Why the Strong Preference for Discord in Remote Games?

[MNblockhead]

I find discord annoying when used as a primary support and discussion forum, which many software companies do. But, as much as I don't like the interface, I have to admit that it is a good platform for on-line gaming. When on a poor internet connection in countries with poor infrastructure, I found Discord to be one of the few platforms that would work well. The phone app and my Google Fi 3G connection provide a good backup if wifi is bad on my laptop. Push to talk is nice.

But for games I run, I use my Google Meet account. It is a nice, clean interface and generally works well no matter where I am in the world, even on less-than-ideal connections.

I use MS Teams for work all day and would be happy to use that for gaming if I didn't have a google meet account.

I use zoom for networking events or meetings/webinars from other companies and I like it well enough.

Use the a/v in Roll20 NEVER gave a good experience, even with a stellar connection.

I can't get Foundry's A/V to work properly.

Role has excellent A/V but I have one player who could never get it to work. I think it competed with another app for access to mic and video, but we couldn't figure it out, so we stopped trying to use it and ended up using Google Meet instead.

 

[Nytmare]

Others have already mentioned the various reasons both practical and cultural, but for me personally there's another, emotional reason. I spend half my working day sat on Zoom. I associate Zoom with sales calls, performance reviews, office training etc. This does not put me on the right frame of mind for pretending to be hobbits.

That's the entire reason why I started my game as a text only, no-video game. I rarely use Zoom myself, but it seemed like everyone in my life was being stressed out by it and it didn't seem like something people were going to want to do as entertainment.

 

[Nytmare]

Yeah, Slack isn't a bad alternative. You don't get free group voice or video on Slack, but otherwise the channel structure, file use, notifications and such are similar.

I prefer Slack over Discord for one real reason, and one silly bias, but Slack has one big strike against it that I don't think Discord has.

Slack offers built in conversation threading, which I really really like because it allows for several side conversations to happen in the same virtual space without the background noise and without needing to juggle additional rooms or channels or invites.

The Silly Bias is that 90% of the Discords that I am a part of are disjointed, disorganized, bot laden madhouses. They have about 40 or 50 rooms, none of the rooms are named in a way that helps you understand why they were made or what conversations they're meant to attract. I assumed at the time I was trying to come to a decision between them that they could be MADE to be organized and sensical, but I already knew that I could make Slack do what I wanted.

The downside to Slack, that I think Discord avoids, is that the free version of Slack has limited message retention. If there's an important bit of information that you're going to want to go back and search for later, Slack probably isn't what you want. I actually wanted this for my Torchbearer game because I imagined it working almost like fading memories. If there's something important that the players really want to remember, they put it in their notes.

 

[glass]

Discord has one nice feature in that you can change you alias on a per server (ie per game) basis. So you can set your name to your character name (or "gm"). Obviously you can change your name on Zoom too, but you have to change it back and forth manually for different games (etc).

Big public Discord servers? Waste of space, but for 4-7 people in one game it is ideal!

_
glass.

 

[MarkB]

Discord has one nice feature in that you can change you alias on a per server (ie per game) basis. So you can set your name to your character name (or "gm"). Obviously you can change your name on Zoom too, but you have to change it back and forth manually for different games (etc).

Big public Discord servers? Waste of space, but for 4-7 people in one game it is ideal!

_
glass.

Yeah, that is useful, not just for character names, but for when you're getting together with people who you know by their real name rather than their online handle. Within your server, where everyone knows them by their actual name anyway, they can change their alias to show their name, without making it visible anywhere else.

 

[Nytmare]

Yeah, that is useful, not just for character names, but for when you're getting together with people who you know by their real name rather than their online handle. Within your server, where everyone knows them by their actual name anyway, they can change their alias to show their name, without making it visible anywhere else.

You can change your handle, but I thought you could only have one avatar per account, right?