Feedback Official Elvenar Discord server

[crackie]

One of the best features of Discord is its voice channels. I use them often and will call my son on Discord instead of using a phone number. Discord runs in the background on his computer when he is playing and he sometimes doesn't have his phone but even if he did Discord is there also.

We have different understanding of the word "best". That sounds like a nightmare. I don't even want phone calls from my friends and family. Imagine random players just calling you...*breathes into paper bag*

 

[Smooper]

When you play games like my son does with multiplayer capabilities it is required to be able to communicate with your teammates real time. I play Minecraft on muliplayer servers and using voice chat was very useful for doing things. Not as important with Elvenar but could be used to chat with other players during FA or if they wanted help with something.

Voice chat is player's choice on whether to join the channel and any personal calls which I have never received can be left unanswered.

 

[Shae-Leigh]

We have different understanding of the word "best". That sounds like a nightmare. I don't even want phone calls from my friends and family. Imagine random players just calling you...*breathes into paper bag*

Gotta agree with this one. The whole voice channel terrifies me, that I might accidentally be thrown into a terribly awkward conversation.
** grabs another paper bag**

 

[crackie]

Not as important with Elvenar but could be used to chat with other players during FA or if they wanted help with something.

"Sorry guys, we're not doing the FA. Someone wants to organize it over voice call. You didn't need those last artifacts anyway, right?"

 

[Turtle2045II]

Gotta agree with this one. The whole voice channel terrifies me, that I might accidentally be thrown into a terribly awkward conversation.
** grabs another paper bag**

Makes note to contact financial advisor on Monday to invest in paper bag company

 

[Ravmin]

Well, I bit the bullet and created a discord account to see what all the fussing was about. Account creation was a quick and simple process, kudos to discord. My only issue was finding the year of my birth. Scroll, scroll, scroll, am I too old for discord?, scroll, scroll scroll, definitely too old for this.

I was a bit worried due to all the negative posts regarding social media and noise and forced account creation.... Facebook, linked in, littered with ads and garbage. I am happy to report that this appears to be a non issue. There are no ads and no messages that are not specifically posted to the Elvenar server. The chat channels are easily ignored until you wish to chat.

With any system like this, organization is key. This forum has had years to fine tune the organization and hierarchy to best serve its community. Setting up the discord channels to match the forum would give the discord server a good foundation to start from and would help reduce the anxiety of this change.

From my brief exposure, discord appears to be a viable replacement to the forums. I'm curious where all the negativity towards it is coming from. Am I missing something?

 

[Dhurrin]

Yes, characters, just like the in-game messages. In my FS's discord server, as I get near the limit it starts showing how many characters are left. If I've created text somewhere else and do a copy and paste, it cuts off the characters at 2k. I have to notice it is saying 0 characters left. Although, sometimes it asks if I'd like to put the info in as a text file. Of course, I have no idea how Elvenar's is being setup. Since currently I'm not planning on using discord as a forum replacement, I might not ever know.

Oh, just to be silly: IfItWasWordsYouCouldJustCreateHugeWordsThatDroneOnAndOn.

That would be great for the German server as German lends itself very well to creating long words, like Donaudampfschiffkapitänskajutentürklinkenputzer

 

[Darielle]

They have every right to shutter the forum if they choose, but it's definitely the "we don't care about you" vibes they keep sending that's gonna do more irreparable damage to the product more than money pinching. Based on the replies, it's hit a lot of nerves.

It kinda hit my nerves when they took down the entire Contest forum ... contests that have been up for years so you could see all of the entries dating back through so many holidays. I could go back and look at the Christmas poems, the spring pictures, the food, everything. But the minute that Helya and I called Inno out for shady dealings in one contest, they suddenly take down the whole contest forum and all of the entries that had been there for years. The only contests they have had from that point on are ones where you cannot see anyone else's entry, thereby rendering the contest process invisible. I have nothing against the recent winners and was happy to see a few people I know win. But I can't help but wonder why they had to suddenly hide everything with contests, or if maybe they just got mad and said the heck with the forums because of it. No one takes down a whole forum built up for years unless they have some reason.

 

[Darielle]

We have different understanding of the word "best". That sounds like a nightmare. I don't even want phone calls from my friends and family. Imagine random players just calling you...*breathes into paper bag*

I hate phones so much I no longer even own one, which isn't a problem since my kids have phones and I can borrow one if I need to. Talk about being out of touch, lol. But I do detest that feature on Facebook, too.

I'll never forget the time when my farmer, who had a stand at a farmer's market each week, was accosted by a customer who said, "I don't want to have to keep coming out here to find out if you have the veggies I want. Give me your cell phone number so that I can call you before I come out, and you can tell me what you've got." No polite request, just a demand (although it's not polite to ask such a question in the first place). Anyway, my farmer told her that he didn't own a cell phone. She got nasty and said, "You're lying! EVERYONE has a cell phone!" As I stood behind her, I suddenly said, "I don't have a cell phone either." She spun around and glared at me, and then stomped away. My farmer looked at me and said, "I love you!" We both laughed.

 

[Astram]

And when did they add "Old Dog" to my name? LOL

Wow. Learn new tricks every day. I must not be an old dog.

Yes, you are it says so in your title. Its on the internet so it must be true

 

[mucksterme]

Did Astram just quote herself? Like she decided, I need an authoritative source to make my point. I guess the most intelligent source would be uhhhhhh ME
Seems scarily like something I would do.

Wonder if it's possible for the players to set one up on their own.

I mentioned earlier that I played a game that died after they took down the forum.
The players set up one themselves.
Most of the regular forum users signed up.
But it didn't last.
Without the fresh game info coming from the company.
It got boring.
Add to that no in game messages to attract new people to offset natural attrition.
One interesting thing. It was much more loosely moderated that the official forum was, but no one seemed to complain.

 

[crackie]

Am I missing something?

You have to start over on discord. There is a lot of good info accumulated on the forum through the years and answers can be found by a simple search. That all goes *poof* when they pull the plug. If a question is already answered before, a lurker can just find it and help themselves to that knowledge without posting. If someone asks again in a post, responder can just point them to a link with the answer without having to write everything out. That info won’t be public anymore and searchable/indexed via a search engine like Google. It’ll be hidden behind a discord registration wall.

What hasn’t been mentioned yet will be the change in support tickets, if any. One used to be find the answers themselves without having to sign up for anything because it’s open to public. Will people now have to send more support tickets and will that impact the volunteer staff who has to answer them? Most established fellowships have one or two people that get info from forum or beta and relay it to the other 23 people in the group. So the info acquired here is spread exponentially, even if none of them have a forum account. If they chose to not migrate to discord, then it’s a lot of people left in the dark. Think of the interesting developments they have announced in the past via forum, like the early chapter migrations. Even though one didn’t need an account to read the announcement, most people probably didn’t bother to read the announcement. Imagine more people having to navigate those type of things while not knowing what’s going on because it’s now behind a registration wall. Support staff can start a new drinking game where they take a shot every time someone asks about how to collect ambrosia in Fairy chapter. That one gets asked repeatedly.

It kinda hit my nerves when they took down the entire Contest forum ...

It was a masterclass in how to run a community into the ground. Under our substitute teachers, we lost the contest forum, they decided to blanket claim copyright ownership of everyone’s work in Artist Corner so anyone who post there lost their creations, bugs went unreported so that section was rendered useless, and staff didn’t bring any Ideas & Suggestions to the meeting so that section died too. BUT…thank goodness, they gave us archives that didn’t work properly to compensate for all that we’ve lost! An unholy year of a dumpster fire experience. You can gauge the moral by noting how many people are still actively counting to 15. They should port that one over to discord, all 500 pages lol

 

[Yavimaya]

Glad you are still part of the first group! I think the death of the forum will be like death of Gems. People will say they miss it, but who left is really going to put in the energy to do the work those guys did to create replacement content. We mostly ask who will do it, and then stare at each other. Time will tick forward and the community will move on, but a part of it will die permanently because at the end of the day, the community is made up of the people, not the technology that runs the platforms. If you don't have the people that went the extra mile, then it won't be the same community.

The irony is the subpar in-game chat has driven a lot of FS to discord, my groups included. If the forum, or even the game, shutters, I'll still be in touch with some of the people from the game and who knows...maybe we all migrate to a new game together. As much as I enjoy using discord for my various fellowships, I'm not sure how I would improve an Elvenar server on discord. I currently have no need for a server-wide real-time global chat, a US real-time global chat, or let alone a massively global English-language chat that may include beta, EN, and the US servers. It's like, check out this latest new phone with all the modern bells and whistles, like a 500MP camera! OK, great, but am I printing out murals that cover the side of buildings? No. Sometimes, you just need to make a simple phone call and a landline that doesn't need charging or won't accidentally fall out of your pocket into the toilet will do just fine. If it's a financial issue, then just shutter the likes of Brazil, Norway, and Tonga and use that money to keep this place open lol. They have every right to shutter the forum if they choose, but it's definitely the "we don't care about you" vibes they keep sending that's gonna do more irreparable damage to the product more than money pinching. Based on the replies, it's hit a lot of nerves.

Losing the memorials on here of my old AM before he passed just doesn't make me feel very good.

 

[Yavimaya]

Also, a lot of people don't know (or even know how) that in each different server they can change what their name appears as. So I won't recognize a lot of people or players in discord. I show up as my game name in each different discord game server but didn't know how to do that or that I even could for a long time.

 

[ajqtrz]

I mentioned earlier that I played a game that died after they took down the forum.
The players set up one themselves.
Most of the regular forum users signed up.
But it didn't last.
Without the fresh game info coming from the company.
It got boring.
Add to that no in game messages to attract new people to offset natural attrition.
One interesting thing. It was much more loosely moderated that the official forum was, but no one seemed to complain.

Yeah, I thought about how hard it would be and how much work it would take to maintain it. But I do think the work, if spread across about 10 or 15 dedicated members wouldn't be too bad. 10 moderators and 4 adminstrators and one "owner" (as required by the site). There would have to be a "reporter" active on Discord to move any announcements, etc. to the forum, as well. Obviously the "owner" would have the responsibility of paying the bill (about $90/month is the lowest I found), and that, I would think would be the extent of his/her committment (though of course, he/she would have to be active and have influence on things). In my opinion, the four admins and the owner and perhaps, the "Head reporter" (it might take a team of "reporters" to keep up) would form an exectutive committee and the 10 moderators would do the moderating feeding their observations back to the 5 who would make decisions and implement changes.

Anyway, it's still a bit of a dream as, so far, nobody has said, "count me in,."

AJ

Donaudampfschiffkapitänskajutentürklinkenputzer

Which, according to Google, is translated: Danube steamship captain's cabin doorknob cleaner. I never knew there was a special cleaner for the the doorknob of a captains cabin onboard a Danube steamship. Wow, one has to wonder how many bottles or spay cans they sell of that product a year and how expensive it is. Or how they advertise it? Maybe "Danube Steamship Monthly, Captain's Edition"?

 

[Ravmin]

You have to start over on discord. There is a lot of good info accumulated on the forum through the years and answers can be found by a simple search. That all goes *poof* when they pull the plug. If a question is already answered before, a lurker can just find it and help themselves to that knowledge without posting. If someone asks again in a post, responder can just point them to a link with the answer without having to write everything out. That info won’t be public anymore and searchable/indexed via a search engine like Google. It’ll be hidden behind a discord registration wall.

There IS a lot of great info here and history and memories, it would be a shame to lose it. There is also a lot of incorrect info due to changes in the game. When I first started lurking the forum for answers it was very difficult to determine if the old thread I found was still accurate info. I can't imagine what a new player is going through with the latest tech tree change. Perhaps Inno feels that a purge and fresh start is needed?

Inno has their reasons for this change but they are not sharing them. It is very difficult to provide any relevant feedback without knowing what the problem is that we are trying to solve (is there even a problem?). Which is why you end up with responses like "It sucks"

There doesn't appear to be any major benefits of discord over the forum. My vote for what its worth is to leave the forums active. If Inno insists on moving to discord and killing the forum at least find a way to leave the forum accessible in some form of an archived state.

 

[mucksterme]

Obviously the "owner" would have the responsibility of paying the bill (about $90/month is the lowest I found),

There are free forum sites out there.
they may not have all the bells of paid but i imagine you can find one that'll do the job
so all you'd need is people you trust to adminster and moderate
yes even i believe you need some moderating

 

[Smooper]

I have already looked at a free site that says unlimited posts and supports video links etc. If anyone wants to contact me about doing some trials with a new forum to see what it will and won't do, you know how to reach me. As I have said before I have run forums before but it was mainly for 40 to 100 people. They were active though and not just lurkers. A lot of the work happens before it is opened and then giving permissions etc.

 

[Dhurrin]

Which, according to Google, is translated: Danube steamship captain's cabin doorknob cleaner. I never knew there was a special cleaner for the the doorknob of a captains cabin onboard a Danube steamship. Wow, one has to wonder how many bottles or spay cans they sell of that product a year and how expensive it is. Or how they advertise it? Maybe "Danube Steamship Monthly, Captain's Edition"?

That's the problem with an auto-translate. In itself correct, except in this case it refers to the person who cleans it, not the chemical.

It's just a fun thing to do in German.
There are fun things in Dutch too; like how many words do you know that have 8 consecutive consonants?

 

[Katwick]

I never knew there was a special cleaner for the the doorknob of a captains cabin onboard a Danube steamship.

They store it right next to the Blinker Fluid and the left-handed Screwdrivers.