I see the guild has finally cut the ties to the old and moved to Discord… and that is a good thing.
However, trying to service every game and game interest in one server is administratively unattainable.
Each game division should have its own Discord server. It ads no cost or hassle of multiple usernames/logins for the users and it allows the actual game support staff to act as Admins for the individual games Discord Server.
Some of the games have already gotten their own Discord server to allow for the better serving of the given games needs… it would just be simply making it official.
It also has the added enhancement on Security of allowing quick action on user violations. (and since the same account is used across servers it makes it easy for admins to share any blacklist that may be needed.
You may not have heard about it … But I can tell you that people have begun making their own Discord servers. This is the reason why the official discord server is dark for many games.
Since there is not cost barrier there is nothing stopping them from doing it … and siphen off players from the “official” server.
Its happening right now.
As for the I like to scroll around games argument. That is only good if people are in said channels. And that is for the most part not happening.
And scrolling down the right side to see what games people are playing is just bothersome and very cumbersome.
OTG is a single online community. We are not a coalition of individual games. Splitting every chapter into individual discord servers would be the first step in driving the community apart. A unified discord server also provides for easier transitions between chapters. Many of our members enjoy playing in multiple different chapters at the same time and should not need to join multiple discord servers for communication.
From a user experience point of view, a single discord server is simply easier for a member to use. There do not have to join different discord servers if they want to join a new chapter. Having to deal with different permissions in every different server would be a nightmare for user as well as the admins.
From the more administrative side; administrating, moderating and maintaining 10,15 or 20 discord server would be a nightmare for myself and the other admins. If members are electing to create individual discord servers for their own use, that is something they are all completely within their rights to do. However, using the official Old Timers Guild name and/or logo is not. If a chapter leader is doing this, they need to reach out to myself and the other admins.
In closing, the benefits of a single discord server drastically outweigh the constraints. If a chapter feels they need something that isn’t offered in the current discord setup, all they need to do is have their chapter leader reach out to me.
Except to the end user. Do I want to join a dozen discords for one guild? No. Hell no. Hell $#%^#ing no.
That the move to Discord was a terrible idea born out of the naive notion that the shiny and new was in any way comparable to what we had. That people flat out predicted the problems with Discord, chief among them being the difficulty in maintaining a channel structure for such a large guild. Specifically, the loss of ad hoc channels allowing member to self-segregate their groups on the fly.
Paying for a large mumble server is no small amount of $$$. Discord is free.
I think the job of making sure that OTG Chapters keep their VoiP/chat use within the parameters of what the admin wish is up to the CLs, XOs and COs doing their part in following the established rules. Or, to seek a variance when it is believed to be required.
Nothing you said about it being easier or better for users is true. Its just demonstrably untrue.
And if by “admin” you mean Forum admins… you might be right… But that has nothing to do with the staff that each game has. Each game has a support staff. Even if you kept it to the top three or so people in each game doing the server admin duties for each given game it would be much more manageable than what you are talking about and what is now in place.
Your tone and view sounds more like somebody wanting to hold onto control than wanting things to work better and in a way that services the players better. You might now feel that way… but its how it sounds.
And the point is moot to begin with. Your players have taken to making their own voice comm solutions for the reasons I pointed out and more.
What you want seems to not matter much… They have gone their own way anyway.
Most people play maybe one or two games at a time…(I said most, not all) so having to be on “dozens” of servers is a false point.
And no more daunting to join a new Discord server than it was in the old Forums way of having to ask for permission to a new games “members only” area and subscribing to it.
And none of the that matters. People are NOT using the “Official” Discord server by and large and are doing pretty much what I outlined… No matter what you think should or should not be the “official” way of doing things…
You can ignore it … or try to do it in a more organized manner with some agreed on rules and methods…
Your choice… Just don’t shoot the messenger… I am just telling you what is going on.
I am very confused by this thread. I know of only a few chapters that have their own Discord channel, and the reason has absolutely nothing to do with ‘making our own, neener, neener’, but simply because they already existed before OTG went officially to Discord.
Discord is hardly shiny, and most definitely not new. And as far as I understand, the move from Mumble to Discord had more to do with a cost perspective than any perceived (naive or not), “shinyness”.
As I said … for the average player… who might be playing one or two games… multiple server is not a big deal. If you think people play 5 to ten games acidly at a time… I think you are mistaken. Perhaps a small number of people are… but you can not codify anything by catering to the exceptions to the norm.
As to the move to Discord because its the new Shiny… You are wrong. Discord is far superior on so many counts as to make your point of view very ill informed. To say it was jumped on too quickly? Without enough thought to what would happen… I would have to say that evidence points to that being 100% true.
I don’t think anyone is saying “neener, neener”. I just think that each given game staff and its players understand what each game needs in terms of text channels, voice channels etcetera … then some other group who are not involved in said game… I would hope that anyone involved in the guild had more maturity than that.
But as I said… people are already using alternative Discord servers… (for whatever reason).
You can embrace it and try to codify it… or fight against it and piss off a large chunk of players. (if you care about that sort of thing).
Just don’t claim doing nothing is a solution when things are happening with or without consent or rule.
Take a step back… Look at what “IS”, and not what was decided and then think what the best course of action is.
Clearly players are making that choice on their own in lew of official choices.
The chapter leadership is involved in how their area looks. They request channels, setups, names, how many, all of that. A default is handed to them by the admin, from there they just tell them what they want. They’re not told here, have 3 channels and thats IT because I dont care to understand about YOUR game. It’s not left up to someone that doesn’t play.
PS: Feedback and useful discourse, regardless of opinion, are ALWAYS welcome.
This is the user count on the official Discord Server:
Offline: 747
Members: 386 (Just means they are logged in with the app running)
Staff: 11
Moderator: 1
Chapter Leaders: 14
Evil Discord Masters: 4
Last I knew the active guild numbers were near 5000. That might be out of date… But it still looks like a very slim number of people are participating in the server to begin with.
And none of those listed as online in any role might actually be “there”. It just means they have the server in their list of active servers… but they could be on any Discord server and it will show them as “online” (green dot)
If that is the intent… fantastic… but reality seems to be turning out a bit differently. Perhaps it is more about the staff of those given games not having a lot of knowledge about Discord and how it can be set up (or good examples of it) Perhaps it is just lack of a given number of players for those games not being interested or motivated to give the information needed to do it up.
For example… I play the game “Sea of Thieves” a bunch. The Sub-Reddit for it has a great Discord set up for it. Rare when they first launched the game also came out with their own official Discord server for the game… But it was not set up very well. I spoke to their admits and pointed them at the way the SOT Sub-Reddit Discord was set up … and they followed the template and made some nice theme changes of their own… and traffic started to pick up on their official channel.
Undead Labs who makes State of Decay 2 had the same problem. I pointed them at the Sub-Reddit Official Discord server for Sea of Thieves and they made changes to their server and user numbers picked up quite a bit … till player numbers went down.
FYI… The Sea of Thieves Sub-Reddit server has about 10K users signed into it most of the time 24x7…
Most of those thousands do not participate on either the website or voice chat. In case you never noticed, mumble never had huge crowds on it, either, except around the time of a big launch.
That’s kind of where I tend to stand on it. When I’ve been an officer in a chapter, I was generally on mumble daily because it made sense from a staff perspective. But when I’m chilling as a regular member? Nah, I tend to avoid the voice channels, in game and out, unless I’m actively grouping with guild members. And while Discord does have chat channels that Mumble lacked, I tend to use the in-game chat only.
There have been times I’ve started Discord and then just forgot it was there.
We moved from Mumble to Discord. Mumble was first released in 2005. Discord was released in 2015 and only in the past year has caught on to where people are asking any and every community “Do you have a Discord?” Furthermore, Discord is a web app with a very slick interface that clearly has the intent of being seen. Compare that to the spartan interface that Mumble has which is functional enough to get you into the channel and then be hidden behind whatever game you’re playing. I think that qualifies as both shiney, and new.
As I mentioned I’ve already stated one area where it is inferior. Users cannot create ad hoc channels. This was great in Mumble in that people who were in a group could create a channel, move to it, run their content, leave and the channel would be removed. This greatly reduced the complexity of the channel list because we don’t have to have several, unused channels sitting there in case someone might need them.
Furthermore, the security is abysmal by comparison. Mumble used a certificate exchange similar to what occurs when you use TLS on any secure browser. But they used it for user authentication. It made it practically impossible for anyone to have their account hacked as there was literally no password to hack. Meanwhile Discord doesn’t even implement dual-factor authentication.
Finally, and this is the most important bit to me, Discord is not in control of OTG. A mumble server was and would be. And what I mean by control is not what you’re getting at here. I’m talking in terms of the fact that Mumble is the only VOIP that is open source and free. OTG can either lease a service from a provider or, if we have technically minded people in the group (and in this group we do) we can stand up our own server and retain completely control of it.
Discord is a private company that is offering this service for free. Just just announced that they are creating a games storefront. If anything I see the app as a brilliant business strategy. They have built a rather large following that they can market to. And I’m not saying they are bad for being a business, far from it. I am just pointing out that if, tomorrow, they decide to alter the policies of Discord so that there’s a constant banner, or that ads for games get played in the middle of streams, or they ban some of our users for who knows what reason, or some other thing the only choices OTG has is to either tell the members to suck it up and deal; or switch to another solution, again. That is what I mean by not having control. OTG is not the final arbiter of what does and does not happen on it’s chosen VOIP solution; Discord is.
Greyed
Let me address your issue with haddock channels.
1: Make your own discord server… takes less than 1 min.
2: Invite people who you are playing with
3: use
4: Delete server when done (if you want)
Might take a minute more or two … but that is what people do. (who use Discord)
As far as OTG not having control of the server? That was an illusion to begin with.
Mumble would go down so often many people just stopped using it. The given host company can close its doors without warning as many hosting companies have done. They can choose to raise pricing… any number of things.
The only server you have any control over is one in your own space that you own… and even then you don’t control the power or internet connection.
But all this is getting away from the main point.
Discord is what has been chosen. I simply pointed out how things are going left… and not working out as I would gather was intended… and offering a way to get it back in line with some kind of guidelines.
Systems Design and analysis has always been my forte … even more so when I was doing Network Design. (Internet Network design)
But … no one is under any obligation to take my advise… and not doing so doesn’t make anyone evil or dumb or bad or uncaring. I hope no one is taking it that way.
Having a single Discord server was a considered decision. Every single point that has been raised was discussed before the decision was made, and the fact that there is no perfect solution was known.
Locking this thread because it gives me tired head.
