Ares & Discord Integration

Testament

@KarmaBum Wait. This is a thing? For real? Since when?

desire to know more

mietze

@KarmaBum i am much more chatty on discord now than before but the few times I’ve hopped on a game one (integrated into ares I think since it had echoes to public or something) it was overwhelming and I quickly stopped checking it.

I don’t think it’s harmful in that regard, maybe it lets more people be the equivalent of folks rjo log in all day to chat in the background on pub or page (no value judgement on that!)

I do think that depending on the structure/culture of the game discord if that’s the place where people are helping each other/making rp contacts/where most timely info is dispersed that should be made SUPER CLEAR on the game especially if its not integrated. Otherwise that’s a pretty lonely and frustrating experience for people not on it bc they think it is optional, but the communication on the game is a ghost town.

KarmaBum

@Testament https://github.com/AresMUSH/ares-discord

Never used it, but - as with all things @Faraday puts out there - install and troubleshooting are very well-documented.

Third Eye

@mietze said in Ares & Discord Integration:

I do think that depending on the structure/culture of the game discord if that’s the place where people are helping each other/making rp contacts/where most timely info is dispersed that should be made SUPER CLEAR on the game especially if its not integrated. Otherwise that’s a pretty lonely and frustrating experience for people not on it bc they think it is optional, but the communication on the game is a ghost town.

This is always my concern as a player who doesn’t want to engage with game-integrated discords. They don’t bother me, except in that I don’t want to use them, but it would suck if this additional app I didn’t want to bother with a lot of the time was the main place where story and RP discussion happened and it wasn’t actually optional. Especially since I can read channel backscroll pretty far back if we’re talking about Ares games, and always have access to my pages, I don’t see what it gives me other than OOC contact with strangers in ways I don’t really want.

KarmaBum

@Third-Eye said in Ares & Discord Integration:

This is always my concern as a player who doesn’t want to engage with game-integrated discords. They don’t bother me, except in that I don’t want to use them, but it would suck if this additional app I didn’t want to bother with a lot of the time was the main place where story and RP discussion happened and it wasn’t actually optional.

Have you played on an Ares game where it’s in use? You don’t have to out the game or anything, just curious if this is from experience or a (completely legitimate) concern?

The things you’re expressing are the reason why I never used it before, so I’m curious how integrated it is, if people are feeling excluded. My understanding is that it feeds directly into game-chat, so you can chat back-and-forth.

Testament

A Discord integration would be very relevant to my interests as that’s the main form of communication for my game. I’ve had conversations with players in the past that if ever got enough players for the game to be self-sustaining, I’d probably shut it down. But as it stands, with about 12 active players on and off only really using the game itself for event and light RP, Discord makes the most sense for players to be able to keep in touch with other. Because that’s all it is really; communication. RP doesn’t happen on it, it’s just an analogue for channels and occasionally delivering news or setting up events.

Third Eye

@KarmaBum
The only Ares game I’ve been on that used it, I mostly ignored it and never felt like I was missing anything. Where I’ve felt like conversations and plotting were happening where I was genuinely missing half the information other people had were games with unofficial Faction discords random players set up themselves. The official integration twigs me less than that, all things considered.

Tez

We’ve tested it out on a couple of games I’ve played on. I think @Yam was responsible for the integrations, because somehow she keeps getting stuck with Ares code responsibilities when I’m too lazy to do anything. In both cases, these were small, closed games so…

We just used discord as normal.

It could be a lil’ fucky? But that was a while ago, it might be better now. I think @sao is the only one who actually logged in to the game to use the channels in any real way, so she has user experience.

Mourne

I’ve seen a few Ares games that has discord linked in, and it’s essentially public channels cross-played to discord.

As an anti-discord type who prefers to keep games and things tied to work separate, I don’t use it myself but it can and does happen with Ares a fair bit.

Pyrephox

I was briefly on a game where it felt like everyone was on the Discord and no one was on the game channel, and it felt like I was missing a good forty percent of the conversation. It’d be like “oh, that was discussed on the Discord” or “Hey, ask that question on the Discord” and…I wasn’t interested in joining the Discord.

I didn’t last long there, not just for that reason, but it did feel a bit…unfriendly? Like, I’m here to play THIS GAME RIGHT HERE; I don’t want to have to go to a different place to get conversation or anything related to the game.

Testament

@Pyrephox This is a thought I have. And I do think it’s really really dependent on the population of the game. If you have something like 20 or more players, I wouldn’t say it really works to use Discord for the exact reasons you say. It create something where you can miss other communication because it’s not happening on the game.

It’s something where everyone has to either buy into it together or not at all. Half-measures don’t work with this kind of thing. I guess the only reason it works with mine is mostly because that’s how the game started before the game was actually created, a bunch of people talking about the planning and development and it just kind of became apart of things.

I’m not sure it’s something I would use just yet. I’ve always spoken that I try to run things like an extended TT group because the population numbers more or less support something like that. But anything larger I wouldn’t see it being fesible.

KarmaBum

@Pyrephox Also curious about this.

Did the Discord have a bunch of channels that weren’t feeding into the MUSH?

I wouldn’t want to do it if it wasn’t a seamless exchange. That is, if you could have a conversation on the game’s Discord that didn’t show up on the channel… then no.

I just want to be able to use the Discord app to chat on the channels when I’m on my iPhone or iPad, since Ares doesn’t play the refresh-game very nicely on those devices.

Testament

@KarmaBum On a more personal note, I can’t access my game’s site on all of my workstations at work. But for…some reason, Discord is just fine. So I admit, there might be a slight bias in there that’s simply an ease of access thing.

sao

I would not describe it as seamless when I messed around with it. But we haven’t really used it in awhile. The nature of the small private game in question means that no one is ever logged on to the game at all (except me). Erryone just portals and chats on discord, lol.

Tat

@sao My experience from the Ares discord is that it breaks with some frequency, usually because discord changed something. Usually every few months.

IMO basically what discord integration adds that you can’t get on the game/portal these days are

push notifications on mobile apps
messages in a place you already are

I’m personally not interested in either of those - I’m good with needing to CHECK the game, and I’m good with wanting people to be in the game space when they’re engaging in the game. So I haven’t, any probably won’t, implement it.

TNP

Sounds like Discord is (or can be) the new OOC Room. Whether this is good or bad depends on your POV.

Roz

It would be the game runner’s choice whether or not to have more channels on a discord server than on the game. There’s no reason you couldn’t have a server that ONLY had the game channels, so that anything said on the discord would be echoed on the game and vice versa. In that scenario, it just seems like another platform for talking on channel.

You can also, for those with the concern, set your settings on a server so that others on the server can’t DM you just because you have the server in common.

Faraday

The integration is a direct mirror for any channel that’s linked. You have to manually hook them up though, so it’s possible to have some game-only channels or some discord-only channels. That’s a game’s choice.

There were some problems last year with the links going down with annoying frequency. Discord would wipe access keys for no reason, or they’d change something in the interface without telling anyone. But it seems to have been pretty stable lately? I haven’t gotten any complaints anyway. It relies on the Discord.js library, so it’ll always be kinda at the mercy of the whims of Discord.

junipersky

I am on one game that has it, but immediately turned them on mute. While it’s nice, I don’t reallllyyy want to be connected to a game unless I deliberately choose to connect.

L. B. Heuschkel

@junipersky said in Ares & Discord Integration:

I am on one game that has it, but immediately turned them on mute. While it’s nice, I don’t reallllyyy want to be connected to a game unless I deliberately choose to connect.

Awwwww.

Anyhow, we seem to have found a working middleground on Keys: We echo the Questions, Game and RP channels to Discord so that people can stay in touch and answer questions/find RP to log into. Chat, however, is not echoed because we want people to actively participate – not simply idle on the Discord chat.