Soulbound or Account bound commander tag? Players do not follow character, they follow a player. Therefore I really like to see a commander tag to become account bound.
people don’t always know a commanders alt’s
If I add them to my friends list, it doesnt matter which character theyre playing, I can see if theyre online or not and where they are. There are a few commanders I follow around and theyve been added to my friends list for that reason. Likewise, I know Ive been added to a few friends lists by people who wish to follow me when Im commanding in WvW.
Point is, we can see if somebody is on their alt.
i use my friends list for friends not commanders i am still stuck trying to figure out who the good and bad commanders are despite me knowing their characters with the tags.
Soulbound or Account bound commander tag? Players do not follow character, they follow a player. Therefore I really like to see a commander tag to become account bound.
people don’t always know a commanders alt’s
i think this is why it is important to make commanders stay character bound so people know who the bad commanders are.
The bad commanders could still buy more icons and the good commanders would have to buy more icons too. Either way they are a good or a bad commander, I would rather have a good commander have the freedom to change between roles that are needed then have to worry about bad commanders having “extra icons” either way he’ll reestablish himself as a bad commander on that other character.
how many times will servers have to learn the bad commanders new names when they can just make an alt how often do i need to learn the good commanders alts? there really should be a way to identify commanders by the name the majority of the server knows them even if they are on an alt. most of the good commanders i know have 3 or 4 characters with commander tags anyway they can already switch roles whenever they want.
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?
i’m not sure i like this or at least not without it being easier to access. my favorite commander recently started playing again and has 10 world ranks because he was very active at the beginning of wvw but quit before world ranks where introduced.
One more thing: no matter what you do, there’s no way to weed out bad commanders from becoming commanders. No wxp rank, achievement, money needed, badges, etc. will stop a bad player from becoming commander.
i think this is why it is important to make commanders stay character bound so people know who the bad commanders are.
We can, however, expect better quality stuff after the Scarlet sega. ^^
can we? they could easily botch this again it.
Thanks for all the responses : )
One of my fav quotes on simplistic design
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.” -Albert Einstein
i think i like where you are going here. make commanders able to stop the fighting and make peace treaties.
Since most of what I would suggest has already been put up…maybe a commander rating tool. I just moved to a new server so a tool that could let us comment on ALL commanders in that server would be kinda cool and useful. Commanders could even look over the comments to see what they could work on.
this sounds good in theory but will bring the trolls out and will mostly be a popularity contest not an actual measure of skill
5. The tag should be account bound
i think nobody is thinking about the downsides to this. there are some commanders most of my server will not follow but i don’t know their alts. I would rather it stay character bound so that i don’t have to get wiped a few times to realize how bad the commander is I can just recognize the name.
Short and simple:
1. Increase the radius of /supplyinfo please.
2. Ability to change color of commander tag and to be able to set to Guild only so only guild members may see.
3. Ability to turn on some sort of block siege deployment from other players in a 600 radius – gets annoying when dropping a ram and griefers drop 3 trebs on top of it.
4. increase /supplyinfo radius
5. Increase /supplyinfo even more
6. Increase /supplyinfo much more.
also an aoe circle on supply info would be nice so people can see if they are in the radius
I don’t think we need to discuss imbalance anymore at this point. Myself and a large amount of forum post agree that a lot of good ideas were givin on ways to solve it. I thinkmore the reason it keeps coming up is people were unsatisfied with the lack of dev interaction.
i disagree population imbalance is the number one problem and deserves a serious discussion. I completely agree that the player showed up with great ideas but the discussion was hampered by failure to show up on anet’s part. We absolutely should revisit the topic now that anet will show up and the discussion will be much more helpful and focused with constructive anet presence.
lots of optimistic people here who didn’t participate in the failed wvw thread.
Commander Tag: Not the most important thing but a thing that can be worked on isolated from other issues across PvE as well.
At least we are focusing on something.
Looking forward to the discussion and will put my thought into it:
Preview of what bothers me most on this topic:
- Larger radius to count players and supply. It’s a bit small.
- Guild Comanders
- Private Squads (like a 30 player party that only when inside the squad see the tag). Basically Raid Groups.
- /supplyInfo is not a chat command anymore (introduce a commander UI)
- All the more detailed stuff about information is already provide via a lot of different overlayes. So focus probably a bit more on API information so 3rd party devs can do what’s needed for WvW.
seems nice but again we havent started yet this is still a best practices thread. save it for the actual next thread.
do not like
I would love to help field a discussion on the commander system, I know there are a few other topics everyone brought up but I think a good brainstorm about how to improve large scale communication/origination has very large impact on WvW. This is also becoming more important in PvE as we move forward with large scale encounters. So I think it would be a fun discussion as there is a lot of room to improve the current system.
To start with:
1. Squad should be an actual group with icons showing all group members like in raid groups in other mmos.
2. With the functionality added in 1. maybe restrict no. of squad members to say 30 maximum.
3. Members should be able to see where other members are on the map as with the current 5 person grouping system.
4. Tag should be able to be turned on for group members only to see, not the rest of the map (with the option for everyone on the map to see it remaining).
5. Info for each player should include supply.
6. It should be account wide, if you can make fractal progression account wide you can make this account wide.
save this for monday
I’m bummed that the rate of CDI activity is getting cut to 1/3 of its initial vision- especially after seeing what I feel were most of the weaknesses of the initial launch detected, dissected, and likely resolved (or at least greatly improved) in this thread. If we have to crawl before we can walk, ok, but I’ll always be wishing we could get to the point where process dances even if it means another 1/3 or 1/2 of the threads fall short along the way.
I worry that with all the eggs in one basket, we risk having one bad mis-step or failed attempt make the whole process look bad because there’s only one thread at a time. It really restricts the rate at which we can detect problems and improve the process and it cuts the actual collaboration off to a trickle of what it could be.
i agree it would be nice if they could do it 3 at a time but i think they showed they can’t do that. So i think i prefer 1 good discusion at a time instead of 2 good discusions and 1 poor one.
I would love to help field a discussion on the commander system, I know there are a few other topics everyone brought up but I think a good brainstorm about how to improve large scale communication/origination has very large impact on WvW. This is also becoming more important in PvE as we move forward with large scale encounters. So I think it would be a fun discussion as there is a lot of room to improve the current system.
- Battlefield style command rose with common commands like stack on me, advance on me, hold here, fall back, etc.
- Ability to enter information about what you are doing, which is shown with a hover over the commander icon on mini map or a pop out box. It would also be nice to be able to enter information for voice chat like Teamspeak and Mumble, maybe even auto link in the appropriate format. Other ideas for features here are a donate siege to commander link, and thank commander option that works into some sort of rep system.
- Designate squad sizes between 5 and 40 players or so, make it easier and more intuitive to join and leave squad, and increase rewards for players in squad on objective taking and defense when the commander completes the same objective. This would make it much easier to run smaller groups for roaming and havok without having a bunch of mystery tags everywhere, and might be a reasonable check on full map zergs.
- Make commander tag account bound, refund players that have multiple tags.
- Give guilds the ability to research a guild commander tag that can only be seen by guild members.
save it for the actual thread but all seem like good ideas
I think that Scarlet has a lot of potential. She is a fun, interesting villain and definitely different from anyone else in the game. I feel like the flaw isn’t with Scarlet as a character but more with the very long arch and lack of meaningful story.
I think scarlet HAD a lot of potential but was so poorly done that the potential is ruined and it is time to put scarlet to rest and move on. I am sure bobby is familiar with the term poisoned the well and should understand he will never be able to use scarlet without this negative feedback and should look into changing this masterplan of his so that players hate of scarlet doesnt ruin the story as it currently is.
(edited by gidorah.4960)
You know it’s Scarlet when the forums explode with hate threads about her.
don’t you think that’s kind of a problem though.
This would give a lot of people peace of mind, Bobby, I hope you respond: is the end of Scarlet’s arch already on its way?
I mentioned this elsewhere on the forums, but I’ll say it here again. There is an end to the Scarlet story that has been planned out. I’m not at liberty to discuss release dates or the timeline, though.
i think it’s also pretty fair to remind you everytime you use scarlet that players do not like her and do not want scarlet to be involved in the story. It is such an overwhelming majority of players that think she is poorly written and want to stop you from using her not actually stop her. This seems a pretty big problem for you to just respond with “we have a plan”.
Hey could have been much much worse we could have gotten the Fall of Abaddon. I could see this now… Scarlet steal’s a TARDIS goes back and time and twist and warps Abaddon to be one of her minons.
Nah, this wouldn’t of happened. This is why Evon should of won. lolwpcost.
lol i like your optimism about this but with everything they put scarlet in where she doesnt belong do you really think they wouldnt put scarlet in the abadon fractal?
bobby how do you feel that the villain you wrote doesnt make us want to stop her it makes us want to stop you?
if you ask in map chat you will find you are the minority their as well.
yup. i think not the tag is the most important, but if they want lets talk about it. and maybe the pop balance also not the most important. if they make a game mode what everybody want to play we dont need to redistribute wvw players
i do not understand at all what you are saying.
Scarlet is a class of villain who once glimpsed perfection and thinks she can achieve it, even if it means undoing the universe destroying everything in the process. She’s basically became a tiny god where we can’t quite defeat her permanently but she enjoys the game too much to put us down permanently either.
So in other words she’s the joker.
like a poorly written joker knockoff with all the bad qualities and none of the good.
Oh! I know what Anet is doing! They’re making Scarlet so detestable, so when the time for the grand finale comes along, everyone will be jumping at the chance to annihilate her!
Brilliant Anet! Sheer brilliance!
i would actualy prefer they just dropped her asap no conclusion to this arc no more ruining the story just she went through a wintersday portal and was never seen again.
Really.. Really..
Look I don’t disagree that Commander tags cud use some loving in game.. but is this really the most pressing issue that the game faces… I think the previous CDI highlighted things a lot more important, things that need action and some tough love.. sooner rather than later.
If all this is going to do is throw veils over topics that have already demonstrated so much concern and frustration (and continues to do so) then expect participation to grow thinner both in the CDI and in game… some servers have very few players even bothering to tag in anymore when all that awaits is face stomping repeatedly.. sure I get your thinking to discuss all facets of the game, but you have designated teams in PvE , WvW that should be able to think independently when it comes to identifying and rectifying things related to their areas of expertise.. Comm Tag is far from being the biggest issue in either of those facets of the game imo so why avoid the things that are and get the ball moving unless your happy to see , WvW (you know one of those facets of the game you so proudly marketed out to us all) sink lower into the gimmick bin.
Apologies if this sounds blunt but really, really!
no it seems pretty reasonable the most pressing concern is the pop imbalance and we probably deserve a redo on it since the first one went so poorly. but the next most voted on thing was commander tag and it could also use some attention.
I love how people are all about how much they liked it and how interested they were in it, but suddenly all that is blown away because a certain NPC turns up.
Seriously?
yes
Hey could have been much much worse we could have gotten the Fall of Abaddon. I could see this now… Scarlet steal’s a TARDIS goes back and time and twist and warps Abaddon to be one of her minons.
this is the only silver lining. at least they didnt shove scarlet into the abadon fractal. but seriously are they just out of idea’s and all they have is scarlet? i really do not understand how anyone there thought this would be a good idea.
seriously i was really interested in what caused the thaumanova reactor to fail and all the lore around it. Its why i voted keil i thought anet could do a great job with it. I have never been more disapointed.
Sucess!!!!!!!!!
Seriously though, I always stand by devs because I appreciate how demanding their job is. Though, this is a pretty bad fail. Something so simple and obvious having such a large impact on the patch.
lol this i get that some stuff will slip through but this is pretty bad makes you wonder if they even qa’ed it at all
Hi Reesha,
So one topic per week with a process evolution thread at the end of a 3 topic cycle?
Chris
If so topics should be only for 1 week. making a whole cycle would take too long if you would extend that 1 week for two. Making it 10 days could work also so the whole cycle would be in 1 month.
it would be 3 weeks of each area and 1 week of this just seeing what went right what went wrong general chatter about the process itself and not the topics. it would still be a month.
i understand where you are coming from but like the skill lag topic issue, there isnt much to discuss on that subject. and i dont think the wvw team is even responsible for this. its the optimization team etc. so having it up for a discussion would be imo a waste of time.
if they listed the topics for the next 5 cdi and we can give our 2cents on if they are worth discussing could save us from those situations
that sounds like a second vote without a good reason like the skill lag not having much room for discusion i dont understand why we would be voting again.
That is true, but also keep in mind if a topic is passed over it isn’t going to be passed over to something no one cares about. In addition, with the final topic being chosen by the devs the players will ideally get to see more of the colaberation part of the CDI. If the devs get ‘forced’ into a topic they can’t do much about or talk much about the CDI can’t succeed and that is bad for all parties.
well you arnt wrong at all it is something that can be handled reasonably but the way it is working now is also being handled reasonably where we reached a player picked topic that cannot be discussed well so we skip it. I’m not sure either system is really wrong but I prefer the way it is now where if we have a topic that cant be talked about we just skip to the next most popular.
Hi Inculpatas,
Regarding the discussion about one thread at a time. The advantage for us currently is that the team could concentrate on one topic at a time rather than having three threads to keep up with and therefore have more time to get involved. It would also allow me to enter the discussion of the threads in different areas. Note i am still undecided about this particular discussion. I to am very worried about the time it would take to rotate between topics and for this reason alone that could be a big enough con to not move forward with the above proposal.
Since I suggested the one topic at a time back at page 3 somewhere, I still strongly believe that the pros, of only having one topic up at a time, outweighs the cons greatly.
Would it maybe be an idea to limit the period of time in which the specified topic is open?
I mean, the living story is an ongoing topic still. Last post was around 5 hours ago and the topic opened 28 days ago. With more focus on one area only, from both players and developers, would 2 weeks not be a realistic goal?
I can only speak for myself off course, but:
If one collaborate topic is open in either PVE, PVP or WvW for a 2 week period and if I only wish to comment on PVE: Then I never have to wait more than a month for a collaborate topic in the PVE section. To me, that would be more than acceptable.Hi Reesha,
So one topic per week with a process evolution thread at the end of a 3 topic cycle?
Chris
while i think this is great idea thanksgiving is this week and next month will be christmas and new year. you may not want to start this cycle now and might want to use this time to experiment.
actualy i am curious what the number 4 wvw topic was since we bumped number 2
HI Vi Au,
‘Is it possible to add a second thread during the 3 day CDI process evolution to “vote” on potential topic?’
Yes i think that would be a good idea. Many have said that they would like us to pass on skill lag with the next in the list being Commander functionality. If we went with this then after the 3 area topics close and we do the next Process Evolution we could vote again.
However it was also put forward by quite a few people that the Dev team should choose the topics for each area, specifically in regard to the most pressing topics for us in terms of working together through the CDI.
Personally i think their are pros and cons with both options but i would like us to make a decision about that action following the decision around area topic cadence.
Chris
So, hopefully this is short, but I’d like to propose an idea. There has been discussion as to whether the players or the devs should choose the topic and each has its own merits.
With that in mind I’d like to propose that we take a middle ground approach. Do the voting process as we did before, but have devs choose which topic would be best to discuss from the top 5 or some such number. The hope behind this idea being that we take a large part of the pros from both categories and leave a few of the cons behind.
this might lead to problems if dev’s dont pick the most popular topic because it is hard and instead skip to an easy topic. i think most agree skipping skill lag is good but what if the dev’s wanted to skip pop imbalance and the players didnt agree it was a good idea.
problem do not arise when you communicate, they occur when there is a lack of communication. the community will not chew off our dev as long as they keep us updated and have well reasoned posts.
as the main source of negative posts i agree with this
HI Vi Au,
‘Is it possible to add a second thread during the 3 day CDI process evolution to “vote” on potential topic?’
Yes i think that would be a good idea. Many have said that they would like us to pass on skill lag with the next in the list being Commander functionality. If we went with this then after the 3 area topics close and we do the next Process Evolution we could vote again.
However it was also put forward by quite a few people that the Dev team should choose the topics for each area, specifically in regard to the most pressing topics for us in terms of working together through the CDI.
Personally i think their are pros and cons with both options but i would like us to make a decision about that action following the decision around area topic cadence.
Chris
since it is the beginning of the process It should be pretty fair to experiment and see what work’s.
Hi Chris,
How are you going to pick topics? As you probably know, i posted something concerning the next WvW topic: skill lag. which in my opinion isnt a very good topic because it stems from overpopulated servers (and we already “discussed” that) or server issues on anet side that we have no control or very little knowledge of. Is it possible to add a second thread during the 3 day CDI process evolution to “vote” on potential topic?
the current topic on the table is the commander system i believe almost everyone is ok with skipping skill lag as it isn’t as rich of a topic.
As for posting frequency, it is always the case that our first responsibility is to the game and the continued production of the features and content.
I just think its odd that you are the only busy person at anet. While you where doing a terrible job here there was a active and productive discussion going on in pve and pvp and in each and every class forum. Unless you are saying that everyone else in the company has tons of free time and you alone don’t you probably owe us a better explanation.
Simply put Devon has been extremely busy of late (Edge of Mists etc) and you will note that many of my posts have been outside of work hours. This is my choice and not something i ask of my design team.
We are working to improve the time we can dedicate to the CDI and if we think that if we can’t appropriate more then it may be best to move to 1 CDI thread at a time.
Chris
I guess the answer of no one else at anet has any projects they are working on is the best we are going to get. 1 thread at a time is probably for the best.
As for posting frequency, it is always the case that our first responsibility is to the game and the continued production of the features and content.
I just think its odd that you are the only busy person at anet. While you where doing a terrible job here there was a active and productive discussion going on in pve and pvp and in each and every class forum. Unless you are saying that everyone else in the company has tons of free time and you alone don’t you probably owe us a better explanation.
Um, thanks, Nike. I think we shouldn’t have to resort to ‘formatting schemes’ to have our posts read, but whatever works. I get the feeling it may be all for naught, anyway. The other threads are like ghost-towns. I will leave it in your more capable hands. =)
I somewhat disagree. There have been posts in the cdi that were a bit obnoxious with overly large bolded font that was formatted more than the usual post. Whether or not these are attempts to illicit developer response, i dont know. Obnoxious regardless.
I don’t mind that stuff at all. anything that helps organize a posters thoughts so it doesnt ramble on is a plus for me.
For the WvW topic could we please start out with the Population/Participation imbalance? Pretty please?
I for one think this is the single biggest problem that people face in WvW right now. I play WvW a lot, and it is so frustrating in the weeks where we get rolled not because of lack of skill on our part (we have some really amazing and talented commanders on our server who have done things with zergs I never thought possible) but because we simply don’t have the participation that the other servers have. The outmanned buff doesn’t help a server win at all. I think it is a self perpetuating problem:
1) Not enough people show up in WvW on Gate of Madness
2) Those that do get rolled over and over again because HoD has a million more players on the map
3) Those that did show up don’t want to participate anymore because they feel that anything they do is useless
4) Repeat week after week ad nauseam.As a dedicated WvW player I would love to see this one be at the top instead of Skill Lag or even ahead of commander abilities (yes I’m a commander myself so I would benefit from that discussion).
we already did that. I don’t know if you missed it or just think the wvw players deserve another chance at the topic but this time with meaningful input from anet instead of what we got.
go read the pve CDI and write how you think future WvW CDI should be. Chris is doing a fantastic job and said he will work with the other CDI to help them improve. he read everything there and reply to a lot of the posters.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Process-Evolution/page/7#post3258645
yeah i probably shouldnt be the only one who brings up how bad it is here i think chris has started to ignore me.
For the most part I think they’ve just run their course. That’s ok. In my opinion they reach a point where their own length crushes them. They get too big and scary for new posters to approach. I kind of lean towards a 2 week cadence myself. Long enough for people with different work schedules to have at least two good opportunities. But for them to fulfill their potential in just two weeks, they need strong, fast launches.
i think he meant the cdi discussion threads like this one not the original cdi threads.
‘For the most part I think they’ve just run their course. That’s ok. In my opinion they reach a point where their own length crushes them.’
Run their course? There are only 33 posts in the PvP thread last time I looked. It’s even dropped down to the 3rd page. Not many more in WvW, 75. Maybe no one is interested in WvW or PvP, I don’t really know. Mostly they are grumbling about a lack of interest on the Devs’ part, I guess.
that’s the thing there was plenty of interest in the wvw cdi thread on population balance. Who is going to show up to talk about how the process can be improved if the main complaint is they never showed up for the first conversation and are currently not showing up for the conversation on the improvement. The pvp guys don’t have alot of interest because the dev’s seem very active everywhere else they don’t seem to need much improvement.
One final thing i wanted to mention to the group before heading of to bed is to note that whilst i have been posting relatively frequently over the weekend, this is not something i expect from the team. It is my choice to spend my free time this way and not something i would promote in regard to how the team spend their weekends.
I am mentioning this in order to set expectations around my interaction this weekend (which by the way i have very much enjoyed) in regard to my ability to interact moving forward.
This comment is not intended to diminish the value of the problem solving around the issues we have discussed about team member engagement on threads during work time however.
Chris
I think no one expects people to work weekends and we all appreciate that you are doing so and see how this really is something you are trying hard to make succeed. but you opened these Tuesday and its really a bit much to have no dev responses in a thread open for 6 days. This may not be as big of an issue for the pvp team as their dev’s are very active on the forums and engage in plenty of discusion outside of this. I am sure you get where i am going with this as i am not subtle and have been beating this dead horse for a while.
Hi Gidorah,
First of all i was listing the next topics and asking everyone’s thoughts on choosing the original topics. I made no comment on whether or not that discussion was valid.
Secondly there is certainly value to discussing this issue being that any ArenaNet dev is welcome to post.
Third, i am sorry that the WvW thread wasn’t more like the PVE one. This is my fault in that i underestimated how busy the guys were, and also that they feel anxious around posting due to not being a 100% percent sure about what they can discuss and secondly their trepidation in posting which can be a pretty difficult environment for them sometimes.
Fourth, be under no illusion that these guys work very hard, play the hell out of WvW and are excellent at their jobs. Please note that i also (like many others at Arena) play WvW.
Finally my proposal around the next topics for discussion was to hear folks opinions. Please don’t assume what my personal opinion is around those individual topics.
I appreciate your patience and hope that this makes some sense.
Chris
Hi Gidorah,
I would suggest reading this post again, specifically point three. I am at a loss as to how better explain to you that there was an issue with the WvW CDI and the areas we will be concentrating on to fix any issues.
You are starting to waste my time and the time of community members contributing to bettering the process through problem solving and evolving discussion.
Chris
I think the problem is I haven’t seen any real effort to fix it yet. You havent stepped into the wvw thread to talk about how the wvw thread in particular went with the actual wvw community. Instead you stay here and make them come to you and derail this thread because you won’t adresss the concerns they are having in their thread. Which to be honest is pretty similar to how you handled the actual cdi.
Hi Gidorah,
I think this section is fair and deserves some more insight:
‘I think the problem is I haven’t seen any real effort to fix it yet. You havent stepped into the wvw thread to talk about how the wvw thread in particular went with the actual wvw community. ’
As you have read in point three i have expressed the issues that i think were core to that CDI not being more successful. Each thread has an owner, I am the owner of the PVE thread. My plan is to work with each of the owners to help them grow to better handle the topics moving forward. I want the individual owners themselves to reply and connect in a meaningful and relevant manner, thus it is disingenuous for me to go in and own another thread (never mind taking into account the time that would eat up for me). However this does not preclude me from working with the guys and girls to build a better path to success in this initiative. Thus i would ask you to remain patient, see how things improve and continue to feedback in a manner that is productive to the evolution of CDI as a whole.
Chris
This is your initiative don’t you think at some point you need to step in when it becomes clear that others aren’t going to? Having participated in both i cannot help but be frustrated by the complete night and day differences between the threads and as amazing of a job as you do in here Devon put in a complete half kitten performance that made it seem like you where imposing this on him and he would only do the bare minimum. In a thread that was supposed to fix the poor communication all the cdi did in wvw was confirm the problems that exist are here to stay. I really have a hard time believing that the pve and pvp dev’s arent busy and hard working as well but they made the time for the initiative because they felt it was important. With the track record of the wvw team and communication since Habib left I don’t understand how you can expect any of the wvw community to come to a different conclusion.