The first day of Vanguard Command has come and gone and while it may not have been introduced to the spectacular fanfare I expected, to quote Costello: "Rome was not built in a day." However, throughout the day today the Phoenix Development Team has been monitoring your behavioral patterns and how you use the Vanguard Command site to see what we can improve on. Furthermore, with input from people like Bailo, we have also heard some feedback to the prematurely launched Community Nexus.
As Forum Lead I am going to take the time to address people's concerns as best I can and I encourage each of you to continue blogging and posting your comments and suggestion. Remember, Vanguard Command is unlike its predecessor: we are building it from the ground up with a community focus and with that there are some changes abound.
On the Subject of Moving Forward
As Costello mentioned in the formal welcome post to Vanguard Command, the Star Trek gaming community has been ailing for years and our golden roots in the Trek era have long since past.
An Intrepid-class starship with two destinations to choose from. Credit: Unknown
When we ventured out on Project Phoenix we literally had two paths we could follow: the one that Federation Command did and build a "clan" or roll the dice on building not just a "clan" but a gaming community. The latter made more sense considering most of Federation Command knew each other for years we weren't just "fleetmates" anymore - we were a family.
So we chose the second path and I doubt any of us will have regrets but we will have to learn as we truly travel into the unknown.
Release Candidate 2
In the lower right hand corner of the Vanguard Command Community Nexus you'll notice version information - a holdover from the days of the United Federation of Planets and Federation Command. Right now, we're running Release Candidate 2 (RC2). You may be asking yourself, "why aren't we running a finalized version of the site?" That would be a good question.
Truthfully, we ran into trouble near the end - trouble as in everything collapsing in on us. So we weren't able to finish everything and were forced to launch the Community Nexus in an unfinished state.
Some Caveats
The first person to point out any issues was Bailo in a blog that you can find here. He does address some very good points which I'm going to answer here.
Firstly, the Chatbox. How many of you all would like to see it only on the Forum Home? That's an easy fix if you all want it. FYI: did you also know you can expand the Chatbox to a full screen page and have real-time instant messaging conversations with others?
Second was about closing all the forum bars (the Categories) by default. There are a lot of them - a lot more than Federation Command ever had. However, this is never going to happen. It prevents search engines from indexing the site - counterproductive to say the least.
Thirdly, if you are one of the lucky ones to already have your Rank and Wing Echelon assigned to you and visited your profile you'll notice they are lowercase and one word when you view their text. That's a limitation of the underlying technology driving it and can't be helped. The reality is however, no one is actually going to take a look at that - most will see the images next to each and every post you make on the Community Nexus.
Finally, Bailo brought up the most important point of all: there's a lot of things to do on the forums whether that be something as simple as blogging, watching Twitch, or creating Competitions. It will take a lot of getting used to - it's been a decade since UFP and is to be expected. Vanguard Command is a paradigm shift from our roots and will take getting used to.
Release Candidate 3
I am not making any promises here as the investment into developing the forums has taken a lot of time but the goal is to push out Release Candidate 3 (RC3) on Sunday which among other things will include the Elite Dangerous forums.
Of course, there's a few other things I'm hoping will be implemented by Release Candidate 3 (RC3):
- Live Forum Search
- User Ranks and Wings Echelon
- Name Changes for those Who Requested One
- Forum Viewing Permissions
- Users to the right Usergroups
Three items may be delayed until Release Candidate 4 (RC4) which will hopefully be the final development version. As a special bonus I will share the crown jewel of RC4 with you today: Facebook Connect. It is literally ready as of this evening but a few logistics will delay it until we can push out RC4.
To quote Costello, "the work will never be done" but with RC4 I believe Vanguard Command will be in a good position to start reaching out to former contacts and make new friends.
If you haven't already, join our Steam Group and Star Citizen Organization as they will play an important role in the future of Vanguard Command. Also, don't forget to link your Steam account!
On behalf of the Phoenix Project Development Team I want to thank you all for your patience as we move forward.
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