Introducing the Planetary Vanguards

Good lord, anyone would think the vanguards are the new Bilderberg group of the forums (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group)...
This is merely a group of experienced forum members trying to facilitate ease of communication between fans and developers...It's not like they are going to sabotage the game or lock out fans from voicing their opinions.

The way I see it, we have some of this:

...and some of this...

So, a lot of the replies to this thread are questioning what would happen if we become "powermad", to which we reply there is no power to be mad about. Well, that "if" is becoming a "we must defend ourselves or immediately be accused of doing it". Preemptively. We have only done few things so far, and that was:

1) Write a letter to the devs concerning communication, or lack thereof at the time, while we hadn't heard from them adamantly in a few weeks time. 2) get a response and were asked feedback on what they should inform about. 3) We suggested only things that we saw in the forums were active questions that nearly everyone was involved in, to which they then posted the "brain dump" thread and followed with a livestream of orbital camera.

The above was what we have done. That was what we want to keep up. We don't care about any special powers as we have none. We just do not want the absence of information to cause the forum to lose all interest and have no activity and the little bit of activity there was was all negative.

Ask for participation, the entire community participates in this. We are not special, it is the community. It is not just the Realm, not all our members are Realm. Not all our members post in these forums. Not all our members are "elite high skilled players". The only thing we all are, is positive and helpful and interested in game development information.

To use a metaphor, we aren't the class council or congress, we are the journalism club or congressional information gatherers (which is a position held by political interns and rookies if I am not mistaken).

At any rate, we are not sure if it should be guilty until proven innocent or innocent until proven guilty, but we haven't had a chance to do either. You should at least give it some time and have some wrongdoing we have done, before actively pursuing Vanguard fallacies.


As Brad said, please actively be involved with the devs, and they will be actively involved with you. We just want to make sure to regularly ask the devs about orbital or about UI or AI or Lobby or Server. We want them to post interesting developments.

Personally!!
I wish everyone could see it like you and a few others do.
But so many people read into things too far i think

I think I know the big problem, it isn't envy, it is this little feeling of downgrade... Like This feeling that you have, when you see another player you know and he has this little blue sight under his name, no not envy, more the feeling I'm-not-worth-it-feeling... I can't explain it better. ( please don't notice this to hard)

Edit: not my opinion, I'm okay with this.

It feels that this is almost what it boils down to. A subconscious feeling of indignation that "I wasn't picked". But, in fairness, I can see where some of the dissenting voices come from. "Why segregate the fans now, when Uber have done okay up until now on their own?". And, I think the response to that is "maybe they have reached a point where it isn't easy enough to constantly monitor all of these threads for debates of merit.".

Ok then, so I'm confused.

I had originally thought the Planetary Vanguards were a way for the Devs to pull back from the forums a little and have the general populations ideas consolidated by a few people before being passed on - both of which should allow them to focus more on development and less on babysitting the community.

Yet this aparently isn't the case and the devs are still going to be rolling around the forums talking to us. So what's the point in the Planetary Vanguards? If the devs have an answer about something, how is if faster to tell the Vanguards privately and have them post, than just make a post about it themselves?
I wonder this even more than it comes to the 'confidential' clause in the Vanguard code... if it cant be shared with the community, why waste time telling the Vanguards about it in the first place?

I don't want more communication than we have now if it means less time spent developing...

I saw the same thing too. People seem to think that if they haven't been asked to be a vanguard, they must not be as important. I can't imagine that Uber actually sees it this way, because they have made it clear over and over that they appreciate the community. What Uber seems to be doing is looking for a way to mark some users as more trusted, so that you know information you get from them is a little more "official" than rumors you might get from people like me. They're backing that trust up by creating a way to make it easier for vanguard people to have more direct and candid conversations with devs. Obviously Uber can't make every dev available to every community member all the time, so I see this as a reasonable compromise.

That said, I'm still not sure the vanguard will actually matter. Uber devs have said they will still visit the forums and interact with the rest of us, so I don't know if we even really need the vanguard. Once or twice, the devs have needed a reminder to involve the community, and I'm glad they have responded to that criticism. It's good to see that Uber is doing everything it can for us, but only time will tell whether this vanguard experiment is worth anything at all.

I agree. At the time they say their letter was sent, I think we all noticed how quiet Uber devs had become. The vanguard pointed it out to Uber, and the problem was fixed. I don't see any need for more to be done than that, but it probably won't hurt to keep the vanguard around in case the devs go quiet again and need another kick.

I think Uber has been doing well with communication, definitely much better than any other devs or games I have followed.
But "doing well" isn't great.
And great still isn't awesome.

Remember this thread? "2 months to release and the game feels like pre-alpha and is a letdown. Please delay the release."
I don't think that thread was really healthy for anybody.
It doesn't make for a positive game community.
I would assume it's pretty demoralizing for the devs as well.


But then we have the positives from @neutrino
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/game-status-brain-dump.54188/
I think that info was really good and appreciated by everybody.
A bit overwhelming, but quality info that us fans very much appreciated.


And that latest live stream? I think the best one yet.
@BradNicholson got questions from the community.
And Uber answered.

I want more of that.

My opinion, right. Also actually each instantaneous vanguard is worth their "position" they doing really great work and helping the community a lot already before they become a vanguard. Keep working guys with or without a "title" !

See what I'm starting to not understand about the Vanguard though is how are they anything other than a drain on Ubers time? Uber are going to be staying in the forums, Brad just confirmed it. What can the Vanguard do that is worth more of Uber's time?

More communication = more time away from development however you look at it.

I do remember the "2 months to release and the game feels like pre-alpha and is a letdown. Please delay the release." The question is though, if the Vanguards had been around then, what would they have done about it? Are you saying Uber hadn't seen it and you would have bought it to their attention? I personally think they didn't respond because they didn't have any more information at the time/didn't want to get embroiled in that kind of debate at that point in development (maybe I'm wrong).

Communication is important, but I don't want more communication if that means taking time away from something like development.

I still want Uber to be able to get on with things in peace, take our feedback/advice when they need it and ignore us when they dont.

Inevitably, we'll miss something that's important to someone (or a lot of folks). The Vanguards will help us make sure we don't. That's a big part of this.

Yeah I must say the devs have gotten a lot better at communication, more noticably recently, with neutrino posting about graphic development, brad letting us know when the patches are due and the sneak peak of are commands by metabolical. There will be a time when communication gets worse and vanguards are a great alternative.

I personally dont see how so many people from the same clan was overlooked or the people responsible didnt just put their hands up and go yeah we may have gotten it wrong, but let's see how this trial period goes and we can then take it further. I feel this would have made this process a lot easier and let them get to work instead of arguing with us trolls.

@clopse
Please don't consider yourselves trolls
Everyone here has viable reasons for asking the questions they do, and are they also entitled to answers to those questions..

As Max said, not a troll, in the slightest. You're asking legitimate questions. However, to make sure it's crystal clear, there wasn't an issue of "overlooking so many people from the same clan". That was the group that approached us and took that initiative. They were the first ones added. It really is as simple as that.

Well, with one exception. Due to what the group finally became, I did specifically request one very active member of the community also be invited, and he accepted. But that's about as hands on as we've been with the creation of this group, other than simply providing the label so people know that when they assert something that we are doing as 'fact' that, as far as our current plans go, it is in fact a fact. How's that fact? Can I use the word fact a few more times. And.. I'm done. And that's a fact.

Hmm, dont really care for this idea, some of the choices are questionable indeed. But grats to those of you that i agree are good for this spot.

I'm not entirely convinced that the Planetary Vanguards is actually a good thing. My issues with it are:

1. Initial communication: As somebody that visits this forum atleast once a day, I had no idea that there was something like the Planetary Vanguards. It was implemented before the community was informed about the idea.
I'm sure there was plenty of feedback between the people who approached uber and uber themselves, but I feel that the rest of the community was left in the dark about this.

2. Member selection: First let me make one thing clear, I don't want to be a vanguard so it's not a case of envy here. But it was decided that the people who approached uber should be the members. And while I don't have any issues with the people that ended up in the group. I again feel like the selection process was something that was done without informing the rest of the community.

3. The implications: So the whole point is information facilitation. My first question with this is how will the information be selected and how will be ensured that the right type of information reaches the hands of Uber Entertainment.


The way I see it, feedback would normally be handpicked by Uber Entertainment themselves. But if information is being picked by another group of people in between the community and Uber Entertainment. Basically creating a filter system. I'm aware that forums can be a messy place, and that some kind of filtering is a good idea. But at the same time it would mean that information through the Planetary Vanguards is relying purely on the idea that they are going to remain completely neutral. It worries me that this is a very thin line that can be crossed very easily even if it's unintentional.

4. What does this mean for newcomers?: There are all sorts of people that come to the forum, and many people don't even bother reading the sticky threads. Chances are that people just see the banner around the name and think Planetary Vanguards are some kind of moderators, administrators or atleast people with some kind of special role in the community. Basic forum behaviour is that people that are "well known" are easily prioritized over people that aren't so well known. Which is kind of what I'm worried will happen here, even if the group themselves don't intend for this to happen. It puts credibility to something as simple as a tag, instead of putting credibility on the person.

Now I may just be misunderstanding it, so I'm all ears for anyone who can explain me why this is not the case.

I can see Planetary Vanguards work similarly as Interstellar Services Department (ISD) or The Council of Stellar Management (CSM) for EVE Online.

Also Planetary Vanguard position is not a job. It is a responsibility.

Perhaps for some this 'jealousy' exists, but i know that i would make a terrible vanguard member. I just cant refrain myself from calling other people bad and their thoughts terrible, which is not what a vanguard can do. The reason i voice such opposition against such a major amount of vanguard members being realm members is because of the potential of bias. From past experience, most, if not all, realm members have alligned thoughts on the direction of the game.

I personally dont understand why this vanguard scenario needs such a large amount of members to begin with.

Also, can anyone clarify what the role of Community Manager is supposed to be?

alright first of all, I don't mistrust these folks, I'm not jealous of having a blue tag thingy and I'm not interested in becoming a vanguard myself.

however, I think right now is in fact the time to ask all about what the vanguard does and how they will respond to certain situations. this is their formative periods afterall. We as a community decide now how we want this structure to behave, we're establishing a status quo.

Asking 25+ questions with a critical tone is not prosecution, it's done to stimulate discussion and pointing out possible problems now before they turn into something preposterous.