NHLGamer or EASHL.EU Discord or anything similar?

[Depch]

A lot of the online competitive scenes have their own chat service somewhere. In the past this was done via different IRC servers and to have a channel there used to be pretty common, but many gaming communities have moved away from IRC to new services like Discord etc. I am not to promote Discord solely here, but I can only speak of it as an example as I have experience of it from the past few months. Overwatch & Rocket league and have their members at Discord at least and the rocket league server for example has over 4000 online members at the moment. This seems to be the new direction, IRC is dying out and new services taking that place. It might be good to make a jump to a such a service where a lot of the gaming communities already exists. This makes the jump for new players easier to get in to. I know there are many similar services like Curse etc. but have no clue which one is the most popular, but I know Overwatch competitive scene & Rocket league use discord. We made a jump from AIM to Discord just recently with our tiny NHL94 community (Yes, lael AIM. :)).

I tried to look for one in the nhlgamer forums but could not find any centralized chat for it, maybe I just missed it? Or perhaps one could be impelemented if there is enough interest.

The Overwatch Finnish community in Discord has several sub channels created to that server of their own. You can have a core channel for general chat, then something for like league chat, a chat for looking for games, chat looking for players/promoting yourself/if you're able to sub etc etc. Everyone joining that server can see all those channels so it's like having your own IRC server where you see all the channels. Teams can create their own servers to Discord as well and to have a publi chat and private ones for the members only. Discord also comes up with a VoIP, but I know the Overwatch players tend to use something different like Mumble for VoIP as it's much lighter. The con is that Discord is quite heavy to use.

I'll import a picture from Discord Rocket league server as an example here below. If something like this already exists I just missed out on it from the forums and if not perhaps it could be of an open discussion. I have reserved the server NHLGamer in Discord for the admins and will release it for Kenu or Lurkins if something should come out of it. Of course there are other services as well that might be better, but I know a lot of competitive gamers already use Discord. In summary it's good for text based chat and something that that's taken IRC over for gaming sevices, but I would not use the VoIP in this service. Even bots can be used in the service. Open for discussion. You can use it by web browser or download apps to desktop/laptop/mobile.

 

Edited April 28, 2017 by Depch

[Depch]

Oh yes. I will add that if you guys run an IRC channel already, which server is it / and what channel?

I will also add why as a service I think IRC can do everything something like Discord does why Discord is better.

-Better to unify as many competitive gamers under one platform so you don't have to create new logins and run many different programs. I think Quakenet used to serve this best. Finnish scene ran some leagues for years in IRCnet, but it was separated from the stock of gamers as majority were in Quakenet. This made marketing leagues much harder.
-I do not want to underestimate people, but I think for younger people who have never heard of IRC a service like this is a better solution.
-You don't have to find out about all the different channels yourself and add them to a modified join list or startup commands, instead you just have to join the server once and you have all the relevant channels opened up there. It's newbie friendly.

I'm also interested in other options and open discussions / opinions.

[MartindalexC]

We originally did set up a discord but it fell out of favour just from lack of activity and it not really being that useful if I remember correctly, it's still up but I'm not sure what the staff want to do with it (if anything). 

General chat usually happens in the chatbox though. As for actual important information the staff put up forum posts and blog posts. 

[Depch]

12 minutes ago, MartindalexC said:

We originally did set up a discord but it fell out of favour just from lack of activity and it not really being that useful if I remember correctly, it's still up but I'm not sure what the staff want to do with it (if anything). 

General chat usually happens in the chatbox though. As for actual important information the staff put up forum posts and blog posts. 

Allright, fair enough. I could see that happen if it does not spring enough activity from the beginning or it would just require resilient people to keep it on in team captains and the staff at least to eventually create buzz around it. It might be still good investment for the future. Great to know that the chatbox is doing that service here.

[Vildmanden93]

On 28/4/2017 at 11:33 AM, MartindalexC said:

We originally did set up a discord but it fell out of favour just from lack of activity and it not really being that useful if I remember correctly, it's still up but I'm not sure what the staff want to do with it (if anything). 

General chat usually happens in the chatbox though. As for actual important information the staff put up forum posts and blog posts. 

What's the link for the server?

I would definitely join it

[Depch]

On 4/30/2017 at 6:56 PM, Vildmanden93 said:

What's the link for the server?

I would definitely join it

I have a server that I reserved with the NHLGamer name for Kenu or any other of the admins. Any NHLGamer admin joins and I'll toss them the admins for the server. If people like the chatbox and it works well enough then a discord does not have to be official, but it can work for people who use discord already to talk about the games / ECL etc. If a critical mass should take over at one point then it can work out well for arranging games, freeagency etc. Below is a pic of the current channels I have created for it as a reserve.




And below is the invite link for the server that I set as never to expire.

https://discord.gg/cTu4YqP

[MartindalexC]

In that case then I may as well post the old one, wasn't sure if the admins were cool with a non-expiring link being publicly available, anyways here it is: https://discord.gg/ZUMrB3s [Updated]

Most of the teams that have played in elite/pro/lite are already available as roles for members to quickly spot who is a part of which team (think Gzell did the tedious work for it originally, although my memory could fail me on that).

The points you raise @Depch were the ones I originally brought up however I don't think you have considered the fact that not everyone actually uses this site (aside from coming on to make their player card and such), as well as the fact that it's probably not in our best interest to fragment where people come and go as this can ruin the 'sense of community' I suppose. Therefore I don't think people will use discord as a straight replacement (something it seems you are trying to achieve by copying across some forum sub-divisions). 

Edited August 21, 2017 by MartindalexC

[Depch]

2 hours ago, MartindalexC said:

The points you raise @Depch were the ones I originally brought up however I don't think you have considered the fact that not everyone actually uses this site (aside from coming on to make their player card and such), as well as the fact that it's probably not in our best interest to fragment where people come and go as this can ruin the 'sense of community' I suppose. Therefore I don't think people will use discord as a straight replacement (something it seems you are trying to achieve by copying across some forum sub-divisions). 

I appreciate your comments and feedback. Discussion is always required to make improvements to any community. The old NHLGamer server will work out even better as it most likely has more members as a basis, I just did not know about it and did find a link, nor did I find any discussion about it in the forums (tried the search function for word discord). That is why this thread exists.

What I am trying to be vocal here about is that as a newcomer to the revamped NHLGamer site and being experienced in other competitive gaming communities how things could be improved. This is not because of ego or trying to get a position of foothold in it. This is merely for the good for all. I just wanted to clear this out.

I think you are getting me wrong. Discord would not be rivaling the forums, for they can feed off from eachother. If to begin with not everyone uses this site then how will it be fragmenting things more. To be honest the forums don't look very active at all for the player base it has minus for the chatbox and I think there is a reason behind it. Forums are getting outdated slowly and younger generations require more interactivity. That's why it's a step forward I think. So if anything a positive success on creating a good service of such kind would enhance the sensation of community. If there is no web page / forums, there cannot be any links to the chat service either, they are both required. At best a more interactive service would replace majority of the stuff from forums though. Obviously I am not in a position to make any decisions, but I am in a position to raise discussion and give insights as well as is everyone else.

Those separate channels are very common for any other competitive gaming scenes and they work out well because of the large user base they have, actually they are required to keep things under control. Danger here is that things stay so scattered that things just fall a part little by little. Hop in or stay scattered, sounds harsh but that is my two cents as things do look quite scattered now. There is nothing personal here and I hope no one takes it so, just stuff for positive constructive feedback.

[edit]

ps. I just checked the server out and it's with the name PS4 for it, I would not separate the servers between Xbox/PS but rather create roles for PS/Xbox players accordingly. I also cannot write anything there currently. Roles for admins, team captains etc. When captains have their own roles they are easy to be approached and you see who is online etc. for arranging games etc.

pps. Perhaps there is the reason why that server did not kick off last time as even I could not find anything with the search word discord for info of that, if people did not know about it or could not find there on their own?

Edited May 8, 2017 by Depch

[Frilander]

I will be using Discord if server will be up.

[Vildmanden93]

Game arranging games would definitely be easier on Discord. And it's a great program for fun talk between players who normally wouldn't interact on a forum. I see that the chat on this site is active. But the Discord chat is way easier to overcome and to get an overview of what's being talked about.
Most games nowadays uses Discord, so I think it would be natural for ECL to use it too.
Like Depch says, I too, don't think it will fragment the community, but rather give more life to the community.

That's just my thoughts about it

[MartindalexC]

22 hours ago, Depch said:

I appreciate your comments and feedback. Discussion is always required to make improvements to any community. The old NHLGamer server will work out even better as it most likely has more members as a basis, I just did not know about it and did find a link, nor did I find any discussion about it in the forums (tried the search function for word discord). That is why this thread exists.

What I am trying to be vocal here about is that as a newcomer to the revamped NHLGamer site and being experienced in other competitive gaming communities how things could be improved. This is not because of ego or trying to get a position of foothold in it. This is merely for the good for all. I just wanted to clear this out.

I think you are getting me wrong. Discord would not be rivaling the forums, for they can feed off from eachother. If to begin with not everyone uses this site then how will it be fragmenting things more. To be honest the forums don't look very active at all for the player base it has minus for the chatbox and I think there is a reason behind it. Forums are getting outdated slowly and younger generations require more interactivity. That's why it's a step forward I think. So if anything a positive success on creating a good service of such kind would enhance the sensation of community. If there is no web page / forums, there cannot be any links to the chat service either, they are both required. At best a more interactive service would replace majority of the stuff from forums though. Obviously I am not in a position to make any decisions, but I am in a position to raise discussion and give insights as well as is everyone else.

Those separate channels are very common for any other competitive gaming scenes and they work out well because of the large user base they have, actually they are required to keep things under control. Danger here is that things stay so scattered that things just fall a part little by little. Hop in or stay scattered, sounds harsh but that is my two cents as things do look quite scattered now. There is nothing personal here and I hope no one takes it so, just stuff for positive constructive feedback.

[edit]

ps. I just checked the server out and it's with the name PS4 for it, I would not separate the servers between Xbox/PS but rather create roles for PS/Xbox players accordingly. I also cannot write anything there currently. Roles for admins, team captains etc. When captains have their own roles they are easy to be approached and you see who is online etc. for arranging games etc.

pps. Perhaps there is the reason why that server did not kick off last time as even I could not find anything with the search word discord for info of that, if people did not know about it or could not find there on their own?

I can't remember exactly the context for the original making of the server; so I won't comment on why there was never a thread posted about it but that certainly seems odd. 

I understand that, but you don't seem to appreciate the differences between these 'communities'. The reason the forums don't look "very active" is because people generally don't care about it. First of all there isn't much to discuss really, any important shit is posted by one of the admin team and is posted to an entirely different section of the site, so what are we left with at that point? Free agent posts? Well there's already a thread for that. What about free players for the day? Again, that is already in place on a companion group on PS4, something that has devolved into a bunch of "free"s which is hilarious to look at personally. 

Plus you have to factor in the fact that Kenu has made it abundantly clear that he wants english to be default language of choice on the site (more often than not, other languages can be used ofc), something that in all honesty probably actively stifles people's enthusiasm to post threads. Feel free for people to criticise me on this as it's just me hypothesising why certain things are as they are.

Additionally for things like voice channels and such, I won't argue that there is a place for it but I think you don't appreciate how many people prefer to use psn chat (atleast from my experience) so while there is kind of a niche use for them, I would imagine the vast majority of players here would rather use psn chat than a pc / mobile based VOIP. 

I think your comment about "hop in or stay scattered" is off the mark a little, if you want to see true activity look at the NHL gamer psn community, it looks like a feeding frenzy late in the day 

Overall though, I'm more than willing to try and get discord up and running for this community, but I think you need to be aware that it will never get anywhere near full participation from people in the community (although I'd love to be proved wrong). Also the comment about scheduling, it's easy as piss right now, you just click on the team you're against, and their captain will be in full view, click on the link and you're in the PM screen with their details already filled in. 

Edit: Fixed it so that new members can now post in the discord channel, dunno why it was set so they weren't able to. 

Edited May 9, 2017 by MartindalexC

[Depch]

40 minutes ago, MartindalexC said:

The reason the forums don't look "very active" is because people generally don't care about it. First of all there isn't much to discuss really, any important shit is posted by one of the admin team and is posted to an entirely different section of the site, so what are we left with at that point? Free agent posts? Well there's already a thread for that. What about free players for the day? Again, that is already in place on a companion group on PS4, something that has devolved into a bunch of "free"s which is hilarious to look at personally. 

My take on this is that forums as a platform for majority of people are getting outdated. People do want to discuss and share things they have interest in. This happens in other communities, so why not here as well. What might explain this is that the PS players have a group of their own that is active, I was not aware of this. Anyone coming to the site outside of the PS community probably agree with my viewpoints. Having a united active XBOX & PS community might be stronger as a core. As of current the forums/chatbox does not provide this sensation of a "community".

42 minutes ago, MartindalexC said:

Plus you have to factor in the fact that Kenu has made it abundantly clear that he wants english to be default language of choice on the site (more often than not, other languages can be used ofc), something that in all honesty probably actively stifles people's enthusiasm to post threads. Feel free for people to criticise me on this as it's just me hypothesising why certain things are as they are.

English works out in any other community just fine so this should not be a factor.

42 minutes ago, MartindalexC said:

Additionally for things like voice channels and such, I won't argue that there is a place for it but I think you don't appreciate how many people prefer to use psn chat (atleast from my experience) so while there is kind of a niche use for them, I would imagine the vast majority of players here would rather use psn chat than a pc / mobile based VOIP. 

Yes I agree that such a service should not be used solely because of VoIP. Even the old Xbox voice chat we used in EASHL before was perfect for it and nothing else was required. I can't see why things would have been downgraded during the years with that so it's not the reason for it.

42 minutes ago, MartindalexC said:

I think your comment about "hop in or stay scattered" is off the mark a little, if you want to see true activity look at the NHL gamer psn community, it looks like a feeding frenzy late in the day 

Perhaps this is the reason why PSN community fourishes. For an outsider of PS community things look quiet and scattered here. Part of why this discussion exists.

43 minutes ago, MartindalexC said:

Overall though, I'm more than willing to try and get discord up and running for this community, but I think you need to be aware that it will never get anywhere near full participation from people in the community (although I'd love to be proved wrong). Also the comment about scheduling, it's easy as piss right now, you just click on the team you're against, and their captain will be in full view, click on the link and you're in the PM screen with their details already filled in. 

I don't think anyone expects a full participation. Just something more of a sensation of a community, but I was not aware of that PS is having a party of their own elsewhere. Great to know that the scheduling is easy as it is.

[Depch]

On 5/8/2017 at 2:18 PM, MartindalexC said:

In that case then I may as well post the old one, wasn't sure if the admins were cool with a non-expiring link being publicly available, anyways here it is: https://discord.gg/vDCYHKm

I am able to write there now so might as well use this one. I have deleted the one I had made. This is the one that should be improved upon.

We're continuing this discussion there.