Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

pcgamer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 308 posts

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#161

Post by notamy »

dmortin wrote: post #111
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

> I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. I wonder why they not let google index their content. It would only drive extra traffic to them from google search, wouldn't it?

Because there's not a need, or at least there wasn't originally. Discord started out as text/voice chat for gamers; small friend groups don't need Google indexing or similar. Larger communities could likely benefit from it nowadays, I agree, but the problem is that it's not search-index-friendly content imo: How do you appropriately index chat for search? I would think this is where LLMs could be useful -- digest an entire chat group and spit out insights/answers/etc.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#162

Post by everforward »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #149
paulmd wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Does anyone actually remember Teamspeak/Mumble/Ventrilo, lol? Discord is an incredibly better UX. Those programs feel like they're from 2000, they're clunky to set up, and the reality is they're still way better than what came before (eg Roger Wilco). (for some inane reason wikipedia lists the installer size for roger wilco... 768kb, now there's a sensible chuckle.) Also, they need a hosted server (which most p…

> Hashtag usernames aren't a problem in small community chats... they are a problem if you're planning on making a reddit competitor, usernames really should be globally unique for a public board. What? Why? Names are never unique. That's not how names work. Why would usernames be different?

> Names are never unique. That's not how names work.

This causes all kinds of pain irl, it's not really a good example. IRL has the same issues non-unique usernames do. It's almost irrelevant in a small community because of the number of members. It becomes a problem in large communities because you can't find someone based on their name.

Discord's issue was downplaying the discriminator so much that a lot of people didn't realize they existed. That if you wanted to add someone, they weren't uniquely identified by username alone.

They probably could have solved that by making the discriminator more prominent early on in the app's lifecycle.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#163

Post by Conscat »

Filligree wrote: post #6
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work , and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. Love it or hate it, let's not pretend it's lik…

No, their app is buggy and has been for almost a year. I've confirmed this with fellow Android users. Discord will spontaneously stop displaying the last 20ish channels across all servers and it will spontaneously start cropping image previews wrong. You have to close and reopen it whenever this happens.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#164

Post by nsajko »

Filligree wrote: post #6
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Their app isn't buggy, is easy to use, voice chat and screen sharing just work , and it's extremely easy to onboard yourself -- you don't even need to create an account immediately. Love it or hate it, let's not pretend it's lik…

> Their app isn't buggy

The Android app often has issues that make using it infuriating.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#165

Post by nodespace »

sc00ty wrote: post #145
coldpie wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I'm reading this correctly this is just Discord becoming a direct competitor to Patreon Man, really? That sounds great . Patreon sucks really, really hard. It's one of those websites & apps where you're amazed someone managed to screw up that badly. Like, you have to put serious effort into making software as bad as Patreon is. Quibbles about their business model aside, Discord actually knows how to make functio…

Can you elaborate on the issues you're talking about? I support a couple of creators and my interactions with the site have been fine, so I'm curious what issues you have with it.

I support a few web novel authors on Patreon, and the website on mobile is so bad that I read the new chapters in my email client.

In fact, I am extremely hesitant about starting any new subscriptions because of how bad it is. (and I do not look forward to reading all the catchup chapters on that interface, not to mention trying to search through where I left off on the publicly posted content without getting spoiled by chapter titles.)

It takes ages to load, content is not on pages, its all streamed in order, and there is just a ton of lag trying to scroll through and find things.

If you click away and try to come back, welp, good luck finding where you left off, better hope you had that chapter number memorized.

Did I mention the lag? It takes like 10 seconds to load a text only section.

There is search, but again the lag is aweful.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#166

Post by IE6 »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #115
IE6 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. Completely anecdotal, but IMHO their app just works and it works well. For instance I used to play an MMO using discord and we had ~72 people in voice chat at any given time and it was flawless (some of our members were 80+ year…

Is the MMO Everquest or Ultima Online?

EverQuest

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#167

Post by paulmd »

gedy wrote: post #159
paulmd wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Does anyone actually remember Teamspeak/Mumble/Ventrilo, lol? Discord is an incredibly better UX. Those programs feel like they're from 2000, they're clunky to set up, and the reality is they're still way better than what came before (eg Roger Wilco). (for some inane reason wikipedia lists the installer size for roger wilco... 768kb, now there's a sensible chuckle.) Also, they need a hosted server (which most p…

> Discord just isn't a reddit/forums/wiki competitor, that's not what the product is intended to be, and people continue to insist on forcing it to be one for some reason. I would assume that there’s pressure for “growth“, and pushing discord as a Reddit or forum replacement. It’s probably just that.

What I'm talking about is the opposite, actually - users keep forcing it into places it doesn't really want to go, it's a chat client not a message board/wiki/etc. And while Discord has catered to it a little bit, it's not really been something they pushed hard yet (threads/etc are still there but very optional and very low adoption from users). I think unique usernames are potentially a sign of that changing, with more public (not just inside a private community) functionality being put forth in a real way.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#168

Post by riversflow »

xp84 wrote: post #86
avian wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're getting downvoted, but I think low text density contributes to the low quality of conversation. I've commonly witnessed conversations that were going around in circles, with people just tuning in and re-asking questions that were already asked and answered in the same conversation two or three page scrolls up. If it's not on the bottom screenful of text in a channel it might as well not exist on Discord. Which…

To be super fair too, if you compare Discord to forums, (the thing lots of communities were using before Reddit) in terms of whether it’s good at managing a large discussion, remember when there would be a thread with 19 pages? People would be challenged to find the actually useful post on page 5 when there were dozens of pages on an active thread. So it’s a slight reassurance, although I feel like still the differen…

> an hour after the brilliant point was made, it’s essentially lost.

This is what pins are for.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#169

Post by jaywalk »

xattt wrote: post #87
Levitz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice chat alone was an absolute gamechanger. The alternative at the time was either crappy free solutions or you just paid for a server. It's really no surprise it got super popular.

Discord gives an opportunity to self-host. It’s a little bit frustrating to do that, but also turn your own hardware into a walled garden.

Can you share a link to information on this? I can't find anything.

Re: Discord monetization: microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes'

#170

Post by ShamelessC »

fndex wrote: post #117
serf wrote: post #3

I say this as a (begrudging) discord user : I don't know what they (Discord) did right to get communities to lock up all of their community and data into such a hard-to-index walled garden. People compared the loss of what.cd to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. While I do think that was an exaggeration at the time, I worry about the loss of effort and 'thought-power' when the discord walls get even taller th…

I think one reason Discord is so popular and many people don't talk about is the same reason why games like Minecraft, Tibia, GTA San Andreas and many other old games are still popular today. The reason is that they allow users to customize the software through code. When you create a Discord or Minecraft server, they act as a "platform" for your server, you can write code to customize every aspect of it. I think tha…

Are you referring to bots?
Post reply on HN