Introducing the Planetary Vanguards

I am well aware of /r/PlanetaryAnnihilation as I post there very regularly (within the pa subreddit I have 707 link karma and 281 comment karma). Haven't been commenting there as much as I used to, but I still do.

There's also the bug tracker, which I frequent and don't recognize any of the vanguard members (aside from SXX) from the tracker. Clopse has a handful of posts over there as well. In fact, from a quick browsing of the tracker, it seems that more of the active community members that weren't included can be found on the tracker than the vanguard members who are on the tracker.

There's also the like count on the forums to consider.

Just saying. The choices are strange.

If browsing counts too i think Cola_collin needs to add it to the "Can I be a Vanguard?"-section and there should be some kind of medal or an achievement like browse the forum for 500 hours and become a Planetary Vanguard

Ps
I'm afraid the trolling in this post is intended

In the end the choices are the result of who came to mind of the initiators when they looked for people to write a sort of letter to Uber, concerned about the current state of communication between the community and Uber. The "Vanguard"-badge by now means says: "this are the most active members" or the like.

ColaColin is part of it, however his moderator badge trumps the vanguard badge.

So now you're saying people were chosen because they co-signed the letter to Uber? And contribution to the community doesn't matter?

This whole thing just seems weirder and weirder.

I think you misread the trolling post there ;D

500 hours of browsing the forums... urg

I'm pretty sure they're mostly picking people who have been contributing positively to the community. In any case, I don't think it's a big deal. We're all still free to participate in the community, and I doubt Uber is giving these people any special moderator powers or magic super-commanders in the game. When I saw this announcement, my first reaction was to think that it's a little pointless to do this because they aren't really changing anything. I'm very surprised to see you getting so upset over this silliness.

Idea of such group not in creating some VIP club of most active players, but creating some more official mechanism of feedback to developers. For example:
Culverin put lot of work into collecting of UI issues.
KNight it's person who can give actually good feedback on modding/modelling.
I'm personally stay it touch with Uber about some technical issues for long time, so I think now it's can be just a more transparent for everyone else.

It's doesn't important who in list now because it's not closed group and number of people who can spend lot of time on PA is limited, so those people always should be able to join.

As much as I appreciate the comments Brian I am not vanguard material. I like to come to the forums to relax and hangout. I also try type quicker than my brain can function which I don't think is sought after for this type of role.

I know my initial post put a negative spin on a positive thread and I do apologize for that, but seems a strange way to go about it. I'm sure many would have made it regardless of clan affiliation.

As I mentioned most who have volunteered would make many peoples top ten choices but it's much too hard to not see the Realm's tint on this.

Are there any non realm members that have not in some way been acknowledged previously by uber?

I don't know of any. And I say that as a Realm member who has been acknowledged by Uber. lol

The Realm certainly is the largest and most active clan in PA, so there is that to factor in.

Keep in mind this is still more or less one huge trial, it could end up not working out yet.

Our role is to act as Uber's eyes and ears on the forum, with a few extra roles in certain scenarios. The forum is simply too vast and fast pace for Uber to keep track of while focusing on delivering PA, were stepping in to act as a conduit to stream line things for Uber's sake.

If this works out we will certainly consider asking others to join up when appropriate but for now we want to run things a bit on the lean side as we get things working smoothly.

Mike

Nice job guys..I am similiar to Clopse in that I come here to relax and find juicy little tidbits of information that sometimes sparks the imagination...these generally get shot down by the community, hehe.

Anything to increase communication is a great idea in my book!

Regards,
Nayzablade

So the monopoly continues.

I hope this does not mean they get a greater say about the game.

Hiyo,
Just thought I would drop in with some thoughts from my end...


I'm really passionate about UI design. (You probably already noticed that ).
TA, SupCom and FA have a legacy where the player is playing with an "unlocked" UI.
It leaves them to focus on the big game without having to fight artificially crippled cameras, weak hotkeys or bad controls.


When I came back to the forums a couple months ago, I found the UI really lacking.
Lots of people would make suggestions.
Mostly, they would be nice, but sometimes they would be insulting the devs. Honestly, would you want to read any personal attacks? I don't think I would.
At the heart of it, they were good ideas. I really loved most of what I came across.
However I found that the suggestions were all over the forums, buried in unrelated threads, or when giving their initial impressions. Many were also poorly worded without good screen shots or examples.
It simply wasn't useable by the devs at all.
Their UI guy simply can't read every thread, figure out what the person meant, collect that info, then sort it into something useable. Uber is a small indie developer, while they may have the expertise, they just don't have that kind of time to wade into the chaos that is this forum.


I decided to make it my little quest. I think it probably took me a solid week just to collect all the info.
Then maybe another 10 days to sort it out into something manageable.
Now we have a "little" document with widespread community input, sorted into categories and bullet point.

Consider this, if we didn't work together on that,
Uber wouldn't have good info from the community.
The community just wasn't communicating effectively with the devs.

I subscribe to the theory that "all of us" is smarter than any one of us.
Collectively, we'll come up with things that Uber might forget.
We need to remind them what is important to us.


Personally, I'd like to help to deliver your good communication to Uber.
I can try to sort through some of the noise of "can I have x-feature now", when we already have confirmation x-feature is coming. But for the most part,



If the community can sort out our good suggestions.
then Uber will be able to get better features in the game.

If the community can ask the good questions (instead of "when do we get X-feature" or repeating old questions),
then we'll be able to get good answers from Uber along the way.



That's my personal take on why and how I'm going to try to help.

I hope that all in all the community doesn't have too much of a say, after reading the forums for a long time I can honestly say that there are many people who want to resurrect the many dead horses.

I personally feel like brian definitely deserves to be a Planetary Vanguard. He's basically been Uber's Q&A guy over the past year and with pa matches he's made significant contributions to the community.

Why thank you kind sir.

*bows*

I shall also nominate the "brianpurkiss"

Yea some of these vanguards I haven't seen until this post ..... strange indeed I frequent enough to throw my river of opposition in enough to piss off the regulars.

Hopefully this " organization" shows no bias and actually communicates popular topics and controversial subjects regardless of their own thoughts......
Also no Brian???? All the obvious time he's dedicated to the game????? Strange.......