Introducing the Planetary Vanguards

i don't understand..

I see that as a relevant thing if the vanguard is searching the forum for "Hot - Topics" .

But as a normal person they should still be entitled to their own opinion, As long as they state "MY PERSONAL OPINION"..

I have done so in one of brian's threads about nuke's blowing up nukes..
Do you think that would be acceptable ?

Uber has asked us not to, if they change thier mind we'll reconsider. In the end as we've said The Vanguard program was not a direct result from the letter itself, we did not propose the Vanguard program within it.

Mike

That is actually a good example of why I think it currently is the wrong way round for two reasons. (Referring to the capitalized, red "personally" marking. Correct me if that's not what you meant.)

One: When reading through the thread, this draws my attention towards it. But it's "just" a personal opinion, just like the majority of posts in the thread. So it appears odd to me, that it's marked to stand out this much.

Two: You are (as of right now) not a PV. So now there's a post, with a special "personally" marking, by a regular user. Unless you happen to be "in the know", it's not obvious at all that this is due to the fact, that you happened to have been a PV at some point. Imagine if a PV had been around a long time, then leaves the group because he no longer has the time to spare for the tasks involved, and the badge is removed. One moment to another, all his "vanguard mode" posts lose that association. And unless you know on which day somebody joined (and left) the PVs and check the timestamp every time you read one of their old posts, you have no idea if they were just blabbing along or actually representing the PVs.

Given that both of these issues go away if you turn the color coding around, I just prefer marking "the uber-word".

I am well pleased with the improvement in communication which I can only assume is partially a result of interactions thus far. Thank you

I get that ..
I was just mainly asking tho if you think .. as long as it's stated so people know our personal opinion from uber's..

ALSO
Yes i may have dropped the blue badge for the moment, but that is because of my Social Anxiety Disorder..
When i had the badge on i felt like a man trapped in a box made of eyes..
and those eyes were closing in on me crushing me.
It had real life "Physical" effects on me. so i had to ask the badge be removed so i could personally "Feel Invisible" until i can work out how to deal with being under the scrutiny of 1000's of people without it effecting me so adversely.
I will restore my blue badge when i feel more secure about myself i think is easiest way to say it..
Sorry if that seems confusing, i just need to deal with "Real Life Illness" before i can prance around online willy nilly under the ever watchful eye of the community..

Yes, I do think it's "acceptable". I can accept a lot of things. I suppose my challenge is: Why settle for acceptable, if it could be great? And I tried to express why I think marking the personal opinion is inferior to marking "the uber-word".

Also, I did not mean to come across condescending, when I said that you are not a PV now. I read about your Anxiety somewhere earlier in this thread and I applaud you for choosing your well-being over holding on to some rather meaningless (in the grand scheme of things) title. I merely took the chance of using this case as a precedence for something that will involuntarily happen at some point: Someone who posted as PV, leaves the group, leaving behind a lot of posts where it's not obvious anymore if they were written during the period where the person belonged to the PVs. And once you've gotten over your anxiety, it seems to me the PVs would be more than happy to have you back. (Resulting in the posts you made between leaving and rejoining the PVs lacking all the "personally" markings, but I hope I got my point across by now? Yes? No? )

Thank-you..
I think your correct here,, maybe instead of stating it's personal opinion it should be assumed personal opinion unless stated "Opinion of Uber" .
That does actually does make more sense..
IMO it probably should be on both "Personal" and "Ubers opinion", then there is less or no confusion at all (hopefully).


Also thank-you for being understanding and having compassion where it comes to my disorder..

I would like to thank everyone who has been considerate of my disorder..
Your kind words make me feel less insecure about myself THANK_YOU!!!

Look, the mission of the vanguards is pretty simply. It's to kick our asses and make sure we are delivering you guys the information you need. They've done a good job of this so far. Everyone should relax a little bit here, there is nothing threatening about this. I understand that people have questions but this is something that is going to evolve over time and that we'll tweak as necessary. Please just relax and let's see how thing go.

You fellows can guard planets all you like, but this game is named Planetary Annihilation and I'm not going to let some measly band of ruffians stop me from blowing **** up!

(I think Planetary Execution Squad would be a more thematically appropriate team name.
Edit: Or Planetary Wrecking Crew. Planetary Demolition Union? Anything that says "planets fear us", really.)

P.S. How do you like my Vanguard Voice™?

I disagree with this heavily. Members of the Vanguard are people who are either very active with the community, or very active with Planetary Annihilation in general. To expect them to put aside their personal opinions in relation to the direction of development is frankly ridiculous.

I've been hearing quite a lot about the vanguards lately from teamspeak. I'm not opposed to it, i think its a good thing it will help Uber get out their information. Them just being able to speak information to the vanguards then they distribute the information throughout the community seems odd at first. However it does allow them to be able to work on the game while spreading new information.

Anything that gets more information out while giving the developers more time to work on the game seems like a win for me. It will be interesting to see how this experiment plays out, but i cant see it being a complete disaster.

For an organisation that is working on our behalf they seem dead set on ignoring and dismissing most off the suggestions made in this thread about becoming more transparent and impartial.

1: They've stated that no data will be collected and distributed on what exactly they are forwarding to you guys.
2: They haven't proposed anything but promises that their own opinions won't bias them in the selection of information to be forwarded.

This means that there is no way for people in the community to check if they are doing their job well.

If there is suddenly 10 times as much information coming out tomorrow, how can we know it's the Vanguards that caused it and not some internal Uber development? Ex: I've painted my door red, now I fell down the stairs. Painting the door must have caused it!

Basically their organisation has no transparency, no accountability towards the community and their poorly organised launch is clouded in mystery.

_____________
EDIT: Just now seeing Brian Purkiss his idea thread. It seems that the Vanguards are now discussing ideas on becoming more transparent. Let's see how that develops.

I actually see that as an awesome idea..
Thank-you again TheKiller..

Each vanguard could keep in individual "Tally" i'm guessing you could call it that is view able by the community, then they can see who's checking what post's and can then post scrutinize over an individual's performance as a part of the team...

But i would personally rather have a smaller group of individual's judge my personal performance as opposed to the ENTIRE WORLD reveiwing me and having their say that just opens things up for easy personal attacks in my opinion.

Another idea is if Lennard is able to add a feature to the forums maybe Vanguards could "Flag" post's to show where they are getting their tally results from..
But that would take time, not something that is in place now and would need implementing into the forum code ..

Well, there is the Like system, that could be used until something more substantial has been developed.

Yes there is that, but it doesn't show vanguard tally's so it doesn't reflect what your seeking in anyway.

-edit--
sorry by that i mean people wouldn't know if it was a vanguard like or just a public like.

The reason is fairly simple if you understand the concept of conflict of interest. The group has opinions on the game and a first hand line of communication with developers. They are naturally going to put their opinions in the front of the queue when they submit their reports to Uber.

Just as you would (should) not have the CEO of a coal company advising the government on matters of energy policy, they have their own interests that will instinctively be put ahead of everyone else.

If they are a collection of fans of the game, how likely is it that they will cherry pick information that is harmful to the vision of the game? People are suddenly worried the PVs will turn into EA or something?? At the end of the day, Uber will look at what is presented to them, take it on board, and carry on however they please. It's still more than we would ever have gotten with a "normal" game development process.

That analogy fails when you consider that the CEO of a coal company wants coal to succeed, which is conflicting with the energy interests of the world. However, with the PVs, they want PA to succeed, which is what Uber want too, along with the rest of us. Why would they sabotage this by choosing bogus information to relay?
Basically, a coal company CEO is out for himself, whereas the fans of this game that are PVs are only here to help make the game better...

I don't doubt that they want PA to succeed. My point was that their own views will take precedence over everyone else.

I can see where you are coming from, but I just don't see the group as a whole giving a terribly skewed idea of what fans what...and if they do, I can't see how it will damage the game as a whole, especially given that no matter what Uber do, some fans will be unhappy (just maybe a different subset in this case)