Discord: My reaction

[PJS299]

From what I remember Discord had a lot of fiddly crap with setting up user preferences and such, and it was a huge pain in the ass to find settings let along change them.

I only really used Discord a little bit to find information on the smaller and more obscure mobile games but in the end it was often more trouble than it was worth. FoE might have a big enough playerbase to generate to much noise for Discord to be worth the trouble.

That's why I only have two social apps now. I had Discord, but deleted it a while back because of all of the above things, plus it was taking up too much space.

 

[Aleria Wrathborn]

Discord has its uses, but it should never be used to replace a forum where every topic has concise and easy to find locations.

Bethesda did that crap with shutting down their forums and moving everything to Discord. It is impossible to find any specific topic there, and if something you actually care about is mentioned early in the day, then you have to scroll through multiple posts of unimportant stuff and people posting because they like to have attention just to try and find the one thing you actually wanted to know about.

 

[xivarmy]

Given that the only real purpose of the forums from inno's perspective is announcements, discord is 100% a replacement for that. They create read-only channels with said announcements, job's done - ignore the rest of the cesspool, like they do with the forums.

All the threads on the forums are only of particular value for the forum denizens.

So yea, I'd say this "doesn't mean the forums are closing" like when the beta CM asked "what would it take to replace GvG?" and insisted it didn't mean they were removing GvG, that it was just a discussion. They probably already *want* to close the forums and they may already be at the threshold of "not active enough to keep" - but will put that off for now as a community management exercise and announce it in a few months time to give the illusion of consideration and it ever having had a chance to go another way

Incidentally if threaded behavior is important to *them* (what's important to us doesn't much matter), there's always reddit

 

[Wwwoodchuck]

I have not visited the FoE discord and do not plan to. I can visualize what it is like and that is all I need. Someone stated it above, like Global on steroids with graphics.

Discord is not something where you can have a written discussion with more than a handful of people. More than that messages get lost in the noise, drifted up off screen and not seen. Sure, you can have a number of channels, each with a different discussion. But that is equally confusing. Discord is not really a ‘large group chat’ orientated program.

I have a number of discord servers I am on. The active ones for FoE we use for voice communication. Notably is the start of GbG season. Commands can be given and acted on in real time, not having people stop to change screens to read a message. There may be 12 or 15 people on a channel discussion, but only one or two doing the talking.

The other main use of discord is to broadcast a message to a group of people. It is very efficient to setup and send out a message to a group of people and everyone will get an ‘alarm’ that a message has been posted. You do not have to wait around for people to log in and hopefully read a message.

It is also a nice place to store group graphics information that everyone can access. Example: at the start of a GbG season the leaders can post a graphic of the island with ‘no hit’ sectors highlighted. A visual graphic is much more user friendly than listing them.

 

[Be Chuille]

*sigh* Just one more thing pushing me to totally quit this game.

 

[Orius Maximus]

Incidentally if threaded behavior is important to *them* (what's important to us doesn't much matter), there's always reddit

That's almost as bad.

 

[Galechade]

Once again Inno is attempting another distraction instead of concentrating on getting Raids out to Beta to be tested. If they spent as much time working on Raids as they do all these ridiculous events and other attempted distractions, we might at least have it being tested in Beta. But nooooooooo, so lets throw something else out there to try to distract. Maybe we should start a pool on whether or not Raids will even be ready for testing by the new year.

 

[Emberguard]

If they spent as much time working on Raids as they do all these ridiculous events and other attempted distractions, we might at least have it being tested in Beta.

That assumes those managing the discord have anything to do with coding. You don't need the entire team working on the exact same task the entire development process.

Imagine if a restaurant took the approach of 100% complete a single tables order before ever bringing in a second table. You'd never get your meal, because you'd have to wait an hour on customer #1 before you could start on customer #2, instead of serving 40-100 people in 1 hr simultaneously through different workers handling different parts of the process or finding a secondary task to work on while you're waiting on something to finish cooking or whatever

 

[NWWolverine]

If they're planning to get rid of this Forum, it then becomes an opportunity for others to build and offer a new one. Someone needs to start now so you can begin the transfer of participants from here before this closes.

 

[Sharmon the Impaler]

If they're planning to get rid of this Forum, it then becomes an opportunity for others to build and offer a new one. Someone needs to start now so you can begin the transfer of participants from here before this closes.

Inno doesn't care about the current content , they will just delete it and start over.

 

[JJ597]

Discord will be the new "GLOBAL CHAT". If these forums are deleted, it's just another reason not to spend any money on this game!

 

[Sharmon the Impaler]

Discord will be the new "GLOBAL CHAT". If these forums are deleted, it's just another reason not to spend any money on this game!

Marketing companies usually split up the project assets across third party platforms to lower the development costs. Development shrinks to a borderline SDK , any communications infrastructure and legacy modules are transferred to third party or decommissioned as quickly as possible and all licensing that can be migrated to open source is. They want the revenue and things like customers, licensing and development are liabilities not assets at this point.

 

[Galechade]

That assumes those managing the discord have anything to do with coding. You don't need the entire team working on the exact same task the entire development process.

Imagine if a restaurant took the approach of 100% complete a single tables order before ever bringing in a second table. You'd never get your meal, because you'd have to wait an hour on customer #1 before you could start on customer #2, instead of serving 40-100 people in 1 hr simultaneously through different workers handling different parts of the process or finding a secondary task to work on while you're waiting on something to finish cooking or whatever

Except with Inno's recent track record, they better put everyone on Raids to even get it to work correctly. Their business practices are lousy at best these days. I wouldn't begin to trust them to run a restaurant. Too many health variables. But that's my whole point. The team(s) they have working on Raids isn't getting it done. Try putting everyone on it and maybe we can finally get a product out to be tested.

 

[Be Chuille]

It looks like the forums will be removed, and probably soon.

On Beta, someone asked if the forum will still be updated.
A Mod replied "All relevant information will be shared in the support system, e.g.: https://support.innogames.com/kb/ForgeOfEmpires/en_DK/2475/Winter-Event-2023"

So... that sounds like a "no, the forums will no longer be used".

These forums were a good place to learn, ask questions, give feedback, and communicate.

I tried FoE Discord and removed it. It is full of vulgar comments and images, and is just chaos. I have no intention of using that.
If that is what FoE is now offering for communication.... This game just keeps degrading.

 

[P C C]

I think the fact they chose not to create a feedback thread on the Forum to go with the announcement is a bad sign

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

Since all my Guilds have Discord groups, that many find useful.. i will also add Foe. Whether i use it depends a lot on what will happen in the future.
Personally the Forums as they are now have little value other than as a place to waste time (for me).. a place to whine / complain about Foe things (for many) and a place to argue nit picking over trivial words (a few longtime players ) anda few bit for fun, (Like the ban thread)
The loss of the Forums will hurt no one except a few new players seeking answers. (but lately they seem to not even be willing to listen! . AkA the plunder thread that was just run. The newbie seemed incapable of actually listening?
Anyway the current Forums have no value other than to blow off steam, or waste time. Same as what the new Discord will do. So why get your panties in a bunch?
The one use for the current Forums might be to have the announcements And threads pertaining to them. If they can make a Foe channel in discord for those after a time .. The the Forums as they are now can die.
Discord can be very complex with many side bits. And where players can invite others, exclude others etc.Making new areas to discuss things within/adjacent to the main line. I would think after a short time a lot of possibilities will open up

 

[Emberguard]

The one use for the current Forums might be to have the announcements And threads pertaining to them. If they can make a Foe channel in discord for those after a time .. The the Forums as they are now can die.

They already have a discord channel for the announcements, plus a area in the "knowledge base" when you click on support that's set up for that

Anyway the current Forums have no value other than to blow off steam, or waste time. Same as what the new Discord will do. So why get your panties in a bunch?

The value of forums is archival value. You have something you can look up when it's in forum format. You don't get that in discord for the most part

 

[Disgruntled Veteran]

The loss of the Forums will hurt no one except a few new players seeking answers. (but lately they seem to not even be willing to listen! . AkA the plunder thread that was just run. The newbie seemed incapable of actually listening?

Personally I'd get over it quickly if the forums shutdown, but like many others I would end up going without any of the information that we currently get here in the forums. Like others have said, I have no intentions of using discord. I got rid of all social media platforms as they became far to toxic since around 2015 - 2016.

Speaking as one of the "annoying" new players that had a run in with the forum 5 a couple months ago, sometimes advice just doesn't click until it does. Another words, some of us are stuck in our own perspectives until we see for ourselves exactly what you were explaining. In hindsight I can absolutely see how frustrating it is to point things out and feel as though you're being ignored. New players aren't ignoring you, they just don't know enough to make sense of your longterm knowledge explanations. I assume this is what the person in the plunder thread meant by "both sides are speaking past each other."

PS: the more hostile you get towards new players the more they will question your advice. Which is quite stupid as it's only going to create more tension... Speaking from experience, I now know to carefully choose my forum questions and never question the advice given. Just say thank you, lol

 

[Emberguard]

sometimes advice just doesn't click until it does. Another words, some of us are stuck in our own perspectives until we see for ourselves exactly what you were explaining.

Yeah. I get it may be frustrating to answer a question only for the answer to then be discarded, but if the purpose is to help the other person it is far better for the "new" player to consider it and tailor that advice to their own needs by testing or adjusting the info given to what the player is wanting to achieve. Especially if it's someone that intends to stay for any length of time, not just a quick bout of playing and move on to the next game

I could have the absolute most amazing strategy ever.... means nothing if it doesn't suit the needs of the person asking for advice. Or worse, they take the advice, understand none of it, test none of it, the game changes and because they haven't experimented with the advice they're unable to adapt. Copy + Paste falls apart the moment you need to do anything outside Copy + Paste if you don't understand the reasons behind the methods

 

[Ebeondi Asi]

Thinking about it, the one group of historical threads that someone should save are the threads about getting advanced troops in earlier Eras. Those directions are really complex and exacting. So I would hope someone would collect them to save them if the Forum is deleted.
Anything else I can think of is pretty easy to recreate.