ReFriender Discontinued

[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/c...ng-2021-09-16/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-d...-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