Do you discord during TFs?

[Eva Destruction]

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I'm not attacking you, Saikochoro, nor anyone else that dislikes VOIP, but I've never understood the hatred that some people have for voice coms.

 

Can someone explain to me why the dislike for voice communication with your teammates in videogames?

I like to listen to music while I play.  That doesn't go well with voice chat.  I don't like to just listen in either, because I find that when people are using voice chat they tend not to read the in-game chat.

[Nyghtmaire]

Comfortable if it’s with people I know in meatspace, but otherwise no thanks. Like @Eva Destructionusually listening to music. Also, I find it breaks the fantasy of the game — getting the settings and the characters. 

[Ironblade]

16 hours ago, Lunchmoney said:

(I was told everyone uses discord to chat, which is self evidently not true), and that due to playing with the sound off (sleeping baby in the house), and not having a mic, there was no way I was able to use discord voice chat.

I then got lambasted for not joining in the team tactics (cos I had no idea what everyone was doing until they were doing it), and also told that no one types as it's too slow (again self evidently not true as I type really quickly during missions 🙂 )

You are correct in that they were telling you a load of bull.  Not everyone uses Discord.  On most pick-up groups, no one will be on Discord.

It sounds like you ended up on a team with a group who usually play together, or are in the same supergroup.

 

Personally, I'll be on Discord when I play with my brother and his family since I live 1100 miles away from them.

When some groups run Incarnate trials, they like everyone to be on Discord to hear instructions (mic not required).

When I'm playing CoH, I am NOT on Discord probably 95% of the time.

 

Get yourself a headset so you can join people on Discord and *TYPE* to them that you have a sleeping baby so you can't talk.  With Discord and Zoom becoming more popular, you'll want a headset at some point.  Note the distinction between 'headphones' and 'headset'.  A headset has a mic.  Headphones do not.

[Apparition]

I've found that my younger friends (under 35), want absolutely nothing to do with forums whatsoever.  To them, it's like trying to use a rotary telephone.  Discord though?  They love Discord.  They much prefer it to both forums and TeamSpeak.  So, I use Discord, but mostly for text, not voice chat.

 

I avoid the Incarnate Trials where leaders ask everyone to use Discord voice chat, so I've pretty much written off most of the iTrial badges.

[Heraclea]

Very seldom; only for master runs in large scale raids.  I don't have a mic, so all I do is listen.  The interface makes me want to pull my hair out. 

[TraumaTrain]

My Friday night group uses Discord. It's fun to hear the voices of my long time friends, and it certainly makes strategizing much easier.

 

[Sir Myshkin]

Nope, nopity nope nope.

 

I understand that the phase of voice communication in games has grown, and a lot of it started on consoles and has leaked aggressively into the PC side of things in the last few years because consoles lacked a reasonable means of chat otherwise.

 

But I tend to play at hours when the rest of the household is asleep, and when they aren't it's chaos, and in either case I have no interest in audible conversation that isn't sufficed with text-chat. I also prefer to have music playing over anything else, and I have all of CoH's sound completely disabled to boot.

 

It's nothing personal towards anyone, but I don't want to talk, and I don't want to hear other people talk, and I don't want to hear the stuff in the background, or the noises, or any of it that comes as sound-baggage because of a cheap headset or a loud roommate or that bag of Cheetos they insist on munching down and ...  I just can't deal with it.

 

Thankfully I haven't dealt with anyone really who's even mentioned Discord, and most of the folks who tend to run iTrials and larger events (MSR/Hami) on Everlasting still actively use the game chat for communication.

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

I rather tend to prefer text on CoH as an RPer, Also i tend to feel CoH is much too slow passed of a game to want to use voice. What do I mean by this? Well over on Warframe voice chat is built right into the game. And that game is very fast paced combat. The time it takes to type Y or N for yes or No is enough time to be overwhelmed and wiped there if playing high end content on anything but an OP build. Hell the speed people move there could make the time it takes to type have you left so far behind you never see them again till the mish is over.

 

Here even things like MSR do not have any aspect that is so time sensitive. Its more likely people chatting at me in voice would actually serve as a distraction in coh as in combat I am only tabbing and cycling and do not want anyone in my ear telling me what I should be doing.

 

As for tactics? This game in general is best without specific tactical plans. Its when people get all micromanaging of others play time that I get so bored Id rather log off.

 

On top of that, I tend to play while listening to audiobooks or old time radio drama's on youtube. Im the kind of mind that needs numerous sources of entertainment at the same time to really be entertained. So I am usually watching or listening to something, as well as having news articles open on my tablet to read, all while also actively playing the game.  There is literally not one word anyone could ever speak to me over voice that would be of more import than my personal amusement while gaming.

[SuperPlyx]

I have bad hearing problems but after seeing it talked about ingame so much I decided to try it. It's hard to explain,but it was like my hearing could not adjust fast enough to the different volume levels. Add in that I had a surgery recently that left half my vocal cords paralyzed I decided Discord was not for me.

But really I have never felt like I needed it, get on some teams occasionally that seems like they are using it. I can usually figure out whats going on and what to do. 

[Mister Mass]

One of my coalition-mates set up a Discord when we rediscovered CoH last year.  We used it a lot at first, but soon dropped out of the habit of voice chat.  As many people have noted above, there is little in CoH that requires more than line or 2 of explanation, & we are all well-versed in typing in chat in game.  The occasional hilarious typo only enhances the fun! 😉

 

So now we mainly use Discord to leave written messages for one another, the most common being what characters need which Weekly Strike Targets each week.  The other use is when one of us crashes out of game due to a power outage or somesuch.  Having a way to communicate when we can't get in game is helpful. 👍

[Scientist]

I use Discord with RL friends, one has a channel setup, but I've never seen anyone else using it in CoH.  That said, I've joined maybe 2 iTrials since Homecoming, as I'm not usually on evenings when they run.  I could imagine it being very helpful for badge runs, where you really want to coordinate everyone.  Other than badge runs, I don't know of any content in CoH, that can't be handled without voice if people are marginally patient.  

[Haijinx]

Never bothered.  

 

Ive used skype for some non gaming stuff. 

 

But my kid and I used text even when playing Secret World with both of us in the same house.  

 

And that game is a lot harder than this one.

 

[Ukase]

I talk a fair bit with my work, doing interviews over the phone, communicating with work teammates across the country - throughout the work day. The last thing I want to do when I play is use discord and talk more. 

But - I have headphones and can listen in. I tend to only talk when I'm actually leading a trial. And I posted just the other day how Discord helped us immeasurably get master of underground when Excelsior crashed on Sunday night. (right after the bombs)

The only reason to use discord for a task force..is if you want to. Task forces are mindless and simple. There are no difficult game mechanics that require talking. At least, I can't think of one, and I've done them all. They're all easy to do. That said - a lot of folks like discord and prefer to talk over typing. I get it. 

[Hedgefund]

I Discord with a specific group.  I've also joined for groups running higher difficulty content like RHW and the Keyes badges.  I will NEVER join some pug's Discord for freakin' Manticore (or insert any tf/sf/trial). 

 

So my 2 inf for whoever does demand this - say so up front so I can quit before we get started.

[Johnny]

My perspective:

• Quite a bit of gameplay "experience" with CoH, Eve Online, lotro, ffxiv; with a smattering of other stuff that were "okay" but didn't really keep me engaged.
• Used various chat clients, going all the way back to ICQ text chat, alternating with Yahoo Chat, back then.
• Pretty happy with Discord, having done fairly detailed server configuration, though I'd say a current negative is that you can't customize your Discord avatar on a per-server basis, and there's a two-year-old feature request thread that is apparently languishing on this topic.

 

For MMOs, text chat versus voice chat is kinda like the following:

• Text chat: Tends to favour communication that is in-keeping with the toons and situation (i.e., easier to have banter that is related to the context of what the players are doing with their characters).
• Voice chat: Discussion becomes business-only, with an emphasis upon what people need to be doing, and keeping the channel clear of banter.

 

That said, I'd say I prefer text-only for both pve and pvp. You might groan at that, or not think it possible. But the thing is, a game is more immersive when people are going in with a rough plan, where only light guidance (via text chat) is needed. Voice chat simply doesn't accommodate an engaging experience.

 

And when I say that, keep in mind that I led the Taxibots into the pvp zones, fully-scheduled activities so people knew we'd be there, and it was a lot of fun. We were mainly there to do badge-related stuff, and the minigame aspects of those pvp zones. We also got involved with arena duels, which was a real eye-opener about how one needed to optimize their build for pvp.

[Mitchell]

On 9/8/2020 at 5:02 AM, SuperPlyx said:

I have bad hearing problems but after seeing it talked about ingame so much I decided to try it. It's hard to explain,but it was like my hearing could not adjust fast enough to the different volume levels. Add in that I had a surgery recently that left half my vocal cords paralyzed I decided Discord was not for me.

But really I have never felt like I needed it, get on some teams occasionally that seems like they are using it. I can usually figure out whats going on and what to do. 

You can click on each person and adjust there volume individually so they are all at the same level, and more importantly for me so you can MUTE 6 out of 8 team mates so only the ones who give important info can be heard.  That being said, if I didn't have an issue which makes typing difficult AND a second anonymized computer running Discord to avoid Privacy issues, I would probably not use it at all.

 

If anyone WANTS to use it, but avoid certain issues a friend of mine runs it on a cheap android tablet to avoid lagging the game and privacy issues. They run around $25-$75 depending on sales.

 

[Ukase]

On 9/7/2020 at 11:04 PM, Apparition said:

I've found that my younger friends (under 35), want absolutely nothing to do with forums whatsoever.  To them, it's like trying to use a rotary telephone.  Discord though?  They love Discord.  They much prefer it to both forums and TeamSpeak.  So, I use Discord, but mostly for text, not voice chat.

 

I avoid the Incarnate Trials where leaders ask everyone to use Discord voice chat, so I've pretty much written off most of the iTrial badges.

I can understand this ...to a point. 

I was leading a Master of Underground on a couple of Sundays ago, and Excelsior crashed. We knew it might happen because my instructions given in chat weren't being displayed. But -- without Discord, most of the league would have had no idea about the impending crash, as they weren't typing, I was. So, instead of using League, I used Local - which worked for some reason. We were mostly on discord. A few were not for whatever reason. When the server did crash, Discord allowed me to tell everyone to rejoin the event in progress. Without Discord, I would have tried to rejoin it - and done so - but I don't think many of our members would have considered it. Maybe half? I don't know. But odds of success would have been reduced a good bit, I'm sure. Those few not on Discord - they didn't know to rejoin the event. I couldn't remember every name who was on the league, so I couldn't send them a tell. 

While it's certainly your right to avoid leagues where discord is encouraged, I think you're missing out. You don't have to speak, just listen to what's expected. 

While I know you well enough to know that you likely have a solid grasp of what's expected, hearing a leader explain things often leads to a better understanding for most. 

I would submit that every badge in game can be earned without discord, but I would further submit that using discord has made many badges much easier. 
I also would submit that often, the discord is full of chatty personalities that crack lame jokes, use profanity for no reason other than it's habitual for them. Some of them even pipe in a playlist of music for reasons that escape me. (I turn that music down all the way. If I opt to listen to music, I can do that on my own.)

 

I would also submit that like any other segment of the population, you'll find some experiences on Discord to have value, too. 

 

 

Myself, I don't particularly enjoy using Discord to lead a trial. But, as a tool, it's darn handy. I don't know why reading is so challenging for so many players. I don't know how it is that some folks reach level 50, and don't even know there is a tiny L button to switch to league chat...and I'm sure I don't know why they don't respond to tells, or team chat either. But, I can't imagine everyone has experienced the same things I have, so I now use Discord to minimize the lack of understanding many people have about trial objectives. 

If I could just figure out pop-menus...but I'm sure I've got not enough or too many brackets..or some other syntax error. Until I do, Discord is the way to go. I don't have enough room to make macros for each step of a master of underground. 

 

[Ukase]

On 9/7/2020 at 4:29 PM, Saikochoro said:

I have never used discord and never will. I have only ever been on one team where discord was even mentioned as an option.  The leader said something along the the lines of:
 

“We are on discord if you want to join, but don’t have to.”  

Even then the leader and others typed in chat the entire time. I’ve never been on a task force or trial where pertinent information was not shared via typing. 
 

Personally, I would quit a team that “requires” discord and put the leader on global ignore. Not everyone can do voice chat.  I’m all for people being allowed to do what they want on their own teams, but I also reserve the right to not want to deal with such teams. 

I realize you're just saving yourself future grief, but ...to me, the ignore feature is for ill-mannered people, not people who just play differently. 

I enjoy speed runs. But not always. If someone ignored me just because I recruited for a speed run, they might miss out on a clear all Eden Trial. (as time permits, lol). 

I think you're missing out on some good experiences - but hey, you gotta do you. 

[Lunchmoney]

1 hour ago, Ukase said:

I think you're missing out. You don't have to speak, just listen to what's expected. 

I play without speakers on, so this is still a no from me. 

[EmmySky]

2 minutes ago, Lunchmoney said:

I play without speakers on, so this is still a no from me. 

I also play without sound.  I am usually watching movies or tv shows.

[Coyotedancer]

On 9/7/2020 at 5:06 PM, Eva Destruction said:

I like to listen to music while I play.  That doesn't go well with voice chat.  I don't like to just listen in either, because I find that when people are using voice chat they tend not to read the in-game chat.

 

That's pretty much where I am, too... I always have music running in the background.

 

Plus my mic is both ancient and a total potato. <_<

 

And DIscord is, as  VT mentioned, on the "questionable" side. I'm not a fan. 

 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[CFIndustries]

Discord is a company I refuse to support for similar reasons why I don't use Twitter, Facebook, or any other "social media." Corporate over-reach, nefarious activities allowed, etc. Using it supports it in my mind, so I don't use it. I don't even trust them to handle security and privacy appropriately…so heck no.

 

But I'd also avoid ANY voice because it breaks immersion. It is absolutely weird when the voice does not match the character (especially the gender benders out there). Like reading a good story you read where you make up voices and looks in your head, I do the same thing in-game. Granted, the chat doesn't always match either, but I can imagine most of the time, or mentally cordon tat off for sake of immersion.

 

I used some voice (Ventrillo?) back on Live a couple times and it was too bizarre.

 

On the upside, no one has ever asked/forced me to Discord on a team.

 

Downside is HC Support really encourages its use, so it makes getting issues resolved a little awkward sometimes.

[EmmySky]

5 minutes ago, CFIndustries said:

Discord is a company I refuse to support for similar reasons why I don't use Twitter, Facebook, or any other "social media." Corporate over-reach, nefarious activities allowed, etc. Using it supports it in my mind, so I don't use it. I don't even trust them to handle security and privacy appropriately…so heck no.

 

But I'd also avoid ANY voice because it breaks immersion. It is absolutely weird when the voice does not match the character (especially the gender benders out there). Like reading a good story you read where you make up voices and looks in your head, I do the same thing in-game. Granted, the chat doesn't always match either, but I can imagine most of the time, or mentally cordon tat off for sake of immersion.

 

I used some voice (Ventrillo?) back on Live a couple times and it was too bizarre.

 

On the upside, no one has ever asked/forced me to Discord on a team.

 

Downside is HC Support really encourages its use, so it makes getting issues resolved a little awkward sometimes.

If you ever imagine a voice to go with any of my girls, imagine deep texas drawl, barely understandable to normal folk, full of local coloquialisms and old family sayings.  That'll just about hit the nail on the head.  And it explains yet another reason I don't discord, y'all wouldn't understand me.

[CFIndustries]

12 minutes ago, EmmySky said:

If you ever imagine a voice to go with any of my girls, imagine deep texas drawl, barely understandable to normal folk, full of local coloquialisms and old family sayings.  That'll just about hit the nail on the head.  And it explains yet another reason I don't discord, y'all wouldn't understand me.

Exactly my point. 🙂

 

I do get it if people want to do FPS-style super-tactics, or just casual chat time play with IRL friends or something (though I still wouldn't use Discord). Just not my thing.

 

And yeah accents never work well over VOIP unless you are already familiarized with them. This is true of even corporate-level chat systems like Teams, Skype, WebEx, etc.

[Hexquisite]

On 9/7/2020 at 4:31 PM, PeregrineFalcon said:

I'm not attacking you, Saikochoro, nor anyone else that dislikes VOIP, but I've never understood the hatred that some people have for voice coms.

 

Can someone explain to me why the dislike for voice communication with your teammates in videogames?

Text is fine, but I don't like talking to people, or people talking to me. I find it annoying, and distracting, and since I tend to RP during missions, harder to stay in-character when I have people yammering about whatever else. 

 

I've had no trouble at all coordinating with groups through in-game chat. All people need to do is be willing to slow down a bit if there's a plan, rather than rushing ahead.