of shorter matchups that wouldn’t necessarily sacrifice the long term fight of a WvW matchup currently and wouldn’t involve merging everyone into one of three teams.

Matches last 8 hours, there are 21 matches in a week with the same 3 worlds, the winner of the week is the world that wins the most matches over the course of that time.

This solves some of the problems we see currently, namely the issues that can arise as matches get out of hand towards the end of the week. However, it would still give worlds with better coverage a leg up on their opponents. It also loses the feeling that you’ve had a long term battle for victory.

I’m curious what you all think of that? Does it retain the feeling of victory in WvW right now and solve problems or does it just introduce more issues without solving any core concerns?

And a quick reminder of the rules:

CDI Rules:

1: This initiative is all about discussion.
2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.
3: Anger and emotion will have less impact than intelligent discussion.
4: Together we will share and evolve design philosophies which will impact how we develop the game moving forward.
5: Aggression and disrespect to a fellow community member or developer will not be tolerated, and in the extreme could lead to the shutting down of the initiative.
6: The teams primary focus is work toward the development of GW2 and therefore posting of discussion and commentary may not be as frequent as you like. Please do understand that the initiative is taken very seriously by us all and that we will be reading the discussions and joining in as often as it is possible to do so.

Please note this is not a competition, either between yourselves or the developers in regard to one up man ship. The point of this Initiative is to work together to make the game better.

Note: We will disclose the ideas we do or don’t like as a group but we will not discuss schedules or timing around implementation. If there is still concern surrounding how seriously we take community collaboration then please do take the time to think about how much impact the community has had on the working of this game over the year.

Topic Goal:

The Edge of the Mists features numerous changes to the standard WvW mechanics.The most notable changes are: Scoring on capture of objectives, scaling creatures, new and more difficult NPCs, unique bosses at each objective, increased emphasis on verticality, more chokepoints, a much shorter match time, and destructible terrain. Of the changes included, which would you like to see implemented in the standard WvW maps?

Please feel free to mention anything not included in the above list, it is simply intended as a guide. The goal is to take some of the things that worked best in Edge of the Mists and discuss how they could be done in the other maps and what the positives and negatives would be of those changes.

Please see the below suggestion for formatting your proposals.

Suggested Proposal Format
Proposal Overview
<A short description of the proposal that is being put forward>

Goal of Proposal
<What problem are you trying to solve with your proposal>

Proposal Functionality
<How does your proposal work in regard in relation to the current design of GW2>

Associated Risks
<What risks or problems can you foresee with this proposal which you would like to have assistance on from other members of the CDI>

Please try to be as concise as feasible with your proposal. There is however no suggested word count for proposal posts.

Devon Carver

Black Scoutsman.5830:

Allie Murdock.8152:

The queue is not broken. It shows approximate positions, and at times like the reset it won’t be as accurate as the number of people logging in simultaneously can cause it to update incorrectly. Once you move through the queue, the positions tend to be corrected.

Thanks for the report!

If its updating incorrectly…….wouldnt we call that broken?

The queue itself is not broken, the display is an approximation. The queue is completely FIFO and while the display can be misleading on occasion, the underlying system is functioning exactly as you would expect.

The removal is to address the manner in which it is communicated in game. There will be a requirement to reach a rank in WvW prior to purchasing the Gift when we are able to provide adequate messaging to let players know why they can’t purchase it and what they need to do in order to be able to purchase it.

We just resolved an issue that arose with erroneous queues being created for maps that were not full. This popped up as part of the roll out of tomorrow’s build and unfortunately affected numerous maps for a period earlier this evening. The issue has been resolved and WvW should be back to normal.

Thanks for your patience.

Devon Carver

Past rank 6, the chests are the same. The earlier chest have slightly less loot because they are easy to acquire.

Summary of the past few pages:

General consensus is that the smaller bits that have been suggested would be enough to make the commander system much better for now and that it doesn’t require a complete tear down.

Outside of that there is a lot of discussion about the idea of a fully fleshed out squad system.

So, let’s say we’ve handled the commander side of it for now and just focus on a squad system. If we added a system for squad management, what are the top 3 things you would want it to do? Examples: Show squad position, allow for orders to be sent to individual players, provide health status of all squad members, etc.

This is a much larger project, but getting a sense of what people would want it to do can help provide bounds for the work.

gidorah.4960:

probably because i prefer function over form and action over talk i really don’t care about how functional improvements are presented and if it is done in small batches or big. It also sounds like devon isn’t willing to drop his pet projects and direct his resources to fixing wvw’s big problems which is something the wvw community was ok with under habib.

Chris has called you out on things before, and now I’m going to do it. This is not acceptable for these threads. You are not engaging with the discussion, you are not proposing solutions, you are instead using this as an opportunity to berate me, my team, and the studio for the direction we are taking the game. You are making serious extrapolations about things with little to no actual information. The decisions we make in terms of what projects to work on and when they get released are made with the interests of the game as a whole and the studio as a whole. No one person is working on “pet projects” as you term it, we are working on the game.

Please be respectful to all of us and contribute to this discussion, if you are going to continue to post in this thread.

Teraphas.6210:

I am also sure you would agree that most of the wish list expanded functions for commanders that go beyond simple functionality mostly arrived after you asked if we would care for a complete overhaul. The nature of these also vary wildly because of it. It does seem most of us agree on core functions. Perhaps before this thread closes you could include a quick request for us to review the ideas in this thread so far and in as brief a post as possible list what we consider to be needed for a core system, what would be nice and which ideas we would not want to see?

Keep up the great work Devon. Thank you and Izzy both for being so vocal and patient in this subject

My intent is not to quash discussion, simply to set expectations according to what this initiative actually entails. The point being that there is no guarantee that any of the things we talk about in here will make it into the game. The guarantee is that we will discuss the design of them as a community to better inform our decisions. That means, in many occasions, we will end up doing almost exactly what gets discussed. But it also means other things, good ideas or not, will not be implemented for a variety of reasons. To reiterate, I don’t want to stop discussion of any of these ideas, but I do want to make sure it is clear that nothing from these threads is a mandate for the future design of the game.

My intent with breaking the concepts into small scale and wholesale change buckets is simply to get the feeling about how broken the system is and what everyone thinks it should do. Hopefully that clarifies somewhat what I’m trying to do.

Chidori.9483:

I fully expect major projects to spring from this initiative, in fact, I thought it was the point.

The point of this initiative is not to create major projects but to discuss the basic principles behind the design of our game with you all. That can mean explaining why we didn’t do something one way or explaining why we did do it a certain way. It also means that through that discussion we get a better sense of the best versions of many of the things we intend to work on at some point or ideas for changes that can be made to existing parts of the game. It is not a forum for making demands of what we absolutely must do, nor should the expectation be that whatever we are talking about right now is going to show up next month. If you are expecting to see any of the things we have discussed happening quickly, you should adjust that expectation. Some of it could, but the simple fact that we are discussing it here is not a promise to that effect.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Here is my question:

What is wrong with the Raid Leader system in WoW that precludes GW2 from adopting it? That system is at least 5 years old (I think it’s closer to 10) and worked extremely well.

The Raid Leader system in WoW provided:
– raid leaders (aka commanders)
– raid assistants (aka lieutenants)
– multiple target markers for assigning priority/actions
– on-screen message overlays for providing clear, concise directions

If you had this system in GW2, you would eliminate many of the problems in WvW and PVE and PVP to boot!

I’ll respond to this to get the general idea out to everyone. Implementing a system that is in other games, older games or not, that is not in our game at all is a very time consuming project. It is not as simple as just copying and pasting some HTML code. Not only do we have to build it ourselves, but it has to fit with the design of our game both visually and from a systems standpoint. So, building any system of this sort, even one that was a direct copy of one in another game or product, would still be a significant project for us. Which isn’t a reason not to do it, but is a factor in determining when we would want to do those things.

Johje Holan.4607:

Why does making simple changes now preclude making larger changes down the road?

It does not, but it’s important to understand what down the road might mean. It could be a few months or it could be much longer. Any changes would be prioritized in terms of what the entire company is working on. If we don’t think those changes are the best use of resources, it could be a long time. And part of determining that is figuring out how well the system works as it stands. We have finite resources in terms of people and we put them to work on whatever most benefits the game as a whole. That is why I want a gauge of how important it is to you.

A summary of the last few pages:

1) It seems to be consensus that a system allowing commander unlocks for WXP wouldn’t be a good move.

2) A lot of people are interested in a sub-commander or lieutenant system of some sort. One that would allow for greater coordination and delegation.

3) There seems to be a general divide between people proposing a system far more complex than the current commander system and people who just want the system to have more clarity.

People have also been answering Izzy’s questions with a pretty wide variety of experiences.

One thing that is coming up with some frequency is the idea of separating PvE commanders from WvW ones. It’s our goal to not have diverging systems like that. We’d rather build one system that can work for both areas of the game for the sake of clarity. So, that’s another constraint to consider, that we’d be making changes in the best interests of both and not changes that separate them out into unique systems.

I have a couple of other things I’d like to mention. I don’t think we’d want to focus the commander on the guild system. It could be that I’m wrong about that, but it feels restricting to say you can’t be a commander, or a full-fledged one, unless you are in a guild of a certain size. How would people feel if, instead, there were some additional unlocks you could get as a guild commander that only displayed to people in your guild? Maybe if you are in guild only mode on your tag you have some additional tools?

Perhaps the largest question I still have, how would everyone feel if the only changes to commander were the smaller scale ones? The other stuff is super interesting and has a lot of promise, but is also a major task and one I can’t make any guarantees about. I suppose the crux of the question is how priority is the rest of the stuff, if the smaller bits are taken care of? Would the commander system be functional enough with more markers, guild only tags, less suppression, better supplyinfo, and possibly additional marker shapes?

Summary of Day 1 of discussion:

1) There are a lot of people that would like to see more colors and/or more shapes for the commander icons.

2) People are arguing for commanders to be able to hide their tags from everyone and only have them be visible to select groups.

3) Improved supplyinfo command.

4) No chat suppression.

5) Account bound.

6) A change to the way the icon is acquired.

That doesn’t hit everything, but it hits some of the most commonly requested stuff. In addition there has been a discussion about if it is more important to redo the whole system or provide some small quality of life improvements first.

I wanted to provide some insight into what might be required for some of the types of changes that are being requested, so everyone has a clearer understanding when thinking about them.

Any change that requires significant UI, especially any new UI functionality, is a long term change. Not only does it take time to design the UI and settle on it’s appearance, it takes time to build the functionality. That is why any full on rework of the squad system will be a large project. It is important to us that when we introduce new UI elements we have fully fleshed out their place in the rest of the game UI.

With that out of the way, I have some more questions.
1) What is an acceptable amount of chat suppression for a commander? It’s important to realize that if the system remains as it currently does, with 100g for a tag, no chat suppression would mean that people can spend 100g to spam you with whatever they feel like. That’s not an acceptable solution. I think there are other things we could do, like provide a commander only channel that has no suppression but that people have to opt in to.

2) How would it feel to have a system that gradually unlocked more commander abilities and icons, but that required dedication to WvW? Let’s say we added a commander line to the ability panel and you unlocked it with WvW ability points. What is the right starting price for that? 100 points? more? If that happens, does it make sense for the system to remain character based? Would requiring commanders to spend their WXP in this way limit them to the point that they didn’t want to do it? What if you still acquired the current tag by spending 100g, but you upgraded to new shapes via the WXP system?

Okay, so before we get too far into this discussion, here is something else to think about:
Would you rather see us make some number of small improvements in the short term and larger changes long term or just tear the whole thing down and start from scratch?

To be a bit more specific, we could probably do something like multicolor markers without too much work, although it is not a given, but that would likely be the extent of things for a long period of time.

Nike.2631:

Could you describe what the Dev’s feel the Commander System does well now?

(That should reduce the amount of barking up the wrong tree )

I can, and it will be brief.

The commander system provides recognizable guidance in WvW and in PvE for players to follow on the map.

It has other functions that are useful but are opaque to most players of GW2.

I’d say there is significant room for improvements of functionality as well as the possibility that a completely overhauled system would better serve the needs of the WvW community and the PvE community.

Greetings all!

For the second round of the Collaborative Development Initiative, let’s discuss the functionality of the commander system in World vs. World. We’d like to know more about what the system should be doing and how we could do those things.

Rules
1: This initiative is all about discussion.
2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.
3: Anger and emotion will have less impact than intelligent discussion.
4: Together we will share and evolve design philosophies which will impact how we develop the game moving forward.
5: Aggression and disrespect to a fellow community member or developer will not be tolerated, and in the extreme could lead to the shutting down of the initiative.
6: The teams primary focus is work toward the development of GW2 and therefore posting of discussion and commentary may not be as frequent as you like. Please do understand that the initiative is taken very seriously by us all and that we will be reading the discussions and joining in as often as it is possible to do so.

In addition to the general rules above, a couple of notes about this particular topic:
1: Try to keep in mind the scarcity of resources available to work on any given thing. It’s important to not be bounded by that, but also to keep in mind that a complete overhaul of the system is much more complicated than smaller fixes.
2: Please provide specific examples of how you currently use the system, if you have them. And how you would like it to better serve your needs.
3: As with anything WvW related, remember that one of the foremost concerns we have is making sure that any system can’t be abused to create a negative play experience.