Live data from Hacker News

Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

ft.com

61–70 of 480 posts

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#61
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what that is meant to convey except scorn. Discord's UI works fine for lots of us and I don't see any relationship with Chuck-E-Cheese here.

it means it feels age-inappropriate for an adult to use, like hanging out at a children's arcade

Yeah this checks out for me. Some people at work were pushing to move from slack to discord and I've never felt more like an old man.

UX preferences aside, I think it's a really bad fit for businesses compared to slack, because it seems to also want to be social media, where you have one profile across servers, where slack and others are team-centric.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#62
post #58
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think tricking is the word for this. You're not going to click something by accident and be immediately billed for something. Yes, they've made monetisation more prominent, but I think that's fair for a platform that's free to use. I'd rather they attempt to get more revenue out of users via premium features than have to shut down cause they were operating at a loss.

> I don't think tricking is the word for this. Tricking is 100% the right word for it. They are putting those Nitro buttons there with the clear intent that a user will click it by accident while attempting to access a different feature that used to be there. > You're not going to click something by accident and be immediately billed for something. If it didn't work, they wouldn't be doing it. I'm not claiming that t…

> advertisements for Nitro when someone was trying to upload a photo

The gifting button is only beside the upload button on mobile, and personally I've never hit it accidentally. To me it just seems like they've made it more prominent, I don't see any intent to trick people into mis-clicking. Like I've said, I have no problem with them trying to make more money, they need to make a profit to keep providing a free service.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#63
I hope not, I don't like the tiny realm vibe I get on discord servers. I find it too stiff and less friendly than most webirc sites (i know irc is not 10% of discord in terms of features but even then I find the added bonuses aren't worth that negative feeling.)

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#64
post #60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT but seriously, name one good Microsoft product other than paint.

VS Code, TypeScript, C#, F#, GitHub but it doesn't count... I've heard good things about OneNote, I guess.

I would add Windows kernel to that list. Overall seems pretty solid. DirectX 12 too. Visual Studio.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#65
post #17

I despise discord. It's bloatware. It has constant popups that are difficult to disable. I do read their tech posts on HN, and they are always fascinating. But it seems to me like a product that the MBAs have taken a over.

Too bad their users in particular aren't the kind to be open minded to other platforms, they just follow the crowd. As an answer to the headline, they'll fail in their attempts to gain in other avenues because not everyone is a follower like gamers are.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#66
post #11

I feel like in order to campfire business users, they would have to rebrand. Discord is a cool name for gamers, but maybe not for your average business person.

Slack does not seem like it would be good name for business use as well, and yet tons of businesses use it.

It isn't just the name.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#67
post #38

Every single Discord-related post here I see comments about the "bad ux". I'm a heavy Discord user and I have no complaints with the UX, I find it pretty intuitive to be honest. I'm also constantly seeing people in shock that people would choose to use Discord over IRC/Matrix/Teamspeak/Mumble. I find Discord to be light years ahead of anything else available, and for an average person who's going to have a hard time…

Discord has taken things that worked in the web client and removed them to force you to download their app.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#68
post #38

Every single Discord-related post here I see comments about the "bad ux". I'm a heavy Discord user and I have no complaints with the UX, I find it pretty intuitive to be honest. I'm also constantly seeing people in shock that people would choose to use Discord over IRC/Matrix/Teamspeak/Mumble. I find Discord to be light years ahead of anything else available, and for an average person who's going to have a hard time…

Tried to ask the Matrix devs about room emotes being broken on Android (though they work on web) and they just ignored me completely. Matrix is simply half baked and somehow barely works so that I keep using it. But they aren't even close to the point where things just work.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#69

Matrix or death.

Matrix is miles behind discord which saddens me. It's a good UI but to consider them in the same ballpark is pretty uncomparable to me

Matrix is a protocol, not a UI. There are many Matrix clients with vastly different UIs and UX. To distil Matrix down to a 'UI' is missing the entire point of Matrix. It is like email, it will inevitably become ubiquitous. 35m users so far: https://element.io/blog/element-raises-30m-as-matrix-explode...

There's a reason that governments, militaries and healthcare systems are choosing Matrix over Discord!

I've bridged all my other messaging apps to Matrix, now I just need a single messaging app. I even get my SMS via Matrix. Can Discord do that? Nope. If it could, would you trust it? Probably not.

Re: Discord has won over gamers. Now it wants everybody else

#70
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mind going into more details about the popups? Ive been using for years and cant say I've ever had a popup besides the occasional changelog.

This week they've been pushing some new Discord college spaces; asking me to connect my account to a .edu mail address. Believe I've seen the popup twice on my desktop, and once on mobile.

I actually did get that too on desktop. It is a bit annoying but not enough for me to call it bloatware.
Post reply on HN