Turbulent vs. CIG community management

[Ploeperpengel]

On a more serious note: can anyone with insight clarify for me whats the difference? Did CIG outsource community relations as a whole to Turbulent or are they just website developers who do a terrible job with CIGs own community management being equally obnoxious?

Spectrum has been in a bad state for quite some time now and overall communication with the community has been horrible forever as well. We all laugh at the "salt mines". But is it really the community alone that is to blame here? Who is really responsible for the communication disaster that is spectrum?

 

[Shadow Reaper]

Can you say why and how it is a disaster?

 

[Black Sunder]

Turbulent are just the web developers.

 

[Blind Owl]

Turbulent are just the web developers.

I used cans of that silly spray and made webs for halloween. Can I work at Turbulent?

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Definitly (in reply to the second post). In terms of website tech it is pretty much still a dumbed down forum. Remember the old one one: https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/24718/star-citizen-economy-and-employment/p ?
That switch happened a long time ago and spectrum still hasn't recovered basic functions like i.e. polls where I happened to start another request thread upon here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/5/thread/can-we-have-polls-please
But I just discovered it is an old request that has been out there about one and a half years and didn't get a response by the webdevs to this day! Apart from this particular issue there are also no responses to requests for new ship subfora or anything else that has an intention to put some order into it. Spectrum is a mess. It's hard to navigate and it's cluttered with redundand posts nobody apparently cares about to join or put into an appropriate place to organize the discussion.

The situation is no different with the obvios CIG employed community managers who state to spend most of their time communicating with backers in interviews (Zyloh i.e. in some Jumppoint I don't remember the the exact issue) but the Dev tracker spots a reply maybe only once a month if we are lucky (or two or three) which makes me wonder what they are actually working on during the rest of the month.

Overall communication is only top down. CIG spreads information without much regard to backer concerns as they rarily get a reply - Ask the Devs is an example of that but I made my case regarding this in my spectrum post linked above - I don't want to have developers spending their time on community questions they should develope the game but where is the community management? Yes there are Q&As but again just top down. A couple of backer questions get addressed by upvotes but again - they answer some of those questions but there is no meaningful way (like i.e. polls) to initiate a bottom up backer demand in a meaningful way that gets a response.

There is a reason spectrum is called the "salt mines".

My thesis is:

Spectrum could be a better place to be and it would benefit the developement of the game!

But we need to identify the actual issues and find the proper channels to address them. I could be wrong about some points I made and I request input.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I used cans of that silly spray and made webs for halloween. Can I work at Turbulent?

Apparently! :D

 

[Bambooza]

Definitly (in reply to the second post). In terms of website tech it is pretty much still a dumbed down forum. Remember the old one one: https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/24718/star-citizen-economy-and-employment/p ?
That switch happened a long time ago and spectrum still hasn't recovered basic functions like i.e. polls where I happened to start another request thread upon here: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/5/thread/can-we-have-polls-please
But I just discovered it is an old request that has been out there about one and a half years and didn't get a response by the webdevs to this day! Apart from this particular issue there are also no responses to requests for new ship subfora or anything else that has an intention to put some order into it. Spectrum is a mess. It's hard to navigate and it's cluttered with redundand posts nobody apparently cares about to join or put into an appropriate place to organize the discussion.

The situation is no different with the obvios CIG employed community managers who state to spend most of their time communicating with backers in interviews (Zyloh i.e. in some Jumppoint I don't remember the the exact issue) but the Dev tracker spots a reply maybe only once a month if we are lucky (or two or three) which makes me wonder what they are actually working on during the rest of the month.

Overall communication is only top down. CIG spreads information without much regard to backer concerns as they rarily get a reply - Ask the Devs is an example of that but I made my case regarding this in my spectrum post linked above - I don't want to have developers spending their time on community question they should develope the game but where is the community management? Yes there are Q&As but again just top down. A couple of backer questions get addressed by upvotes but again - they answer some of those questions but there is no meaningful way (like i.e. polls) to initiate a bottom up baker demand in a meaningful way that gets a response.

There is a reason spectrum is called the "salt mines".

My thesis is:

Spectrum could be a better place to be and it would benefit the developement of the game!

But we need to identify the actual issues and find the proper channels to address them. I could be wrong about some points I made and I request input.

You're not wrong. Spectrum was pushed out before it was ready and is missing a lot of features that are still missing. I do not know if this is because Turbulent is not capable or if they are overly busy with attempting to hook into game engine api's for things like voice, chat as well as org features and other things that are suppose to be accessible outside the game in Spectrum.

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Turbulent are just the web developers.

Ok thx for this clarification. Now are the community managers just overwhelmed?

 

[Blind Owl]

Apparently! :smile:

Fuck this, I'm pulling pin on the army then, haha

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I appreciate the time you took for your response. I don't use spectrum since I am not yet a supporter. I don't have a gaming machine nor the time for that yet. Has to wait.

I would just note though, that communication really does need to remain top down. There are certainly ways for CIG to get the pulse of the community, and they hear feedback when it is significant. I think it's well to keep in mind though, that no project like this could possibly survive a running conversation with the fans, who all want different things and hold basically no responsibility toward their opinions. Any real attempt to create a running conversation would have literally thousands of danger points and very, very little benefit, and I for one don't want to see any CIG folk waste their time like that.

This is a game, but CIG is a business, and it needs to be run like a business.

 

[Agent_Mothman]

Now are the community managers just overwhelmed?

Always

 

[Ploeperpengel]

I appreciate the time you took for your response. I don't use spectrum since I am not yet a supporter. I don't have a gaming machine nor the time for that yet. Has to wait.

I would just note though, that communication really does need to remain top down. There are certainly ways for CIG to get the pulse of the community, and they hear feedback when it is significant. I think it's well to keep in mind though, that no project like this could possibly survive a running conversation with the fans, who all want different things and hold basically no responsibility toward their opinions. Any real attempt to create a running conversation would have literally thousands of danger points and very, very little benefit, and I for one don't want to see any CIG folk waste their time like that.

This is a game, but CIG is a business, and it needs to be run like a business.

Have to disagree to a degree here. I stated in my spectrum post that quality has to be the priority and polls should not be followed just because they reached a majority. My request there was simply that the community management should address popular polls with a reasoning as to why they will follow a determined backer will or not. That's basically what every good customer service should do. Provide the customer with a good reason why his demand can't be serviced like he wants to and provide him with a reasonable compromise so that he(I implicate she) doesn't feel ignored. That's where CIG community managemant currently utterly fails.

 

[DirectorGunner]

CIG is parent company which legal name is Cloud Imperium Games Corporation.
Divisions

• Cloud Imperium Games Texas, LLC
• Cloud Imperium Games UK Ltd.

Subsidiaries

• Foundry 42 Ltd.
• Foundry 42 Germany
• Roberts Space Industries Corp.
• Roberts Space Industries International Ltd.

Their web development technology (the website, spectrum, integrating the game data with the website, etc) is subcontracted out to Turbulent.
Turbulent I believe has other clients.

Community Management has nothing to do with Turbulent.
Disco, Tyler (the best Tyler), and Tyler Nolan, and the new CM in germany all work for CIG, they do not work for Turbulent.

Although turbulent interacts with backers on Spectrum, they are not in charge of community management.

The former TESTie who was a mod and recently got hired as a paid official forum moderator works for CIG.
The rest of the forum mods are volunteers.
And ofc, all official CIG staff get gold names in spectrum.

 

[Printimus]

I wonder if they have been waiting on OCS as well? I know you all are thinking that OCS is really only for the game client, but with it's implementation, it frees up a lot of resources which could then be used to talk to Spectrum from in game, the way CIG intended it to. Just a thought.

 

[Bambooza]

I wonder if they have been waiting on OCS as well? I know you all are thinking that OCS is really only for the game client, but with it's implementation, it frees up a lot of resources which could then be used to talk to Spectrum from in game, the way CIG intended it to. Just a thought.

It could but I have a feeling its more the server mesh that has a bigger impact on Spectrum then a 2d overlay.

 

[Mich Angel]

Reason Spectrum is not more developed out that we see it is because it will be integrated in to game engine and the game, some features can't be added in spectrum until game have the features needed for it to be added. Hence from outside it seem like development of spectrum is slow but you just don't see all what's going on in background at this time.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

The Volunteer section of the Moderation team has been released from their commitments it seems? A lot of the international language chat-sections have been temporarily closed until mods with such language skills can be employed, too.

As for functions, Spectrum only recently got the ability to flag posts for mod attention and still has not Poll function which are basics on a forum... I still remember when it launched and there were no dedicated ship manufacture forums with it intended to all be handled with tags like a Redit - and then the first concept ship arrived without a tag ready for it and all shit went down...

The move from the old forum lost a bunch of regulars and lost a bunch of that community spirit which takes time to revive. A lot of time. Consierge is pretty chummy but even a room full of people who have backed to the tune of $1000+ is missing that je ne se quoi that the old forum had...

We'll get there. I have no idea how, but we'll get there.

 

[Bambooza]

in the mean time we have this forum with all of its

je ne se quoi

or as others put it, shit posting.

As much as I would like to say Turbulent has been working behind with engine integration, I am finding myself wondering if they were another CIG misstep given that Spectrum is missing so many forum features that have been industry standard for over a decade and the amount of time Turbulent had prior to its launch and still even years later after countless updates. I have a feeling that the blame lays with both CIG in not having a clear expectation of what they wanted and Turbulent lacking the back end developers needed to truly pull off a ground up recreation of a common forum. While Turbulent has talented web designers they seem to lack on their team software engineers.

 

[NaffNaffBobFace]

As much as I would like to say Turbulent has been working behind with engine integration, I am finding myself wondering if they were another CIG misstep given that Spectrum is missing so many forum features that have been industry standard for over a decade and the amount of time Turbulent had prior to its launch and still even years later after countless updates. I have a feeling that the blame lays with both CIG in not having a clear expectation of what they wanted and Turbulent lacking the back end developers needed to truly pull off a ground up recreation of a common forum. While Turbulent has talented web designers they seem to lack on their team software engineers.

That's the thing - I don't believe they wanted a refreshed integrated forum, I believe they wanted a Reddit and I don't think that desire has gone away.

Upvoting, whats hot rather than whats latest, that heinous nesting as default rather than chronological, you cant put an image in a post it has to be in a seperate post-box, you cant include video it has to be seperate, no polls, only recently did we get an Ignore feature, only relatively recently did we even get the ability to flag posts, only recently did we get search a basic of any community to the point when you join up you are told to look for old threads on a subject using search before making a new one... None of it seems fluid, its jarring, when was the last time you had to stop typing, click to open and image window, click to load an image and click to open a new text window to start typing again? There are three too many clicks just to put a meme on a post.

it's not a forum and every part that has been made to be a like a forum seems to have been at community demand rather than dev initiation. I don't think it's ever supposed to have been a forum and I think they arn't delighted that the community wants it to be one.

By the way, whats a Reddit?

 

[Ploeperpengel]

Reason Spectrum is not more developed out that we see it is because it will be integrated in to game engine and the game, some features can't be added in spectrum until game have the features needed for it to be added. Hence from outside it seem like development of spectrum is slow but you just don't see all what's going on in background at this time.

Makes to sense stalling normal forum functions for that given that not every forum function needs to be integrated, the already long developement time and it pretty much looks like they just recently started integrating the gamefunctions with the forum without much progress in the meantime.