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Kavawuvi

Evolve client

32 posts in this topic

Evolve (the client at http://evolvehq.com, not the game Evolve) is a gaming platform that is based in Minneapolis, MN. It's run by only a small group of people, and it is free, though you can choose to pay at least $4.99 to permanently turn off the ads. The platform has been around for several years, and is run by only a small group of people, and it has gained an amount of popularity from the death of Xfire's social services. Is it worth getting?

 

 

Party!

 

Party support allows some people to play a private game without the need of port-forwarding, and also has VoIP as a substitute for TeamSpeak. I've never tried these things myself, but I know some people who have who say they work well. Parties also have a chatroom, and you can see the IPs of players in the VPN that is made. Matchmaking can automatically assign you a party and play a private game, though you'll each have to start the game manually.

 

 

Group Support

 

Group support allow for chatrooms of players, and you can also opt to automatically join the chatroom on startup. Online, the groups also have their own forums to discuss in, and chatrooms will also show you the last messages that were sent to give you the context of the chat.

 

 

Misc.

 

It also supports hundreds of games (though Halo has issues which I'll talk about). Each game also has a single forum to talk about the game, though games that aren't very popular will probably never see use of this. Video recording and screenshots are also supported, as well as Twitch streaming, though video recording seems to automatically be scaled to 50% by default, so you'll want to change that. The quality is pretty good, though. It will also record from your microphone when you record a video, which is nice for those who want it, but bad for those who don't want it, because you can't turn it off in the settings.

 

 

Missing features...

 

It's missing a few needed features. There is no chat logging, so once you close that window, that entire chat goes away. Its overlay is not as customizable as Xfire's overlay, either, and it lacks skin support. Also, there is no nickname support, which Steam and Xfire both have. Once you pick your nickname upon logging in, you will have to stay with it for quite a long time, perhaps forever.  Make sure you pick a name you can be proud of, unless you want to either make a new account or just live with being called xX_360NOSCOPE420_Xx. A lot of people actually set their status as their nickname to make up for it. One of the biggest features it is missing is server favorites and the ability to join a friend's game. You can see that they're playing a game, but what good does that do if you can't join it?

 

 

Halo support

 

The reason why this section is a thing in this review is because quite a few people on this forum play Halo. If you're looking to play Halo with this, don't bother. Evolve claims to support the overlay in both Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo Custom Edition, though the only good you'll get out of it are hotkeys for recording and taking screenshots. The overlay is buggy as hell on the game, even though Evolve said it should work. You either can't click on elements in the overlay, or you can click on the overlay but you can't see the overlay. If you're going to play Halo, disable the overlay, first, so you won't even be tempted to activating it. I've tried reaching out to them in their help support, and I did get a response asking for info, which I replied with, but they haven't replied in almost a week. At its present state, don't bother with Halo.

 

Update: I never got a response from support after several months, and one of their developers said they were aware of the issues with Halo, and did not understand why they were happening. Because it wasn't a high enough priority for them, it won't be fixed in the near future. Again, if you are looking for an Xfire replacement for Halo, this is NOT it. I posted more information in a reply to this topic.

 

 

Summary

 

Evolve is pretty good with what it can do. Many features it has are especially useful, such as the ability to create a party (essentially is a VPN so you usually don't need to forward ports) and play a private game together. Its social features are fairly good, like groups and stuff. Unfortunately, its shortcomings come with what it lacks, as its lack of features will make it rather frustrating to use. Some of these features can be a deal breaker for those who will miss them.

 

 

Pros:

  • Free (ads)
  • Friends support and private messaging
  • Party support with VoIP
  • Matchmaking and tunneling, allowing for games without port forwarding
  • Screenshot and video recording
  • Twitch streaming (can even record from webcam, too!)
  • Group chat and forum support
  • Recent group chat messages are retained, and offline private messages are also saved

 

Cons:

  • No nickname support
  • In-game overlay isn't very customizable
  • No client interface skin support
  • Cannot join servers directly from the client or keep favorites (or even see game servers that friends are in)
  • Forced to record from microphone when recording videos - Better off recording using something like FRAPS if you don't like this
  • Help support is not always reliable

 

Alternatives:

  • Steam (http://store.steampowered.com) - This is a very popular client by Valve. You can buy games, do voice chat and text chat, and it has an overlay that allows you to take screenshots, even on non-Steam games. There are also Steam groups which allow you to coordinate between larger numbers of players as well as giving you a chat room. You can also use features such as in-home streaming to stream your game to other devices on your network as long as you log into the same Steam account, and you can join games in progress either through the server list, your favorites list, or your friends list without having to even go through your game's user interface. This is not to mention that the overlay supports doing much of this in-game.
     
  • Discord (https://discordapp.com) - This newer client supports text chatting and voice chatting in both small or large communities as well as text/audio/video chatting between friends. Rather than one big chat room, you have a server with multiple text and voice channels, similar to how TeamSpeak works. You can set permissions for users, invite bots, see what games people are playing, along with many other useful features. Best of all, it's available for use as a standalone client on your PC or smart device or it can be used from within a web browser.
     
  • Origin (https://www.origin.com/usa/en-us/) - This client, by Electronic Arts, although it isn't as popular as Steam or Discord, has a respectable number of features such as text and voice chatting, plus it has a decent game library of its own.
Pfhunkie and NeX like this

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Tiddy-bits:

A good read until you referred to a particular clan.

 

I removed all mentioning of them. To be honest, I'm actually not a fan of them (or any clan at all), so they definitely shouldn't be mentioned at all.

Krazychic likes this

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No chat logging? So pretty much the easiest feature to implement and probably the most important and they decided not to add it?

Really? How fucking lazy do you have to be...

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No chat logging? So pretty much the easiest feature to implement and probably the most important and they decided not to add it?

Really? How fucking lazy do you have to be...

Well, Steam doesn't have chat logging either (aside from the last 5 lines of text), and that's their biggest competition.

Kvasir and Pfhunkie like this

Oddly, this is familiar to you... as if from an old dream.  

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No chat logging? So pretty much the easiest feature to implement and probably the most important and they decided not to add it?

Really? How fucking lazy do you have to be...

They both have offline messages, though, which makes even less sense to not have logging somewhere.

 

 

"donation"

 

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I don't exactly agree with spending $20 for priority support to fix bugs that THEY have, which further gives me a reason to say that their support isn't very good. I won't spend a dime if regular support ignores me. You really don't get all that much else, other than some stickers, a t-shirt, no ads, and access to some private group.

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Yeah, most of the "Cons" are actually features that I'd use, less so with the "Pros". As it sits, I'd give it about a 2/10 from myself in terms of being able to do what I want with it.

I'm fairly close to just getting rid of it altogether. There's really no one on Evolve that isn't on my steam or on here, so I'm seeing less and less point to maintain the aggravation.


KsqHutE.png

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Yeah, most of the "Cons" are actually features that I'd use, less so with the "Pros". As it sits, I'd give it about a 2/10 from myself in terms of being able to do what I want with it.

I'm fairly close to just getting rid of it altogether. There's really no one on Evolve that isn't on my steam or on here, so I'm seeing less and less point to maintain the aggravation.

 

Yeah, it's missing some things a lot of people really want, presently. The Xfire client does have a few pros that Evolve lacks, despite its poor design. Some people will still find value in this client, but many people will probably look elsewhere. Many of these cons are a real deal-breaker.

 

I actually don't give number ratings, because they mean nothing to me.

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