How did Discord become the go-to service for gamers?

Games
#54

I wish it was only a Pair. There are at least 4 dedicated Discords for Dominions. Each relatively active.

The break down is partial because of modding rules. The one I frequent is relatively strict, but it’s also about getting a responses.

There are only X number of channels to have discussions, and if one is being used, then it’s harder to start a new discussion on that channel until the other discussion natural ends. Or go to a different discord. That’s why each of the discords I know about have a question and answer channel and a General Chat.

On a forum, each new discussion gets its own thread, making it easier to scale.

I think one of the biggest failures of Dominions, and the reason for the fragmentation is mostly a failure of Illwinter. The use of Steam as their main platform for their forum drives people to seek help or community almost any where else. The software is awful.

I think Discord helped fill in that void.

#55

It doesn’t prevent that take to be true. When I was into Langrisser Mobile, the “English” speaking community was absolutely terrible, and I was perusing google-translated Chinese wikis. I bet you can do the same with Japanese wikis for your Final Fantasy game, to much benefits.
As for Dominions, [blah].

Reddit pushes ads within posts as replies regularly, which the blocker have to adjust too. That place sucks, and so does searching info on it

#56

That’s a very good point, because on discord, things can get messy with so many servers and channels sharing so many users on a given subject matter.
It’s sad sometimes it jumps around and can get confusing or lose intervenants that matters.

#57

https://illwiki.com/dom5/discord-servers

I count 13 discords. Only 3 are Foreign Language ones. Just for Dominions 5.

#58

But it is used as a forum replacement. See Old World:

image

Now try Googling anything about the game. How far along is Old World in early access? What about a development roadmap? Try finding information on certain mechanics that are unclear for you, or maybe a guide to playing Egypt. Google barely finds anything, because it’s all lost in an IRC chatroom replacement.

I’m having similar issues with another game I’m playing now, Nioh 2. Some youtubers have put out content, but trying to find details on mechanics is extremely frustrating. The Wiki is barebones and most of the Reddit discussions were back in March when the game first released. There’s stuff in the Nioh discord, but again it’s just not searchable.

This isn’t just me being an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. I use Discord almost daily and like it a lot. As someone who grew up as the internet came of age and spent a lot of time on IRC, it does absolutely feel like an IRC 2.0 for me. It’s fantastic for chat, it’s great for me to voice chat with friends when playing a game together. But it really has sucked to see so much content moved to ephemeral chat instead of forums which can be indexed, searched, etc.

#59

OTC was the same way, living in its own remote space with barely anything filtering out before release, didn’t it? I think that was a preference of the developer to manage the number of feedback inputs at the time, and it probably still is?
I’m not interested in playing Old World before its release, but to relate to something else that is probably very close: I had been using Discord for Offworld Trading Company exclusively, after that game’s 1.0 release, and it never felt like a poor trade off to me then. The information on that server was readily available in guides that were updated regularly depending on the updates.
To get back to the point, probably, there was an OTC forum. It was a terrible place.

I was told earlier it wasn’t a valid criticism, but again, that stuff is up to the server admin to set up things so knowledge database can be put together by some people on the server, and be actually searchable.
It’s up to people, be it admins or members, to turn a server into an interesting place or a stupid free-for-all meme/gif/twitter link throwing mess.

I’m on various servers discussing the MiSTer FPGA platform, and the gap is staggering between them and the crowd they host. Some I just keep around just for the announcements. It might be a matter of finding the good Nioh server out there. And it’s true there is no easy way to find that out, that I know of.

#60

I love that Discord can run in a browser – even with voice chat! That you don’t have to install an app removes a huge barrier to entry.

But somehow, just last night, we were raiding with a new guy and he couldn’t get in the Discord. WTF. Eventually he got in, but, dude. It’s not hard. It’s just a URL.

But I strongly agree with everyone above that Discord is just chat. It is absolutely not a repository of information and in absolutely no way could it replace a forum or subreddit.

#61

Why even try to have it be a replacement for forums? It’s just live chat.

#62

Companies claim they’re shutting down (or never opening in the first place) forums in favor of Discord, Reddit, etc. because people aren’t using them in the numbers they used to. I’m sure they don’t mind cutting the cost of administering them, but it’s not just being imposed from above on a whim.

Usenet died out because, ironically, people stopped using it in favor of web-forums, and I’m sure there were many similar threads on there about what a loss it was as that process happened. It still happened, though.

If people need a repository of information about a game or other product, then I’m sure that need will be filled with wikis, faqs, etc. But nothing says “dead product” louder than a lightly-trafficked forum, and so they’re being phased out.

#63

Don’t ask me, but that’s what’s happened. Nowadays if you have questions and want answers, the usual response is “go ask on the discord,” which makes it so that each and every person with the same question must do the same thing for eternity, and when the people are no longer just hanging out waiting to answer you, well, tough shit.

Why are you sure? The answer to everything isn’t “make a wiki,” either. Some stuff is just never going to make it there. A lot of stuff about how to install mods for Silent Hunter 5 is on old threads on subsim. There’s no wiki.

#64

I remember what GameFAQs was the place to go. Now it’s Discord, and this engagement and then being tied to the server and getting responses all the time is not my favorite. It is kind of fun sometimes though to see a dev live respond once in awhile though.

I don’t know it’s an age thing so much as my complete lack of desire to actually fully engage with my entertainment choices.

#65

True. But it may be the answer to “how do I preserve important data that may disappear at any time without warning if someone gets tired of maintaining this forum”.

#66

Not to mention, there are many games to have questions for, and signing up to each Discord just for one answer is the gateway to notification hell unless you mute or leave the server instantly.

#67

I’m not sure I’ll ever actually complete a JRPG that doesn’t have one or more multi-hundred-page txt file GameFAQs guides filled with ASCII art and absurdly overly detailed, meticulously researched breakdowns of stat minmaxing strategies derived from reverse-engineering the code.

Mind, I don’t need the ASCII art or the breakdowns, but they added to the ambience, dangit!

#68

The Harvest Moon and Rune Factory ones were sometimes very cute. Those individuals put a fair amount of work into those full guides. Now we get like Q/A often single sentence questions with single sentence responses or just some weird conversation in the middle of a Discord server.

It’s a loss and a gain.

#69

I’ll admit while I love Discord, I do miss game-specific forums. I can’t keep up with a lot of game-specific Discord servers so I either mute them except for the announcement channels, or don’t join at all. I much prefer the…asynchronous communication of forums.

#70

I know Stardock used to use IRC around 15-20 years ago, so I don’t think it’s anything new for older devs.

Newer devs want the control Discord allows, you get fewer spammers/trolls on Discord. You also can shut down revolts a lot easier.

I’m not on any official game discords: it’s mostly a webcomic, local community, FGC community , and calibur character discords.

#71

I think the voice & video quality on Discord is descent enough, and it’s overall nicely integrated. That said, I think one of the main points of Discord is that you only need one account. If companies ran their own IRC servers, you’d need to create individual accounts/credentials for them.

But yeah, I see more and more devs relying on Discord as their main community hub. I think chat is nice for some direct interaction and to gauge trends and the current mood, but it’s definitely not great and built for long-winded in-depth discussions.

#72

Usually FAQs are pinned on Discord chat channels. There’s often even a #faq channel for this purpose.

I instantly mute every public server I sign up for and selectively unmute. There’s no other way to do it.

#73

Curse actually released “Curse Voice” well before Discord, and had several similar features as it developed. They were very similar competitors when Twitch acquired Curse in 2016. Twitch shifted focus though and the Curse App is no more.

My concern with Discord is their shaky monetization strategy. They’re primarily VC funded, which means the free ride will end at some point - if no one buys them.