Feedback Official Elvenar Discord server

[Astram]

OK back on topic please

 

[crackie]

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.

It’s not too hard to install and set up a forum, but not sure there is that much value in starting a forum from scratch with no new official game info or communique though. At that point, you might as well just join official discord if you want to start from a clean slate too. We got a taste of that kind of forum for awhile here. It devolved mostly into an echo chamber of complaints and the occasional answering of questions. If there is no way for meaningful feedback to reach the devs to improve or fix the game, then it’s not more useful than hearing someone complain about their mother-in-law all day. Hence, a lot of people didn’t find it productive or enjoyable and called it quits. By the sound of it, it looks like similar conclusions are forming over at the beta community because more bugs are showing up in live releases. So I would agree with @mucksterme that a fan-driven forum would die of attrition. Because what is the added value of an alternative and unofficial discourse? What are they offering to bring in new members that they can’t find on official discord? If the only answer is readability, then it’s not enough. The other place is offering chances to win blue bling and promises to provide feedback. Added value would have to be something like Gems and Elvenstats.

I don’t think forum and discord are interchangeable, and I truly hope their discord succeeds. Cause the hardest thing in the game isn’t settlements, events, tourney, Spire, or FA. It’s bloody recruiting! Archmages having to juggle players like a freakin decaying good with subpar in-game tools to handle it is one of the most frustrating aspects of the game. I think the forum and discord are wonders we are supposed to build to help lower the decay. Some companies are worth billions while offering free products because the people are the product and they have managed to reach critical mass in herding them all together. If the majority don’t want to use discord, then it is no different than Friendster before MySpace before the next best thing that had its it moment for 15 minutes before sizzling out.

It's a bit of a vicious circle they have created. A lot of us were watching the ads to help Inno make money. Now they are dumping the forum. I'm not going to discord and Im also no longer attempting to watch ads. As soon as the ads become mandatory, I am uninstalling the game.

Hopefully, we don’t reach the point where they make everyone befriend Ad like Tom and Elon on MySpace and X.

 

[mucksterme]

Hopefully, we don’t reach the point where they make everyone befriend Ad like Tom

Sue me but I have to tell an off topic Tom story.
I used to see him on Facebook.
One time someone said something like
"You are such a loser. You couldn't keep your own platform going now you're on here"
He replied.
"Yeah I'm a loser. I sold Myspace for $1.5billion. Now I spend all my time travelling the world. How's your life?"

 

[BrinDarby]

If the majority don’t want to use discord, then it is no different than Friendster before MySpace before the next best thing that had its it moment for 15 minutes before sizzling out.

Yes, which company who holds the monopoly changes.....

BUT, the fact it was outsourced in the 1st place, does Not......

 

[Pheryll]

So after all the effort to clean out the contest subforum, with the promise of a contest each month, we now have the contest offered on discord only making the removal of many years worth of contest data seem unnecessary.

 

[Yogi Dave]

Has anyone mentioned that another significant difference with the forum and discord is you can freely come to the forum and read all you want remaining anonymous, but you can't with discord? You only need to join the forum if you want to commit. Whereas with discord, you have to join even if you just want to read what is going on.

There has been talk about trying to get the forum kept too. It leaves me to wonder in what form it will be kept. One would hope that announcements still are posted here, and we can continue to have discussions. Somehow, I think this will become less and less useful as time passes. I strongly suspect that all links from the in-game News tab will take you to discord asking you to join if you haven't. Well, maybe some will take you to the YouTube. But again, you don't have to join YouTube to view the info.

 

[Dhurrin]

See original post here

But all this has less than nothing to do with Discord. It is turning into a discussion on what system is best. I'm not going there again; the best system is what you are comfy with and works for you. For us that's the threads, for you it is something else, end of discussion.

I have stated this before;
I have no issues with people using Discord if they feel like it.
I have no issues with Discord being added by Inno as a way of communicating.

However, I do have major issues with being forced to use something outside the game itself. Even these forums one can read without having to make an account; an account is only needed for posting. Even searching can be done without logging in. For Discord however I need to have an account to even be able to read anything.

I also have major issues with a CHAT-server replacing an actual forum, as that will quickly become a cluttered and unorganized mess of messages. And retrieving older topics/posts is just a real pain.
I also absolutely abhor the fact that strangers messaged me about different things, just because they saw me being online.

So, also as stated before; I have been there, done that, not interested, deleted my account, not going there again for this. Inno can go screw themselves.

 

[mucksterme]

Has anyone mentioned that another significant difference with the forum and discord is you can freely come to the forum and read all you want remaining anonymous, but you can't with discord?

Excellent point. Especially considering the weird privacy rules they go by.

(I've never understood why saying, "Mr Sweaty Shirt caused drama" somehow affects a person IRL.)

 

[Mykan]

I often wondered if part of the reason participation in forum is down is "there is not much left to say". The game has been around long enough that a lot of mechanics and such have been figured out. Short of high emotional topics (which keep popping up, but nothing new) there isn't much "new" to discuss. Without some new game features there just is a limit to how much can be said on the same topics. Discord won't change that.

 

[Child of Fyre]

And to those of us who are not allowed to join because of employer?

 

[Katwick]

And to those of us who are not allowed to join because of employer?

Don't do it at work!!

 

[Yogi Dave]

I often wondered if part of the reason participation in forum is down is "there is not much left to say". The game has been around long enough that a lot of mechanics and such have been figured out. Short of high emotional topics (which keep popping up, but nothing new) there isn't much "new" to discuss. Without some new game features there just is a limit to how much can be said on the same topics. Discord won't change that.

Less participation may have gone into their decision. Even without new changes to the game, there are the announcements and release notes that are helpful. If the forum just becomes a place with no more input from Inno, the questions and answers section may become the most important part until people just stop coming here and it becomes a ghost town.

At least we can quit talking (whining) about Inno ignoring us here. They've pretty much said that is the case.

I just created a thread which I'm hoping people who are in discord will use to bring us the announcements and release notes along with any other Inno publishes there, but not here. Here's its link:
News from Discord - May Contain Info!

 

[Katwick]

If you want to (and you should) structure your Discord messages a bit, you can, but it seems that you need to insert most of the formatting commands by hand. The complexity level is pretty much the same as the BBCODE that our forum uses.

Discord Markdown includes a nice list of supported commands (tables are defined but are NOT supported by Discord) and clicking on each of the categories yields the syntax.

The other consideration is the exact meaning of "free." Discord uses a Free to Play, Pay to Win model. Active users accrue Discord Experience Points each day, that you can use to enhance your favorite servers. And of course the server creator can BUY experience points and use them to enhance their own server. Elvenar uses a very similar approach.

AS YOU MIGHT IMAGINE, there's a lively DiscordBot community that's all about finding ways to farm experience points by posting fake messages.

It will be a bumpy ride.

 

[Yogi Dave]

f you want to (and you should) structure your Discord messages a bit, you can, but it seems that you need to insert most of the formatting commands by hand. The complexity level is pretty much the same as the BBCODE that our forum uses.

Discord Markdown includes a nice list of supported commands (tables are defined but are NOT supported by Discord) and clicking on each of the category yields the syntax.

So, in other words, we have to use a markdown language to format things nicely, unlike here where there are at least some icons to do things like make headings, tables and lists. Oh and bold, italic, etc. Bold in discord is **this is bold** Gee, discord is sooo much better than what the forum offers.
BTW, how do I change font size or color? I don't see that listed in the markdown page. The page does mention that other markdown languages have this.

Phone call for Discord. 1990 calling. They want their advanced tech back.

 

[Yogi Dave]

Another great innovation (-er- I mean annoyance) in discord is pressing the enter key submits the message. If you want to just get to a new line, you have to press shift+enter. Things like this go on and on, but that's what we get to live with now. Didn't I just say in a post above that we don't need to whine anymore and @Mykan mentioned something about emotional topics? Sorry, just talking to the trees and the stars. But they never listen nor hear me. (Yes, that line is a throwback to the musical Paint Your Wagon. Wow italics without using asterisks.

 

[Lelanya]

I think, that changing fonts and colors may be a Nitro feature. I will ask around.

 

[crackie]

Over the next several weeks you'll begin to see more and more promotional information about my current development project: Pathfinders - Swap Plus.

Well, uhh…I don't mean I need help joining a fellowship when I said recruiting is the hardest thing in the game. I've been in enough FS to know they run best when you only play with fellow like-minded players with shared goals. That said, Spire is a priority for me. There currently is no in-game tool to filter applicants by Spire ability and even Elvenstats can't fix that conundrum. AMs have to go by an applicant's words and you wouldn't believe how many strangers claim they can do a full Spire in the application, but can't find their way out of Gateway! Therefore, your Pathfinder project would not be helpful to my recruiting cause. Vetting players based on desire for wonder KPs will probably net you a wild bag of playing types. From experience, those aren't the type of fellowships I want to be in anymore. Old fashioned networking is still the most assured and effective way to find like-minded players with same playing styles. Discord is first and foremost a chat app, which means it’s like putting The Lounge front and center, and then building around it. Like @Mykan said, the flurry of chat might increase, but prob not be of substance. Then it becomes trying to network from The Lounge. I can form an impression based on someone’s counting or word association skills, but it doesn’t help me determine if they like or are good at the Spire or Fellowship Adventures, for example. I am open to them introducing a new FA badge that requires FS to count to 15 in a message thread though. They like to throw curveballs. I am also not disenchanting my Winter Lampions collection yet because it will be valuable one day…

I often wondered if part of the reason participation in forum is down is "there is not much left to say". The game has been around long enough that a lot of mechanics and such have been figured out. Short of high emotional topics (which keep popping up, but nothing new) there isn't much "new" to discuss. Without some new game features there just is a limit to how much can be said on the same topics. Discord won't change that.

So after all the effort to clean out the contest subforum, with the promise of a contest each month, we now have the contest offered on discord only making the removal of many years worth of contest data seem unnecessary.

Well, there used to be a fun contest forum that had high engagement in between the more serious discussions…

Btw, there were no winners in the recipe contest over at EN. Like someone could have blown their nose on a tissue and submitted it as an Orc recipe and won. Closed contests lead to lower engagement, or in this case, no engagement. In an open contest, even people with questionable culinary skills will be encouraged by the community to enter a cooking contest, something that is labor and time intensive. See the difference and how engagement works? When tasked with building a community, one should always pick the path that leads to the lowest engagement though.

 

[Katwick]

Font Colors can be changed only by faking out the underlying JavaScript.

 

[ajqtrz]

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.

The thing is, if you consider Discord a glorified chat experience, offering a forum experience, instead, where people could get the Scrolls of Knowledge, as well as all the other things we do here in the forum, I do believe we'd have more than 100 of us there and active. The only problem is "advertising," and, (sorry), we at The Consortium, are working on a method for that. If a msg is sent to every AM and the new ones get it when they start new fellowships, it should be too hard. I'll let you know how it goes.

AJ

 

[MaidenFair]

I realise the decision has already been made so feedback is basically irrelevant, but just in case any of this feedback is ever passed on and informs future decisions, I’m going to throw my two cents in after mulling it over a while.

I have two main concerns with the move to Discord. One, and this is a huge, backbreaking one: it requires registration even to read what’s been posted. I lurked here in the forums for months before joining, soaking up wisdom, gauging the community vibe, reading about experiences in the coming chapters. If I had been forced to create an account before I could even see what the community participation was like and that it would be a valuable resource to me, I never would have bothered.

Two: being a chat platform means it’s not set up for long-term storage and retrieval of info. If I have a question right now, it’s usually easy enough to search the forum and see if there have been other discussions that have addressed it. If not, I start my own topic. If I can’t find something I know I’ve seen through the forum search, I can search Google for it. Even if someone tries to search on Discord, the info will not be clearly presented and contained the way it can be here in threads. If someone came on late and participated in a discussion that happened earlier, their responses will be separated from the rest of the conversation and probably never found in search, unless they happen to clearly label the topic they’re discussing with keywords. Discussions will be fragmented and scattered, and repeated over and over again as the original posts get pushed up off people’s screens.
The forum is more like a library, while Discord is a coffee shop. The latter is great for hanging out with friends, but not so good if you want to find out how to build a treehouse or when the Wars of the Roses were fought.

Three, for a bonus point: Discord, by its nature, encourages more casual interaction. In my fellowship’s Discord group, we chat about our daily lives, share recipes and weather reports and silly memes, tell funny family stories. It’s community, social media in the literal sense. The official Elvenar group, however, has rules prohibiting all that sort of interaction to protect users’ privacy, which makes sense but will also create a terrible disconnect between the logical, instinctual use of the platform and the intended, moderated use by Inno (which, as discussed in point two, isn’t going to work well anyway).

I like Discord well enough for what it is. I already have an account which I use daily and if this had been in addition to the forums, I probably would have happily joined and enjoyed the extra interaction in a different format. But as a replacement for the forums, I foresee the usefulness will be extremely curtailed, and I’m not sure I want to bother sitting in a coffee shop trying to be a research librarian.