We have gone on a tangent from the OP's main point, but I want to mention it isn't fair to say no information is released on the forums. As someone who follows both media, plenty of information gets put on both, and there is a fair bit of cross flow besides. Quite often, you will see discord quotes on the forums and forum links on discord highlighting something a dev said. There are at least 3-5 staff posts on the forums every day. Most are in direct response to questions. The devs enjoy interacting with the community to a level I haven't seen in a game before.

But lets talk about the salient qualities of the two media. The official forums are generally slower paced and easier to take a leisurely read. People tend to write longer responses and think about what they wish to say before hitting the Submit button. Discord is immediate and more easily supports the rapid back and forth exchange of ideas.

Often, if I am looking for a conversation and some fun stream-of-collective-consciousness speculation I will head to discord. If I have something specific I want to say or if I am looking for a deep dive in an idea I will head to the forums. Both media are valid and useful in their own way.

For the devs, it seems like Discord is the medium of choice for low-pressure interaction. Discord is not an official platform for game information, and nothing said there is set in stone. That means the devs can be free to ramble a bit in a way they cannot in the forums. The forums require a well-thought-out official, factual response. That is something the devs don't generally make time for because... well, because they are developing the game. So the posts we get on the forums are scheduled and regular. But as a result they are more concrete. If you see something on Discord, it is almost always smothered in a blanket caveat. That is less so on the forums.

TLDR; you aren't missing anything if you don't follow Discord, because Discord is not official. Anything official will always be (and always has been) mentioned on the forums.

I will bathe my toes in a pit of possible snake venom and see what happens.

So what do I think?

Well, I will try to sum it up as simple as possible. First off, that calender was like being given a wall of text. I honestly did not give it more than a few. From this I can in a sense understand the OP's reaction. Not everybody loves everything that comes out on the forums and we should not. The diversity must never turn into a collection of A vs B.

Now I would maybe have structured my opening post a little differently, but the OP goes to the point. I could not care less for what the OP have written prior to this, I take my view from what is here now.

To me the recent event has felt so bland. In my opinion, which no one has to agree with, The Searing Plague quickly ended up feeling like a filler. While I can see the idea behind it and the use for the future of adding some lore into the game. It was, again to me, the worst event yet. Did not something good come of it? Well, I did start to interact a little more with my future kingdom and finally signed up, so it was not all bad.

Some one once said something along the line of:

There is nothing so bad, that no good could come of it.

I may be phrasing the quote wrong, but you are all smart people, you understand.

Now as a small mention as to how information comes out. Yes, I too believe that Discord has gone to far, spite the continues statement that Discord is not official information. The lines have blurred it seems, if this was not so, then people would not take note and mention it. Recently even I, who have also been around from before KS, have experienced the information especial on the website as a little of a mess and sometimes not cut clean. Now this comes from how I personally work and we do not all follow the lines. On a website mentioning final note, it is nice to see the random threads of art pieces for the game.

And on a final note. Months back I spoke to some one I know in the community, a king of a sort, though this person would rather be a hermit. One thing we agreed upon back then was that the next big boom would be map selection (Domain/settlement included).

I for one will be expecting a nice short, clean and informative thread post from Caspian, that; now it is here. Now we can all taste the smell of soon knowing, where in world of Elyria, on each our respective server, that we will settle down.

Thank you for your time, those who read my little fence of text and understood my points and also to those who just read the first little part and threw in a Dislike.

Caspian 'The Pure'Today at 12:35 PM

Just remember..... you think the drama around the plague has been interesting... our next big event is Map Voting....

((Adjusted my comment on the first page))

>Discord isn't an official platform, all announcements on forums

>Map voting announced on discord

k.

What this tells me is that there is a nonzero chance map voting will be pushed back again, and SbS will still have the convenient shield of 'not on the forums, ergo not real'.

Posted By mickdude2 at 11:54 AM - Fri Sep 14 2018

>Discord isn't an official platform, all announcements on forums

>Map voting announced on discord

k.

What this tells me is that there is a nonzero chance map voting will be pushed back again, and SbS will still have the convenient shield of 'not on the forums, ergo not real'.

Map voting wasn't announced on Discord. At best, map voting was teased on Discord. That shield of convenience is the point. We enjoy a lot of communication from the devs. Without that shield, we would enjoy far less. Let's not take it for granted.

Posted By Wolfguarde at 10:03 AM - Fri Sep 14 2018

Posted By Malais at 12:26 AM - Sat Sep 15 2018

Posted By zimmah at 07:21 AM - Fri Sep 14 2018

And apperently lots of things are >only mentioned on discord.

This right here.

I have NEVER seen a developer use third party chat software as the primary means to communicate important information to their user base while almost completely ignoring their own website.

New players will visit the website first it should be the primary vehicle for information. Sbs continues to miss this and now it’s actually starting to be a little sad.

In fairness, this is probably partly because the development process itself is unconventional, and Discord's an easier channel through which to pass on small parcels of info while they're working.

That said, as someone who almost never uses Discord, it's frustrating that a lot of the updates to the old DJs and some of the new info seem to now be happening primarily through it.

I understand that on the one hand, it's allowing them to communicate with the more active members of the community more consistently, without interrupting work flow to make posts. But on the other, as you've pointed out - this is one of the first places new players will see upon discovering the project, and there's always going to be people who can't or won't use Discord. It would be good if we had someone collecting all of those bits and pieces and throwing them together to release on the forum.

Even as someone who uses discord, it's hard to remember and piece together the tidbits of information, assuming you don't miss any of them, and assuming they aren't just Caspian trolling us in the first place.

And besides, you can't really pitch random quotes to new players.

Posted By Dleatherus at 08:46 AM - Fri Sep 14 2018

i personally don't spend much time in the official CoE discord because i find it to be too fast paced and have plenty of other stuff and projects on my plate - so i often miss what caspian, snipehunter etc say and i get and understand where you're coming from

what i do is once or twice a week run a search for @caspian or @snipehunter and the other devs and their quotes come up - easy peasy to sift through and see which ones have substance and which ones are "just chit chat"

i would rather have these to sift through and learn some more about CoE, than have none on discord at all (or the CoE Forums)

somebody was doing this for The Searing Plague Event and posting relevant quotes from discord into a thread on the forums

might be somebody takes the initiative to do something similar

This workaround should not be required for any of us, much less for new community members trying to orient themselves to CoE for the first time.

Gunnlang and Malais are correct: communication has been a recurring issue for SBS for a long time, and you have to start wondering what people like serp are doing if not improving communication with the community...

Great post! Very clear. Everything was already known, but I guess it was necessary to clarify it again. You guys at SBS are patient on an impossible level.

Some people are so impatient... If you READ and talk to others, you're bound to find out what's coming up... In this instance map voting was naturally the next step and also makes the most sense, since the plague would directly effect the world. This also could mean things could start picking up after voting ends...

I for one enjoyed the event... there was a lot of RP going on, met a lot of people from each of the servers, and definitely made it a bit more challenging to just stay in my current server... I've met some awesome people I'd love to play the game with from the other servers... SO I wouldn't say the event was "not that amazing" at all... it was indeed amazing and gave just a glimpse of what our effect on the game could be... everyone steered history a different direction for the whole game, more towards advancement instead of plague ridden...

@Caspian

I would agree 100% about information changing and all that on the website being a bad thing except this is a game in development not a finished product. Going back to Asherons Call and DAoC my first online games, up through more recent launches. Games in Beta or Alpha for those I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of have ALWAYS prefaced their comments and posts with the usual legalese “can change still in works Ext”. Yet info was still posted on the website.

You guys want to be different that’s fine. Let’s take something that was officially mentioned in discord from this last event.

Milestones. The fact the CB hit one twice as fast as the OB was mentioned on Discord first. To my knowledge it was not a dev who brought it to the website but a group of players who did.

Yes very small thing but does lead those of us who do not have time to frequent discord to feel left out. Sure sounds like a school yard kid crying he doesn’t get to play but what about the thousands of new folks that will stop by between now and alpha/beta/launch?

We still have folks asking if the games out and older members who when stepping through the site again with fresh eyes cannot easily find this basic information?

Now as for who should be moving or posting you guys have a large group of dedicated folks from ambassadors to mods who would likely be able to volunteer time to keep things up to date. (Posting new info correcting out of date). Shoot I do it from work more often than not when I see a question based on old info. The reason I mentioned serp is I’ve dealt with the guy and he’s pretty sharp. He’s also a very good judge of character. If he is the one picking who can and cannot update the masses your life would be much simpler.

Not three days ago someone posted a question on how they could help you. Perhaps this is a good use of the ambassadors?

I’m not trying to pick a fight but if you look at the site and the forums through a users eyes instead of a dev you would see what a lot of us are talking about. It’s not an attack it’s a red flag that should be looked at before CoE goes fully mainstream heading into launch.

I for one liked the searing plague event. It wasn't anything major that required our constant attention, and it didn't overstay it's welcome, in my opinion. It was a necessary event to get the community's engines revved up again before moving on to bigger things.

Though I can see why people might not have liked the event, since it did have a slight tone of "do this or suffer the consequences!" But I think the majority of people enjoyed the event for what it was, gave it the attention it deserved, and then moved on.

As for this whole discord vs. website argument. I think it just comes down to being a perceived slight, and not an actual one. The problem stems from exposure to the devs and managers. On discord the devs and managers are almost always available to chat with, while on the website they only post when they have something actually worth sharing, for obvious reasons. This causes the appearance of discord being the main source of information, but it really isn't.

Asking the devs/managers to constantly post discord conversations on the forums regardless of their importance or accuracy, is like asking your bosses at work to send out an email consisting of all of their casual conversations with your fellow employees. It would be a constant annoyance to everybody, and it would be too time consuming. Not to mention unreasonable.

Posted By Dleatherus at 03:57 AM - Fri Sep 14 2018

Posted By MagistrateMondra at

What do you think?

having seen many of your posts, i think you complain at every single opportunity

Seriously, you want us to follow information listed on Discord? why is'nt it listed on this website?

Also who cares if he complains, we have that right to complain, praise, worship etc.. w/o someone coming in on their high-horse and trying to put him/her on blast..

Hell now i'm complaining, and will continue to complain especially if i have to dig and and do research on shit ppl are blurting out that should be listed HERE on the forums not on DISCORD.

I don't sit around playing a game all day I have a life and should be able to find all the information that is new in ONE spot...

Umm so yeah I'd say he/she has a right to complain.

Posted By Orikoren at 5:49 PM - Fri Sep 14 2018

I for one liked the searing plague event. It wasn't anything major that required our constant attention, and it didn't overstay it's welcome, in my opinion. It was a necessary event to get the community's engines revved up again before moving on to bigger things.

Though I can see why people might not have liked the event, since it did have a slight tone of "do this or suffer the consequences!" But I think the majority of people enjoyed the event for what it was, gave it the attention it deserved, and then moved on.

As for this whole discord vs. website argument. I think it just comes down to being a perceived slight, and not an actual one. The problem stems from exposure to the devs and managers. On discord the devs and managers are almost always available to chat with, while on the website they only post when they have something actually worth sharing, for obvious reasons. This causes the appearance of discord being the main source of information, but it really isn't.

Asking the devs/managers to constantly post discord conversations on the forums regardless of their importance or accuracy, is like asking your bosses at work to send out an email consisting of all of their casual conversations with your fellow employees. It would be a constant annoyance to everybody, and it would be too time consuming. Not to mention unreasonable.

You say that the info listed is unofficial info but for the most part some of the conversations that happen on discord eventually do become official.. One site for all info is all we are asking for.