ReFriender Discontinued

[BobbinT]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/867254070201024533/1115209641538891776/image.png


discuss away...

[Alhanelem]

Not muich to discuss, blame Elon Musk.

[Immortal]

sky is falling.. all our "favorite" apps and services going away. Best director

[Alhanelem]

I mean lets be honest, did anyone actually use this thing in the first place?

If you did, I'm sorry for your loss. But this never seemed particularly useful from the start.

[Sirmarki]

If I remember correctly, it wasn't available to citizens of the EU because of data protection laws there.

[Alhanelem]

If I remember correctly, it wasn't available to citizens of the EU because of data protection laws there.Twitter itself probably shouldn't be available there as it stands right now.

[Pixela]

Nuke all social media forever, except forums they are ok.

[BobbinT]

Gamers now have discord though. lol

[Sirmarki]

Nuke all social media forever, except forums they are ok.

I agree on that point.

[Sp1cyryan]

No. Wait. Stop. Come back.

[Uriah]

Good riddance to wasted resources. Not that they'll be put to better use though.

[Alhanelem]

Good riddance to wasted resources. Not that they'll be put to better use though.
It's not like they had to do anything to maintain it.

[Monsuta_Man]

Gamers now have discord though. lol

I personally like forums better than reddit & especially Discord.

The atmosphere of Discord is just so plain & dark......makes me depressed......

I warmed up to reddit, but forums have always had better social interaction imo.

Beth Softworks shutdown their Fallout & Skyrim forums, the salt was real......Liked those "Show your character" threads.

[Alhanelem]

The atmosphere of Discord is just so plain & dark......makes me depressed......It sounds like you are haging out with the wrong crowds, which isn't discord's fault.

Unless you're referring to the actual interface color... in which case, if you want it to be light, you can certainly do that in the settings. But most people these days seem to find dark mode easier to read.

[Pixela]

Discord is ok for certain things, it does not compare to a proper forum if you want to have a discussion or good argument.

Discord is too spammy, it's too condensed and I feel like I'm playing fortnite or something with all the kids spamming stupid ass emotes.

I have a few good arguments on Discord but it's not the same experience, you can't come back hours later and carry on what you were on about. There are about 100 replies since then and the time has passed.

[BobbinT]

Discord now actually has forum features as well, can make separate threads in channels, hence for more focused discussions.

[Alhanelem]

Discord is ok for certain things, it does not compare to a proper forum if you want to have a discussion or good argument."
Discord actually has a forum feature that some servers use, as well as a thread feature that lets you branch off a discussion without clogging up the main chat channel. On good servers people actually use this stuff and it makes things a lot nicer.



Discord is too spammy, it's too condensed and I feel like I'm playing fortnite or something with all the kids spamming stupid ass emotes.This is entirely a matter of the company you choose to keep. You can make your own discord servers and invite people you want to chat with and avoid all of this kind of stuff easily. You are in total control of your experience with how feature-rich it is.



you can't come back hours later and carry on what you were on about.You aboslutely can. Both with the forum channel feature, and in any chat channel- Use the search function to call up something someone said earlier and simply reply to it pick back up a past conversation.

Everything you've talked about here is entirely addressable and fixable with the massive amount of customization Discord offers. It can really be whatever you want it to be.

Voice chat, IRC style chat, forum threads, channels for images, channels for whatever you want, when you set up a server you can decide who has permission to do anything, like using emotes and reactions, posting images, or whatever else. You have absolute total control over a server you create and you can make it into anything you want with just a bit of know-how.

Meanwhile these forums were designed ages ago and SE hasn't even kept it on the latest version.

[Pixela]

The forum feature is just an inferior version of this though.

Discord is at its best when it's either friends having a communal chat area, is extremely well managed or you run the thing and so it's best for you, other than that I think a forum is better.

Most of the people who post on here would never be in the same Discord.

[Tarmarkvar]

This is like when you find out a TV show is being cancelled, but you thought it was already cancelled a decade ago.

[Catmato]

I personally like forums better than reddit & especially Discord.

The atmosphere of Discord is just so plain & dark......

Try Light Mode.

[Alhanelem]

The forum feature is just an inferior version of this though.inferior? how? you have to reload every time you post or do much of anyhting here. Discord does everything in real time, even forum posts. it's cleaner, simpler, and it just works.

This forum is ancient and powered by software i'm not sure is even available anymore.

[Pixela]

Going to discord to use forums is like going to mcdonalds to order vegetarian meals, 99% of people there aren't there for the forums.

Their forums are inferior becasue it looks bad and basic, barely anyone uses it and the audience for discord is much narrower so you're interacting with a far smaller variation of people. It's kind of like a PServer in that way, I've met so many people that I would of never met on a PS because a PS almost always only attracts nerds and veterans, whereas retail attracts a far wider array of normal people.

Discord is good for certain things (and it does those things well) and that its free basically allow anyone to make a community, but for just talking about stuff in the way I do I prefer forums or even reddit. If Amazon or something allowed everyone to setup to good quality forums for free like this and that you can personalize, far fewer would use Discord as their goto.

[BobbinT]

I actually like their veggie options, so I don't rly get the comparison. Sure, young peeps rather go crazy since meat offers more tastier protein options, but those who are aged enough starts to see the benefit on veggie, even their veggie solutions taste way better nowadays (ofc those home-mades are much better options).


As for discord forums, you can also pin important stuff just like normal channels. And it also shares normal channel functionality such as @ mentions if need for a more direct approach, way broader use of emotes and even very easy to search GIFs. Even multimedia links can be viewed easily without needs of special formatting. Custom bots also easily implemented for much further QoL with majority of devs easily approachable for support. Overall, it is much easier to use and normal forum already aged so much, especially this forum, with posts sometimes doubles spaces between paragraphs, very limited emote, broken multimedia linking, & such. I do enjoyed forum since mid 90s, but they starts becoming relics of the past, with majority of them that I used to frequent already closed or rarely visited.


Reddit still survives coz they actually go beyond normal forum functionality as well where it can be customized. Sadly, some countries (like mine for example) did ban reddit, especially due to its sensitive topics & very easily to access adult stuff. While these can be remedied through VPN, personally not to comfy using them since VPN could also became another problem with it practically filter whatever uses peruse while using it.


Oh... and one of the most important thing: discord are way easier to use over their mobile apps. Normal forum sadly had to rely on normal browser, which can sometimes taxed mobile performance, not to mention their instability with semi frequent crashes. My phone felt hotter when I use browser, whether stock or 3rd pt browser like firefox/chrome/etc, & drain battery faster compared to browsing in discord, this also mainly due to browser has lots of background ads which constantly use net traffics hence making device hotter than usual. Another thing that is highly usable is their custom schedule maker & alerts, which is highly useful on mobile, complete with easy participant registration. In FF11 case, one of my LS groups usually got frequent weekly run schedules for Dyna-D, Omen, or Odyssey runs. And with their integrated voice chat, it is way easier to manage runs, some games like FF14 has it's own integrated overlay display for voice chats, hence why playstation users been begging Sony to have discord integration as well.



Discord also has built-in stream feature, & there's been occasional times where I stream my FF11 there as well.


As of this moment, I have dozens of groups joined, with several from FF11 LS, their reddit version as well (which they did embrace discord as well). Ofc, number of FF11 related groups pale in comparison with FF14s or any other non-game related groups, probably nearing limit of groups I can join for free account. lol

[Pixela]

If Amazon created a system where anyone could create top class forums for free, Discord would not be as popular as it is.

The cost is why so many forums closed, forums are superior to Discord for talking in the manner we are used to and more widely used and open.

I would say Discord probably runs at a huge loss as a company, and once they have more market domination and remove competition they probably intend to leverage it to start making proper money. Which will most likely include ads and fees to all the people who setup discord communities.

This is how you operate tech companies, you run at a loss to kill competition and once you're an effective monopoly you change the deal.

As I say though, I don't hate Discord and I use for specific reasons it but I still think it's inferior to many forums and I don't like having conversations on it.

[Alhanelem]

If Amazon created a system where anyone could create top class forums for free, Discord would not be as popular as it is.
Actually, traditional style forums have greatly fallen in popularity since the advent of modern social media. Especially people born around or after the new millenium are not going to like this format, they don't want to spend long periods of time writing detailed posts and having long discussions/arguments.

These forums don't operate in real time like Discord. Discord is an all in one communication system. Voice chat, text chat, forums, group calls and streaming, plus you can create your own server and customize it however you want and turn it into a personalized hangout for you and your friends. Whereas a forum is set up by the operator to work in a certain way and you are bound by that forum's rules and design. Forums were not designed for real time discussion.z


This doesn't mean I don't like forums. I think my post count reflects how much I enjoy talking about my favorite games. But forums do not satisfy all of my communication needs. Even back in the day, many of us used Ventrilo and Teamspeak to communicate for Dynamis or other alliance stuff. Discord was designed more to fill this role than anything else, in fact in its early days it sold itself as a replacement for those programs, promoting the fact that Discord was free whereas teamspeak and vent servers requried monthly costs. But over time it evolved and became so much more. In fact before long it wasn't even just about gaming, the pandemic caused them to branch out and attract many more users for other purposes, particularly as an alternative to Zoom.

[Pixela]

Forums have fallen off because they cost money to host, not because they aren't good or wanted.

Discord is running at a loss to build market dominance, I'm sure in the next 5-6 years setting up your own discord will also cost money.

[BobbinT]

Discord did incentive users with premium upgrades through nitro purchases which unlocks exclusive perks, not only for personal but also for servers as well, & saw some did bought them. There's already huge base of premi users on FF14 alone, can't imagine how big over other gaming/non-gaming channels.

And it is not forced either, since free users still already have huge benefit anyways and premi can stop their nitro if they want to.


Maybe research 1st if discord actually running at a loss rather than pre-assumed things would go sour. Been using discord over 5 years & saw it more improved rather than slowing down.



And gonna stress down on mobile usage again since it does have huge benefit over old forums on battery/device consumption. Web browsers has been riddled with so much net consumption especially when ads involved. Even on PC can be clearly seen through task manager just how huge browser hogged RAMs compared to single use of discord app, in which has been riddled with continued issues: would not free up RAMs even you close browser tabs, usually ends up having to close browser just to free all of them before reopening to use it again, while discord app doesn't suffer this issue which I very rarely need to close it since I usually hibernate my PC. Website needing ads to support its finances has becoming more & more hindrance to daily usage, that alone already makes me had to upgrade my RAM size just to mainly using web browser longer before still needing to close/reopen it.



Now imagine that problem on PC when doing things on mobile, especially on android-based mobiles. I do personally switched over to Iphone for nearly a decade coz android-base still clearly terrible handling these kind of multitask, as I saw over my siblings who kept using android-based since it is much more familiar to them & still saw same issues. Nearly any1 I met who uses android device asked how they deal with it & majority just either try resetting to factory default (which way less ppl does) or just buy another android mobiles since alot of brands are now cheaper & offers similar specs with more pricey known branded stuff.


So yeah, aside from all those pre-assumed financial stuff, there's that personal usage problems in which having discord app still a huge beneficial over forum usage which still relies on web browsers.

[Pixela]

You can use Discord without paying money, which means almost everyone doesn't pay money. Which means it's almost certainly running at a loss, tech companies do this all the time because investors throw money at them with the plan of making money long-term.

All you have to do to see Discord is running at a loss is google search some news:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/chat-app-discord-raises-500-million-new-funding-2021-09-16/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-discord-m-a-idUSKBN2BE320

The way it works is you offer a better and better service above what anyone else can, to attract more and more users and try to kill off the competition with an offer too good to be true. Then you ask for investors to give you millions of dollars to keep building up this company that makes no money (because it costs more to run than it brings in) and then you hope that in the long term you can sell it to some mega-corp for 10 billion dollars. Then you get a billion dollar payout and the investors get 10x the money they put in (which is the only reason investors invest money in the first place)

Then this megacorp will monetize it or link it to some other service they run that costs money.

That's how it works.

Discord will at some point in the not to distance future be bought by Microsoft, of Facebook or Google or something like that and at that point strings will be attached or ads will be displayed and Nitro will not be optional but required.

[Sp1cyryan]

This thread has more than run it's course. Now it's once again just a place for someone to talk aimlessly about unrelated and pointless subjects.

[Alhanelem]

Forums have fallen off because they cost money to host, not because they aren't good or wanted.

Discord is running at a loss to build market dominance, I'm sure in the next 5-6 years setting up your own discord will also cost money.
You really have to invent excuses for everything dont you?
The cost of running this forum is trivial. Anyone can have a website hosted by a place like cloudflare for very little.



Discord is running at a loss to build market dominance,
No, they're making all kinds of money with their subscription services.

You really don't have any idea what you're talking about. You're just being contrarian (which is true, as discord is a popular communications platform and this is not)

Oh and Discord doesn't have this "cant post becuase the token expired, refresh plz" error either sigh

[Pixela]

You don't take investor money unless you aren't making enough money to do what you want to do.

Investors don't invest unless there is some plan to make 10 times more later, either selling the company or going public later.

Discord does not make enough money from optional nitro, there are bigger monetization plans ahead.

These are corporations and they want to be billionaires, they aren't running discord cause they like you.

Regardless, forums > discord for what forums do.

[Alhanelem]

You don't take investor money unless you aren't making enough money to do what you want to do.

Investors don't invest unless there is some plan to make 10 times more later, either selling the company or going public later.

Discord does not make enough money from optional nitro, there are bigger monetization plans ahead.

These are corporations and they want to be billionaires, they aren't running discord cause they like you.

Regardless, forums > discord for what forums do.
Discord isn't powered by investors. It's powered by the users as well as partnerships with other companies and such.

Money made is money made, it doesn't matter how they get it. Discord isn't being run by a megacorporation, it's a privatelly held company that is focused on one thing, its product.

People are absolutely subbing to nitro, and they keep adding new features to it to make it more enticing (like the recent super reactions, which i see people using all the time and since you have to have nitro to even follow with the same reaction, it shows that they're collecting quite a lot from it).

You're free to not like discord but you don't have to come up with bullpoop reasons for it. You keep acting like you have an MBA or something but the actual level of knowledge you're displaying definitely does not match up with that.

[Pixela]

I like Discord for the things I use it for, I just prefer forums for discussions.

We will see how Discord evolves over the coming years.

[BobbinT]

https://www.reuters.com/technology/chat-app-discord-raises-500-million-new-funding-2021-09-16/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-discord-m-a-idUSKBN2BE320


both links already 2 years old, alot of things changes since then. Maybe giving a much more recent news to substantially backs up ur claims?

[Pixela]

Reddit is going public this year to make a ton of money for the owners, which is encouraging them to take actions to increase revenue, which is annoying the content creators that make the site profitable in the first place. As such they are all shutting off their subs, so nobody can access them.

Which is a prime example why you should not put all your eggs in one basket.

Who knows where reddit will go in the future now they are going public and want people to buy into their company, and reddit is responsible for replacing so many forums.

[BobbinT]

FF14 reddit already boycotting it by setting the channel private in which there would be no new user for time being & being directed to join their discord instead. Perhaps mimicking what Elon did with twitter which prompts how Refriender services got to end in 1st place. :p

Perhaps the feature should quickly adapt to a more popular social media channel instead. Even SE had made their own discord groups as well. Maybe they should try adapting similar feature with discord as well, seeing as even Sony themselves already in the way to integrate discord for their consoles as well.

From what I see, back when Refriender launched, already had doubts this would work since it only accept US region in 1st place, with twitter integration already posed their own problems, one of them being requires to register more personal info like mobile phones as main authentication. Can't really confirm if this happens on others, but at least it became requirement on my region due to government regulations. Personally even had to go to my own provider customer service due to my mobile won't get accepted as valid authentication, thankfully they managed to get the authentication works in the end albeit having in need to make new free emails just to make it working. All these only for enabling me to access SE customer service on twitter as well as joining their promo tweets.

[Alhanelem]

Reddit is going public this year to make a ton of money for the owners, which is encouraging them to take actions to increase revenue, which is annoying the content creators that make the site profitable in the first place. As such they are all shutting off their subs, so nobody can access them.

Which is a prime example why you should not put all your eggs in one basket.

Who knows where reddit will go in the future now they are going public and want people to buy into their company, and reddit is responsible for replacing so many forums.
Going public doesn't HAVE to mean screwing over your users. Discord has been doing it right. Not perfectly, mind you, as there were some rather ill concieved ventures like having a game store (why when virtually every Discord user has Steam?), but they aren't simply giving their userbase the finger for no good reason.

[Pixela]

The problem people have is positivity bias, they always think this new / other company is different. Omg reddit isn't like Twitter, and reddit isn't like Discord.

They are all the same, they endgoal is to be a billionaire by the time they are 50. They don't care about us, they don't care about the platform they will just to be billionaires.

Spez is really no different than Elon, and Elon is no different than whoever runs Discord. They all have the same endgame goals, to be a billionaire. They tell you the sweet little lies, they pander to your ideology to pretend they are one of you, they give you nice gifts to build trust and destroy competition.

The goal is money, going public is about money and people only want to invest if there is a good path to making far more money long term.

So yes going public does mean screwing over users, it's just how long till you get screwed. Name one company that went public that didn't goto crap in the following years, you can't cause the balance of power immediately moves form the users to the share holders lol

Consolidating communication around 2 for profit corporations with aspirations of being billionaires (just as happened with twitter btw, Jack is a billioanaire now and doesn't give a fk about twitter) is not a good idea. Cause you don't know where the company will be in 5 years.

The reason the blackout will do nothing is because a) there is really no alternatives now and b) muh 48 hours.

[Pixela]

Here is what the reddit blackout will usher in:

Spez will stop users being allowed to private any sub or delete it, he will also crack down on the power admins currently have.

This will happen slowly but it will happen, and the reason it will happen is because this time it's about money.

[Sp1cyryan]

Here is what the reddit blackout will usher in:

Spez will stop users being allowed to private any sub or delete it, he will also crack down on the power admins currently have.

This will happen slowly but it will happen, and the reason it will happen is because this time it's about money.

If only we had a Rooks-like figure here to scold you and your need to go off topic and wildly speculate in every thread.

[BobbinT]

Then all it needs it providing actual facts.


which btw, found some reddit channel also being set private as well, even youtube reddit for example. ^^;


also, nowadays there r ways to generate money without being that greedy. Those who still does probably still stuck with how things does in the past & haven't gained wisdom on how things works currently.


And another thing to wonder... does Refriender made exist with one of concern being money issue? since personally not sure how it would relate or help.


FF14 itself does take advantage of em being the current popular MMORPG with their cash shop, example with the recent released hideous demon dog mount there, from what i gather on discord & facebook groups, ppl seems to love it. Not all probably love being lured by mere virtual presentation, but me for one... didn't regret getting few that I do find worth my while on mog shop. ofc, there's still that temptation "gotta have 'em all", but so far... can still manage that urge. lol

[Pixela]

The point I'm making here is that putting your trust in a corporation and helping them to become a monopoly is stupid, especially when the foundation of why the corporation was built is money.

People invested in Sam Bankman-Fried:

Here is what he said:
“Ya. Hehe. I had to be. It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those guys who get f—ed by it, by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”

Basically what he is saying is he said and did the things that his target audience wanted to hear or believe, to fool them. Because people fall for it if you lie to them, if you tell them the sweet little lies they want to hear they will take you at face value.

Spez of Reddit, did the exact same thing. He acted and said the things his unpaid moderators wanted to hear because he needed them to build his corporation up, and now he is taking the company public and now needs to pander to investor millionaire and billionaires he is going full corpo talking like a capitalist and removing moderators that oppose him.

Jack of Twitter did the exact same thing, and is now a billionaire in some desert island drinking cocktails.

I like Reddit, I like Discord I use them for specific things. However putting all your eggs in one basket and allowing them to become a monopoly is bad for you, it's bad for the things you like and ultimately they will crap on you when it's time to pander to investors and sell out.

Forums are good, discord is good, reddit is good. I like forums because they are separate and because billionaires don't have any interest in them.

Money corrupts, more money corrupts faster.

[Sp1cyryan]

The point I'm making here is that putting your trust in a corporation and helping them to become a monopoly is stupid, especially when the foundation of why the corporation was built is money.

People invested in Sam Bankman-Fried:

Here is what he said:
“Ya. Hehe. I had to be. It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those guys who get f—ed by it, by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us.”

Basically what he is saying is he said and did the things that his target audience wanted to hear or believe, to fool them. Because people fall for it if you lie to them, if you tell them the sweet little lies they want to hear they will take you at face value.

Spez of Reddit, did the exact same thing. He acted and said the things his unpaid moderators wanted to hear because he needed them to build his corporation up, and now he is taking the company public and now needs to pander to investor millionaire and billionaires he is going full corpo talking like a capitalist and removing moderators that oppose him.

Jack of Twitter did the exact same thing, and is now a billionaire in some desert island drinking cocktails.

I like Reddit, I like Discord I use them for specific things. However putting all your eggs in one basket and allowing them to become a monopoly is bad for you, it's bad for the things you like and ultimately they will crap on you when it's time to pander to investors and sell out.

Forums are good, discord is good, reddit is good. I like forums because they are separate and because billionaires don't have any interest in them.

Money corrupts, more money corrupts faster.

Lol, just stop.

[Alhanelem]

Cmon Pix, you could make it any more obvious that you're just a troll?

[Pixela]

no you're the troll

[Alhanelem]

no you're the troll
Oooh, nice comeback.