EntropiaPlanets wants your opinion

Negativity?

They are just afraid of unpleasant questions - but exactly that, to answer those questions, would help them regain some credibility... there will always be unpleasant questions, to dodge them leads nowhere.

It happened several times already that every "older" player stopped posting on EF for quite a while, next time this happens people DO have an alternative...

MA/FPC will have to deal with EP sooner or later - the age of "711 will cover our asses" is over and with every member that joins EP it will become harder to ignore such requests.

Sry for off-topic...

I can start compiling my mining runs and post a mining blog (at least it can be done on EP w/o everyone thinking it's just to make MA give you a tower) - if people want to read "yet another mining blog"... mine will be different, that's for sure... i just hope people won't hate me!

 

Hi, and "Hello all!"

Well, if you ask for it ... ;-)

Some ideas/ opinions:

IMHO atm EP is much too "cluttered" - too many sub and sub-sub forums, makes it hard to navigate and to find what you're looking for. This huge list on the forum overview page is just repelling for first-timers.
There should not be more but maybe "EntropiaPlanets - the Forum", "Entropia Universe - the game", "Other games" and "Other stuff", each of them with a max. of 3 - 4 subtopics. The need of constantly vertical scrolling is evil!

IMHO the layout is a little "suboptimal". A fixed min. width of 1024 isn't much, but for instance my good old notebook doesn't have - and to add to the trouble even at my basic machine I'm not surfing in "full screen mode". I close to always have more then 1 window open, and I want to navigate them by clicking into, and I cannot stand having to read lines as long as in an 1024 layout - this hurts my eyes, and I just hate it.
Not in vain there's something like a "gold ratio" in book printing, and not in vain close to all newspapers are using columns for easy readability.
An enforced "long lines" layout for web pages like yours (approx. 95 chars for me) is widely regarded as retarded, and will not make your readers happy. The need of constantly horizontal scrolling is evil!

For my feeling here's a little bit too much "swapped over" from ER. I cannot help but recognize to have to read the same bickering, fighting, name calling, "venting off" and nonsense as there, at least for a quite huge part. This doesn't make me happy.
Nobody is interested in such, and it just creates bad karma.

I'd really like a forum where we'd not need to fear to be censored, but in my humble opinion there should be strong rules to enforce a civilized behavior, a minimum of ortographic diligence and at least a little common courtesy. Maybe I'm just too old for this world ...

Why not enforce a minimum post length of 200 chars, excluding quotes? Or maybe have a look at this forums rules, for instance? It's something quite different, but it works. I'm really sad they have abandoned the rule they once had, was something about this:

If you have the possibilities (I don't know ...) why not offer to host resources important to the community? This could give you an edge!
Why not host maps, screen grabbers, loot analyzing spreadsheets and such? There's quite some of this stuff, and afaik most of the makers have to host it themselves on their personal servers atm. As mentioned, no idea if the server space/ bandwidth costs would be acceptable - but such a central point for EU related resources is lacking, and could be a gimmick getting ppl here.

Well, guess this was my major first impressions. Sorry to have to be this negative, but you asked for input.

I'd really like to see EP prospering, it could succeed to become a place for the common participants, beyond the Ubers getting cared at EF, and the spoiled brats marauding at ER. My best wishes to you!

Have fun!

 

Hey :) thank you for helping out - it is very valued, and we didn't make this thread just for people to tell us it's all nice and dandy ;)

I'm not technical, but this one I will reply on.

In the beginning I agree, we had too much negative overfload and people replying respectless to each other. By striking down and first temp ban those people and after, when it shows they did not understand this is not a new ER (nor is it a new EF - we're not aiming in any of those directions) we had to perm ban them. This is actually quite a shame because we hoped we did not have to do this, but unfortunately necessary if we do not wish to have a lot of negative attitude on EP. We wish this place to be for everyone and not for a few or for people to be afraid of stating their opinions or for posting because of some personal stalkers etc.

When this is said I actually personally believe the forum is becoming quite positive. Not everything can be rosa - people are allowed to discuss matter here which might not be that pretty. We truhly believe there should be room for that, which is also why we made special sections like The Black Hole which you can easily turn off if you do not wish to read the posts from there(as you can always both block and close down forumsections in the menu if you do not wish to have everything open and filling a lot. Personally I closed down a lot of forums, because I'm most interested in 'Todays posts' and 'New posts' and have no reason to keep everything visible. Just a suggesion, if all the subforums annoys you).

If I can share my humble opinion, I find that 'other forums' to be turning far much negative than the way we're heading here, which is quite positive - and one thing I believe is a part of this is peoples attitute, helpfullness to make this happen and the fact other things can be discussed aswell. Combined with our try to provide you with constant positive/semi positive (at least constructive) news about both EU and the world outside.

EP is of course for the game but mostly for the gamers ;)

 

Hi Lykke,

you're replying to the part that was of least importance to me, and to one that I'd maybe wouldn't have formulated such after deeper thoughts. Plz lemme explain:

I don't have any problem with the way you're doing this now.

I had an initial problem some weeks ago when I first came here, finding posts after posts of quite some of the same ppl that IMHO participated to make ER the unpleasant place it's IMHO now.

It seems to have changed, some ppl I had on ignore on ER are writing interesting posts here, and my initial fear of EP becoming a second ER has been proved as wrong.

So I kindly ask for pardon for writing this part of my post in a manner really not exactly matching my up-to-date feelings, but instead expressing "old" concerns. My fault.
Judging the forum climate from just before my post and following there's nothing to complain, and it has been a bad choice of me to mention it.
At least I hope with linking this other forums rules I might have been able to give ideas - this forum was the best game fan forum I ever participated, even if I'm since long not active there anymore.

But I'd really like to hear your (the EP makers) opinions concerning the others parts I posted of:

• the cluttered interface
• the evil long lines, and
• the possibility to host EU related tools

I understand it's not your job caring of such, but maybe you can get your Castorian Enblade ButtPrick out of your storage and treat them ppl responsible a little?

Anyway, a big Gratz to your recent 7K Mannell shoes, and:

Have fun!

 

Hey :) great with some graphic inputs aswell - will definitely be looked at when we integrate the new version of the vbulletin (which we already bought, but we're waiting for updates of the other features we have too, not to mess it all up)

:)

 

As a newbie to this game, I kinda like this place. It is a small forum. I dont really know any people yet, Still this seems like a good place to start for me. If i would go to the main forum, U are basically flooded with information, I am going to stay here as long as i stay with entropia i think ^^

I think it is a great idea with adopt a newbie, It is a great way for us to learn the ropes in the game and actually stay within the game,

Still keep up the good work, ! Thank you

 

Tass, most of the points you bring up do apply to EF as well (which is still the biggest forum) - i.e. the size of the header (including logo, ads and main menu) - the header size looks very different tho if you use a higher screen resolution than 1024x768.

I think you should cut down on throwing around phrases like "occams razor" and "mission creep" (you messed up the links btw ) - this just comes across like "bashing coz i can" and instead focus on providing concrete detailed suggestions (do you have better options?) - what is important in your opinion, what do you think belongs on the main page in which order, yada yada...?


Most of the things you mention are not like this out of pure randomness - the used version of vBulletin demands a certain layout and limits the possibilities - im not a friend of the 3-column "holy grail" layout either, but i think it is one of the most common vB setups out there, not sure if some of the modules will work with a different layout (or make sense, like the expiring auctions bit, which has a right to be there only as a quick info thingie, not meant to occupy much space)


And your citation of occams razor is completely out of place btw - occams razor doesn't apply to redundancy (parsimony in the sense of less assumptions, not in the sense no redundancy), im not sure if you understood the basic concept behind it.

 

Hey :) Thank you for the very nice words - it is great to hear that new people find the place nice to hang out. We hope we also in future will be able to provide you with useful and helpfull info, tools etc.

Happy day :)
Lykke

 

Might not be exactly flattering but what i like about this forum is it's relative obscurity and general scope.

All i need to do is log on, click on new posts and i find out anything of note that happened. No endless noobie threads, no army of people playing their own distorted version of the game and waking is shock time and time again when entropia doesn't emulate it, no pro bono life and game coaches, etc.

Sure if it were my forum I'd tend to appreciate the traffic but as it is I'm more partial to actual content.


And now I'm going to attempt to be helpful. :P
EF is not interesting because of the huge number of users. Those who require an audience rarely say anything of consequence. EF is interesting because of a very small number of people who satisfy their own curiosity and are kind enough to share the results. Sadly, and understandably, they are a minority, none of the others feel the urge to share... and i can't say i don't understand them, there's nothing like offering an informed opinion in a rare moment of kindness only to be buried alive under a wall of irrational, emotional, uninformed opinions who feed off each other to create canon.

Personally i would try to come up with ways to help such people and activities. Ways to input and display data, incentives to do so, etc.
I would even do a Q&A subforum (heavily moderated), where a number of select people, defined by more than their willingness to waste their time, could answer game related questions and curiosities. I think i saw Knuckles do something similar a few years back (though in the interest of reading an answer it was less moderated). I don't mean Q&A as in the "celebrity" interviews though, i really don't care why some dress in pink or what others were drinking when they chose their names.

Sure it's hard and in many ways redundant, not to mention that my tastes are probably in the minority, it would just be nice to see this forum grow without rivaling the other for the position of entropia's IMDB.

 

Hey guys, I have been clicking through some of the thinks on the sideboard for your side and some of the links are dead.

Need a list?

 

Do you mean the links on the front page?

 

Yes some of the links on the front page! I really need to take 30 second before I post for proof reading.

 

Some minor things we did today to further improve the forum (in random order):

- In our auction system, the field to fill in your full avatarname now points to the profile field also used for the tracker, in order to avoid having multiple instances of your avatarname all over the place.
- New posts earch results now should remain active longer.
- In the navigation bar, we reduced the size of the welcome message by hiding the EPD Credits balance as well as the "Last time logged in" message.
- Various behind-the-scenes improvements on the tracker system. We hope to release an updated version of the client soon. In the meantime, the tracker code for the forum integration has been optimized and performance has been improved on it, as well as minor updates to the display functions.
- Added a few new links to the frontpage links section. Under MindArk: EntropiaPlatform.com (showing what seems to be a trailer video for the Dotman/CRD platform); under forums: EntropiaUniverse.pl, EntropiaForum.pl.

Tonight, we will experiment with implementing a slightly less high version of the EP logo, and see if we can reduce the size of our banners somewhat in order to put more relevant information on the page.