Discord

[Hyperion]

I'd rather not ran any additional programs on my PC. Also I believe I can't shift+tab to Discord chat while having it on second monitor already.

And some opinions:

Spoiler: Thoughts

+Multiple rooms

That would just separate chat. You can make chat with more than 2 people in Steam already and I believe it is not used nearly at all

+Voice chat (this is opt-in, you can join or leave at any time and you're not ever required to join

Noone uses it in Steam Chat

+No more chat ghosts

Very minor upside

+@mentions to grab someone's attention

Yes, this will be the absolute best feature in Discord

+More robust moderation tools (we can create custom roles for users, which lets us configure permissions in a lot of ways)

Permissions for what? Everything else but moderating kinda things will be just annoying if everyone don't have access to them

+A more robust API for bots (and a wide selection of available bots)

Yes please

+Mobile access (iOS/Android app)

This is huge also, I would hang up all day long in chat

-Requires a separate program/webpage to be open

As said, I'm not fan of running additional programs on my PC, even though this is above average PC

-Requires moving from an established way of doing things

All the nostalgia will be lost AND same time
1/ can't join game
2/ can't check gameinfo
3/ can't check someone Steam Profile or even see it if DC name differs from Steam

-No convenient way to check someone's game info (Possibly supplemented by a bot? We're not sure.)

As said above and more

-No Steam emotes

But more free emotes, right?

Overall I think it has more positive sides, but same time enough negatives to make me not recommend it.

E: moved comment inside spoiler

i love that i don't have to have a chat window open (hate it when it glows yellow) to participate in the chat.

 

[Fantaboi]

I'd rather not ran any additional programs on my PC. Also I believe I can't shift+tab to Discord chat while having it on second monitor already

You can log into it online, so you can just add it as a shift+tab there and don't need another program open

 

[TMB]

I don't know this might just be me, but i feel like being able to actually talk to people in voice would either ruin or extremely improve the chat experience.

That being said i'm all for a Discord server, i love that i don't have to have a chat window open (hate it when it glows yellow) to participate in the chat.

The problem (for me) is that i cant understand english talk! They talk too fast and i cant understand it, i prefer the text, its more easy to understand and if i dont know any word i can always use the translator...

 

[Another Bad Pun]

I say we try out discord for a week or so and then see what happens/discuss

 

[LadyRaee]

I already use Discord for many communities, so I have a bit of experience with it (since it was first released, really), I'd mostly appreciate access from basically anywhere, and splitting off-topic, dogs, communitg and map-related conversations into separate channels. Besides with pinned messages and big topic space we don't need bots spamming messages (bots can also update topics and edit messages on the fly, so eg. server stats can be displayed 24/7 no problem)

PS. If ya need help setting anything up, I can help, I translated Discord to Polish by myself, so I know what-and-how

 

[Ida]

+Multiple rooms

That would just separate chat. You can make chat with more than 2 people in Steam already and I believe it is not used nearly at all

There wouldn't be any harmful separation as long as there's a main general chat, I'm sure of that. Having multiple channels is great for when people wanna talk about very big topics, as opposed to Steam chat where everyone's just kind of screwed if they want to talk about something but a huge debate about coding between like 4 members is going on. Besides, they make it super easy to switch channels. Speaking from experience there are only upsides to this.

As for shift+tabbing, I believe Discord has an experimental overlay feature if you use the desktop version, but I didn't get it to work right. Still, most games have borderless fullscreen nowadays, so I think we can live with it.

 

[Izotope]

With Discord there won't be any more chat ghosts though

 

[LadyRaee]

With Discord there won't be any more chat ghosts though

But that's the very best about steam chat! :v #obvioussarkasm

 

[TMB]

With Discord there won't be any more chat ghosts though

That is something that i dont understand... i mean, that depends of people not the system we use...

 

[Yrr]

Steam chat sometimes becomes unsynced and people see themselves connected to the chat but it's actually restarted and they need to rejoin. That's what we refer to as ghosts.

 

[Lain]

Yes i'm not an idiot, I chat to a lot of people on Steam so I actually like when it flashes yellow, but not when I tab into the chat to see irrelevant shitposting.

 

[Hoplitejoe]

As much as i am a fan of discord, i really don't think there is an appetite for moving.

Steam chat sucks. There is so much you can't do on it, so much mods can't do on it, at the same time, i doubt that bothers the majority of users (or bothers them to the point of wanting to switch chats). Then there is the benefit that steam chat has, and that is ease of access. The majority of users on chat will just have steam open whenever they are at their computer, which is an advantage over opening a separate program (discord has the benefit of both phone and web clients, but i'm not sure that is enough to tempt people).


One big thing about opening a discord, is you need to think hard about the risk of splitting the community harder. If this is a likely situation, if it is worth the potential reward, if you even care if people are split between 2 "official" chat rooms.


Long term, I would worry a little about what will happen to discord once they try to monetise.

 

[iiboharz]

RIP Steam convos thread, you had a good run.

people post stuff not from Steam chat all the time, it'll still be fine

As a downside, this sounds like an awfully easy way to get spammers and "griefers."

You can force verification levels on users, but that would in-deed make it harder for people to just drop in.

Long term, I would worry a little about what will happen to discord once they try to monetise.

I don't think Discord will ever monetise , they get most of their funding from sponsors + merchandise and are already pretty confident that there won't ever be any intrusive advertising etc.

--

Personally, I'm for moving to Discord, but I understand it could potentially split the community & make it harder for newbies to join in.

I think it would actually be best, if we're sure we want to move at some point, to wait until Discord is a much bigger platform with a larger user-base.

Or we could always hope that Valve buys Hammer & Chisel (company that develops Discord) and integrates it into Steam.

 

[Hoplitejoe]

I don't think Discord will ever monetise , they get most of their funding from sponsors + merchandise and are already pretty confident that there won't ever be any intrusive advertising etc.

Investors tend not to give money out for free, and no way they make enough money on merch, seeing as they host all the servers.

at the moment they say they will operate a freemium style service (selling emoji/voice packs ect. keeping what's free now free with no ads), but i really doubt that will make enough money, hence the suspicion about discord's future.

 

[Tumby]

Not being able to click somebodies name to get on their profile, or join them or anything is enough reason for me to simply not care. And the fact that I have to download a third program that is exclusivly made for chatting doesn't help either.

People say "oh you can have it autojoin on startup" yeah you can do that on steam too. But I can't use these things anyways because my PC is often abused by my family for their own internet needs.

 

[Hyperion]

OK, I tested Discord a bit and I noticed that it takes so much more space to be functional. I don't know if there is skins or something but this makes Discord big no-no for me

Left has Discord in browser and app same size than Steam Chat window. Clearly unusable. On the right there is somehow usable sizes

 

[Jethro]

As a middle-ground - perhaps it'd be better to roll out a TF2M discord for events like the 72hr jam in future? General opinion of a permanent move to Discord seems negative, but maybe the best way to try it out is to trial it in stuff like the next 72hr jam, etc.

 

[Psy]

OK, I tested Discord a bit and I noticed that it takes so much more space to be functional. I don't know if there is skins or something but this makes Discord big no-no for me.

You can use this: https://betterdiscord.net

I'm all for Discord. The addition of channels would help to reduce all the off-topic spamming/nonsense that happens in chat, plus all the other benefits of Discord would be nice to have.

 

[UKCS-Alias]

For me text chat is best done within the steam overlay. for voice chat it could be a nice addition, but not worthy to replace the steam chat.

 

[Kube]

Both Steam Chat and Discord have their perks and downsides. I think @UKCS-Alias brings the best argument against a full transition to Discord, but is there any happy balance between the two?

A question regarding the Steam chat, is it possible to configure a bot so that whenever chat ghosts, an announcement is quickly sent out? Even if that announcement is through @tf2maps_updates (I forget who made that bot).