Discord is great, love it but I don't rely on it.

When I'm not stepping on Lego in my bare feet, stubbing my little toe on the bedpost, slamming my fingers in my car door, or losing all of my money gambling in Las Vegas, I use Discord. However, I generally enjoy the aforementioned more than Discord.

3 hours ago, tttocs said:

I've learned it, and use it... because I have to.  I still find it generally chaotic, disorganized and often more difficult to find previously solved issues than in most support fora.  As for the "near real time" stuff, I see no reason why a good support forum can't be similarly responsive.  Yes, I realize you can have pretty much real-time convo's in Discord, but on the few occasions when I've posted that simply doesn't happen.  The response times I've seen tend to be, well, whenever the developer has time, just as they are in most support fora.

This speaks for me too.

I've gone from point blank refusing to use it, to now having 8 different servers on my Discord account.   But I still detest it and will never understand why people claim that Discord brings instantaneous advantages.   A dev could be logged into just about any forum, Facebook, other social media and provide the same "near real time" support that they do on Discord.   It is horribly chaotic, disregards accessibility and even logging on to it is a right pain.  I can log on to AVSIM here with one click.  Discord insists on sending a 1-off verification code to my email, blah, blah, blah  "we don't recognise the machine your using" - despite me using the same PC, logging into the same account, every time.

Discord is one of life's mysteries to me.  I acknowledge it is wildly successful and prevalent but I just can not see what it offers that sets it apart from a good forum (or even a Faceook page - and I don't like Facebook either!).  

I put it down to Discord's superficial ethos, visuals and modern aesthetics appealing to young people, who have in turn subscribed widely and made it successful.... dragging us "not young" people with them 😄 

It is ultimately a First World problem though. 

Edited October 13, 2025Oct 13 by JYW

19 hours ago, psolk said:

the structure can be very difficult to follow and pick up where you left off

In case you aren't aware you can use the Search feature (upper right) once in the channel you're visiting, then click in the search field and enter (or select if already had done this step) your username, and up will pop all your prior entries, then click which one you're interested in and voila your in the thread.

I'll give my two cents as a developer,

I love Discord for support. Yes, superficially, it does seem like you could have the same "responsiveness" if a developer was sitting on a forum, but in practice that doesn't at all pan out, and it isn't anyone's fault really, it's just the format.

You can't really have a live conversation on a forum board. A forum board is more like trading letters or emails, and users understandably get annoyed if a support thread degenerates into very small rapid-fire questions back and forth that start to take up pages. On the other hand, if I need real-time details from a user and they just posted a message, I know they're live, likely to be experiencing the problem now, and I can have a direct conversation with them bested only by face-to-face communication and try and either a) understand the root cause of the issue, see the reproduction steps as the user is doing them, and be much closer to understanding how to fix a bug quickly or b) help the user with an error in how they're using the software. I can even step into a room and have them stream the problem right now. Attaching images? Just drag and drop or copy and paste, no forum wonkiness or needing to upload to some other image site and then figuring out how to embed it. Need video? User just screencaps a video clip super quick and drops it into the app.

The downsides are yes, searching for solutions can often be less straightforward, and you are at the end of the chat firehose, so to speak. Nonetheless, I can't even begin to count how many bugs I've been able to locate down to the line just by having an actual conversation and/or seeing the actual software in action with the user as the problem is happening. It feels like the stuff of magic, and I say that as someone who grew up on usenet and Prodigy boards.

23 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

I'll give my two cents as a developer,

I love Discord for support. Yes, superficially, it does seem like you could have the same "responsiveness" if a developer was sitting on a forum, but in practice that doesn't at all pan out, and it isn't anyone's fault really, it's just the format.

You can't really have a live conversation on a forum board. A forum board is more like trading letters or emails, and users understandably get annoyed if a support thread degenerates into very small rapid-fire questions back and forth that start to take up pages. On the other hand, if I need real-time details from a user and they just posted a message, I know they're live, likely to be experiencing the problem now, and I can have a direct conversation with them bested only by face-to-face communication and try and either a) understand the root cause of the issue, see the reproduction steps as the user is doing them, and be much closer to understanding how to fix a bug quickly or b) help the user with an error in how they're using the software. I can even step into a room and have them stream the problem right now. Attaching images? Just drag and drop or copy and paste, no forum wonkiness or needing to upload to some other image site and then figuring out how to embed it. Need video? User just screencaps a video clip super quick and drops it into the app.

The downsides are yes, searching for solutions can often be less straightforward, and you are at the end of the chat firehose, so to speak. Nonetheless, I can't even begin to count how many bugs I've been able to locate down to the line just by having an actual conversation and/or seeing the actual software in action with the user as the problem is happening. It feels like the stuff of magic, and I say that as someone who grew up on usenet and Prodigy boards.

Searching for an answer is in the near feature something that isn't needed anymore 😉

Edited October 13, 2025Oct 13 by virtualstuff

Discord is poorly designed, but, for now, it is considered the 'cool' place for developers to actually post updates and respond to people. Any such forum is only as good as the information put into it. If developers decided that some other new site was the place to be and stopped updating Discord, people would quickly be wondering why anyone was there in the first place.

Perhaps it is Discord's clunky and not easy to navigate design that helps it as it keeps many away, except for those that really need information and are willing to make the effort to find it. Even so, it tends to get annoying as well with endless threads of people posting what they had for lunch with some tid bit of useful information buried in the middle of it.

Of course, more and more you have AI programs that will scrub through the sites for you to find an answer for your question. The problem with that is it tends find wrong answers along with correct answers and doesn't actually 'know' anything itself. 

1 hour ago, MattNischan said:

I'll give my two cents as a developer,

I love Discord for support. Yes, superficially, it does seem like you could have the same "responsiveness" if a developer was sitting on a forum, but in practice that doesn't at all pan out, and it isn't anyone's fault really, it's just the format.

You can't really have a live conversation on a forum board. A forum board is more like trading letters or emails, and users understandably get annoyed if a support thread degenerates into very small rapid-fire questions back and forth that start to take up pages. On the other hand, if I need real-time details from a user and they just posted a message, I know they're live, likely to be experiencing the problem now, and I can have a direct conversation with them bested only by face-to-face communication and try and either a) understand the root cause of the issue, see the reproduction steps as the user is doing them, and be much closer to understanding how to fix a bug quickly or b) help the user with an error in how they're using the software. I can even step into a room and have them stream the problem right now. Attaching images? Just drag and drop or copy and paste, no forum wonkiness or needing to upload to some other image site and then figuring out how to embed it. Need video? User just screencaps a video clip super quick and drops it into the app.

The downsides are yes, searching for solutions can often be less straightforward, and you are at the end of the chat firehose, so to speak. Nonetheless, I can't even begin to count how many bugs I've been able to locate down to the line just by having an actual conversation and/or seeing the actual software in action with the user as the problem is happening. It feels like the stuff of magic, and I say that as someone who grew up on usenet and Prodigy boards.

Thank you for taking the time and providing your perspective Matt, even more factors I hadn't considered.

Thanks for your contribution here and to the community at large! 

16 hours ago, Lucky38i said:

Then you don't understand how to search in discord, it's extremely powerful with a multitude of keywords and this doesn't even go into the granularity you can do per channel or on the forums/threads. If a developer is trying to do live support on a general chat, then that's just the blatantly wrong way to do support and that's not on Discord, that's on the developer. Discord support forums and threads where you can get a proper 1:1 live support with a developer.

That's great if you know exactly what to look for and can thus use all those granular tools. If you have an issue that you don't know has been discussed before, pretty much all of that granularity goes down the drain. Not to mention that a good forum has search tools that allow the exact same thing. 

And what is the point of Discord 'adding' a forum style mode, reinventing the wheel... Monitoring a forum can literally be as "live" as you want. Get notified about new threads, and reply. It is not rocket science. Like I said, only a matter of willingness.

It is like you guys are singing the praises of an invasive piece of software that reinvents the wheel and 'fixes' something that was not broken in the first place. But to each their own.

2 hours ago, CRJay said:

That's great if you know exactly what to look for and can thus use all those granular tools.

Can’t the same argument be made for forums? The search function here is extremely granular if you want it to be.

 

2 hours ago, CRJay said:

If you have an issue that you don't know has been discussed before, pretty much all of that granularity goes down the drain.

Then wouldn’t you search to see if it has been discussed before? Just like a forum? 

 

2 hours ago, CRJay said:

Monitoring a forum can literally be as "live" as you want. Get notified about new threads, and reply

Like I pointed out already this is akin to suggesting an email can be as live as a phone call. Forums aren’t treated that way as everyone, developer and customer, safely assume they’re online on discord because that’s what it is, a live service. Matt put it quite succinctly and his examples I can’t imagine translating as well to a forum. 

 

 

2 hours ago, CRJay said:

It is like you guys are singing the praises of an invasive piece of software that reinvents the wheel and 'fixes' something that was not broken in the first place

Discord is a live chat service that optionally supports a variety of features but primarily a chat service, it doesn’t “fix” forums. It’s just another piece of software where like-minded individuals can communicate in a more live manner. I’m here and I also actively use discord and don’t find one intruding on the other and can clearly see both of them can coexisting.

I am curious as to how exactly a discord to a major game/simulator/etc like MSFS would play out. While I've used discord for many years, I've only seen it used in the context of smaller communities, streamers, and 3rd party devs. How chaotic would that server be? Do Devs find that discord comes with more of a demand for proactiveness on the side of the support staff versus a forum? Is Asobo generally pretty good at being responsive to those levels?

16 minutes ago, Kevin_28 said:

I am curious as to how exactly a discord to a major game/simulator/etc like MSFS would play out. While I've used discord for many years, I've only seen it used in the context of smaller communities, streamers, and 3rd party devs. How chaotic would that server be? Do Devs find that discord comes with more of a demand for proactiveness on the side of the support staff versus a forum? Is Asobo generally pretty good at being responsive to those levels?

Pretty sure it's the same as the official forums, no direct communication with Asobo employees on it.

9 minutes ago, MarcG said:

Pretty sure it's the same as the official forums, no direct communication with Asobo employees on it.

Yea that's what I kinda figured.

Personally, I view Discord for user support as shoving a circle into a square hole. And I say that as someone who's used Discord for 7 years for what it was designed for: community engagement and socializing. Let's face it: developers use it because it's free. Forums and websites require a web server, which results in monthly costs and maintenance. Something like GitHub seems better laid out for software support, but GitHub is meant for open-source software and I'm also not sure if the free tier would do everything commercial devs need.

I guess Discord lets devs "engage" with their users, at the expense of other users needing to piece together a bunch of disjointed messages to actually track down the answer to someone's question. I wonder how devs maintain their sanity getting asked the same thing over and over in real time and not being able to easily refer someone to an existing answer. I guess some devs just rely on other users to answer and only use their Discord to post product updates.

Reminds me of people who want to use Slack for everything. No, it wasn't designed for video conferencing, that is what Zoom and Teams are for. Discord is great for content creators and great for game and sim communities too, when the end goal is getting a bunch of people together to talk about a common interest, organize and participate in community events, etc. But as for FAQ's and user support and downloads and other "static" information, there are much better ways to organize it IMO.