Andrew, I think you are missing the point here. EV.com was an almost entirely indepentant opperation, Ambrosia was only providing the disk space. Now, it is nothing more than a product pusher. One can almost wonder if you have something against EV itself. Though I obviously don't know the exact sales numbers, I'd bet it's a safe bet that Escape Velosity has been one of the more successful Ambrosia products, and yet it's fans have been lucky to get apathy. True, there is Override, and it has the distinction of being Ambrosia's only sequel, but what is EVO? A glorified plug-in, really. It's only advantage over many of the better EV plugs out there is size, and that hardly outwieghs the cost (not to say I would pay for EVO, I'd sooner wire a check to Skyhawk or toffe). The point is that Ambrosia has truely been more of a hinderance than a greatful company. EV.com would of been better off privately opperated. If anyone thinks I am merely spouting bull, I can point out many cases, from the ousting of laer, probably our best admin, to the creation of this site. I'm also in the dark as to what exactly happened to HHunter. Care to enlighten us? Or maybe you'll just deleate this, I would not be surprised to see this string labeled as spam and promptly nuked.

------------------

Quote

Originally posted by Nullity:
**Andrew, I think you are missing the point here. EV.com was an almost entirely indepentant opperation, Ambrosia was only providing the disk space. Now, it is nothing more than a product pusher.
**

Tell me, specifically, how it is nothing more than a product pusher? Is giving people better, easier access to plugins a "product pusher"? Is giving people an easy to submit/find/read Chronicles section a "product pusher"? Specifics, please.

You've posted quite a few empty accusations; give me substance. Support your claim; I don't think you can, because it is not true.

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

Quote

Originally posted by Nullity:
**
True, there is Override, and it has the distinction of being Ambrosia's only sequel, but what is EVO? A glorified plug-in, really. It's only advantage over many of the better EV plugs out there is size, and that hardly outwieghs the cost (not to say I would pay for EVO, I'd sooner wire a check to Skyhawk or**

:: To each his own; EVO is more popular than EV ever was.

Quote

Originally posted by Nullity:
**
toffe). The point is that Ambrosia has truely been more of a hinderance than a greatful company. EV.com would of been better off privately opperated. If**

Untrue; ev.com WAS privately operated, and you know what happened? The site was rarely updated, large sections of it were left unfinished, it was hostile to anyone outside of the clique, there were dead links, plugins took forever to get released, and on and on...

Quote

Originally posted by Nullity:
**
anyone thinks I am merely spouting bull, I can point out many cases, from the ousting of laer, probably our best admin, to the creation of this site. I'm also in the dark as to what exactly happened to HHunter. Care to enlighten us? Or maybe you'll just deleate this, I would not be surprised to see this string labeled as spam and promptly nuked.
**

This web site is significantly better than the one before it; it also is easier to update, maintain, moderate, etc. The Add-On Files section is positively awesome compared to the dead-link-ridden, rarely updated HTML plugin section you had before.

I am done with this "argument" unless you can point out SPECIFIC substantive areas where you feel this site is worse than what you had before.

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Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

(This message has been edited by andrew (edited 04-21-2000).)

Well, I personally cant think of anything to complain about. Except personal opinions, which will be promptly shrugged off as an opinion.

The site is like all the others. The EV community (meaning both EV and EVO) was always different. It was a different game, different site, had a real community, ect.

The site is also not a site about the game. It's a site to SELL the game.

Sure, there are plugins and the like, but it's doing about as much as the origonal Ambrosia EV/O sites - just the little intro, some graphics, a link to buy it and a link to download it.

And, finally. escape-velocity.com should NOT point to ambrosiasw.com/games/evo.

That, if nothing else is, is selling out.

~S~

------------------
Life is but a dream. Pass the coffee, please.
Could I have an order of Discboard with that?

Quote

Originally posted by Skunko7:
**The site is also not a site about the game. It's a site to SELL the game.
**

You gave me ZERO specifics to back this up.

------------------
Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

I will have to take your word that EVO was more popular than EV. I could point out many reasons why this might be other than superior quality, but that would be drifting from the topic.
When I said EV.com would of been better off privately operated, I really meant privately owned. I would definitely dispute that it was worse off before. The site being rarely updated wasn't ever much of an issue as I saw it. The heart of the old site was really just the board(s), and I think it's the heart of the issue here as well. Perhaps large sections were left unfinished while I wasn't looking, but I never remember this happening while I visited the site regularly. Hostility to newbies did happen, but rarely to those that acted with much intelligence. Dead links is another claim I cannot quite remember as important or noticeable. Lastly, I cannot see how EV.com's private operation had anything to do with slow releases, or how the official EV/O homepage AmbrosiaSW edition rectifies that. I see nothing particularly awe-inspring about the difficult to navigate 'plug-in section.' The majority of its entries have no description; to anyone who pokes beneath the surface of the currently popular plugs, it has little substance. Most of the other advantages you point out are only apparent to the administrators.
The specifics you were looking for from Skunko are obvious. The download and purchase links are above all the community links, and the constant banner ads once weren't a fixture. It has precisely the same structure as every other Ambrosia game. I know I'm just restating what other people already said, but evidently the obviousness is needed.
My main problem with the current site, which is probably what you are looking for, is how closely it is tied to Ambrosia. Without more independence, the number and diversity of people will remain low, and without that, you can hardly expect many new plugs to be written or pages to be created. The community left to EV is a shadow of it's former self. The board is not much more than a free support line. I find it difficult to think how this could ever keep a regular interested for more than a month.
I could of course, be wrong. Perhaps all the life has just been moved to the Newswire and Chronicles areas, I haven't browsed them enough to be sure. But I am dubious. Maybe it's not your fault at all that EV/O is less healthy than ever, but it is curtain that you haven't helped.

------------------
- Nobody

Danke, Nobody.

On the old page, there was offical information - and we all know that some things sell better than others.

99 cents is proven to sell more stuff than 1 dollar prices. The word "New" sells, even if 'new' is crap (I'm not hinting at anything here, this is something I've noticed - I downloaded a new version of Netscape, I refered to it as new, parent and sister called it 'better' without trying it.). Offical is the same. There are others, stuff that's more modern. Such as the web site stuff, 'log on', ect ect.

I dont really want to get into sales and marketing physcology, but..

There were also flaws on the old one - it took me a large deal of time to find a download link on the old site (when I first downloaded EVO, and had no experiance with the net.)

However, there are still flaws. The old plugins that are NOT rated high are hard to find. A listing of all plugins is hard to find.

As for specifics, the old site had information about the game, stuff for the game, ect. It had links for the game, a few of which were old. However, the info there was good. There WAS info.

Now, there's a sales pitch.

~S~

------------------
Life is but a dream. Pass the coffee, please.
Could I have an order of Discboard with that?

Quote

Originally posted by andrew:
**.... The site was rarely updated, large sections of it were left unfinished, it was hostile to anyone outside of the clique, there were dead links, plugins took forever to get released, and on and on...

**

Hostile to anyone outside the clique? Can you give any specifics of that? And specifics of how the current site is an improvement in this regard?

I really have not observed any change, except that registering with the UBB system is much more 'hostile' than posting on the discboard was.

------------------
Joe Burnette

"I find that humans can be divided into only two meaningful categories: Decent Humans and Sonsofbitches; both types appear to be evenly distributed
among all shapes, colors, sizes, and nationalities." -- Keith Laumer

Quote

Originally posted by Skunko7:
**
However, there are still flaws. The old plugins that are NOT rated high are hard to find. A listing of all plugins is hard to find.
**

untrue -- click on any of the "view more" links under any of the plugin lists, then you can view them by name, date, download count, rating -- whatever you wish, broken up in pages just like Alta Vista searches. This is far more than what the old site offered, and it's easier to use, too.

Quote

Originally posted by Skunko7:
**
Now, there's a sales pitch.
**

Funny, I don't see a sales pitch anywhere, unless a single word ("Purchase") is a sales pitch.

------------------
Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

Quote

Originally posted by Nullity:
**The site being rarely updated wasn't ever much of an issue as I saw it.
**

Ahhhh, well, this speaks volumes from where you're coming from, then. It might interest you to know that the vast majority of people who visit ev.com -- both the old site and the new one -- did not read the web boards, let alone participate on them. The majority of visitors were looking for plugins to download, hints and tips on the game, etc. I know this because of the web access statistics.

Quote

Originally posted by Nullity:
Without more independence, the number and diversity of people will remain low, and without that, you can hardly expect many new plugs to be written or pages to be created. The community left to EV is a shadow of it's former self. The board is not much more than a free support line. I find it difficult to think how this could ever keep a regular interested for more than a month.

The boards were almost devoid of EV/EVO related talk when I changed them over -- the fact is that EVO is a 3 year old game, based on an even older engine. That, more than anything, is what has contributed to a decline in the "community." People do move on you know.

The changes that have taken place to the web site have actually sparked a hell of a lot more interested (both good and bad) than existed before.

I'm done with this debate; continue fighting among yourselves if you wish.

------------------
Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

I have to say, andrew, you are right. I mean, the old web site was in complete and utter shambles! Mabey I was the only one who actually looked beyond the boards, but half the plugin links did not work, and those that did were usually outdated versions. The tips section had not been updated in literaly months, and just about every other section had broken links, unfinished pages and messages saying "sorry, this section will be finished soon" or some such nonsence. Oh yeah, sounds like a great site to me.

------------------
I like people. They taste like chicken.

Quote

Originally posted by Servack:
**I have to say, andrew, you are right. I mean, the old web site was in complete and utter shambles! Mabey I was the only one who actually looked beyond the boards, but half the plugin links did not work, and those that did were usually outdated versions. The tips section had not been updated in literaly months, and just about every other section had broken links, unfinished pages and messages saying "sorry, this section will be finished soon" or some such nonsence. Oh yeah, sounds like a great site to me.
**

Actually, towards the end those pages WERE being completed. I don't know if the rest of them were though...

------------------
tear it down / AIM: G2uidehatr

I do not see any hints or tips on the new site.

~S~

------------------
Life is but a dream. Pass the coffee, please.
Could I have an order of Discboard with that?

Quote

Originally posted by Skunko7:
**I do not see any hints or tips on the new site.

~S~
**

Hints and tips are found two places:
(url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/evo/weblinks.html")http://www.AmbrosiaS...o/weblinks.html(/url)

...under the EV Override Help/Info sites section. Fairly clear an appropriate.

and of course, lots of people are asking game-related questions on this web board (much to the chagrin of folks who just want to chat in the clubhouse).

You do raise a good point, though -- the Questions section is undone -- when it is finished, it will be a dynamic FAQ system of sorts.

------------------
Andrew Welch / el Presidente / Ambrosia Software, Inc.

Quote

Originally posted by Sparks:
Forge, why do you even bother coming here anymore? The last strain of intelligent thought on any of the EV boards died under the pressure of a thousand whiny, self-centered newbies well over a year ago. Maybe two, it's hard to say.

Sparks, The exact point at which the boards and the EV community in general went to hell was the 'Newbie Rush of EVO'. Oldies, the few that are left (for the most part, You, Me, EVula, Reg, to name a few... actually, that's naming most, isn't it?), will remember that before EVO was released the boards were practically bad spam free, free of attempted imposters, and free of troubles. Once Newbies came in from EVO it jumped 1000 fold. Now that the boards have been moved to this UBB area, there are very, very, few people who are still around from the 'Pre-Evo' Ages... I think this community, or the one that used to be, is slowly dying and it will continue to do so.

I remember a couple of years ago, a whole bunch of posts, "EV is dying," "The Community is Dead," etc... Sadly, that was nothing compared to what is happening today.

I'm not saying that I'm leaving or anything like that. Personally, I'm sticking with this till the bitter end. Even if it means that I am the only person who remembers the times from before EVO, I'll do it.

-Bill "Jericon" Gunty

It seems to me that this debate has gone too far, its not accomplishing anything and is turning into a flame war among people that should be leading the community.

The fact is, the old site had some good parts and some bad parts. It was nice that it had info on planets and weapons and ships and all that, even if it wasn't finished. Maybe we could salvage whats there, and finish it and add it to this site. This will also cut down on spam because most people won't ask questions like "where do I find the Zachit Space?"

I think this BB is actually better than the old one, because it allows for time to respond to messages, on the old one, topics would be pushed off the board in a day, forcing people to start new topics and adding to the mess. On this BB you don't have to read the whole board, find a couple of threads you like and you can bookmark them and come back to them later at your leisure and they will still be there. I would like to see some improvements, but these can only be made by the UBB creators. The improvement i'd like to see the most is a "what's changed status like here (url="http://"http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/news/webboard/")http://www.AmbrosiaS.../news/webboard/(/url) now if it were applied to individual threads then it would be more practical.

The addon section needs improvement, its easy to find the latest and the best files, but its hard to find a file when you know what it is, as I suggested in another post, it should have more links on the main addons page such as list alphabetically, with letters you can click on instead of numbers where you have to guess which number goes with which letter. The script needs bug fixes, currently when an administer tries to download a file that has not been released, it gives a message of file not found. Also, andrew why did you release the individual disks into the addons files, that seems impractical.

The Question page needs to be made, this is really necessary as well. Maybe you can make a simple script to let us add new FAQ's to it.

And since you have the (url="http://"http://www.escape-velocity.com")www.escape-velocity.com(/url) domain why can't you use that? It simply looks cooler than having games/evo. You could make it so if people go to ev.com then they always have the ev.com web site in the address bar, but if they go to ambrosiasw.com then they click to EV/O they get the games/ev. Maybe this will be more satisfactory for all, as those who want to see ev.com up there can rest assured that its there.

So Let's keep this discussion positive, and think about what we CAN do to make this place better, instead of insulting each other.

Chamrin

PS. Jericon, I'll be around too for a long time

(This message has been edited by Chamrin (edited 04-22-2000).)

To Andrew Welch:

I just want you to know that your efforts are being appreciated. I have been to the old boards before and I agree with every point you made about them. I still recall long spam threads on birthdays and vacations. Your point about the old boards were rarely updated was also true. I estimate that other than some cosmetic changes, the boards were not updated for several months at a time. (My own admittedly unscientific estimate puts the time period at 2-3 months.) What I mean is that there was not substantive updates. New plug-ins were not being added to the download page. I also can recall the amount of posts made by people asking for web site updates. Curious how those same people are now complaining about this site.

As for the point made by some people about how this web site is being used to push Ambrosia products, all I can say is: "So what?" In my opinion, Ambrosia products are not being pushed hard enough. If making a better web site for your products so that in effect you are furthering support for customers is "pushing your products", then I say go ahead.