OOC Discords And The Influence They Hold

[Azensor]

I for one really dont want to have to go back to ventrillo.

[Rei_Jin]

Ooooh, we could all use IRC

[PowerWord Rage]

Ooooh, we could all use IRC

Omg...never thought that i'll hear of IRC again. My goodness, time flies so quickly.

[Dachlatte]

I politely refuse joining Discords for factions. Many players think you don't want to play with them if you're not jumping into their Discord. Of course, that's not how I feel. I was very happy to join them and play with them in-game. But it was apparent that they were doing a lot of planning and coordinating outside of the game, and felt that in-game coordination was a burden. Discord is not going away, and the 2000s aren't coming back. So it a matter of adapt or don't.

As we have it now, as a player you have to choose between either instantaneous Discord messages to everyone in their pockets, or leaving paper written messages on message boards/catching people online, or leaving a message in the ancient -faction dialogue system.

Improving our current in-game systems for organizing Factions, Faction communication, Faction events, Faction Ranks, etc. could go a long way to get people to move their coordination out of Discord and back into Neverwinter Nights.

Imagine logging into Arelith, and heading to your local Speedy Messenger service to interact with your Speedy sanctioned Guild Box that your Faction pays for each month. You're greeted with a NUI menu with the MOTD from your faction. It includes information on the faction, in-game dates & times for events/meetings that you can RSVP to. Maybe there's a list of messages that faction members have posted in the last 7 days. You could go to a Speedy office and have the option to send a mass speedy message to all faction members who are online, or pay to have a message delivered to their faction mailboxes (and their residence). Maybe your guildmaster has sent you a letter asking you to go on an urgent coal mining quest.

There is a ton of functionality that could be built into the game through NUI. Would love to see it (and even help build it.)

+1 100%

[Xerah]

Imagine logging into Arelith, and heading to your local Speedy Messenger service to interact with your Speedy sanctioned Guild Box that your Faction pays for each month. You're greeted with a NUI menu with the MOTD from your faction. It includes information on the faction, in-game dates & times for events/meetings that you can RSVP to. Maybe there's a list of messages that faction members have posted in the last 7 days. You could go to a Speedy office and have the option to send a mass speedy message to all faction members who are online, or pay to have a message delivered to their faction mailboxes (and their residence). Maybe your guildmaster has sent you a letter asking you to go on an urgent coal mining quest.

There is a ton of functionality that could be built into the game through NUI. Would love to see it (and even help build it.)

I gotta be honest, this sounds extremely un user friendly and complex system. Add on that someone need to build a worse version of something that discord does far better than you suggest. I really don’t see the benefit even if Ork keeps telling me that I’m held back in every faction since I don’t always join their private discords.

[Coolguy McMagic]

I think new and better functionality for the in-game factions menu would be a welcome change - even if it won't or can't replace Discord.

I don't see a point in trying to somehow ban the use of Discord and "push it underground". Apart from not being feasible, it's also not desirable. I'm sorry to say it, but there is no permanent or easy fix to some people being toxic and unpleasant OOC. It's something that just needs to be moderated whenever it pops up.

I must also seriously wonder how much time the people who want to remove all Discords spend on Arelith everyday, and how much organizational duties they actually undertake for events, factions, sails and other things. I often only play for one or two hours, or take several days off and I really do not want to spend the limited time I have tracking down each and every member of a faction to ask them for input on when to run next week's event. Instead I could just take 5 minutes to post a Discord poll, seek out the few people that don't use Discord and put up a note on a board for everyone else.

That being said, I agree that settlement leaders probably shouldn't also take over moderating duties on official Discords. At the same time, DMs also have only limited time and given that DMs have administrative powers on these servers, the opportunity for abuse should be relatively low.

[Floral Shoppe]

I don't think a lot of negative opinions here means there's a general sentiment against Discord use on Arelith. I'm pretty sure the Discord users outnumber Forum regulars by many multiples. This is also where those who don't like Discord will end up so a thread about it will be more complaints than praise.

[chris a gogo]

Don't care about discords.
I don't use them not because i don't want to chat to people as I'm happy to do so via tells in game, but I've seen a few good players burn out due to the constant hassle of running factions via discords, as such i just don't use them, plus I'm old married and have a job so I prefer to play the game as a game, not a social club.

[-XXX-]

I avoided using Discord for a very long time, but I fear it's become such an integral part of the shared player experience for the entire player base, that people who deliberately remove themselves from it (for a plethora of very valid reasons) become regarded as the odd duck.

• it's become indispensible for IG event organization - to a point where most IG announcements merely serve to check a box ensuring the information that's being primarily shared through Discord even exists IG.
• it's a well of useful information & advice ranging from build guides to dweomercrafting table & while the wiki does exist, many players have frankly become too lazy to search it when they can simply ask and get an answer to what they're looking for in real time.
• it's a social space - most players simply want to interact with each other on an OOC level despite the fact that people can get a little toxic at times, especially once emotions get thrown into the mix.

Like it or not we seem to be past the turning point & I don't see any alternatives or solutions.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Banning the use of Discord would just push it underground.

This might be what's best. Players are able to incorporate other players into their discord first through in game avenues mainly tells. The innocuous "hey man add me I'm ork#8835" is how these discords mostly start, and how you'd have to organize for organically grown factions.

Make that an actionable offense. Push private discords into the underground. They'll have less ability to actually do anything if they're risking consequences to add the new guy. This will also make them so insular that 1) we'd know it immediately and 2) they can't grow without a lot of effort.

Ork, I usually count on you to be one of the bastions of reason and logic, but I can't find it in what you are saying in this thread. I remember the days of there being no official arelith discords and the closest thing you could find to a server discord was the player run 3.0. That created a group bubble that didn't necessarily reflect the values and design intentions of the people who make those decisions, and while I don't hate anyone involved with the 3.0 I still consider it to be by far the most toxic example of a toxic player run server I have ever been in, and I have been in some pretty gnarly ones. The group think was so inbred that I was actually banned for suggesting you could make a weaponsmaster with 40 will. At this point, you can't toss a rock on the server without hitting a weaponsmaster with a divine dip that pushes that threshold.

Now it's not my intention to bring up old arguments or anything, but I think it's important to illustrate just how bad it was before the official discords. Is it perfect now? No, especially if you are of the mind that no ooc contact is the pure way to play the game. But it is sooooo much better than it was. People still get to call me an idiot when they disagree with me, and I at least know I can finish my point before getting nuked out of the conversation entirely. That's a win-win for everyone as far as I'm concerned.

The settlement discords are now just a smaller example of that comparison.

[D4wN]

You don't need to be in any Discords if you don't want to. As far as I know none of the Settlement Discord's leaders force anyone to be in or participate in Discord and the majority of stuff I see is either new players asking questions, organisation of events or banter. The settlement Discords imo aren't the issue. It's the toxic echo chamber private Discords. Every Discord owner has the responsibility and accountability to manage their discord server if they choose to make one. So they should enforce the rules applied by Arelith. 'Be Nice', don't use OOC methods to get one up over your enemies. No metagaming (this includes voice use for PVP).

I just feel like the DMs/Admis making an announcement to the community to please just be nice and not use OOC methods to 'win' won't do much. They already have a zero tolerance on bullying and that's not followed either. It's unfortunately as they say pushing the snuggybear uphill. That's why I simply leave toxic Discords if I find myself in one. It's also definitely easy to get drawn in mind you. That's why it's safer just to not be in them and remove yourself from that toxicity.

We've literally had the ship captain of a settlement say in this thread that yes, you do need to be in discord, because that's exclusively how they organize sails, and you'll be excluded if you aren't in that discord because you "might be a pirate." Not a single ship captain from another settlement came in to offer a rebuttal that "No we don't do that here anyone can sail with us." because they are all exclusively organizing via discord too. That's not okay. I have already removed myself from the toxicity of discord many years ago, I still suffer from it because it continues to spill into the game, and I usually find myself feeling excluded because of it.

Of course I don't believe a simple warning will completely stop all the discord shenanigans either, I am not that naive, but I do think it's fair to at least give them a warning and a chance to start doing better before issuing bans. If they choose to continue with the metagaming and exclusive discord clique behavior then sure, the DM's can give them a free vacation and maybe it will do them some good to play on other servers for a while. It certainly did me. As others have pointed out, a lot of this problematic behavior stems from the "must-win" competitive mentality and paranoia so many Arelith players have. People take this game way too seriously and forget we are here to tell stories and to have fun.

This is not okay no. That should be addressed. No one should be forced to join a Discord to 'be included', that's just silly.

[silverpheonix]

You don't need to be in any Discords if you don't want to. As far as I know none of the Settlement Discord's leaders force anyone to be in or participate in Discord and the majority of stuff I see is either new players asking questions, organisation of events or banter. The settlement Discords imo aren't the issue. It's the toxic echo chamber private Discords. Every Discord owner has the responsibility and accountability to manage their discord server if they choose to make one. So they should enforce the rules applied by Arelith. 'Be Nice', don't use OOC methods to get one up over your enemies. No metagaming (this includes voice use for PVP).

I just feel like the DMs/Admis making an announcement to the community to please just be nice and not use OOC methods to 'win' won't do much. They already have a zero tolerance on bullying and that's not followed either. It's unfortunately as they say pushing the snuggybear uphill. That's why I simply leave toxic Discords if I find myself in one. It's also definitely easy to get drawn in mind you. That's why it's safer just to not be in them and remove yourself from that toxicity.

if you aren't in that discord because you "might be a pirate."

This is metagaming.

[Coolguy McMagic]

This thread is now getting derailed by a made-up scenario of someone being excluded from a discord for "being a pirate", even though the person attributed with that statement clarified that it's not what they meant at all. All they said is that settlement discords use tags to assign roles, so people can organize events without everyone seeing them. As long as those are still posted in-game and are NOT used to for ad-hoc PVP encounters or anything of the sort, that should be perfectly fine. And if they ARE used for that, DMs have full access to those channels and should be able to respond appropriately.

[-XXX-]

We've literally had the ship captain of a settlement say in this thread that yes, you do need to be in discord, because that's exclusively how they organize sails, and you'll be excluded if you aren't in that discord because you "might be a pirate." Not a single ship captain from another settlement came in to offer a rebuttal that "No we don't do that here anyone can sail with us." because they are all exclusively organizing via discord too. That's not okay. I have already removed myself from the toxicity of discord many years ago, I still suffer from it because it continues to spill into the game, and I usually find myself feeling excluded because of it.

No we don't do that on Sencliff, anyone can sail with us.

While I use Discord to post time and place for sails, I also do it IG on a message board placed in a public space where everybody can read it & I bring along anybody who shows up - to a point where there's often disguised characters on the deck whose real identity is a total mystery to me both IC and OOC.

Similarly the Dreadnought sails often start by scooping up everybody who's loitering in the hub at the time.

[silverpheonix]

This thread is now getting derailed by a made-up scenario of someone being excluded from a discord for "being a pirate", even though the person attributed with that statement clarified that it's not what they meant at all. All they said is that settlement discords use tags to assign roles, so people can organize events without everyone seeing them. As long as those are still posted in-game and are NOT used to for ad-hoc PVP encounters or anything of the sort, that should be perfectly fine. And if they ARE used for that, DMs have full access to those channels and should be able to respond appropriately.

Well that's what I get for not reading down. My apologies.

[But Will It Blend]

As noted. I think the intention I had when making this was fairly intentionally just. 'Be more mindful'.

If you see somebody planning to do something IC and your immediate reaction is to jump into discord so you and the settlement can talk/meme/joke OOCly about how to shut IC things down? Thats kind of what I mean.

Again. I am not saying public discords are bad and should be banned. Nor should discord be. I would love to see upgraded and enhanced IC tools

And sorry Xerah. I do disagree. If somebody tells me all of the information that IC I need is in a discord I am going to tell them that unless it exists in game it doesnt exist period.

Its a helpful tool to coordinate. But if its happening purely in the discord thats a problem. Yes. Many people post event information up on boards and thats great to be inclusive this way. Its how I get to join anything.

I can't imagine not wanting to revamp in game IC tools to be more reliable and effective so players can be included easier. You can say all you want you don't see or experience problems. You probably haven't! But we all exist in a bubble to some extent. It happening even once to a player can be enough to discourage them from ever trying again. Thats why its a problem. Even one rare time can be damaging to that person.

Obviously there is no way to stop it from ever happening. That would be naive. I just hope everyone can reflect and take a moment to genuinely think on if their actions have indirectly contributed to this.

[Xerah]

And sorry Xerah. I do disagree. If somebody tells me all of the information that IC I need is in a discord I am going to tell them that unless it exists in game it doesnt exist period.

I’m not sure which discords you’re in but 99% of the events I see are screenshots posted from in game.

Looking in to it, the last 23 events posted were screenshots. I think the one that wasn’t I saw in game on an board and they just didn’t post the screenshot.

[Ork]

I remember the days of there being no official arelith discords and the closest thing you could find to a server discord was the player run 3.0. That created a group bubble that didn't necessarily reflect the values and design intentions of the people who make those decisions, and while I don't hate anyone involved with the 3.0 I still consider it to be by far the most toxic example of a toxic player run server I have ever been in, and I have been in some pretty gnarly ones. The group think was so inbred that I was actually banned for suggesting you could make a weaponsmaster with 40 will.

When 3.0 was around you probably got build-locked because you sacrificed a ton to get div dip wm back then and it was a bad trade. Also, incidentally, I deleted 3.0.

I hope folks do the same for their private, toxic discords.

[Peacewhisper]

No we don't do that on Sencliff, anyone can sail with us.

This is the response I was hoping for. The fact so many other people just dog piled on me to call me toxic instead of simply saying, "no we don't do that" is worrying though.

I avoided using Discord for a very long time, but I fear it's become such an integral part of the shared player experience for the entire player base, that people who deliberately remove themselves from it (for a plethora of very valid reasons) become regarded as the odd duck.

I very much feel like the odd duck. Its painfully obvious when you try to mingle with a group of players and they all conveniently come up with an excuse to go hang out somewhere else without you. Its wild the backlash I am getting in this thread because I took a stance against a hypothetical example of using discord to metagame. Maybe I really am an odd duck.

I remember the days of there being no official arelith discords and the closest thing you could find to a server discord was the player run 3.0. That created a group bubble that didn't necessarily reflect the values and design intentions of the people who make those decisions, and while I don't hate anyone involved with the 3.0 I still consider it to be by far the most toxic example of a toxic player run server I have ever been in, and I have been in some pretty gnarly ones. The group think was so inbred that I was actually banned for suggesting you could make a weaponsmaster with 40 will. At this point, you can't toss a rock on the server without hitting a weaponsmaster with a divine dip that pushes that threshold.

The "Official" discord has nearly all the same people that were in the 3.0, only now they are "Official" and have DM's watching them so they use it as a recruitment platform and means to exert influence over the community while keeping all of their more blatant rule breaking in other private discords. Every corner of the server has some discord tied to it with several members of 3.0 sitting in it with colored names telling everyone what they think about everything and how they should do things. If I could go find an abandoned tower or fortress in the wilds somewhere and get away from it I would, but guess what? That abandoned fortress or tower in the woods has its own discord with colored names and 3.0 people too, because they've held the lease for the past 4-6 real life years. Its inescapable.

Now, I'm not calling for bans or to ban discord or anything like that. I just don't think we should give them anymore power than they already have. The colored names in official need to go, the settlement leaders having mod privileges needs to go, and any channel that isn't for a MAJOR settlement should probably just be removed so that people who don't want to worry about some out of game echo chamber affecting their role play actually have some place of refuge from it to go to. Right now discord is pervasive and I've seen zero good arguments against at least making the changes I just suggested to try and reduce its influence. I'm sure I will get called toxic and mean for this post too, that's how you know I am right over the target.

[Edens_Fall]

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

[But Will It Blend]

And sorry Xerah. I do disagree. If somebody tells me all of the information that IC I need is in a discord I am going to tell them that unless it exists in game it doesnt exist period.

I’m not sure which discords you’re in but 99% of the events I see are screenshots posted from in game.

Looking in to it, the last 23 events posted were screenshots. I think the one that wasn’t I saw in game on an board and they just didn’t post the screenshot.

I wasnt meaning events. Sorry if that is unclear. Even just faction information and details that might be important to keep IC. But there are a couple. I am fairly sure I said events aren't usually a problem though. It was the point I made immediately after

Word docs with a bunch of details. That sort of thing.

I make a slight exception for Excel files personally because we don't have GondSoft Spreadsheets in game.

I was also meaning that there shouldn't be a push to ignore improving IC and in game methods of information sharing and message systems and say "Just use discord". I think the faction system could use HUGE facelifts. Honestly I never even thought about that until somebody mentioned it.

[Peacewhisper]

Even just allowing someone to select their faction name when sending a speedy to send that message to all of their faction members would be a huge improvement and remove a lot of the need for discord. That one thing would be a massive improvement and I see no reason to push back against it.

[AddledPunster]

I’m pretty glad that I have only the vaguest sense of what “3.0” is because it sounds like what the Elitist Jerks forum used to be for WoW, which would have been even worse because Arelith is RP Foremost.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I’m pretty glad that I have only the vaguest sense of what “3.0” is because it sounds like what the Elitist Jerks forum used to be for WoW, which would have been even worse because Arelith is RP Foremost.

99% of the time it wasn't bad at all, it's just if you found yourself at odds in a conversation with the people who ran it, they could get a bit heavy handed with their ban powers because they convinced themselves they were in the right. It's the type of thing that the official discord has checks and balances for, which is better for everyone imo.

This wasn't in the waning days where Ork ran it by the way, I was already long gone by then but as I understand it, he shut it down shortly after he was handed the keys.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

This is the response I was hoping for. The fact so many other people just dog piled on me to call me toxic instead of simply saying, "no we don't do that" is worrying though.

Ok, I'm going to try one more time because I'm old and patient, but I reread it all and I don't see any dogpiling. People (politely) disagreed with your premise, despite understanding where you are coming from.

For me, discord is what allows me to continue playing arelith. Sometimes I have a couple hours a day to play when work is slow, but for the most part it's a juggling act between real life responsibilities, getting my old dog out for 4 to 6 long walks a day so she can live her best life for what's left of it, and other hobbies like marvel rivals, magic the gathering, and a few other ps5 games i play. The thing I do have though is flexibility.

What that means is, if someone goes into the navy tab and says "I want to gather a sail group together in an hour," I might be able to get my work done before then, or take my dog out in the meantime, ect and make it. But I am probably too busy to just log in and wait around for something to happen. That's why I find discord so helpful, not because I want to exclude anyone, or want a shiny navy tab to make myself look cool.

The pirate thing I mentioned was more for the pirate's protection then the navies, even if I could have taken some time to explain what I meant better. If I'm a pirate who randomly happens to still be in the Cordor discord from my last character, and clear as day there is the navy announcing they are going sailing, even if I personally don't even look there anymore, I'm going to be suspect if I happen upon the navy ship with a crew ready to throw down. I can totally be accused by some random assuming everyone on discord is metagaming because of an honest mistake. The tab in that instance saves me from that, because while I may be lazy enough or friendly enough to linger in the Cordor discord, I know I wouldn't want the access to the naval plans because I know my current character is directly opposed to them.

Now, the roles don't need color coding, so they can do it without, I guess. And for some reason that seems triggering to more than just you. I personally think you guys are overthinking it and doing more harm to yourselves worrying about metagaming than any metagaming that might slip through the cracks can ever actually do, but like I said it would be easy to eliminate that aspect and still keep the roles.

And one final thing: These roles are not heavily gatekept lol. If you want to join the navy or a city, or a guard of a city, it's usually as easy as finding one in game and going through whatever basic process it takes to get in, and you too can have a shiny different color. I personally think it's -too- easy but going back to me being old I am also secure enough in who I am to admit that I have some old school roleplay purity things of my own and accept that that's just a me thing at this point.