Feedback Official Elvenar Discord server

[Lelanya]

hmm? I'm online? lol of course I am, I'm trying to sort out how much, what exactly, I should say about the topics covered in the Q&A. There were 5 staff, and many answers were provided.
I really wish y'all wouldn't lump me in anywhere. I love Discord, wish more people would use it, dread that more folks really would, lol, I'd never get any work done.

 

[mucksterme]

You must have a US account to register and post here, for example.

But you don't need an accout to read posts.
Big advantage.

 

[BrinDarby]

After doing a quick search for "embedded chat rooms for websites"
It appears there's a few good free choices, So if Inno didn't want to
just expand the FS Chat UI, adding chat to this forum is cake.

I see no reason to throw away all the info here to go to Discord
when adding chat here is so simple and free.....

Please anyone, show me where I'm wrong here..... please.

 

[crackie]

The problem with keeping the current forums, any of them, is they are tied to our game accounts. You must have a US account to register and post here, for example. They would have to create a brand-new forum that anyone can register for, with any game account from any set of servers. And then you have the problem that, for example, someone playing on the EN servers can make an account name identical to someone on the US or Beta or other servers and not be that person. Then you have a conflict when trying to register for one big forum.

It's only true as it's currently set up. When you get a forum license, you get a vanilla forum. It's not like everyone who buys a XenForo forum software is locked into the Elvenar player database. All that stuff is customized. If you click register, it takes you out of the forum subdomain and to a different subdomain. Therefore, they made their own player authentication gateway script, which means they can change that however they want and handle it however they want. They can change the criteria and the database tables they're looking up against too. Players can be imported wholesale from the database level. Prefixes or suffixes can be added to usernames to indicate player's market origin and differentiate same usernames. Essentially, it's not set in stone and many potential solution sets exist because it's customizable. And yes, all while keeping the information publicly visible without a registration wall and can be scraped by search engines.

 

[BrinDarby]

Players can be imported wholesale from the database level. Prefixes or suffixes can be added to usernames to indicate player's market origin and differentiate same usernames. Essentially, it's not set in stone and many potential solution sets exist because it's customizable. And yes, all while keeping the information publicly visible without a registration wall and can be scraped by search engines.

I agree with your post and can add the following....

Had Inno just sent us here thru a game link, auto-logging us
into the forum, it would be easier to accomplish what you
describe. Also, guests could be eliminated, stopping the bots
from scraping out data ... or given a PW known to all players,
making annonymous viewing the forum if wanted, yet still
keeping the bots outside a PW wall.

 

[crackie]

I agree with your post and can add the following....

Had Inno just sent us here thru a game link, auto-logging us
into the forum, it would be easier to accomplish what you
describe. Also, guests could be eliminated, stopping the bots
from scraping out data ... or given a PW known to all players,
making annonymous viewing the forum if wanted, yet still
keeping the bots outside a PW wall.

You don't want to keep the bots out though. A lot of people find the forum from just Googling answers and searching outside the forum. Without bots crawling the forum, pages can't be indexed to show up as results in search engines. That's what those army of bots are doing. It's like recording the info on a webpage and sending it back to headquarters (search engine). Then the search engines use their own proprietary algo to process all that information to find stuff it thinks is pertinent to what you're looking for. Some crawlers, like Google's, will respect if you put in code to stay out, but not all bots respect those tags so they aren't enforced in any way across the Internet anyway. But overall, the bots and guests are not an issue but are beneficial. You want people to be able to organically come to the forum, find it useful, and hopefully join the community for the long haul. Promotions like contests are more like flash sales. You'll get a temporary surge in traffic, but they might only come for sales and not necessarily become returning regular customers. But if a player knew they found an answer they were contemplating on the forum, then it's more likely they'll see the value and come back for more answers. And as it's been stated over and over, people don't *need* to post if same questions have been already asked and answers given! They can get what they're after with just viewing privileges, which is what a guest is! If you keep out guests and close the forum to only logged-in users, then it's no different than Discord's setup behind registration wall. Bots cannot crawl Discord and put its contents in search results either.

 

[Silver Lady]

A lot of people find the forum from just Googling answers

Maybe that’s part of the reason (to kill the forums), Inno doesn’t want questions answered.

 

[crackie]

Maybe that’s part of the reason (to kill the forums), Inno doesn’t want questions answered.

It's absolutely silly to shut the forum down from an exposure perspective. The U.S. forum alone contributes to prob tens of thousands of pages of content, any of which could be potentially hit by search queries, and not necessarily for searches just for "Elvenar", but any aspects of the game, like "Winter Lampions". It greatly magnifies and expands the real estate space that Elvenar takes up in the virtual world. It's like they own 100,000 acres of property and are just going...nah, I don't need it. It's only being visited by the squirrels and deer. I'd rather take up the space of a single family home and make my footprint as small as possible so it's harder to find me.

 

[BrinDarby]

ANY Forum, BBS, or message board ... performs a much
different function than ANY chat client/rooms. So why
has Inno chose to replace 1 with the other ?? They are Not,
I repeat Not interchangable... they serve a different function.

I posted before, but 'tis true... in <10 minutes I found 3 decent
embeddable chat clients, for free or a minimal fee. Discord
was Not 1 of them. I'm sure if I researched this for 2 days, I
could find a suitable one that could be add'd to the forum.
Since Inno refuses to use the UI for FS chat to also offer an
expanded chat experience ( like Discord is ) they could do
a simple embedd of a chat client for the forum that would
even pull in usernames itself so no sign-up is necessary.

It's absolutely silly to shut the forum down from an exposure perspective.

Its equally silly to shut it down from an informational stance.
The sheer amount of information accumulated over 8 years,
is not easily replaced in a chat environment where you have
to keep re-explaining to each next person.

Inno makes us discuss a suggestion to the Nth degree before
a vote, then of those the best of the best get pass'd on.... Why
on gods green earth, should we accept such a lame vanillia
answer when it comes to the forums ?

Details !!! we want details.... sell us on why this specific remedy
was the best course of action. If you want a vibrant community,
then Inno has to interact vibrantly with its playerbase. When is
Inno going to realize its a 2way street... If you want the tone
around here to change, it starts @ the top. The better the
relations between Inno & its Playerbase... the better it will be
short and longterm for Inno's bottom line , no joke ...

Happy wife = Happy life, ever heard that Inno ???
The playerbase is Inno's wife, so to speak here......

I'l give Inno the benefit of the doubt on Anything, but as soon
as they prove me right, then its all over.... Actions speak much
louder than words do. @crackie 's right.... you're torching 90%
of what we have here, for what ?? To replace the 10% you don't
like for something else, because if all you wanted to do was add
chat, you already have a UI for that, or very cheaply chat can
be add'd right here to the exsisting forum.

Your answer didn't explain anything to me, it was basically just
an announcement of fact.

 

[TimeMachine]

Hello US-community, i was banned from the Discord-DE-server for 24 hours on 9.11.23, but still wasn't able to access the Elvenar Discord-Server today.

After asking german CM, I've learned that they decided to keep me banned forever. Ok, no problem for a time traveller.

But I don't see why I should not be able to use Beta- and US-Discord anymore especially because I didn't do any "crime" there.

Maybe it would be great to divide the Discord-Server in any way.

I guess it is not really fair to ban somebody internatonal, just because of some critism which only was spoken in DE channel.

So to all who said: "I will never use Elvenar-Discord-Derver", I've given it a try but I will never ever be able to use it again.
The first ban was directly forever!

That's why I from now on can only get actual informations about the game by visiting https://elvenar-fan-forum.de

I used to feed Elvenar-Fan-Forum with the actual announcements especially from Discord-Beta-Channel.

Now I am forced to stop this, luckily there are enough other players and mods in Elvenar-Fan-Forum who are keeping it up to date.

Otherwise I would from now on not be able to read them announcemnts even if i would like to do it on Discord.

Edit: That's why I have to say goodbye to the Elvenar-US-Community because after this Forum will be closed there will be no possibility for me to stay in contact except writing ingame-messages or the Elvenar-Fan-Forum.

I had a good time here on US and it was a pleasure to read from and write with all of you! Best Wishes to everybody! I will miss you!

 

[BrinDarby]

i was banned from the Discord-DE-server for 24 hours

Why ?

I've learned that they decided to keep me banned forever.

really, hmmmm.

Was that your 1st ban ?? Seriously now all of Discord
can go away for 1 channel's comments ????
@-Solaris- , can we get some clarification here, please ?

 

[TimeMachine]

Why ?

It was because of "conspiracy theories" about all that human trafficking going on at fb and insta.
I just wanted to underline that I would recommend @InnoGames not to prefer Discord and the others, because, you know it is, a part of Zuckerberg's empire too.

Was that your 1st ban ?? Seriously now all of Discord
can go away for 1 channel's comments ????

Yes, this was my first ban on Discord. I am and will not be able to access the Discord-Elvenar-Server in general anymore.

So my whole Elvenar-Discord is now gone forever just because of 1 channel's comment.

But since I supported and got kicked out of Team DE, I might be some kind of special stored special case to them.

My offer to german community management was me switching off the german role forever.
Just to make it somehow possible to accept the ban from Team DE while still being able to read US- and especially Beta-Threads.

But the answer was that there is only one Elvenar-Discord-Server, that's why being banned in any state or language automatically bans somebody from the whole Elvenar-Discord-Community worldwide.

I would love to use Beta- and US-Forum although it is on Discord and I never caused any kind of trouble on those Servers or Forums - not a single message of mine was deleted.
If it should be somehow possible to access US-Discord-Server while being banned by DE, I would be very thankful if for example @-Solaris-
would tell me how to do.

 

[BrinDarby]

ok , thats just plain sillyness ( and you might edit ur post a tad )
"comment" singular, means you didn't go on-on, but I wasn't there.

I've been on the wrong side of insane moderation. In chat rooms
it can be even worse, I can't understand 1 violation = lifetime ban.
I do think your "baggage" might have come into play here. While
I was not there, my issue is with the insta-lifetime-ban. It also does
highlight who's ToS trumps whom, which also dictates who's the
company ultimately responsible for privacy issues. It makes a big
difference if Inno is running thier channels on Discord, or whether
Discord is hosting Inno's rooms on Discord.

Sounds like a Hitjob, because what you know is dangerous to Inno.
You gave them a reason for a ban, they went nuclear instantly.
All I can say is tread lightly around here, they're prolly gunn'n for ya.

 

[-Solaris-]

Hello hello dear elvenarians,

@TimeMachine , you raise an interesting point concerning accessibility to other categories that I will investigate. Although, it is true that our discord server houses every Elvenar market, your account is used to access the server and not a specific category of it.
In any case, I recommend that you open a Support Ticket with the moderation team that applied the ban so that you can discuss your ban with them.

Have a lovely Sunday!

 

[Myne]

Amen, Crackie. I have a wonderful team of players in my fellowship, and we have a lot of heart and camaraderie. We care about each other. But since Inno is determined to destroy the game and move on to newer and bigger bags of silver, I am seriously thinking about stepping down as archmage and eventually leaving. Not right away. I need to get us through the next FA and then think more about it. I first started playing in 2019 and most of my time in Elvenar has been spent in Thornwood. I would be surprised if there has been a single day where I haven't logged in at least 5x. It's gut wrenching to even think about leaving. If you had asked me 6 months ago if I would ever do so, I would have told you they'd have to rip it from my cold dead hands. Now, I've changed, and I'm saddened by it.

Or rather, Inno's changed. They've been bought out by venture capitalists, who always drill into the heart of a business, hollow out its shell and then throw it away. It's happened far too many times in the past. Everything is glitchy now. I hope that no one is paying for their ads in the hobby room. Every single time I click on them, I get a box with an X in it ... nothing else. I do get the prize, so it doesn't hurt me, but who is paying for the ad? That's been going on for a week. The event currency around the city now gets stuck there after you collect it. It never goes away until you refresh the game. That never happened years ago. The Beta FA was a fiasco and now they're going through it AGAIN? Are they crazy? Cutting down on devs to save money always has a negative effect in terms of glitches. And the new tech tree is utterly ridiculous and very badly thought out. Cutting down on game designers has its consequences as well ... and all designers should PLAY Elvenar and NOT with unlimited diamonds and other resources. You can't test a game and its effects on the little guy when you have unlimited resources, and I've yet to see a screen shot from a dev with low resources. They just don't think things through. I can remember a time when devs actually were addicted to Elvenar. They've moved on to other games. Everything's changed.

That flat view on browser change was very much welcomed and appreciated. Yet, it didn’t help wash the bad taste from the discord announcement, which made me realize, yay, thanks management for inserting yourselves into player’s user satisfaction and taking away from the game. I’m sure the devs appreciate it.

Let’s look at the current state of the forum:
1.) Announcements - torched by discord
2.) Release Notes - torched by discord
3.) Ideas & Suggestions - torched by management
4.) Found a Bug? - torched by discord
5.) Artist Corner - torched by Reign of Terror
6.) Contests - torched by Reign of Terror, finished off by discord
7.) Game Worlds - probably torched by discord bc who are we recruiting if they keep diverting traffic away

Who made those decisions? Staff
Do they improve or decrease favorable user experience? Decrease
Have they been building a community or destroying one? Destroying

That’s seven sections they’ve torched! Does this help spell out why people have had it? And yet, despite their best efforts to burn the community to the ground, we are still here because everyone knows this is still the best place to get quality answers quickly without having to clear your cache. That’s how important the forum is and cannot be replaced by Discord! So put the reports down. By the time you guys figure out a trend looking at numbers, you’ll already be behind another user dissatisfaction trend. You. Guys. Are. Killing. The. Community. Stop doing more harm! Way more have been taken away than you’re giving us with Discord. So pardon me if I’m not giving anyone a pat on the back and a standing ovation for this kind of community leadership across the board. Please do better. The good news is the people are angry, but at least angry still mean they care. If they’re not angry anymore, then they already left and you’ve lost more players, which is always good for the bottom line everyone is so concerned about, right?

I cannot agree more with the above statements. I am so sick of hearing " Oh we have a huge number of people registering for discord! It's going great!" You may have that now, in the beginning, but how many of the people you have forced to register are actually actively using it? I mean interacting there. I don't mean just holding an account. I hold an account because I am a proactive archmage and disseminate info to my fellowships as soon as possible to assist them in game progression, and you have given me no other choice. Most of the time I have to come here and get it still, because of the lack of organization. That is the only reason. I do refer players to the forum to search for information on the intricacies of game play. I use it for strategies pertaining to the game, as do others. If I am in a hurry, I do a webwide search and invariably the appropriate forum link will show up. I know others do the same.
As far as overstretching your employees, I am going to quote that old adage that "Poor planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on my part". You had the best community manager there was, and I think she left because she had an inkling what was going to happen and was vehemently opposed. That should have been your first clue what was going to happen. Listen to your customer base and the people who actually run the platform you are considering getting rid of, they are the ones who keep food on your table.
I have said before, the vast amount of knowledge that will be lost is just a crime as far as player retention goes. It's also going to harm new players. Frustration is a big motivator to players not playing. Discord as it is set up is a nightmare to navigate. Sorry, but it seems to me to be a product of a chaotic mind. Inno recently had a popup inviting players to go to discord for more info on the upcoming FA. I clicked on it to see what would be presented. The answer? I was presented with the discord server, and I will be a monkey's uncle if I could locate a stinking thing on the FA.
Like some others, the thought of quitting the game has gone through my mind. Never before has that happened. Thank you so much for sucking all the joy of playing and helping and mentoring others with available information out of it. IF that was your goal, you have succeeded. Congratulations.
OH and one more thing, the link in the game that takes you to discord? Yeah, it takes me to accepting the invite every time. That could very well be inflating your numbers pertaining to "the success" of your endeavor. Fix that and then rerun your numbers. Bet it makes a difference.

 

[BrinDarby]

but how many of the people you have forced to register

and you have given me no other choice. Most of the time I have to come here and get it still, because of the lack of organization.

I am going to quote that old adage that "Poor planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on my part".

The answer? I was presented with the discord server, and I will be a monkey's uncle if I could locate a stinking thing on the FA.

Lets start from the premise, a "new" Inno ( post mgmt/ownership shakeup )
claims a desire to change gears. Discord and The Forum, are not and do not
operate to perform simmilar functions. Therefore they are not interchangable.

So, the decision has been made to "migrate" your playerbase to something
completely different. There are cost effective ways to add chat, which is all
that Discord really is to either the exsisting game or to the exsisting Forum,
yet you have chosen 1 or the other.... not Both. Discord offers 1 thing that
the Forum doesn't, yet the Forum offers a bunch of things that discord
can't/doesn't offer. I think Inno is underestimating the playerbase both in
amount of frustration they can absorb before leaving..... and the value
of the playerbase that creates community, beta tests, brainstorms ideas,
debugs, and continually advertizes the game. 8 years of content that is
google-able ...

The last game I played, had a smaller playerbase and a bigger more
vibrant community. There was a BBS style actual Forum, there was an
ingame/server message board, and there was Universal Global Chat.
( that included unlimited user created PW protected sub chats. The chat
was detatchable, therefore much more usefull once it was bigger. )

If Inno was serious about the chat aspect, they should've partnered with,
or contracted with someone, to Add chat to the Forum. Discord is being
used to funnel eyeballs to them, hoping some Elvenar ppl will explore
and interact with thier exsisting community. Multiple companies can offer
an "Embedd", for chat, into the exsisting forum. All those eyeballs stay
here, interact here..... foster community here. All along over the past 8 years,
Inno could've add'd chat to the exsisting UI in the game. It makes the most
sense to add it ingame because thats where ppl are "logged in" in a way
that differentiates them by server/world. Its seductive though to have a
Universal Chat, that would be easier if it was here on the Forum.

All of that being said, The Forum and Discord are not interchagable.
Losing the Forum does more harm to the game, than not having Chat.
Yes, we want both.... and we want chat here or ingame, not 3rd party.
If Inno wants an epiphany moment, here's their chance. Change the
tone with the playerbase, by understanding that not all markets react
the same way with global changes, by partnering with the community
for the same goal... making Elvenar better, and by breaking the current
downward spiral of piss'n off your current customers, willy-nilly.

 

[Cleo7311]

Since Discord currently refuses my logins, ticket expired, password invalid, I have accessed it only once. It appears that Discord is designed for the real-time battle gamers, that demand 24/7 access to survive attacks - essentially a fancy version of Skype. Why bother?

 

[TimeMachine]

@TimeMachine , you raise an interesting point concerning accessibility to other categories that I will investigate

Thank you!

Although, it is true that our discord server houses every Elvenar market, your account is used to access the server and not a specific category of it.

That's why I will no longer able to use the Elvenar-Discord-Server in general, as long as the ban from DE exists.

In any case, I recommend that you open a Support Ticket with the moderation team that applied the ban so that you can discuss your ban with them.

I already did so and was told that this is a permanent ban forever - seemed very indiscutable to me!

I suggested not to use the german channels anymore by switching off the german role, but the reaction was the same - permanent ban - out in bad standing forever.
They don't want to discuss anything with me anymore, I guess they are just happy having me finally out of everywhere.

I have no problem with not being able to use german forum but I am very sad about being not able to use US- and Beta-Channels.
Would it have been a month or maybe three or even six months of ban, I wouldn't even talk about it but forever sounds way to hard to me.

I guess I will have to simply accept that I am completely excluded out of the Elvenar-Forum-Community worldwide and forever now, just because of what happend on DE. I guess nobody will be able or willing to help me on this.
Nothing against the teams - Please don't get me wrong. I guess the decission of having me "out in bad standing forever" might come from inhouse and was just executed by Team DE.

Because of the Discord-Server structure being estimated like this, one could guess that this maybe should be exactly as it is, or that nobody @InnoGames has yet been thinking about those kind of cases.

Don't they want to close forums for the same reason they prohibited iDavis to go on with that community knowledge project?
All that old bugs all that critism and obviously all them good hints from the player-base, one should not be able to read anymore?

To me it seems like just annother adjusting screw to raise the difficulty of the game a little more.
Since those "new" people from MTG are in charge, nearly any adjustement to the game worked in this direction, like them fragments in the boss-chests in spire or the new tech-tree, just to name these two.

I don't like it and I especially didn't like the style they were introducing all this - I guess they have recognized me and some of my posts and simply don't want to read anything from me anymore and much more imporant they don't want other players to read some of my thougts.
I will have to simply accept it because it is their right as a part of the house rules.
I was just a guest and if the house owner tells me to leave, I have to do so!

It's pretty clear to me that @InnoGames is not going to change their slim server stucture just especially for me - one of Germanys "bad boys".

Good luck with investigating theses points of accessibility @-Solaris- I guess this might be interesting in general in the future for players all around the world.

The first time i thought about leaving the game and all my cities was the moment I got fired from Team DE as a Supporter, the second time was when they deleated my forum status as a "former team member" and the Elvenar-Team-Signature without telling me one single word about it.

The third time was when they announced to possibly shut down all forums worldwide.

And now after being banned everywhere I would just stay in the game to show them that I am still not giving up.
I guess this whole case has really nothing much to do with the game anymore and through this issue I've nearly totally lost all my passion, love and fun playing Elvenar.
I am pretty sure it should all lead to this - me leaving the game by myself.

Today I am so close to leaving Elvenar like I never was before. So whoever wants to see me out will maybe be partying reading this.
If this kind of stuff or chicane makes anybody happy, I guess i should just express my compassion for a maybe mentatly ill person.

Have a lovely Sunday!

Thanks for your efforts @-Solaris- I don't think anything will change in the future.

If I should be wrong you would be very welcome to tell me!

I wish you a nice week, a good time in Elvenar for the future and good luck with the new forum anyway.

Edit: At last not to forget: "I would like to congratulate Team-US and Team-Beta for moderating a community, like it should be moderated in my opion."
Nearly a year ago after suffering from a very bad working climate, I was trying so switch from supporting DE to supporting on US or even Beta because after lurking and reading in these forums I've found out that there was a totally different work- and community-atmosphere.
I guess you are doing very much better than the guys from my home country.
So, don't loose your passion for the game and the community as well and just stay as you are!

 

[TimeMachine]

Since Discord currently refuses my logins, ticket expired

Might be a ban too. Discord was telling me the same after being banned.
I just got to know from being banned for longer than 24h by askking the only Team Member which was and is in my friends list.

Just as an sditional warning to everybody: One is usually not able to write to team members after being banned from Discord-Servers because from that moment on there is no common server anymore that's why messages will no longer be accepted.
They won't even recognize that you've tried to write a message. I guess this kind of style matches perfectly with the plattforms name!
Once you are out normally the only possibility to reach the teams is by Support-Ticket ingame.

 

[BrinDarby]

@TimeMachine , I say don't quit...... yet....

Although, it is true that our discord server houses every Elvenar market, your account is used to access the server and not a specific category of it.

I find it quite odd, that a so called professional Chat
system such as Discord, doesn't have/allow control to
this depth. Thats like not being able to ban from 1 part
of Discord, but all of Discord only.

Sounds like a tech Issue Inno needs to talk to Discord
about, cause thats plain silly to only be able to ban
someone from everything Elvenar. Speaking of bans,
ahem, a 1st time ban, thats permanent ... speaks
more to the ppl banning, than any single infraction.

I don't like it and I especially didn't like the style they were introducing all this - I guess they have recognized me and some of my posts and simply don't want to read anything from me anymore and much more imporant they don't want other players to read some of my thougts.

Nothing against the teams - Please don't get me wrong. I guess the decission of having me "out in bad standing forever" might come from inhouse and was just executed by Team DE.

I would think, as long as you don't give away propriatery info,
or break any non-discosure agreement, you should be safe in
that could continue here as long as it stays open. I've been in
your boat before, ultimately they deny you access to anything
they have control over under the auspice of " we reserve the
right to deny service to anyone ".

I'm on the fence about Elvenar because once the "death spiral"
has started ( it has here ), most companies refuse to do what it
takes to reverse it. They either just let it die, or jump ship and try
to sell it to another unsuspecting patsy... ( so they think ). I see
no reason to keep the Forum open, if most of our contributers
have moved on to greener pastures. Its like a ghost town around
here lately ( last few weeks ).