Collaborative Development: Commander System

#1 - Dec. 2, 2013, 2:12 p.m.

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.

#5 - Dec. 2, 2013, 2:39 p.m.

rodadams.5963:

Are we allowed to talk about how the Commander system impacts with PvE as well?

Absolutely.

Chris

#6 - Dec. 2, 2013, 2:43 p.m.

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.

#25 - Dec. 2, 2013, 3:34 p.m.

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.

#107 - Dec. 2, 2013, 9:52 p.m.

A lot of awesome ideas here.

Here are some questions I’ve been wondering about.

How often do people actually join squads and use the features that are there? (4 different way point markers, /supplyinfo). What would make you join squads more?

How much is spies a problem with commander system?

Should the commander icon be shown above the commanders head to the commander?

Should we allow a WvW upgrade to see enemy commanders (not on the map just on screen) ?

#127 - Dec. 2, 2013, 11:55 p.m.

Thanks for all the responses : )

I’ve always felt the commander system had a lot of room to grow mainly it does a good job of giving people something to follow but that’s about it. I used to do a lot of commanding and I found splitting a group of 20-40 up into smaller groups to be very difficult and we just ended up using parties and voice but I’ve noticed the lack of tools to do this drives a lot of gameplay to follow the commander. I know in PvE and in WvW we’ve been trying to make the content force a little more splitting as the game becomes a lot more fun when there are a bunch of smaller fights then one big one.

I know there are a lot of suggestions about a whole commander system with points, ranks, ect.. and I think that could be neat but one of our big goals is deep systems and as few of them as possible, as having a lot of small shallow systems all over the game can make it hard to maintain and keep up to date. Some examples are we could just roll the whole commander system into the Guild System and make new ranks and abilities part of guild upgrades. Another way to simplify this would be turn commander into WvW abilities and have a few lines that focus on commanding/following. (Granted this approch does make things more messy for PvE commanders). Just a few examples of how to design in a more simplistic way by folding this into another system, and some of the discussions and debates we have internally every time we go to improve/update a system.

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

#191 - Dec. 3, 2013, 10:34 a.m.

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?

#202 - Dec. 3, 2013, 11:02 a.m.

ptitminou.6489:

If you want smaller groups, why did you make a fight like Tequatl? Why are smaller groups punished in WvW, its much harder to take down a keep with 20 people than 60 given the supply one can carry…

My point wasn’t that we don’t want large fights we love large fights but we want a mix of large and small fights, different tactics and tools for players to use to approach any battle or situation. I think the commander tool could help solve these problems in all situations.

#272 - Dec. 3, 2013, 5:56 p.m.

Seems like people really enjoy answering questions so I’ll throw out a few more.

How big do you expect a squad to be?
What kind of content is a PvE commander most useful?
Is money a good enough gate for commander tags?

#307 - Dec. 3, 2013, 11:50 p.m.

Thanks for all the answers might be hard for me to answer everyone but I’m up for a bit any questions I could answer?

#312 - Dec. 4, 2013, 12:26 a.m.

ptitminou.6489:

How are decisions on designs and ideas reached within ANet? That actually could help with some suggestions.

How many devs completed their Season 1 WvW meta?

Has there been any kind of discussion about a /announce and a macro system for GW2 in the past (not necessarily tied to commanders) that may have been dropped for various reasons?

It really depends on the decision, we have a bunch of different teams working on different features and content, our high level direction is picked from our directors and leads (those decisions come from meetings with directors). Then a problem or feature is given to a team to solve. That team then works to come up with solutions to the problems and then get the design of those solutions passed by the leads from all disciplines and then once approved start working on the feature. From minor to major decisions different people make all kinds of decisions based on feedback testing ect.. So I guess it’s really hard to say I think in some way every one makes some decisions on some level. : ) Hope that round about answer helped lol.

No idea I would have to pull numbers, I know I got it by the skin of my teeth completing it last Sunday… repair being my last one to get. I heard a few other people saying they where close.

Going to keep to the commander topic as much as possible (looks at the above to answers and realized they where not commander related so FINE! no really hasn’t been much discussion on those two things in a long while.)

I’ll try and only answer the commander questions to keep on topic!

#313 - Dec. 4, 2013, 12:33 a.m.

FirstRyder.2091:

Is this something you see as a problem? Or working as intended? Or which could be improved?

I think it’s less of an issue now that you can trade siege and I wouldn’t exactly say it’s working as intended. I think our goal was siege placement was done but lots of different people but in reality it’s much easier and more practical for the commander to do it as they have a better understanding of supply and are paying more attention to these things. I could see features to support easier donations but in the end I think people can do this pretty easily now so I honestly haven’t given a feature like that much thought or discussion but now typing this got some ideas flowing about it and I could see a few neat ways that could be improved. : )

#314 - Dec. 4, 2013, 12:40 a.m.

Blackarps.1974:

Out of the suggestions given so far, how many do you think will be put into action? Which ones? When is the earliest we could see a change to the commander system?

I have a ton of other questions and could talk to you about GW2 for hours. I wish you had some time to do so

I think it’s hard to say how many but from the other CDI threads I know they spawn a lot of discussions internally and give a lot of different perspectives on the issue. I think overall this discussions will help shape the feature and backlog list of things to do with commander which could lead to many ideas here spawning improvements. As for time frame thats not really what this thread is for so I’ll dodge roll that question.

Hit me up in game if I’m not doing something I’m always up for discussing/debating. Char name is Izzy or Izzys Rose.

#356 - Dec. 4, 2013, 2:53 p.m.

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?

#360 - Dec. 4, 2013, 3:09 p.m.

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.

#404 - Dec. 4, 2013, 5:54 p.m.

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.

#459 - Dec. 5, 2013, 9:55 a.m.

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.

#474 - Dec. 5, 2013, 1:21 p.m.

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.

#523 - Dec. 6, 2013, 10:56 a.m.

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.

#544 - Dec. 6, 2013, 5:47 p.m.

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.

#569 - Dec. 7, 2013, 12:44 p.m.

I think this thread is nearing it’s end so I wanted to do a quick high level summary of what I’ve gotten out of it so far and a few questions about each.

Commander Visibility

• More options for the Color/Shape of the tag itself. This could be tied to functionality or rank of commanders but mainly targeted around organization.
• Removal of buff display to enemies. As well as we should avoid doing skills/abilities that highlight the commander to enemies.
• Ability to limit visibility to a sub group, party, guild, ect..
• Tag sizing. (I debate this a bit as when you auto size the tag you can often lose the ability to see how far away something is but it was brought up a lot so listing it here)
• Add squads to LFG system.

Questions:
1.) How important is it to see your squad members as a different color and always visible on your map like party?

Commander Tools

• More detailed supply info that’s always up. (Increased radius)
• Ability to create sub roles within a squad.
• Current squad tools are rarely used.
• Seems to be some debates on buffs to followers, but there is a lot of good examples of ways to do that.
• Squad size needs to be increased.
• Ability to group up parties or other commanders to form different squad organization.
• Improved chat suppression for commanders
• Commander announcements (yellow text across the screen)

Questions:
2) I’ve always felt the best commander organization tool would be the ability to create events. Like drop a siege and the commander can set this is a build event then everyone gets Ui like build this flame ram 0/50 supply needed. Or Destroy this gate <show gate health bar>. Lets assume for this discussion there are no rewards to the events just a communication tool. Thoughts on commander created events?

Commander gating

• Current 100g gate isn’t the cleanest gate. (Whole goal behind a gate is to limit the number of commanders out there.
• Gating using WvW abilities seems to have some debate to it, but seems like something we should avoid.
• Account bound commander tags vs character bound.

Question
3) A guild gating system would be clean but require all commanders to be in a fairly active guild is this a fair gating system?

Question
4) What did I miss on this list

#587 - Dec. 7, 2013, 5:46 p.m.

Twinny.9304:

Question
If there will be any change to the Commander Gating, does that mean everybody start from scratch? or current Commanders still get to keep their tags? Because I would hate to lose/get a refund on my tag. I saved hard for that when i had very little cash and would like to keep it.

I was just asking to get a sense of it really. : )

#658 - Dec. 9, 2013, 8:50 p.m.

I’m going to close this thread as I think this topic has come to and end, I wanted to thank everyone involved it’s been a great thread here is a summary of the discussions, this is a list of the main topics that where discussed and not a list of upcoming features. As with all CDI threads will bring the info gained from these threads into our discussion internally.

Commander Visibility

• More options for the Color/Shape of the tag itself. This could be tied to functionality or rank of commanders but mainly targeted around organization.
• Removal of buff display to enemies. As well as we should avoid doing skills/abilities that highlight the commander to enemies.
• Ability to limit visibility to a sub group, party, guild, ect..
• Tag sizing. (I debate this a bit as when you auto size the tag you can often lose the ability to see how far away something is but it was brought up a lot so listing it here)
• Add squads to LFG system.

Commander Tools

• More detailed supply info that’s always up. (Increased radius)
• Ability to create sub roles within a squad.
• Current squad tools are rarely used.
• Seems to be some debates on buffs to followers, but there is a lot of good examples of ways to do that.
• Squad size needs to be increased.
• Ability to group up parties or other commanders to form different squad organization.
• Improved chat suppression for commanders
• Commander announcements (yellow text across the screen)
• Open/Closing Squad tools

Commander gating

• Current 100g gate isn’t the cleanest gate. (Whole goal behind a gate is to limit the number of commanders out there.
• Gating using WvW abilities seems to have some debate to it, but seems like something we should avoid.
• Account bound commander tags vs character bound.

The next CDI thread will be run by Chris Whiteside starting on Wed 12/11 the topic will be Progression.

Once again Thank you these threads are a joy to read and cause many great conversations and discussion here in the office.