Join our Discord!

[Binary_Digit]

It seems every time I turn around, game developers are encouraging people to Join their Discord!

Want to report a bug? Join our Discord! Need tips from expert players? Join our Discord! Have feedback or suggestions about the game? Join our Discord!

Seriously, how on Earth did Discord ever become the defacto discussion forum for game communities and developers? Discord works great for audio and even for streaming your screen for friends to watch, but the discussion interface is an absolute trainwreck. Every channel is just miles and miles of multiple discussions interleaved into one monolithic wall of text. Trying to read that is like babysitting a dozen five-year-olds with ADHD on sugar highs. And it seems like I'm the only person on the planet who is able to see that and willing to say it out loud.

Anyone else hate this trend and wish developers would get off the Discord train? Or am I the crazy one lol?

 

[Slartibartfast]

I have two discords that I regularly participate in.

One is full of real life friends that we use to host our table-top rpg session on.

The other is a hold over from a semi-online anarchist movement from the late 90s that started on IRC and shoutcast, but never really got off the ground. Now we are all senior IT people who complain about work, discuss technology, etc, with the original spirit of the idea being lost to time.

I may join a third for my masters program starting next month, but I am not sure if its a requirement yet. This one would be moderated by the TAs at the school.

 

[Nomad4Ever]

Anyone else hate this trend and wish developers would get off the Discord train? Or am I the crazy one lol?

Man, when I saw the thread title I got excited for a minute and thought we had created a debate politics discord

The only thing I hate about Discord are their shady privacy practices and the near defacto monopoly they have. Literally no real analogous service exists to compete with them.

 

[Binary_Digit]

Man, when I saw the thread title I got excited for a minute and thought we had created a debate politics discord

Lol sorry about that!

But that goes to my point. Why did you get excited at the prospect of a DP Discord? Is there any instance of the multiverse where Discord's ridiculous discussion interface would be in any way better than DP's layout?

The only thing I hate about Discord are their shady privacy practices and the near defacto monopoly they have. Literally no real analogous service exists to compete with them.

How do you not hate the stupid discussion interface?

And they do have competition though, at least as a discussion forum. These are all free and objectively superior to Discord's strategy of merging multiple conversations into one huge wall of text like a fool:

WIXBlog
ProBoards
Forumotion
Site123
MyWebForum
CreateAForum

I just cannot understand the mentality that accepts Discord's poorly designed communication channels as the best thing since sliced bread, when far superior alternatives are so easy to find.

 

[Nomad4Ever]

But that goes to my point. Why did you get excited at the prospect of a DP Discord? Is there any instance of the multiverse where Discord's ridiculous discussion interface would be in any way better than DP's layout?

And they do have competition though, at least as a discussion forum. These are all free and objectively superior to Discord's strategy of merging multiple conversations into one huge wall of text like a fool:

It wouldn't be "better", it would be different. The main thing I'd be interested in is the voice channels and the chance to easily participate in voice debates. For text debates I think DP is a better format.

The other thing Discord provides that I personally cannot find a replacement for is group screen sharing alongside their text based chat interface. My friends and I use Discord all the time as a group chat to just text, which there are replacements for, but then can seamlessly transition into a voice call where we can share our screens (which we mostly use for games) by just joining a voice channel instead of like starting some group call that would give a bunch of people an incoming call notification.

There are replacements for text based servers with channels and good moderation capabilities (another key feature for more public channels are auto-mods and bot API integration). There are replacements for voice chats by joining a channel. There are replacements for screen sharing. There is no replacement that has all of those things.

 

[Binary_Digit]

It wouldn't be "better", it would be different. The main thing I'd be interested in is the voice channels and the chance to easily participate in voice debates. For text debates I think DP is a better format.

The other thing Discord provides that I personally cannot find a replacement for is group screen sharing alongside their text based chat interface. My friends and I use Discord all the time as a group chat to just text, which there are replacements for, but then can seamlessly transition into a voice call where we can share our screens (which we mostly use for games) by just joining a voice channel instead of like starting some group call that would give a bunch of people an incoming call notification.

There are replacements for text based servers with channels and good moderation capabilities (another key feature for more public channels are auto-mods and bot API integration). There are replacements for voice chats by joining a channel. There are replacements for screen sharing. There is no replacement that has all of those things.

Any standard forum would be objectively better than Discord's chaotic mess of never ending subconversations all interleaved into a monolithic wall of text.

I only ever use Discord for audio and occasional streaming with friends. I don't think many developers are doing that with their community. Primarily developers ask people to join their Discord to have a community discussing their game. This amounts to posting forum-like text conversations in a non-forum-like interface. And it's so darn popular for this. It seems that every other developer on Steam wants you to join their Discord, as if it's the greatest thing for a community to discuss their game. It's not, it's just about the worst thing for that. It makes no sense to me. And it makes even less sense that I seem to be the only one who sees how dumb it is lol.