Ever since it’s creation, the Discord app has been a rather polarizing program. With many people exclusively spending their time using it for anything concerning our fighting games, it has cause dedicated gaming forums to be pretty much void of consistent activity.
With dedicated forums, you’re able to reach every single potential player, share knowledge and properly organize/archive vital information (along with all the subcategories like X vs Y threads). Discord has an immediate response feature with texting, but information is scattered everywhere and there’s no such thing as a front page. If the app ever has a glitch, any and all info posted can be lost forever.
Personally, to me, it seems that we are not growing to our potential because we make getting into the FGC a hassle with not having a be-all-end-all place to form a hivemind.
Facebook and Reddit were killing it in the same way first. Personally not a fan of any of those, including discord, for any serious discussion for a single reason: documentation. Anything put out on any of those formats are essentially lost in the aether. SRK remains relevant for me in 2 areas, tech talk is very active and full of quality info and the wiki is an indispensable resource.
I’m really confused on the WHY. Why do something that will eventually affect your community? It’s one thing to be ignorant of it, but another to not care. Videos, tweets, pics, etc. can all be posted in real forums. Diagrams and break-downs are far easier to find and use on forums. I see people complaining about not finding people to play online. Well, People are scattered everywhere, so communication is going to be weak.
I made the Susanoo guide and character match-up/video posting section on Dustloop and it just went to waste. Go on Susanoo’s Discord channel and you’d be combing for weeks to find a break-down on him.
I don’t worry about it much. I just talk with the people that still use the forums and just occasionally FB or twitter DM someone if I have to. Still rather use the forums no matter how little people there are than mess with Discord outside of DMs.
Reddit has a Wiki feature for subreddits and posts can be Sticked or linked to on a Sidebar. Discord has pinned things as well. I mean if you really want to document there’s always stuff like Wikia/MediaWiki and stuff.
I’m torn on the whole discord thing. On the one hand it’s very accessible because of its texting feature, on the other hand the app is convoluted as hell and navigating it isn’t intuitive at all.
There are ways to archive various pieces of info though, when I started to play some BB characters they had great archives and listed resources for info.
But not remembering EVERYTHING is kinda a problem.
It’s hit or miss for me personally. As a brand new (and I mean BRAND NEW) KoF player, I’ve taken to Discord/Reddit as a last…really my ONLY resort for learning the game/match ups. I haven’t had much in the way of success with sites like DreamCancel as they are mostly dead for a game like KoF IVX (plenty of info for XIII and earlier games though). Now one could certainly say the lack of activity on those sites is a product of KoF being maybe a bit more niche than Street Fighter and even GG I would say, but I can definitely see the Discord trend impacting how many people new to the FGC as a whole are learning.
The fact that Discord can’t really (or it least it doesn’t seem like it can) document any and all that’s happened in a particular server is a detriment, but I can attest to the fact that I feel like I get the answers to what I need to know much, much quicker and also a quicker feeling of camaraderie that’s developed by way of Discord as the particular server I’m apart of serves as both KoF tech and general discussion as we all chat shit throughout the day.
It’s also been something of a breeze setting up matches with people as well which is a lifesaver I imagine for games with smaller communities than MK/IJ/SF/etc…all I have to do is drop an APB that @s everyone while I’m in training mode and I usually get a response/match or matches in a fairly short amount of time.
I remember one time one of the Cannon bros posted up on Reddit, and that shit was linked on the front page of SRK. The founders of this site don’t even promote their own creation. Great, lol. I haven’t even tried Discord, but it doesn’t seem appealing to me. I prefer forums to get my info. Reddit is laid out in a weird way that makes it hard to read. IMO forums are still the best!
the addition of features like pinned messages and searching have improved the interface but overall discord’s interface still lacks intuitive archival methods
overall it’s to the detriment of the program but at least it’s better than Skype and Reddit’s weakass search function which never gives you anything relevant
Discord is awful for finding very specific information you want.
Yet it is pretty great once you get into these secret rooms with top players. Why are they secret? I don’t know. But now that I have a line of contact with many of them my GG game has improved a lot.