OOC Discords And The Influence They Hold

[But Will It Blend]

Hello.

I am writing this after thinking about a certain situation which happened recently that, while I am not surprised, I think is genuinely concerning.

I am not going to go into specifics. I will not name names. It is my understanding official discords are monitored by DM's and all of that so I'm confused as to how these things happen.

When things are happening ICly. You should not be using discord/faction chats to OOCly attack people in them or gang up on people ICly.

If you are not in this faction or part of the government. Or were a prominent figure that has moved on. Frankly? You should not be part of these discussions or making comments to try and influence or push people who are your friends OOCly to be making certain decisions or taking certain actions you want them to.

This feels like a no brainer but I just saw this happening while all of it is literally monitored by DM's. So hopefully people can take a moment to self reflect, consider why this is toxic. And hopefully do better.

Thank you.

[Peacewhisper]

In my opinion, there should be no official discords for any settlements or code-supported factions like the Radiant Heart, Assassins Guild, etc. There should only be one official Arelith discord, and all IC stuff should be kept out of it as much as possible. As it currently stands, people who keep things IC and don't participate in these discords routinely get excluded from events, leadership positions, raids, sailing, and more because people plan this stuff in discord, they trust their discord buddies more than the new adventurer they don't know, its more convenient to ping a group of trusted friends on discord than it is to go to the local hub and ask around who wants to sail, etc. If people want to make their own unofficial discords for this kind of thing fine, but it really bothers me that this has become officially sanctioned for every corner of the server and it is clear that it has eroded away much of the immersion and authenticity of the role play experience on Arelith for the sake of convenience.

[In Sorrow We Trust]

In my opinion, there should be no official discords for any settlements or code-supported factions like the Radiant Heart, Assassins Guild, etc. There should only be one official Arelith discord, and all IC stuff should be kept out of it as much as possible.

just giving my +1

i left all of the discords and remain in a few only because i need to observe a few specific channels. they're big echo chambers.

[Royal Blood]

I am not sure there is a way around Discords or OOC communications except pointing out when they are being used in a way that is damaging the game and then making DMs aware.

The reason for the sanctioned servers were so that they could be monitored. Because without them, they existed privately and moderation by DMs was sometimes granted but not always guaranteed. Obviously private servers exist beyond the view of DMs still, but I think the like standardized discords offer a moderated area for players to congregate in and be productive.

I think that the sort of activity you are speaking about would happen sanctioned discord or not. The players that play to be with OOC buddies will be with OOC buddies' discord or not. They will search for groups OOC discord or not. OR they will just make their own discord because they can and it's the way they want to play. Whether this is good or bad is up for each player to decide I guess.

I agree there is a level of immersion broken when communications are not held IG enough but, in my experience, most places and groups may make an OOC Post, but it also comes with tangible IC encounters, postings, etc and is not like strictly OOC.

TLDR: Maybe we don't need a small discord for every niche in Arelith. But without the moderated discords, un-moderated discords would still exist. Issues with OOC communications are not a Discord issue, it's a player issue. And each individual player has to decide for themselves how they want to play and whether they'll be like a net-positive for the RP community or like whatever

[Peacewhisper]

I agree toxic discord behavior and metagaming will always happen. But I think sanctioning it has just normalized it and allowed cliques with some of the worst offenders to more heavily entrench themselves into positions of authority. Echo chambers are bad. All y'all did is put "Official" in front of them and invite everyone in.

Imagine if I had a thorn bush in my yard. I complain about the thorn bush and everyone else complains about it because it is prickly and it hurts if you bump into it. So my solution is to water the thorn bush every day, put fertilizer on it, call it THE OFFICIAL THORN BUSH, and chase anyone out of my yard who tries to cut it down.

Yeah, thorn bushes will probably always exist, doesn't mean I have to put up with the one in my yard or give it more power than it already has over me.

[LivelyParticle]

I've left all Arelith discords lately and only (had to) rejoin the unofficial sailing Discord as it's the only way I can submit bug reports directly to the developer who handles the sailing system. I find there's way too much handled or talked about in Discord that should be kept in game, as much as the moderators try their best, they can't keep an eye on things 24/7 or have full context of what's going on. And yes, me leaving the servers won't solve that, but at least I won't see it and be disheartened by it.

The only thing I miss is being able to complain about Surface crashing in the middle of a voyage for the umpteenth time with the rest of the people suffering in general. Overall it's a net win.

[Floral Shoppe]

I have to be strategic about what times I can play (can't just log in whenever any more) so Discords are very useful for arranging times for events and moots and such. I'd be fine with doing that using -factions in game but nobody seems to look at that. Also when I have a question Discord is faster and frankly tends to be a lot friendlier than the forums, every time I post here I dread when I see a reply because half the time it's putting me down for not being a skilled enough player instead of being helpful.

But it is abused, can't deny that. I wonder if it's the best idea for elected settlement leaders to also control the official Discords for example.

[Royal Blood]

The difference is this Rose Bush is monitored and trimmed it's not left to grow uncontrollably and when it becomes an issue the DMs are aware of it. Arelith does not broadcast what punishments they dish out so it can appear as if 'Nothing' is happening, but I doubt blatant meta gaming goes un-noticed and unreported. A moderated server is one a DM can pull logs on and verify the reports they receive are like actually happening.

I'm not arguing anyone /should/ use discord or shouldn't. It's a personal choice. I'm just saying that players who choose to use it, have a moderated place to do so. I think that's better than un-moderated, because the alternative is that these places exist regardless and simply don't have any DM oversight.

My overall point though is that removing the official discords won't have any positive gain in my opinion. Players who want to centralize their roleplay around OOC communications will do so regardless. Echoe chambers will exist regardless. The difference is in the moderated spaces its recorded and can be used appropriately to address rule breaks.

Discord is alos player outreach. It gives Arelith -control- over it's own OOC brand like instead of letting individual players handle it form them which I think is important because it was easy before to miss-understand a private server to be an official server and be like speaking on behalf of the Arelith Team.

[But Will It Blend]

I posted this less as a case of 'Banish all discords' even if I choose this route personally and think it can create issues. I just was hoping that it could be a general reminder just about making sure people are mindful without calling anyone out. If you're using these to coordinate stuff? Fantastic.

If you're having OOC talks about why things people are ICly doing need to be stopped and high fiving your bros and talking about having characters come back to deal with things you dislike. That's the problem. And that's the toxicity.

[Peacewhisper]

The truth is that those unmoderated spaces already exist in tandem with the moderated ones. So the moderated spaces just give plausible deniability to their curators and their colleagues, in addition to the immense status and influence they wield in being able to just straight up ban anyone they don't like or simply turn the popular opinion against them OOC. This is why I see no benefit to having an "Official" discord server for every town, city, castle, church, grove, shack in the woods, bump on a log in the bottom of the sea, etc. It is just wasting DM's time and giving unnecessary power to people who don't need it and probably don't deserve it. Plus it gives the very wrong impression to newer players that this is how it is supposed to be, that you should schedule everything on discord, ping your buddies on discord if you are about to PVP, that anyone not in the discord is probably evil or a spy, etc.

[Xerah]

For every new player with the "wrong impression" even more would be confused if there were no discords for groups. That's just how communication works these days and there's no real reason to pretend it doesn't.

The vast majority of things are fine on Discord. You might not like them, which is fine, no one is forcing you to join them nor are events not posted in game (almost all even are posted with a screen shot from in game).

[Rubricae]

i hate the private discord discourse because it provides hiding places for people to fling things they probably shouldn't
it's happened with most faction or alt settlement discords i've seen
i don't think giving them official moderation would help because more alt discords would be made
nature of the beast

[Kushion]

as stated above, i think the absence of official discords will only encourage making private ones, and making settlements more “cliquey” in the process.

as it stands, I can’t imagine anything said in the official discord matches up to the player bashing, voice-chat pvp, development leaks, and all the other things that go on in the many private/friend discords formed out of people meeting on arelith.

there’s nothing to really be done about it, and I don’t know that the DMs have the manpower to more closely scrutinise all of the official discords.

[Darkstorn42]

I avoid most discords. I am only active in the tech-help channel of the official cord because when you are having a problem, the forums are just to slow.

That said, I will leave cords and/or call people out for being inappropriate or talking about too much ICly. A little joking and scheduling are about all I expect to refer to ICly info.

I'd also rather have official monitored discords than what we had before. It's almost like a lesser of two evils.

All in all, I understand the feeling and while things could be better, they could most certainly be worse.

[Dreams]

it ruins the game, happens all the time, and I don’t think it can really be stopped other than DMs taking a more active stance against metagaming.

[AnselHoenheim]

Considering the amount of gaslighting, cliques, memes, and a general consensus of gatekeeping content under FOIG for new players that come asking about help in the official discord, I'd rather prefer, personally, to avoid joining any of the official discords, it is no very different from what 3.0 was in the past, it's just now labelled as official

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I don't get this argument. Discord has its issues, sure, but it's not going anywhere. Theres always going to be private discords with cliques and stuff, there's no coming back from that at this point lol. What the official ones do is give people who don't want to be part of that an alternative to catch up with people in their area.

I do like what I think the actual intention of this thread was though. Calling out some of the BS. I just feel like because it's true that discord is here to stay, there's only so much the rules and dms can do. We as the players need to take some accountability for our culture too. Now, I'm not advocating for arguing with people or accusing them of breaking the rules or anything, that's not really your place. But sometimes something as simple as "hey this feels a bit ic to me" is enough to change the tone of the conversation. Sometimes it's not, and that's when you should consider reporting if you feel it warrants it, but I find more often than not it's generally someone who knows better but is just wrapped up in the moment.

Anyways, that's my daily ramble. TLDR, official discords do more good than bad.

[Irongron]

Unfortunately while Discord has been a great benefit to forging a community, and hearing back from players it is also sometimes a proper cesspit of unpleasantness.

I've been in the unfortunate position of having to deal with reports from the 'unofficial' discords, and seen a great many vile personal attacks, slurs, threats, and just other rampant hate-filled postings, targetting myself, staff and fellow players. This of course spills out elsewhere. I've had to reduce my personal online presence to a minimum due to near constant targetting, by creepy individuals who really don't seem to be able to grasp that running Arelith staff and making occassional area updates doesn't make me some all-powerful overlord. Almost every means for players to contact me directly have now been shut down because of this. DMs deal with the brunt of it of course, ranging from tirades of abuse, to full blown death-threats.

At times? I've really had to convince myself that such behaviour didn't represent the majority of players, but I've sometimes found that hard to do, especially when I've seen just how many go along with it, without pausing to reflect on just what level of **** you have to be to condone it.

I wish unofficial discords didn't exist at all, but then I'm in position to control that, and seemingly hanging out in unmoderated spaces where one can live the dream of online bullying and harassment is how some of those playing here get their kicks.

Settlement Discords should have no place in RPing in that settlement, or being part of it, and for a long time the official didn't have them, but we took then 'in-house' when players kept insisting on making their own, and pitching them in tells as the genuine article, and telling all their citizens to join (I myself would get invited to them pretty quickly after RPing in one.). I've had the impression, too, that in some of those settlements, one simply didn't get ahead, IC, without being part of the OC clique, not least so those there can see who you 'really' are.

I'm honestly not sure of the best approach here, other than wishing people could be better. I know some people object to whole idea of being 'moderated' at all, and I sincerely wish there was no cause for us to do it.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Settlement Discords should have no place in RPing in that settlement, or being part of it, and for a long time the official didn't have them, but we took then 'in-house' when players kept insisting on making their own, and pitching them in tells as the genuine article, and telling all their citizens to join (I myself would get invited to them pretty quickly after RPing in one.). I've had the impression, too, that in some of those settlements, one simply didn't get ahead, IC, without being part of the OC clique, not least so those there can see who you 'really' are.

This is going to be way off topic, but apparently folks made it so I can't pm you anymore so I will take my opportunity where I see it.

What you wrote here touches on a major flaw of the settlement system. It's just too easy to take over an area with a group of friends if your group is large enough. When you control an area, it naturally breeds a sense of entitlement over anyone else in that area, which often leads to any who push back being immediately curb stomped not just by that group but anyone who might be able to tell its wrong but wants the benefits of the imaginary power the clique is now selling to would be followers. Some will be brave, most will not.

Now, I'm not against perks involving in game power by any stretch of the imagination. I once touted the settlement system as a strength of the server. But I feel like with the bigger settlements at least it needs to be broken up so that instead of one group having all the power until you muster enough votes (which seemingly drives people to cheat sometimes) to knock them out, dividing the power in a few different spots that different groups can control seems like the best way to balance it out some. If that sounds right to you and you need ideas on how to achieve that, I have plenty, but I'm sure you can work it out on your own in a way best for you better than I can so I will spare you the details. At the very least though, consider removing the extra votes from the nobles that the person who they are voting for gets to bestow on them. It was a neat idea, it's a nightmare in practice.

[Irongron]

This is going to be way off topic, but apparently folks made it so I can't pm you anymore so I will take my opportunity where I see it.

What you wrote here touches on a major flaw of the settlement system. It's just too easy to take over an area with a group of friends if your group is large enough. When you control an area, it naturally breeds a sense of entitlement over anyone else in that area, which often leads to any who push back being immediately curb stomped not just by that group but anyone who might be able to tell its wrong but wants the benefits of the imaginary power the clique is now selling to would be followers. Some will be brave, most will not.

Now, I'm not against perks involving in game power by any stretch of the imagination. I once touted the settlement system as a strength of the server. But I feel like with the bigger settlements at least it needs to be broken up so that instead of one group having all the power until you muster enough votes (which seemingly drives people to cheat sometimes) to knock them out, dividing the power in a few different spots that different groups can control seems like the best way to balance it out some. If that sounds right to you and you need ideas on how to achieve that, I have plenty, but I'm sure you can work it out on your own in a way best for you better than I can so I will spare you the details. At the very least though, consider removing the extra votes from the nobles that the person who they are voting for gets to bestow on them. It was a neat idea, it's a nightmare in practice.

I totally agree with the diagnosis - OOC cliques can absolutely get a stranglehold on a settlement, but I don't personally agree with the prescription. Smaller settlements are far easier to dominate than large ones, where the pool of voters is several hundred rather than just a few dozen.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I didn't realize that cordor, guldorand, and now i suppose sibayad got that many votes. I don't know anything about anundor politics to speak on it really. I did like your idea you once mentioned of mashing settlements together into nations, I'm just not sure how it works geographically with bendir right in the middle.

[Xarge VI]

I can pretty quickly feel when the faction has an active discord channel.

The rp feels more flat. It's difficult to say the exact symptoms but it doesn't take long to notice

It doesn't matter if they take all the steps with ig notices and ig meetings, the flatness persists.

But also it's pretty easy to feel when the rp within a faction is dynamic. By my experience that's due to lack of OOC communication.

[Richrd]

In my opinion, there should be no official discords for any settlements or code-supported factions like the Radiant Heart, Assassins Guild, etc. There should only be one official Arelith discord, and all IC stuff should be kept out of it as much as possible. As it currently stands, people who keep things IC and don't participate in these discords routinely get excluded from events, leadership positions, raids, sailing, and more because people plan this stuff in discord, they trust their discord buddies more than the new adventurer they don't know, its more convenient to ping a group of trusted friends on discord than it is to go to the local hub and ask around who wants to sail, etc. If people want to make their own unofficial discords for this kind of thing fine, but it really bothers me that this has become officially sanctioned for every corner of the server and it is clear that it has eroded away much of the immersion and authenticity of the role play experience on Arelith for the sake of convenience.

Officially sanctioned = ease of access / easier to find.
You know, since it's linked on the official Discord and I don't have to awkwardly ask around and hope a member of whichever discord sees it.

Because, let's please be real, it is a thousand times more convenient to just click on an event in Discord and it showing you your specific time for that event straight away than having to awkwardly tab in and out repeatedly out of the game to slowly write an a.chronus link.

Now, for the main topic. If anyone sees rule-breaking behavior on an officially sanctioned Discord? Report it. Let the teams handle it. Lmao, it's official after all.

[Ork]

I want to emphasize that if we do have official discord settlement channels, we need to remove roles. Roles present to players that this player is a hawk'ins or an admiral or a constable which lends special privilege that bleeds into the in game world.

I brought this up in a suggestion, but the only entity that should have moderating powers in these discords should be the DMs. Equipping entrenched players into moderating roles or roles in general only serves to lend them ooc influence over a specific settlement.

[Peacewhisper]

Some really good posts here.

I've had the impression, too, that in some of those settlements, one simply didn't get ahead, IC, without being part of the OC clique, not least so those there can see who you 'really' are.

I got the same impression, and have been told by more than one player how their character got ran out of a settlement after they joined a discord and encountered some other player there with an old grudge against them who then started making things hard for them IC. Sad to say but cliques are using discord to gatekeep role play on the server from people they don't like OOC.

I want to emphasize that if we do have official discord settlement channels, we need to remove roles. Roles present to players that this player is a hawk'ins or an admiral or a constable which lends special privilege that bleeds into the in game world.

I brought this up in a suggestion, but the only entity that should have moderating powers in these discords should be the DMs. Equipping entrenched players into moderating roles or roles in general only serves to lend them ooc influence over a specific settlement.

+1 to this. No players should be elevated above the other players in official channels with fancy colored names and the ability to ban whoever they dislike. Only DM's should be trusted with this. Players stand to benefit too much from it even if they have good intentions and are trying not to, they still will since it is human nature to follow the person with the most status, which is conveyed by their colored names and power to exclude folks.

Now, for the main topic. If anyone sees rule-breaking behavior on an officially sanctioned Discord? Report it. Let the teams handle it. Lmao, it's official after all.

You really think the veterans with colored names and staff roles in these discords who have played the game for over a decade are too dumb to make a separate non-moderated channel for all their scheming and rule breaking? You really think they don't just point to the official one any time someone scrutinizes their activity to use as plausible deniability? Come on. Lets stop pretending these bad actors are all that stupid to get caught so easily when they've clearly been getting away with it for so long.

Considering the amount of gaslighting, cliques, memes, and a general consensus of gatekeeping content under FOIG for new players that come asking about help in the official discord, I'd rather prefer, personally, to avoid joining any of the official discords, it is no very different from what 3.0 was in the past, it's just now labelled as official

Exactly! All they did was stick the word Official on the old toxic channels people complained about and instead of dealing with the bad actors they empowered them further.