Guild Wars 2

That diagram would be really interesting if it didn’t ignore dozens of DO NOT TOUCH towers that don’t fall anywhere near that line.

tichai.4351:

Why would you think this is a good idea?

I spelled that out in the post before it: because there’s in game-precedent of opening up abilities with skill points. In fact sPvP is incorporating it, and I’d have said that’s a format that a LOT more about jump in and play than WvW is…

A new player coming into the game ends up on your server and turns out to be the best commander since Alexander the Great and it’s like “Hey, awsome gameplay and tactics but as you are new you can’t have commander functionality for at least another 3 months, awfully sorry man, but you HAVE to get all those skill points first”

First off, even Bobby Fischer had to learn chess before he could be the Master. There isn’t a human on Earth so talented that a little experience won’t improve their performance. Second, maybe the number is high, or maybe we have different experiences with amassing skill points. If skill points are my goal I don’t see 200 taking more than a couple weeks. I think ‘Alex’ can stand a couple weeks learning his way around before taking up the reins of leadership. And I also think a modest hurdle saves us from a growing problem of tag-spam.

SIGNET OF THE WARLORD
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Blue map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 5% wxp bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards gates, walls, & lords (radius 2000; 20 second duration; 90 second cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE RAIDER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Red map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). AoE 10% out of combat speed bonus (radius 2000; 30 second duration; pulses every 15 seconds; max 20 targets; does not stack).
Active. AoE 10% damage bonus towards dolyaks, guards, & mercenaries (radius 2000; 15 second duration; 1 minute cooldown; max 20 targets; does not stack).

SIGNET OF THE WARDEN
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Yellow map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces your supply and coin cost to purchase camp, tower, keep, and castle upgrades by 10%.
Active. PBAoE Rez up to 10 NPCs (120 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 10 targets).

SIGNET OF THE SIEGEMASTER
All-class utility skill. 200 skill points to unlock.

Passive. Enables Dark Grey map tag (shape set in Hero sub panel). Reduces supply cost of incomplete siege build sites by 20% (radius 1500; max 10 targets; does not stack).
Active. Heals fixed siege sites for 50% of their base health, golems for 10%. Also refreshes all unoccupied siege decay timers. (90 second cooldown; radius 1500; max 15 targets; does not stack)

If you have multiple Commander Signets slotted the color displayed is based on the Signet in the lowest numbered slot (i.e. 7 trumps 8 & 9, 8 trumps 9).

DevonCarver.5370:

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.

One of the basic mechanics we’ve seen spreading through the game lately is purchasing ‘exotic’ skills with large numbers of skill points.

I wonder if that could be applied to the core Commander functionality: you buy it with 200 skill points (or there abouts). That’s a purchase on par with a Bloodstone Shard. That gives you a cost that can be met with both WvW and PvE activity, and on the PvE-side doesn’t segregate it behind a ‘Big Guild’ barrier. I’d even suggest that with the various trains running out ther in both WvW and PvE, you might benefit more from having a deep ‘skill point sink’ than you do from the Commander books serving as gold sinks.

It might even be funnier if “Commander” was a utility skill you could slot on your bar. Maybe a class-universal Signet (or we could throw Engineers a bone and have it be a class-universal kit… ). Putting it on the bar enables your map tag, clicking it lays down some extremely visible signpost (like casting a banner, only more visible). As with all tradeoffs, losing a utility slot from your build means you need to get a proportionate benefit back. But at least the scale of Utility-benefits is fairly well understood.

I’m still thinking that if the squad UI is currently so poor and the effort to build one that mimics other established models is so demanding, then maybe focusing on the squad functionality is less promising that looking at improving on the reality we have: that Commanders mostly guide un-linked groups of individuals.

mrauls.6519:

Yeah, because if you sneeze at them they’ll fall apart

Really? Lets put a ‘Zerker and a Celestial load-out side by side in a perma-field of Toxin and see who sneezes last? I’m thinking celestial… ’Cause the Zerker will be on the floor dead.

Zerker is hands down best for pure DPS, power-based weapons. Its awesome in all the spaz-based combat this game shipped with. Which is why we’re going to see sources of Vigor nerfed into the ground and things like Toxin more and more often. Because they made survivability a one-dimensional exercise in dodge-spam and now they know it.

Celestial ends up being the best for almost every Support build because no Support build is allowed to not do DPS too. Similar situation with bunkers. You can’t win by just being tough, so you end up having to get survivability stats AND DPS stats to be fully competitive. And once you’re wearing celestial, you can start using some of the hybrid direct damage/condition damage weapons and get pretty decent results.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Venom share thief

Doggie.3184:

Heh, that’s actually true. It’s literally the only Thief build that will ever be buffed and never nerfed. Unfortunately no matter how many times they buff it it’ll still be crap,

Super unicorn Thief has be getting steady buffs with every balance patch for around half a year now. Dec 10 looks to include even more buffs for the indestructible acrobatics thug-tanks of Tyria .

And venoms is looking to become one of the stronger group-support options for Thieves.

Decision time.

Make one.

Here I was thinking Warrior was getting nerfed for very good reasons.

I’m so glad this thread set me straight.

((snort))

Thank you. That was amazingly helpful .

JonPeters.5630:

The reason we went with heal skills first is that we actually believe this is the highest impact area for build diversity.

Playing to one of the strongest Ranger builds with even more animals for the ‘petting zoo’ is pretty much a clean miss for adding to diversity . Just sayin’.

OTOH healing venom-share along with some of the other Dec 10 changes could actually push a corner-case build into the spotlight.

Its a good effort overall. Looking forward to seeing more skills that expand on some of the exiting themes. Especially by adding or reassigning some skill tags to the exiting pool of elite skills.

P.S. Make the elite skill Entangle a ‘trap’ instead of a ‘wilderness’ skill and suddenly you’re on to something.

pho.9412:

doesn’t our new healing skill seem rather weak compare to other class’ heals?

Depends a lot on numbers we can’t see yet.

The cooldown on the water spirit’s active ability is going to make or break it I think.

There’s also a real questions of does the active trigger Rune set bonuses based on “use a healing skill” or does it only count when you initially summon the spirit?

As a ‘spirit’ skill we’re also looking at interactions with~

Nature Magic IV: Vigorous Spirits — Spirits have increased health and a greater chance to trigger their benefits.
Nature Magic VII: Spirits Unbound — Spirits can move and follow you. (yes, I know this one is being shuffled down a tier)
Nature Magic XI: Nature’s Vengeance — Activated skills of spirits are larger and trigger when the spirit is killed.

That’s not a lot of potential for variety, but its clear how to maximize it by loading up a single trait line to 30. And with an Elite spirit skill already in play you’ll be able to set up a full right hand bar of 5 spirit skills…

insanemaniac.2456:

Quick fixes then an extended break would be great imo.

I’m not completely adverse to that strategy either. Most of the critical improvements are easy to extract from this thread.

A quick, targeted, potent upgrade is a great play for retention.

A larger, sweeping, playing field-defining expansion is a great play for attracting new players.

The only way we should be privy to ANet’s needs in those categories is by observing what they do, not by being told in advance what they want to do. On the PvE side there is a lot of demand for a new expansion over rapid upgrades. If anything, I find it interesting that the balance of desires within the WvW boards is so inverted.

The new Warrior heal works with~

Defense III: Sure-Footed – Increases stance durations.
Discipline V: Vigorous Focus – Gain vigor when using a Stance.

That puts both supporting traits very low in their respective lines. You can max out the effectiveness of the new heal and still have a ton of points left over to fill out your concept/spec.

Ok I Did It.2854:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Obsidian_armor
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Elite_Kurzick_armor

Not all but some of these skins for sure would look awesome in GW2, Assassin Elite Kurzick was good looking in GW

Um… YES PLEASE!

I like a few of the non-elite Kurzick sets better than their elite counterparts but simplicity and elegance are hard when moar spikes or moar flamez are constantly making off with the armor artists…

gidorah.4960:

while you are probably right i think people want more resources put into commander redesign than devon’s pet project wxp for new golem mastery or whatever he is making that players didnt ask for. I think everyone assumes the wxp was something to tide us over till they did the big work on the bigger problems but all we get is more wxp and no progress on the big problems. well this is one of the big problems and it deserves more resources than it is getting.

Ok, while designing in a vacuum is good exercise, lets step back and look at the reality of how development assets get assigned.

We can have a bundle of quick fixes. Lets pretend those can be built, tested, and brought to live in February. Outside of WvW, where the game does battle as just one of myriad entertainment possibilities, what do we get? We get 1 paragraph in the cavalcade of bi-weekly release descriptions. A screenshot of a map with a rainbow of icons, woo-hoo. Maybe we get a live stream that mentions it in passing. In game we get happier players, but also some actual negative response because its a tiny upgrade that “those idiots should have put in at launch, duh!”

Or in May we see ‘Commander 2.0’ hit. Its The Central Headline for that bi-weekly release. There’s a full blog that points to how the CDI process lead the Developers to make “major changes based on player input”. There’s news articles scattering out into the web how GW2 has ‘done it again!’ setting the standard for other games to live up to. Those changes include a plethora of QoL improvements (the entire February package has been folded into it) and several larger advances in commander abilities and responsibilities. One bundle more meaningful than two smaller patches.

Where the small changes are concerned, the same work gets done either way, but the presentation of that work serves the welfare of the game vastly better. We won’t die from enduring an extra couple of months of what we have now (as long as communication from the Devs is good…), but throwing out changes in dribs and drabs is squandering their impact. Especially with new games so close on the horizon. I’d rather see the game on war-footing, forcing the other studios to race to keep up, than feeding the competition guidance one easily absorbed nugget at a time…

morrolan.9608:

I think this mischaracterises some of the aggravation of the posters in the past 24 hours or so on this thread, which is due to Devon stating that they only want to consider quick solutions and implying that issues which would take more work to implement will not be considered.

Now see, I didn’t get that at all. I saw more of a ‘we can do quick fixes and then take an extended break from the topic or we can do major overhaul in the time it takes to do a major overhaul (which can include many of the smaller features).’

Which was answered a bunch of times with “we want both.”

‘That ’OR’ statement in there wasn’t optional. Pick One.’

“We still want both.”

((Tears))

If he said they will work on implementing some quick wins immediately and they will continue looking at the more resource intensive issues on a longer term basis I wouldn’t have a problem and I doubt most would.

And there’s “we want both” again .

Cactus.2710:

Ahh .. you mean the one that was locked over a week ago. Gotcha …

Actually, this one:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/CDI-Process-Evolution/first

I’d say frustrations and concerns about the past performance of CDI threads are extremely topical there.

Continuity of Command Mode (C2C)

Commanders may set themselves to C2C mode, indicating they are ready to take up the burden of command if another leader they are following falls.

When a Commander with an active map-wide tag dies, there is a check to find the closest allied player with their tag in C2C mode (to a maximum of 2000 range). That player’s command tag is set to active.

- – -

Basically I was just thinking about tools for commanders to manage standard zergs. Not formal squads but the looser arrangement of un-grouped players we see so often now. C2C would allow multiple commanders working in concert to turn off some of the spare tags, yet still maintain a visible map cue to focus the group if the active Commander falls.

I’m just wondering if in our focus on improved squad functionality we’re failing to look at what could be done to improve the non-grouped behavior of the game. Or is the inherent contempt for casual blobbing too ingrained ?

Cactus.2710:

Certainly the CDI on population imbalance was totally pointless, for pretty much the same reasons. Absolutely nothing … not even a summary of key items to explore … has come of it.

I can think of two (good) things that came of it.

1. It was a perhaps necessary negative example. That was ‘how not to run a railroad’, and they know it. Keep in mind we’re back to having CDIs in WvW and PvP while the PvE field lies fallow this cycle.

2. There was enough recognition that the thread failed to deliver that the topic is getting another shot under the improved Dev participation model. We’ll be back better prepared and so will they.

((sharpens wits and knives…))

I’d point out the discussion in the Living Story CDI didn’t have relentless focus on “How soon will we see this?” from the poster-side. Without asking “so, when?” every few minutes, I think we can trust a few persistent refrains have absolutely worked their way into the Devs’ awareness. Consider:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I hope you can appreciate this as i appreciate your dialogue and understand that when it looks like a point has hit home, it probably has.

Chris

I’m actually glad to hear a variety of “What the CDI is for” statement from posters. I don’t agree with several of them (‘ploy to placate us’ high on that list…), but I’m glad to see people taking on a broader vision. To me, what CDIs are for is to discuss areas with them and my fellow posters until we’re ready to put ideas in front of them that are so attractive they want to pursue them ASAP. Its not an exercise in wringing a timetable out of them . That was in the ground rules of the first round of threads and while I didn’t read as closely this time I’m pretty sure its still there in the first post of this thread too.

If anything we’re just losing valuable Dev reading/response time to repeatedly reiterating that timetables cannot be revealed. I dunno: maybe the division of ideas into piles based on potential delivery dates makes it impossible to not scratch at the “ya, but when?” aspect? It seems like a sensible bit of organization, but maybe it’s sidetracking us.

I would never hunt Charr – you make entirely too good of booze to risk accidentally putting arrows in a brewer!

Mmm. Beer.

Makes me think we should educate the little explorer about frothy adult beverages!

“That” would be the topic for the next WvW CDI. And this time I’m coming armed for that chat…

Infamous Darkness.3284:

watch yourself human we charr still have the border around ebonhawk mined, I’d suggest you keep your temper under control or you may find that we charr are not interested in sparing anyone breaking the rules set forth by the truce we signed at warrior’s crown.

Uh, Norn. If I were a human living in Hoelbrak I’d already have furs to protect myself and visitors from the brisk mountain air .

(like I needed another excuse to go hunting!)

Please learn diplomacy and cunning are components of warfare.

DevonCarver.5370:

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.

Are you just looking for ideas that can be ratified by some sort of 51% majority? Personally I find paint-by-consensus boring…

Or maybe I’m mis-reading that phrase and you meant “what each of you thinks it should do.”

Makes me wish we had more robust tools for surveys so we could move on to the synthesis and creativity rather than spend so much CDI time on reporting.

Wild.3847:

I wonder how it will interact with

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Altruism

could be interesting if the cooldown is short

That IS an interesting question…

((ponder))

Delvoire.8930:

What is PVE Rubric?

Go into the heart of the Mists (crossed swords icon t the top of your screen), find the PvP locker (you may need to do a brief tutorial first) then look at the armor skins. There is one complete set + the full guild armor set in there for each weight class that don’t have PvE equivalents.

I think Krait needs to see another side of the humans. The is an Asuran gate in the SE part of Divinities Reach. Poke your head through it and you’ll see some very different humans. They have a kind of art there called ‘posters’ that may show you what other ‘feelings’ they have…

And while you’re at it I’ll try to hunt up a big enough pile of furs that you can come visit Hoelbrak and not turn blue .

Hokie.1045:

I think you have it wrong. Should be more along the lines of: Commander System passes from ‘horrid’ to ‘acceptable’. I believe it’s understood that this system will always be able to improve and some sort of attention will always be placed on it. I believe this then goes back to long term vs short term changes. From my interpretations of your posts, your saying you’d like a big change to come much further into the future. I don’t agree with you in this sense and feel quick changes which can be released faster are better, because, believe it or not, WvW is still being played everyday.

To me WvW works and is playable and fun right now. Naturally it can be better, but the broader context is I’d like to see Commander System changes hit one out of the park so hard that when people inevitably wander off to try out the next generation of MMOs, I want them thinking “Why am I messing with this trash when I could be in Guild Wars 2 right now doing some WvW?” Guild Wars 2 has set some standards for the industry as a whole. I notice things cribbed from it making LotRO’s PvE experience better all the time. I don’t see WvW having had that level of impact, yet.

Shapes and colors for tags is a great thing – though I think people have seriously overlooked the interface demands for managing that expanded functionality. Its gonna probably have to be a huge extension to the finishers sub-page about doubling its current size with clicky-choices. You could put it on its own sub-page but they’re already getting pretty saturated with icons along the left side of the hero panel…

I love evolutionary refinement of systems. Sincerely. But is shapes and colors the ‘killer app’ that’s going to seize the Stomemist Castle-like center of attention of WvW players and make them think that GW2’s endgame is a over a year better instead of over a year old as the new competitors hit?

I really wish we were seeing some more ‘dream big’ suggestions.

Stuff the Devs haven’t thought of yet. Stuff nobody has thought of yet.

WvW’s killer app .

Josh Davis.6015:

Citizens,

We have invited 1000 additional guilds to the public testing of Edge of the Mists. Please have your guild leaders check their email inboxes! If your guild didn’t make it in this round, don’t lose hope! We’ll be adding more guilds in the coming weeks.

For those of you already invited, we’ll be running two tests today:

9AM-11AM PST
5PM-9PM PST

Thanks again everyone! We look forward to seeing you in Edge of the Mists.

So… Exactly what mechanic exists in the Edge of the Mists that you’re ignoring solo, unaffiliated WvW players in your testing?

I mean, if its not built with players like me in mind, I’d be happy to know in advance to never go there.

DevonCarver.5370:

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.

Heehee. The onus falls to us the posters to come up with something so awesome that the Devs feel they MUST act on it . As happy as I am with some of the ideas put forward, I don’t think we’ve seen that magic, transformative concept yet.

I suspect some of the ideas about new colors and shapes have resonated with the Devs. Its one of those simple but also powerful ideas. But I think the degree to which players view the existence of PvE and WvW tags as separate things may have been a bit of a shock to the Devs.

I’m wondering if we can improve upon the current arrangement by leaving the 100g commander books in place, but also selling the same basic commander books for X Badges of Honor and Y Guild Commendations (with X being around 1,000 and Y around 100 just eyeballing it). Keep the unified mechanical bundle, but make it more accessible to people who are already doing the types of content it’s most used for.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Indeed! 4 million + sales must have generated a lot of money. Where did it go?

Consider how much has to be paid back to the people who footed the bill as 300+ employees worked for ~5 years without generating a single cent of revenue.

All MMOs start out in a tremendously deep hole financially. Only some of them ever dig their way out.

Mixed Vigil and Whispers on that thief, I think. Lookin’ good!

I was already mulling over a Venoms Thief (and stupid Rune of the Sunless tricks) – now I kinda have to do it .

Webba.3071:

It seems that CDI does not have a home, so to speak, but is spread out across the various forums the different threads are related to. This makes sense, but for someone who doesn’t visit the forums everyday its quite difficult and time consuming to find where the various threads are.

I generally find them/stay current by browsing through the Dev tracker .

I would suggest a stickied post in the suggestions forum listing all the CDI threads, current and completed, in chronological order and with a short paragraph describing the purpose and contents of each.

This would allow participants very convenient access to any topic they might want to contribute too or read up on without requiring you to move any existing threads or reorganize anything else on the forums. It might also help people to grasp the big picture of CDI, which might help them appreciate what you are trying to achieve with it, something that is hard to see if you only see one or two threads every now and then.

This is actually pretty elegant.

Solstice.1097:

A small and easy change now is infinitely more welcome than waiting months or longer for a full overhaul, and there is no reason the two need be mutually exclusive.

Then listen more closely: There IS a reason.

If they make small changes, then the Commander System passes from ‘ok’ to ‘mostly good’ and IT WILL NOT GET ATTENTION AGAIN until all other ‘ok-or-worse’ matters have been addressed.

Finite resources. Problem triage.

Singular window of opportunity.

DevonCarver.5370:

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

((Sigh))

And I’d like to still have Battle Presence (a trait that ONLY heals others) on my Guardian without it cutting into my DPS trait assignments… But that’s not a good design choice for the game.

Diversity comes from equitable trade-offs.

Buying powers/functionality for gold has no meaningful trade-off.

Hell, spending wxp is about the least demanding set of choices in the game since the number you can get isn’t capped.

I dunno. Maybe it should stay a shallow little system off in a corner fueled by gold since we wouldn’t want to upset anyone by them having to make actual choices between Commander benefits and the Flame Ram skill…

The gating material for me is dragonite. I just don’t play enough anymore to be in on all the temple flips.

Elana.2584:

Mixing and matching armor pieces is so much fun.
My ladies: Ranger, Mesmer, and Thief
I love playing on my thief, but love hopping on my ranger/mesmer to frolic around in pretty armor. I’ll probably change my thief’s set soon. Also thinking of making a heavy armor class next, to continue playing dress-up. :p

Nice hue matching on the light armor vs. the holo-shatterer wings.

What skin tone did you use on that Sylvari?

I have nine 80s in full exotic. Most of them have 4-6 ascended trinkets. Two have 1 ascended weapon each.

I basically expect to put an ascended coat on maybe two of them, but trying to fully gear even one of them is beyond my drive.

View the armor from the PvP locker – you can preview dyes from the Trading Post with the same panel and test any piece with any dye even if you don’t own the piece or the dye.

No one could possibly have the breadth of vision and range of experience to make meaningful nominations for a “best in game” title.

If you want to break this up into some sort of best Commander per server, you might be able to get some meaningful nominations…

FA may have had some blow-outs, but I spent plenty of time getting mauled as an Aspenwood individual. There were some excellent fast response teams out there protecting the non-FA camps from a little low profile commerce warfare .

Alcyone.8695:

I don’t think a commander should be able to buff groups or find survivability increased just by spending some points…

Out of curiosity, why? People are reporting that they get specifically targeted for being the commander – that says “being a commander might merit some added survivability while they are clearly on-the-job.” People report they have trouble getting people to mass up – that says “make it more rewarding for doing so.”

We have TONS of ways of improving our damage or survivability with wxp… but very few ways of providing Support or Control. Its an imbalance that shouldn’t be enshrined as ‘the way things have always been’. Its something that should be fixed.

The next wave, I’m hoping…

I run Axe/Focus with

30 (II, VIII, XII) Focus cooldown, Axe cooldown + damage, Bonus damage against low health
0
10 (IV) wells give AoE protection
30 (II, VIII, XII) better syphon, Wells cooldown, Wells syphon
0

I have 2 Givers weapons with Superior Sigil’s of Peril.
My base condition duration bonus is +70%, and its +90% for vulnerability.

Axe #1 becomes quite distinctive then .

Porqington.3189:

Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet is cross map commander chat/visibility. Being able to see which (if any) commanders are on any given map and having the ability to communicate with them would be amazing.

Love this idea for a Commanders Only channel. I’d also add a function where it automatically inserts a [tag] at the beginning of each message posted that indicates which map the speaker is on. Being able to tell at a glace could cut down on a LOT of “Wait, where are you?” chatter.

Tags could be as simple as:
[EB] Eternal Battleground
[BBL] Blue Borderland
[GBL] Green Borderland
[RBL] Red Borderland

Zaxares.5419

I do wonder what that means for players who picked the “ragged” ears for their Asura though. XD

‘Chicks dig scars’ is a universal constant .

Gaining levels and completing accomplishments triggers all kinds of dialogue blurbs that are suggestive of Asuran values.

Kikkah.2306:

Prior to my old post from a few hours ago i took some time to work everything out players asked here and some thing I threw in for myself.

Ok, first off I want to say those mock ups look great! .

• Team Warning (Raid Warning)
  I know this is a copy from other MMO’s but its same like the scarlet invasion give commander a change to use this in order to get people there attention. This can be seen in the middle of the image. Take in consideration that this can be abused so a good system has to be build for this.

Allowing commanders to type into “billboard text” is a GREAT idea either for squad members, or in some sort of localized area about the same size as a /say. I’d probably put it in a 45 second cooldown to avoid malicious or accidental spamming (and to give a little tension to the decision when to blow your big in-your-face command opportunity…).

abiyde.5064:

Sorry if it has already been mentioned, but I think hiding the commander buff from enemies is a bad idea.

I know it disproportionately hurts commanders of small groups, but finding the commander of a zerg ball and assassinating the commander is not easy and seems like a legitimate tactic for beating bigger zergs.

WvW tactics and skill would suffer if enemies lost the ability to see commander tags.

Skillful assassination becomes more important as Commanders gain effectiveness (even with just a couple new colors and tag symbols).

Having that kind of counter-play will be even more import than it is now.