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Comment by anymouse123456 | Hacker News Reader

This.

"Join my Discord" is a 100% hard pass for me.

Every time I've made an exception, the entire experience is a net-negative.

Half the time, I can't even get authenticated and then once I'm in, everything is awful. The notifications, the constant chatter, the dozens of topics, the useless search, it shocks me that anyone over the age of 14 uses it at all.

Add to all the broken basics, the fact that your data is now locked away in a vault that will absolutely disappear at some point in the not-too-distant future, and it just makes no sense at all.

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> it shocks me that anyone over the age of 14 uses it at all

Our group of 40+ old farts uses Discord exclusively, because we can do it all under the same roof.

Want to chat about stuff, we've got a few channels just to keep them contained (one for each RPG campaign we're playing and separate ones for the few PC games we have time for).

Need to chat during an online game? Discord has video and voice chat as well as screen sharing.

Want to keep a log of a RPG campaign? You can do a "forum" post about it after every session, it's all there in a nice format under the same platform.

When we play online games, like Helldivers 2, everyone can use Discord for voice even when I play with PS5 and the others are PC players. Discord works cross-platform.

Exactly the same experience here in the same demographic. In this friend group, we all have kids and wives and pets and jobs and everything else, but we want to still try to do stuff together. Video games, DnD (though we play PF2E and OSR stuff), we do some book club stuff, we talk about sports and our hobbies, we talk about our kids, our personal and professional lives... We can do text, voice, and video. It's been a great experience for us. We do meet in-person every couple of months for a DnD session but that's typically as often as we can manage with 5 busy schedules to juggle.

I don't get this:

> The notifications,

You can turn them off

> the constant chatter, the dozens of topics

Topics are there to limit the messages to just what you're interested in, cutting down the chatter.

If you expect it to be anything different than discord, you'll be disappointed, but there are communities where discord/slack/mattermost model works fine.

I do find it very strange. It assumes I've been "invited" when I just clicked on a link to join from a website. I can't tell why I am or aren't logged in when I join. It's full of animations.

Maybe it's the Gen Z take on IRC, but it seems a bit much. The client is very smooth in performance, though, which is nice.

"Add to all the broken basics, the fact that your data is now locked away in a vault that will absolutely disappear at some point in the not-too-distant future, and it just makes no sense at all."

Who cares? Why do you want to record every single thing forever? Do you write down every single thing when you converse with someone in real life?

And you really can't figure out how to use Discord, when a 14-year old apparently can? Maybe it's time to retire.

yeah any complaints about UX should be seen as boomerism and fought against with your full might with no reflection on the critique. When the water wars come and you have to learn to use a slide rule -- remember this day.

>it shocks me that anyone over the age of 14 uses it at all.

Really? I'm in my mid 30s and am in a couple servers with a bunch of 30-50 year olds. I don't know of any better platform to organize and play DnD with voice chat and screen sharing. It's also great for when I play larger online games with a group (e.g. World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy) as we have a guild server to organize absences, socialize while not raiding, etc.

If you have a suggestion for a better way to voice chat, screen share, drop in and out of conversations, etc. I'm all ears.

For what its worth, all of your complaints (except for search, which really does suck) are easily addressed.

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