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Top 10 Reasons Negative World Should Start Using Discord For Chat [top ten]
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01/23/17, 08:30 Edited: 01/23/17, 09:07
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Negative World needs a great chat solution |
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Chat has been a valuable part of the Negative World community for many years now. The most exciting times we use it are during the big events - E3, Nintendo Directs, etc. Just the other day, during the Switch event, there were around 20 people in chat. For me, it was just like old times again and that was a blast.
Some of our best, long-running jokes come from Negative World chat. FloRida singing into a golden taco... you kinda had to be there to understand why that was so funny. But that also kind of proves the point. Chat adds value.
Beyond the big events, there was a time when chat was extremely active nearly every night. I know I participated in those chats and some of my most cherished memories at Negative World are from just shooting the breeze and making jokes with you guys on some random Wednesday when the chat thread got bumped. Zero, Stephen, Stache, Anand, Gui, Ploot, Shadowlink, Jargon... we all used it pretty frequently at one time and got a lot out of it.
So just as a community building feature, I think chat has value here at Negative World.
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Mibbit was never a great chat solution |
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Look, Mibbit has one thing going for it - you can sign in with a single click and you're in. That's pretty much the one advantage. But beyond that, it was never very good, even in its heyday. In fact, it's always been inferior to the old IGN chat from the mid-2000s, and that had to be accessed through a long-removed link that got passed around through PMs and had a tendency to go down.
Some problems with Mibbit?
- It's not very stable. People get booted out of it all the time and come back swearing because they've just lost an important part of the conversation.
- It works like absolute stinging hot garbage on a smartphone. There are so many times I wanted to chat with you guys before bed, but I really couldn't because it was so pathetic on my phone. It would crash more frequently than usual. I'd have to tap a hundred times on the little message window to get a field to type in. It was so bad that I just stopped using it there altogether. But the problem never went away. During the Switch event I actually had to get out of bed and go to the computer because I didn't want to miss out on the chat. I shouldn't have to do that in 2017. If I want to lay in bed in my underwear and talk to Mr. Mustache, I should be allowed to do that. This is America, dammit.
- There are no avatars. Instead, we try to figure out who's talking based on a limited number of color choices that get claimed by people as they come in (or if they use chat frequently. Or did use it in 2011. The point is, Purple is still mine and I'll cut you over it.). This has led to actual fights, believe it or not. It's silly.
- No accountability. Anyone can come in with any name. If I want to show up to chat pretending I'm Ploot and tell everyone I'm not really Canadian, I can do that. It's bad. (Well, that example is kinda funny, but it's still really bad.)
- It's never handled pictures very well. You want to drop a photo and actually have people see it? There's a trick to it, but even then it didn't always work for everyone. I lost so many good jokes that way, I'm telling you.
- When a chat is over, it's over. There's no transcript. There's no going back to it. This also means, you know, it's open for backbiting and stuff. Two people want to talk trash about you, there's no way to limit that.
- Who even runs that Mibbit server? Last I asked, Zero basically just knew a guy or something that let us use it. It's not like it was something Negative World built into the site that we have control over. Why have loyalty to that?
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The big new feature though? Voice Chat. And it's glorious! |
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Tonight I was testing out the Discord chat and Fink just said, "Yo Money, let's play some Splatoon." And I thought, why not? It wasn't what I was planning on doing, but what the heck, right?
So what happened? I fired up my Wii U, hopped into Discord voice chat with Fink and Ploot and played about an hour of Splatoon. And it was so much fun. It was the kind of experience everyone at Negative World could and should be having with each other. We were laughing, cutting up, talking about the game, talking about the Switch. Stephen and Pokefreak joined us, too. We got a preview of some of Pokefreak's thoughts on the latest Pokemon game. Heard Trish in the background talking to Finn, even. It was really just a delight. There's no downside, here.
Personally, I can be really self conscious about things like Voice Chat. I think of myself as a writer and I think, "What if I'm not as funny on voice chat as I am when I write? Or what if I say something stupid?" I also hate the sound of my own voice - I sound like a dude with a permanent cold. So I can be very neurotic about talking to people on the phone.
But I'm telling you, even with those thoughts in my head, I think Voice Chat is the kind of thing you think you don't need until you actually participate in it. Then you wonder why you bothered going without it. If you don't think you want Voice Chat, I say try it first.
Currently, it's the missing component in our Nintendo game sessions. It's true that Nintendo is about to roll out a Switch app, so there may be opportunities in the future to put something like this together using that app, but for now this is way too easy and way to fun to miss out on.
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Negative World really could use a new community building tool |
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Let's face it, Negative World has been pretty dead over the last few months. I'd even say we've been in a funk. Not right now! I'm being serious! Geez!We don't have to be ashamed to admit it. It's not like the community had a big falling out or anything like that. Yeah, maybe we shouldn't have talked so much about politics, but I don't think that's really our problem. I think it's just that there hasn't been much Nintendo news to fire the engines of conversation. So we've filled it up with other things - chatting about politics, music, movies... whatever we could talk about. And that's ok, but those topics are not as comfortable for this community. It's not why any of us came to Negative World in the first place. We came here because we love playing Nintendo games. Frankly, I think we made some mistakes. We should have been playing video games with each other that whole time. I really do believe that Discord is ironically named, because I can imagine it bringing some harmony back to Negative World. Like, my game with Fink and Ploot just now - it was a great opportunity to catch up with some friends, share our love for Nintendo, and play a great game together. And it all grew out of just one stray comment by Fink on Discord. Imagine that happening every night. I'm super excited by the idea! Yeah, sure, the counter argument is that someone could already bump a Splatoon thread if they wanted to play, but we all know that's a different thing altogether. Threads feel so permanent and we're not in the habit of bumping them or checking them for something so casual as that. Plus, if I see a Splatoon thread and, if I'm not already thinking about Splatoon, I'm probably not going to open it. I'd never have known Fink wanted to play. Whereas tonight we were just chatting about any old thing and the decision to play Splatoon just grew organically out of that conversation. This sort of thing is good for the community and I think it's something we've been sorely missing.
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Don't worry about having to download the app or signing up to an account. It's super basic and easy. |
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I heard in the other thread some disapproval about having to make an account or run an app to use chat. Those worries are for nothing. It's simpler than just about any online account I've ever set up. Yes, you do have to set up an account - but you set up that account in like two minutes. Maybe less. I bet you could time yourself and set it up in 30 seconds. You don't even have to verify your email right away, so you could use some throwaway email if you're worried about that. And that two minutes prevents spoofing, so that alone is the least you can do for such a good trade-off. Ok, so I guess you're just the mascot of this article now. Fine. Why are you dressed like Randy 'Macho Man' Savage with a Tool Belt, though?As for whether or not it'll run on everyone's devices, I admit that's something that remains to be seen. But you can make that argument until everyone's using apps that are compatible with Windows 95. At a certain point we have to move on and hope as many people as possible can come along for the ride. Anyway, tonight, Fink was running voice chat directly from a Safari browser in an operating system that's 5 versions old. And it worked just fine. Sure, there may be a few people who'll have some challenges getting Discord to work, but I don't think that's worth holding the whole community back, particularly when you consider the people who can't use Discord probably aren't using Mibbit regularly anyway.
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Okay, my post is in three parts. The first is the short version. The second is the long version. And then I included a Too Long:Didn't Read one line summary for anyone who doesn't even have time for the short version. THE SHORT VERSION:I like you guys and want you to be happy, so I will make a Discord account even if I don't often chat, and let's be honest, I didn't often chat in the old chat that had no barrier to entry. I prefer message boards and don't care much for chat rooms. I still don't want to make more online accounts, and I have a number of very personal reasons for that. But if it is important to you I will make it important to me. What follows is a very, very long response that was edited numerous times and may still fall short of what should be said. Along the way, I discovered I was writing it for myself. It became something I needed to read, rather than a response to anyone else, so if no one wants to sit through all those paragraphs below, please don't. If it has other purposes to serve, so be it, but as far as I know it has already served its purpose which was to bring me, personally, to terms with a number of things. Thanks! THE LONG VERSION:kriswright said: But I have to admit, I personally don't understand your point-of-view against creating a Discord account.
I think you do understand. Your post indicates you understand totally. If there’s anything, I think maybe you just don’t accept my point of view. And that’s totally okay, yeah? We don’t all have to accept each other’s points of view, understanding is a huge deal in itself. In your opinion, creating another online social account isn’t a big deal. You’re right, both subjectively and objectively. It isn’t. In my opinion, I don’t want to create another online social account. You understand that, clearly. You just really want me to share in your opinion instead. :) Let me link that together with this next bit: "But to turn around and ask the forum to not update the chat service to something clearly better just because you simply don't want to take the two minutes to create an account is not really fair, either." I've never once said that. I've never once asked this group to do anything to accommodate me, except on occasion politely requested cursing and using religious slang as profanity be kept to a minimum, and that was nothing but a personal request. If people kept doing it, I moved on and let it be. I am not asking for the forum to stay stagnant on account of me. Any feelings of my opinion being intended to do anything of the sort are absolutely not intended. I am only saying I, and probably others, just don't want to make more online accounts. That is not to stop you, it is just to share why some of us won't be there chatting. And that's okay, not everything is made for everyone. Let’s look at it this way, and I think that will help tie everything together: You've left this forum before for a number of reasons, yeah? (You and me both.) But I love talking to you here. However, I'm not going to ask you to abandon your reasons for sometimes taking a hiatus from Negative World just because I want you here. I respect your reasons for taking the breaks you've taken. I'm also thrilled when you come back. You have to do what's right for you, and your reasons are your own. I don’t want to try to convince you your reasons are stupid, because they are yours (and frankly, it’s not my place to judge your reasons in the first place, ala James 4:11-12) How you feel may not be how I feel, but it isn’t my place to tell you how to feel. My place is to listen to why you feel how you feel, and then do my best to help however I can. You’ve done your part; you’ve explained beautifully why Discord is the way to go. You’ve also listened to my reasons, and I appreciate that. My desire to avoid more online social accounts, however, still remains. As you mentioned regarding Facebook, I’m also considering parsing back at the moment and removing some that already exist. That leads us to this: “While Ploot maybe could have worded it a little more generously, I think he is right about one thing, though: You're taking a hardline stance on an innocuous product you haven't even used, yet. And that's a total Green Eggs and Ham thing. You haven't tried but you're convinced you won't like it.” I hope you will believe me when I tell you, as I told Ploot, that this has nothing to do with the particular service or my “liking it” or not. This has to do with my desire to stop entering more online social accounts. That is what I dislike, not whatever is beyond that account creation. I’m just worn out from it. I’m so sick of having 1000 accounts (online AND off) across 1000 things. You guys caught me at a bad time. If this was account 999, maybe we don’t have this conversation. But I’m at Account 1000 now, and so it becomes a conversation. It becomes something I must deal with. But you know what? You didn’t catch me at a bad time. You caught me at the perfect time. Because all this, I needed to see and be part of, desperately. I am finding that more and more life lessons come from my interactions here, which is perhaps why I constantly feel a tug to return. I have left so many message boards in my life and never come back. With Negative World, sometimes in spite of not wanting to come back, I consistently return. Again and again I feel I’m supposed to be here in this place for reasons I don’t know. Well, chalk up another. I needed this. I needed to see this side, because I'm feeling very down that you guys are telling me I'm being silly, but I've done the same thing to others who are doing other things they believe in and I don’t. And that's not right, and now I get to see that clearly. Much like a recent conversation with another member taught me the other side of not poking holes in people's entertainment bubbles for the sake of being right. I needed to learn this lesson, and so I thank you for that. Going forward I'm going to try to do a better job at hearing people's "silly" points of view and not just writing them off. That is something I need to work on, and I see it now. I was blind to it before. I will close with one final thing. “This isn't something we have to take some big philosophical stand on.” Right now I am hooked up to a heart monitor. I got it this morning, because I’ve been ill for four months or so. Hopefully at the end of the week they will have a better idea of what’s wrong. So far no tests have come to any real conclusions. That idea of what’s wrong could be something as light as “You have an arrhythmia, and have to live with it” to something far more serious and life threatening. I do not know, nor can I do anything about it right now except wait. I say this because I am at a point in my life’s journey where I have far more of a desire for everything to showcase the big philosophical things behind them and to see it clearly for myself. Because, let’s be honest, deep down all our reasons and thoughts and perspectives mean something to us. Little things, like Nintendo games over EA games, often have much deeper implications if we allow ourselves to dig in deep and truly look. Or we can write everything off as no big deal, truthfully, because in 100 years we’ll both be dead. And what will it matter then, even if the issue is seemingly huge now? One of life’s beautiful paradoxes, supreme meaning and no meaning simultaneously. But that’s getting off topic. My point is, this does mean something to me. To me, this isn’t nothing. It is something very personal, because I am coming to terms with how I am spending my fleeting time on this planet. It is using such a tiny thing to make such a big, life-impacting realization. It is a showcase for me, rather than just a write-off action. Is my time spent online meaningful? Should I be doing it as much as I am now? Increasing it even more? Why, when I try to justify spending so much time online socially, do I get a nagging feeling in my stomach that something isn’t right? And I truly apologize for dragging you and everyone else into this personal part of my journey. You are being affected (in this case negatively) because of my need to learn a lesson. Several lessons, possibly. Knowing that literally brings tears to my eyes, because I hate that I have to make someone else suffer so I can learn. I hate that about myself. In the end, I just don’t want to live sleepwalking anymore. I don’t want the choices I make to be made so flippantly like I have an infinite amount of time here to do whatever. When yet another social account presents itself, I don’t want to do what I used to and just go off mindlessly and join and toss more time into the wind without thinking. I have asked for these things to be shown to me, so I can learn. This thing that is so little to everyone else is, to me, quite a lesson. Now I have to decide if I should post this, or rewrite it in a short way simply to give you a response. Because let’s be clear, this was all written (and rewritten, several times) for my sake mostly. I am the one who needed to see these words, so I could wake back up and lose another blind spot of my own. I believe the only harm in posting it is to myself, for it will no doubt be seen by some as the ravings of a lunatic. I’m okay with that and who I am, so I’ll add a disclosure at the top and then post it I suppose. TL:DR – Life is short, buy Snipperclips.Final note: If anyone wishes to post on these subjects responding specifically to me, feel free to do so publicly or in PM form. However I will reply to that response via PM, because I am not going to gunk up this thread with even more of my personal musings. This is not the place, but PM is a good place. |
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kriswright said:@J.K. Riki
(heck, Mustache is already posting in Discord with his account, and he's usually the holdout on things like this. If he can do it, you can do it). To be fair, I had an existing Discord account when I needed to talk to tech people a couple months ago on my NSFW browser gaming; they use Discord for all of their titles. I don't want to muddy the waters, but I'm not sure I would've hopped right over if I hadn't set it up already. Because as you said (and others have, too), I'm a holdout on those sort of things -- and I understand what JKR is saying (who will also be PM'd as opposed to responding directly) because I don't like that "social footprint" either, or whatever you wanna call it. I HATE making new accounts. Hell, Tim won't even get a Sporcle account to track his awesome progress because "too many passwords!" " TIM, USE THE SAME USERNAME AND PASSWORD COMBO AS NW." No dice, Rocko. Did anyone watch The Hunted last night? It was funny when the pros were tracking them by checking their deleted Twitter account for help. No, I don't stay "off the grid" because I think the fuzz is going to find me, I just don't like all that schmutz in my life. And when I hear the relief that people get when they say "yeah, closed my Facebook," and then the little "sigh puff" comes out of their mouth, like Mario after taking down a late castle in SMW (World 4?), I can't imagine how I'd feel if I had those entanglements on me now. I already feel bogged down, yeowch! A positive nudge: Discord isn't all that bad, holdouts. The voice stuff is there for those who want to talk hands free while gaming (I didn't hear any of it, as there are defined rooms, and without a proper mic I probably won't be in there that often at all), and the text side is easy to catch up on when you get home from work or whatever, see what you missed. Furthermore, there are side things there where you can direct message someone else, if you, say, try for 3 hours (and fail) to convince Tim to watch Plinkett Star Wars Reviews. And media embeds there, usually, even when you don't expect it to. I was able to show TK_Thunder some Monster Party Crawling / Ground Humping with ease! (Only finding it was tough..) I probably won't hit Discord at work, and yeah, I do worry a bit for the Daily Thread. I'll be sure to water it, but I know that a lot of people here don't particularly like my brand of fertilizer, so sorry about that. And if Mibbit stays on this site and someone wants to jazz it up in there, I have no problem hopping in there, too. But thats me. (And I'm using Discord at home on PC, Windows XP, Firefox; works fine.) EDIT- Yeah, whats Slack? *downloading* |
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