Spectrum beneficial or waste of assets

[Michael]

I vote all three...
I think there are programs that exist already which fill the niche, and that CIG should be working on completing the game.
I think that it's beneficial to the ORG as it will help the ultra lazy "I already joined CIG, now you want me to join Discord and some Forum, I'm too lazy to do all that hard work..." types get into the overall community. But do we really want to get to know those other 9500 members of TEST that were too lazy/drunk to sign up for the Forums or Discord?
And Discord does work fine. Facebook works fine. Testsquadron.com work fine....

You make it sound like its a bad idea. ^^
(actually i still havn't unlocked discord ... shame on me, too much work going on here)

I'm hoping for some options discord afaik doesn't have, like some kind of adequate Fleet and Ship internal communication system. I would still keep discord as option or some kind of additional channel.

 

[Frisbeerocker]

Munken, Chrizz and I spent 2 hours the morning after CitCon discussing Spectrum. Very hung over.

So, for 90% of the community, it will be fantastic. But for the rest of us, who have active discord servers and our own forums, this is annoying. We have spent 4 years refining Testsquadron.com. Now they are going to force us to just their own platform. Discord is amazing. But now they want to force us to use their own platform.

Generally, this topic agitates me. So we will see how it goes when they finally launch it in a year.

 

[Crymsan]

In some respects keep giving the project more money will keep throwing up extra things that will be cutting edge and more features and will make things better. The more of these they add the more chance one or more will be delayed. Ambition is great for the game but I am not sold on them needing to improve everything else.

I do wonder whether the game would be more likely to release if they had less money to work with.

Since they have announced they are adding it I hope it will be great and will work without draining to much funds.

 

[chrizz]

as frisbee said we talked about it the day after.

i want to add some points from my point of view:

obviously this is directed to all the small orgs/clans that don't have the manpower and ressources to host their own forums, voice comms and chat and that is amazing.

TEST (and other big orgs) obviously don't need it, at least not in the beginning. we got amazing forums with groups features, with a twitch plugin and everything else we want to do, because we can implement stuff how we see everything fit. we can develop our own stuff and customize to our likings. we have discord now, that almost perfectly combines voice chat and text chat and it is fast and sleek. and we were already planning to integrate it into the forums user DB (e.g. a member with the role "group leader" on forums could easily be copied to discord and he'd also have the role/tag "group leader".

now spectrum comes along and wants to do EVERYTHING (i bet they closely looked at TEST and other orgs, how they function and what drives activity). not only they want to implement all these features, but they want to set it up as a closed system.

so we won't be able to properly customize it to our own needs.

and that is a problem. because either we move to spectrum early on and lose all the features and services we have now, or we have both and split up our community to several locations.

i don't think i could be bothered with 2 or 3 chat systems/windows, apps on my phone. it's either spectrum or our own stuff.

and in the end we won't even have a choice, because spectrum will be tightly integrated into the game.

and that is stupid, at least from my PoV.


and my biggest (and personal) rant of all is: spectrum could have been implemented 2 years ago, or at least started. we wouldn't have spent so much time growing the community in TEST, now with >4K registered members on forums, with >2K registered users on discord. it feels like we have to abandon and retire our in place services because spectrum comes along.

why could it been started 2 years ago ? because there was a vote on RSI: do you want turbulent to work on Org 2.0 features or do you want them to work on a starmap.

that stupid (but amazing) and useless starmap took them forever, and only because people voted for sth shiny instead of sth that made sense.

that's why i feel salty.


but in the end spectrum is good for the whole SC communtiy.

 

[JackAvalon]

Most of the time, I see us(Test) using Spectrum. It will allow great communication to haulers, miners, farmers, science dudes, and medical staff.

When it comes to combat ops(war, black ops, piracy, and recon/data running), i see us using Discord with permission only rooms. That way we can keep our locations and info as secret as possible.

The only way we wont be using Discord is if the Glorious Leader says Spectrum only.

 

[maynard]

...When it comes to combat ops(war, black ops, piracy, and recon/data running), i see us using Discord with permission only rooms. That way we can keep our locations and info as secret as possible...

do you really think we will be able to keep secrets in TEST?

you must be new here

 

[AntiSqueaker]

Pros- Really idiot proof for people to get into. Hosted by RSI and hooked up on the main site. No more people not finding the forums.

Kinda 3rd party voice chat that is also integrated into the game (directional audio for instance) could be really cool.

Cons- We already have a Discord and Forums that work out really well.

It's unclear if the forums would be OUR forums hosted by CIG....or CIG letting each org have their own forum. Big difference in moderation and stuff, I don't want douchey RSI mods to be telling us off for shitposting and circlejerking over stuff.

Also unclear how customizable voice chat and stuff will work. I'm sure even when SC is launched we'll have people playing FPS's, MOBA's, RTS's etc etc on Discord with other TEST buddies. If CIG frowns upon using the Spectrum Chat for non-SC stuff that could be a problem.


Overall I say plan to stick with Discord and our forums unless Spectrum blows our socks off with super cool stuff.

 

[JackAvalon]

do you really think we will be able to keep secrets in TEST?

you must be new here

I believe that our incompetency knows no bounds! I also believe that we have some of the most sly and crafty gamers out there. Makes for a deadly combination. Anyone we set our sights on will truly have no idea where we will come from until their Sun is blotted out by all our Auroras!

 

[rogesh]

I believe that our incompetency knows no bounds! I also believe that we have some of the most sly and crafty gamers out there. Makes for a deadly combination. Anyone we set our sights on will truly have no idea where we will come from until their Sun is blotted out by all our Auroras!

Then you hear over the coms:
"dude. I think that's the wrong sun"

 

[Han Burgundy]

Spectrum sounds like an excellent interface for staying connected to your org and your character when away from your PC. Imagine a world where you can sort and organize your cargo assets while taking a shit! It may very well replace reddit as my defecation time distraction. That way, I can shit post while I shit! Brilliant!

 

[Grimm_Reaper]

I feel spectrum is going to be good because CIG will constantly support to make sure it works as intended integrated with the game while third parties like discord etc need to make sure their system works in the background with no conflicting issues and that it does not take too much bandwidth or interfere with gameplay over multiple games. In game I've had issues where discord needs administrative privileges to work over a games setting in the foreground.

I just feel its less headache for the organisation to worry about as new updates and patches are released because you know any issue with spectrum will always be taken care of almost immediately to not interfere with the games functioning. With also mobile integration etc and the use of just our RSI accounts rather than multiple it just seems more fluid in my opinion.

 

[I_MIKE_I]

My first impression during the stream was pretty much "yeah... let's get it over with...".

I'm still somewhat sceptical weither or not having forums and so on in the hands of CIG is such a great idea, but I believe the voice-chat incorporated into the game does kinda make sense. Discord isn't bad, but I think it's just not able to keep up with some of the situations we'll eventually see in SC.

Even if the first few versions of it would suck, we could push them towards improvements, while discord won't really care too much about how well it's suited for commanding a fleet of ships.

Another aspect would be, that we could give all Members ingame notifications about the Forum etc., so it's not just the couple people currently active on the forum.

 

[Schmunkel]

I would much rather see developer resources directed toward the hard problems CR outlined at CitizenCon

a shiny comms suite can wait until the game has gone live and a few balance passes implemented

bah humbug

This. I feel like feature creep has pushed this game back at least 2 years. Remember when planets were just going to be a landing zone? Well now we are going to procedurally generate them and go anywhere on them, which is awesome, but it comes with the price of release pushback. I feel the same way about Spectrum in that it is cool but is going to push the release back even further and could have been added after release.

 

[Ryonin Shonin]

This. I feel like feature creep has pushed this game back at least 2 years. Remember when planets were just going to be a landing zone? Well now we are going to procedurally generate them and go anywhere on them, which is awesome, but it comes with the price of release pushback. I feel the same way about Spectrum in that it is cool but is going to push the release back even further and could have been added after release.

I thought spectrum was being developed by staff who's job was to design those interfaces? I may be wrong. My take was those people would otherwise not be working if they weren't focusing on spectrum.

Is it possible to make Discord the official voice and chat channels for star citizen. CIG has said a couple of times that they like to use resources that are allready available. Why reinvent the wheel. I'm not a programmer so I'm only speculating but it would be awesome if there was a way for orgs to use the discord servers they already have inside spectrum.

 

[ShakyWater]

If it works, keeping more stuff in game without switching out windows will be a plus, in my view. It would be nice to see a name and avatar pop up when someone is talking, so you know who it is.

 

[Schmunkel]

I thought spectrum was being developed by staff who's job was to design those interfaces? I may be wrong. My take was those people would otherwise not be working if they weren't focusing on spectrum.

Is it possible to make Discord the official voice and chat channels for star citizen. CIG has said a couple of times that they like to use resources that are allready available. Why reinvent the wheel. I'm not a programmer so I'm only speculating but it would be awesome if there was a way for orgs to use the discord servers they already have inside spectrum.

The way I see it even if it was a separate team it is still time and money devoted to something non-essential to the game that 3rd parties like Discord already have covered. Plus, it is one more thing they have to integrate into the total package.

If it works, keeping more stuff in game without switching out windows will be a plus, in my view. It would be nice to see a name and avatar pop up when someone is talking, so you know who it is.

See, I have two monitors, so the second one is nice for keeping voice coms up. With Spectrum, I doubt I will be able to do that. Other voice programs such as Curse Voice already have overlays for other games that let you know who is talking. I would much rather CIG partner up with someone that has an existing solution than attack this right now. I'm sure it is too late to change though.