New forum

Fair enough Georg, we all prefer different things. But to me, Discord just seems like a gimmicky fad - it doesn't seem to do the things a forum does, or as well as a forum does them, but since it's the newer 'in-fashion-thing', people feel the need to jump to it, even if the older forum system works perfectly well. Change for change's sake.

It is far less convenient to go to Discord and search for a particular conversation, picking through all the comments in the crowd for mention of one particular item of interest.

As an example, on the Crew Chief Discord, I recently went to search for old information about the VR mod for Automobilista. The result was a few sentences all mixed up in the rest of the very long list of comments. How can this begin to compare with a single thread on the Reiza forum, that still contains all the relevant info 6 months or a year later?

Sadly, it seems the arrival of Discord (for all games, not just R3E), has served only to divide games' communities & make sharing resources & knowledge more difficult.

 

Not really. All the big studios use forums instead of discord, as the latter stops being practical with too much active crowd and too many things to discuss. Discord is admittedly better for small, niche communities that can utilize more direct and immediate interaction. Each serves their purpose. Just like the fact we have SMS doesn't mean e-mails are dying. You choose one over the other depending on the situation.

I think it's a mistake to consider forums "a dying medium" and thus marginalizing them to an extent.

Focusing your communication through a third party app also puts you in a dependant position towards the provider. If Discord bans you for some reason, or goes under, you'll lose much of the community momentum you worked so hard to build up there. So I think forums should remain a backbone for that, and discord should be only supplementary, not the other way around.

 

I think there´s something amiss somewwhere if there are 17k members and on average less than 500 playing the game at any one time, but I guess that´s the same for Facebook, Twitter - a lot talking the talk but not walking the walk.

 

Hehe, on Facebook there are millions on there talking the talk, and none of them walking the walk or doing anything else.

 

But the decision which medium is used by developers is. And it's no wonder people migrate to place where developers respond more. There are so many instances where people are being directed to your discord just because you guys supposedly respond there more. So don't try to make it out like you don't have any influence over this and it's only the crowd speaking. Interaction always goes two ways, and you said it yourself that you consider forums a dying medium. Maybe that's why the forums have less activity, if that's the case.

And to be fair, I think you guys are responding quite well here, but the general impression seems to be that discord is better in that regard.

What numbers are you speaking of, exactly? You proudly mentioned the number of Discord channel members, so let's go with that. It's 17k members on Discord vs 28k members on the forum. And you have to actually join the discord channel to lurk around, while you can read the forums without registering, so the number is additionally skewed in favour of the former. Seems to me then that the numbers actually speak in favour of the forums.

Rennsport doesn't have a forum, but has a discord channel.

F1 games don't have a discord channel, but have a forum. (Insert "iRacing" if you find F1 a bad comparison.)

One is a just announced, barely developed racing sim. The other is the biggest racing franchise on the planet. They're on two opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to community size, and that's why one doesn't find utility in forum (yet!) while the other doesn't find utility in discord. Everything else in between will probably find the utility in both forms of communication, and that's why they use both and neither is dying.

 

I wanted to join discord just to get setups because the forum posts regarding setups are several years old and are null and void.
The first thing discord wanted was my telephone number.
A red flag straight away.
Why users have flocked to yet another platform who collect privacy is beyond me.

 

You have something good and trustworthy here.
Your company has our details: credit card paypal blah blah.
Can I ask if sector3/kw studios have ever shared our details or is it possible that discord could harvest our details from our Raceroom profiles/accounts. Even basic stuff leaves a bad taste.

It might sound paranoid, but some of us prefer to protect our family members who have purchased vrp as presents ...so their details would not be harvestable?
Please don't ask us to trade our privacy to a 3rd party.

 

There is no personal data sharing between your Discord and Steam accounts, even if you "connect" them. That's the point of the standard Steam uses for authentication. But regardless of that, as a general rule of thumb, the less places you store sensitive information about yourself, the better. I rarely purchase anything directly with my credit card on the internet. I like to use PayPal, because it creates an additional security layer and prevents sharing your actual payment credentials with the seller. Unfortunately, PayPal is not an option in every case, but on the other hand, Revolut has these disposable credit cards which change properties after every purchase as well, so we have various tools in our hands to protect ourselves.

 

With all due respect and, I do appreciate and take onboard your very good advice.

I was rather hoping for an official representative from sector3/kw studios to answer in all honesty.
Cheers.

 

I don't know what exactly you mean by that, but I have a feeling our perspectives are different.

This is how I see all that.

Forums are losing popularity because people who prefer live, immediate conversations are moving to Discord because Discord better fits that purpose. However, calling forums "a dying medium" is too early, Reddit looks pretty alive for example, and since there's nothing that does forums' main job better than forums (at least for now) there will always be some demand for them. Which means moving your focus to Discord hurts the quality of communication with 1) those who value information over chatting, and 2) all of those who, let's say, come in contact with R3E from outside of R3E Discord. The latter also slightly affects how effectively the word spreads out about R3E.

 

I hate green

 

And for what reason, if I may ask? If I have any kind of problem with the game and give the good old Google search a try, posted solutions on Discord obviously are not shown. Yeah, that's really great. Let's bury all that behind some unorganized UI.

 

I agree with many people here, Discord is not the way to go. A forum like this is still by far the best option.

 

Raceroom general section on discord this morning :

Interesting...

 

Just saying, but the same thing can happen if you use a XenForo forum, and this forum here literally is based on XenForo.

https://www.theadminzone.com/threads/xenforo-revokes-kiwifarms-license.154182/

 

+1, that is exactly what I see when I visit.
Also, it has to be said, of the 17,000 members, how many are like me, who felt that I HAD to join because it is where the devs seem to be, and I have a fear of missing out on any important news, and NOT because I preferred it over the forum.

Anyway, enough said from me, I will continue doing what I am doing, i.e. frequently visiting this forum, but onlychecking on DIscord when and if I really have to.