contra discord

[Mltqhzkzrz]

A thread just got locked in which the case was made against discord and it's influence on the dominions community, and although the case may not have been well made, I feel there IS a case to be made against the service as it is used which I will endeavor to outline.

For one, I feel that persistent ingame identities are contrary to the conceptual premise of the game. In such a contest between gods such as which is depicted in each dominions game, the ascension of a new pantokrator coincides with the total reconstruction of the world. Given such high stakes, a pretender god would be expected to take a do-or-die approach to the ascension wars, and should be interested in breaking any NAPs it takes to win. Discord by it's nature cultivates cliques of gossipers with which the in-game conduct of it's users are fettered, and thus prevented from acting in a lore-accurate manner by the need to cultivate a reputation for diplomacy in subsequent games.

Secondly, for a game which relies on it's multiplayer, it is not pleasant to have networking with other players overseen by capricious moderators. Social networks are subject to a sort of network-effect and cannot be considered to compete with eachother entirely in matters of quality, but instead by their self-reinforcing size. In this way an unpopular moderator can unpleasantly govern a community (or several communities!) with near impunity.

The largest dominions discord in particular, Nexus, is moderated according to two principles. First, the guidelines for participating are explicitly left vague and uncertain, such that it's users cannot simply abide by a clear set of rules, but instead must evade the vague personal whims of its moderation team. Secondly, any activity both in and out of game can be considered fair material to conduct a ban, such that rather than merely policing your activities in-server, to maintain access to the largest repository of new dominions games your conduct will also be policed everywhere else on the internet too. This is not a hypothetical scenario, this HAS happened to several good people (not me). I do not feel like the majority of nexus users agree with or even know about these practices, but the server enjoys the privileges of both seniority and size so it is unlikely to face repercussions. Unpleasant.

When one wades into a discord game they may not know which players know who, how they feel about eachother, and other considerations for how they will act. Sometimes players attack each other out of enmity for how they act out-of-game, or just to troll them even if such a war is foolish otherwise. Sometimes two or more players will stick together and metagame because they have a particular preexisting relationship, and as such a newer or less popular player will get picked on. Sometimes a player will get dogpiled because they have a reputation of being too good. Most dominions players have seen behaviors like this before, but it was less of an issue when llamaserver was the default, before discord bots took over the hosting game.

What I freely admit being the best use of the service is in the use of tracking aforementioned persistent reputations by which a lobby of reputable, skilled and committed users with an established etiquette for going AI and conducting diplomacy can be made. I hope the service can continue to be used for this purpose going into dom 6, but in a significantly reduced capacity such that most new players would use the new in-game lobby system, and the prevalence of using discord to host games would be greatly diminished, thereby alievating many of the gripes I have with the platform by relegating it to a more appropriate auxiliary role in the community. To this end I simply throw in my hat in favor of a well-crafted lobby system. Illwinter have a lot on their plate but I respect their work a lot. If a two person team doesn't want to allocate much development time to fleshing out that part of the game I can respect that, but a man can dream, can he not?

[Quillithe]

Aren't they already adding a lobby system?

[Mltqhzkzrz]

Originally posted by Quillithe:

Aren't they already adding a lobby system?

They are, I just hope its good and used lol.

[Mormacil]

The game (Dom1) was designed for LAN play, knowing the players was always part of the design. So that entire part of your argument is invalid.

Secondly I think neither seniority nor size allows Nexus to operate the way it does. You know what does? Their direct blessing of Illwinter. The owner is an acquaintance of Illwinter and part of their beta team.

Lastly, honestly having gods act on old out of game gripes, having them show particular hatred for another god to own detriment or help a friend is just classic Greek gods to me. Not perfect in a competitive sense but entirely lore friendly.

[Murderer]

yeah OP i agree.

discord breaks my immersion. i played a game (organized on discord lol) where there was no out of game diplo allowed. it was way better. its fun to read people's messages, because they put way more effort into the ingame messages.

discord diplo = "hey man, it's me Fluffyballs. wanna help me rush Ind? he didn't respond to my dm for a NAP request. also i heard he's a racist so let's just kill him :)"

in game diplo = "Greetings, gracious lord! We bring tidings from Astrak'oth the Magnificent, god of the exotic land of Fomoria. We come seeking your aid in the war against Ind, a land of cowards and reprobates! They have declined all attempts at diplomacy. And rumors abound of their xenophobic, genocidal tendencies... Let us wipe this scourge from the world!"

[Sombre]

There's an in game lobby system. It seems to provide a useful function from my perspective, but maybe it would be worth you describing what you think would make a lobby system good.

Putting aside regional and governmental restrictions you are free and will continue to be free to engage or not engage with any space or service you want in terms of finding people to play with you. You will find that most of these spaces are moderated, like the one you're posting on right now. This is because:

1. Most players of dominions don't want to participate in unmoderated spaces
2. Hosts of services (whether corporations or people) don't want to host unmoderated spaces because they are either responsible for or associated with whatever happens in those spaces

You will likely find that the lobby system will also have some sort of moderation, because it is Illwinter's service and they won't want to be responsible for/associated with unmoderated content.

I suspect you don't actually want unmoderated spaces though, just spaces that are moderated the way you want. That's reasonable (it is how most people feel) and if you find others who want the same sort of moderation you do, there's a good chance you can find or create a space which has just that moderation and you can organise games there.

[Sombre]

Originally posted by Murderer:

yeah OP i agree.

discord breaks my immersion. i played a game (organized on discord lol) where there was no out of game diplo allowed. it was way better. its fun to read people's messages, because they put way more effort into the ingame messages.

Well as you say, there's nothing stopping players organising games like that on discord, so I don't think the service is the problem there is it?

[Ibis]

Originally posted by Murderer:

discord breaks my immersion. i played a game (organized on discord lol) where there was no out of game diplo allowed. it was way better. its fun to read people's messages, because they put way more effort into the ingame messages.

I had both type of messages on both Discord and ingame.

And as you said, nothing prevents people to organize games with custom house rules. Those are usually very enjoyable as everyone in them know what they got into. There's all kind of different type of rules organized around all the communities, be it RP-restricted, competitive vanilla games, wonky mods, nation builder rules etc...

That being said, I can understand the will to not use third parties to play the game.
What I don't understand is the goal of the post as you can't force people to not use discord, and the ingame lobby was already confirmed several times.

[Mormacil]

Originally posted by Ibis:

Originally posted by Murderer:

discord breaks my immersion. i played a game (organized on discord lol) where there was no out of game diplo allowed. it was way better. its fun to read people's messages, because they put way more effort into the ingame messages.

I had both type of messages on both Discord and ingame.

And as you said, nothing prevents people to organize games with custom house rules. Those are usually very enjoyable as everyone in them know what they got into. There's all kind of different type of rules organized around all the communities, be it RP-restricted, competitive vanilla games, wonky mods, nation builder rules etc...

That being said, I can understand the will to not use third parties to play the game.
What I don't understand is the goal of the post as you can't force people to not use discord, and the ingame lobby was already confirmed several times.

Same, roleplay messages have never been bound to any specific platform. That's dictated by game rules and community. I love them, they're great fun but I've seen them on Steam, Discord, email and forum DMs.

[Murderer]

Originally posted by Sombre:

Originally posted by Murderer:

yeah OP i agree.

discord breaks my immersion. i played a game (organized on discord lol) where there was no out of game diplo allowed. it was way better. its fun to read people's messages, because they put way more effort into the ingame messages.

Well as you say, there's nothing stopping players organising games like that on discord, so I don't think the service is the problem there is it?

?

i think OP and i and the banned guy are saying that the majority of games use out of game diplo.

i personally dont like out of game diplo, because its immersion breaking. but i think the op and the banned guy are saying that discord users are bringing their "social dynamics" into the games. which isn't wrong.

am i not understanding something?

[Mormacil]

None of that is worse on Discord than any of the other tools used by the community. So singling out Discord is at best unproductive.

You may not enjoy out of game diplo, for me it's the main reason to play Dom in MP. It's my favorite part honestly, especially when we roleplay it. And it seems most players gravitate towards to as well. So what's the goal here? Forcing the majority to adhere to your niche views? Just venting?

[Sombre]

Originally posted by Ibis:

That being said, I can understand the will to not use third parties to play the game.
What I don't understand is the goal of the post as you can't force people to not use discord, and the ingame lobby was already confirmed several times.

On the topic of discord I quite dislike the service myself, for various reasons. It's just where most dominions user made content exists currently. I agree this post doesn't really seem to be about discord specifically, but outside-of-game spaces being used to organise games/conduct diplomacy.

[Sombre]

Originally posted by Murderer:

i personally dont like out of game diplo, because its immersion breaking. but i think the op and the banned guy are saying that discord users are bringing their "social dynamics" into the games. which isn't wrong.

am i not understanding something?

You said discord breaks your immersion, but it seems to me what breaks your immersion is actually diplomacy that doesn't roleplay. There's nothing stopping people using roleplayed communication on discord, or non-roleplayed communication in game.

Similarly 'social dynamics' are going to be an issue in any game you play with other people which isn't functionally anonymous. This isn't a unique feature of discord.

[Ulfberht]

The guy who got banned for making the thread was completely correct. The hyper nerds that make youtube videos about their Dominions multiplayer games make similar points as well.

[Murderer]

Originally posted by Mormacil:

None of that is worse on Discord than any of the other tools used by the community. So singling out Discord is at best unproductive.

You may not enjoy out of game diplo, for me it's the main reason to play Dom in MP. It's my favorite part honestly, especially when we roleplay it. And it seems most players gravitate towards to as well. So what's the goal here? Forcing the majority to adhere to your niche views? Just venting?

even if they are just venting, they shouldnt get banned. i dont understand the hostile reaction, against OP and the banned guy.

also they are totally correct in saying that some of the more popular discord members have an advantage in diplomacy. ive experienced this in games. its not insurmountable but it is there.

edit: also the skilled players are at a disadvantage because they get gangbanged

Originally posted by Sombre:

Originally posted by Ibis:

That being said, I can understand the will to not use third parties to play the game.
What I don't understand is the goal of the post as you can't force people to not use discord, and the ingame lobby was already confirmed several times.

On the topic of discord I quite dislike the service myself, for various reasons. It's just where most dominions user made content exists currently. I agree this post doesn't really seem to be about discord specifically, but outside-of-game spaces being used to organise games/conduct diplomacy.

i think they are saying that anywhere where your outside persona has an effect on diplo is a bad thing. in a game of fortnite, it doesnt matter who u are outside of the game. in a game of chess, it doesnt matter who u are outside of the game. they are saying that in dominions, ur clout on discord is having a effect on the game.

i gotta go for now, but i think OP and the banned guy have a point.

[Ibis]

Originally posted by Murderer:

i think they are saying that anywhere where your outside persona has an effect on diplo is a bad thing. in a game of fortnite, it doesnt matter who u are outside of the game. in a game of chess, it doesnt matter who u are outside of the game. they are saying that in dominions, ur clout on discord is having a effect on the game.

The chess part is wrong as some chess players have a reputation to using specific strats or playing a certain way, and their opponents sometimes adapt to it.

Also nobody denied diplo and reputation have an effect on the game.

So coming to the point, what are you asking exactly? That anyone with a discord account get denied from buying Dom 6?