Announcing the Raizing Cave Club Discord :-)

[Mark_MSX]

All details can be found here:

http://electricunderground.io/announcin ... b-discord/

[it290]

Hi Mark—I'm really appreciative of everything you've contributed to the community, but I have to ask, is further fragmentation really a good idea? I feel like this board has slowed down significantly since its heyday and I'm rather skeptical of cloud platforms that partition content into its own, unfindable walled garden. Obviously having a place to hang is great, but when I look at how much platforms like Medium have done to control the distribution of content it does make me cringe a bit and I can envision Discord going down a similar path. Wouldn't discussion about strategies and gameplay serve a larger audience for longer in an independent venue like shmupsforum? Please don't take this as being hostile to your effort; I really do think the aim is very noble but I have to ask if it's the best way to serve the community. I, for one, love to seek out info and discussion about these games and I would never bother combing through a really ephemeral medium like Discord.

[Shepardus]

RIP Psikyo fans

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

At least it isn't Touhou

[MathU]

Nice, another datamining spyware channel.

[zakk]

Those discussions have long since moved off of forums like this.

Hi Mark—I'm really appreciative of everything you've contributed to the community, but I have to ask, is further fragmentation really a good idea? I feel like this board has slowed down significantly since its heyday and I'm rather skeptical of cloud platforms that partition content into its own, unfindable walled garden. Obviously having a place to hang is great, but when I look at how much platforms like Medium have done to control the distribution of content it does make me cringe a bit and I can envision Discord going down a similar path. Wouldn't discussion about strategies and gameplay serve a larger audience for longer in an independent venue like shmupsforum? Please don't take this as being hostile to your effort; I really do think the aim is very noble but I have to ask if it's the best way to serve the community. I, for one, love to seek out info and discussion about these games and I would never bother combing through a really ephemeral medium like Discord.

[qmish]

RIP Psikyo fans

ha-ha, yeah, first thing that came to mind.

p.s.
i explained many times why discord method is prety much degenerative... it's basically a couple of longass chats... it's fuckin atrocious from the point of information organization, archivation, utilisation, access, hierarchy etc. unlike structured forms like forum or blog.

Those discussions have long since moved off of forums like this.

yeah, though to where? to freaking personal messages or, even worse, 2chans where everything dies off instantly? discord is almost same, even if it keeps stuff for 2-3 years (before some crazy admin nukes it to make new channel, deleting all those thousands of messages) but you dont know what information it contains unless you know it has it or you got lucky search hits.

p.s.s.
But i admit that discord is great when you need "instant talk", also inevitably thematic discords became hearts of many communities recently, ne that fandoms or not. Still, there are many things of why discord is inferior format.

2-p.s. (2nd loop of post scriptum)
Elaboration:

Discord (and the likes) is one of worst possible ways to store information. It's basically bunch of endless chats. It's good for "immediate talk" but absolute garbage for keeping, finding, using valuable information in long term.

1) Forums, on a contrary, have great data classification, separation, organisation, systemisation (through use of subforums and threads) and better readability and usage (advanced search function is great for finding exact things; information separated into threads, and threads are divided in pages - in the end, it's much more comfortable and less exhausting in comparison to scrolling of endless chat in discord, where you also have 40 subdiscussions going on at same time without separation into threads).

2)Also on discord it's all about "here and now" (and if you've been away for some time, you'll spend several days reading all new stuff in discord; when you are away from forum, and back, you choose yourself which subforums and threads you check out for new posts and which you don't). Also, here on forums we still use wiseness and information that was leaved here long time ago. Which basically non-existant for discords aside from few "sticky posts"/"locked channels" and perhaps random findings from your searches (on forum with categories and threads you see titles of threads and now what to expect; on discord, in huge chats, even separated into several general categories, you don't see threads that indicate what was discussed, so you can only take wild guess and try to search something and hope that somebody was talking about that).

3) Also it's even more fragile (forum may die and webarchive is incomplete... but discord can be wiped out even easier and everything is lost). At least Skype conferences before Cloud hosting (or icq? i still have .txt exports) allowed users to have offline log of chat channels.

2-p.s.s.

Also … Please be sure to introduce yourself and talk a little when you join, otherwise you will be banned.

Mark, is this a system of "verification of group member from random guest to approved user" or you also demand people be active 24/7 or smth like that? I think you have enough experience to notice how people in shmup community are ON and OFF with shmupping for years, disappearing and returning.

2-B-p.s. (alternative route in 2nd loop of post scriptum)
Re:Fragmentation

Hey, why do you wanna steal a piece from resurrected http://cave-stg.com/forum/index.php


2-B-p.s.s.

there is no centralized place for players of these awesome games to gather

This exact forum is not centralized (which was de fact home for all shmuppers for more than decade until "2ch autists declared a war" or whatever current meme is)? Or the most popular shmup-related reddit (where most casual gamers usually go for shmup questions often; reddit good for threaded comments where you reply to each reply, but awful coz auto-closes threads after 6 months so you have to create same themes over and over)? Smells like revision history.

Hidden-Boss-p.s.

The reason why mods are able to do so much, comparatively, is because I want this server to become a community that doesn’t depend on a few select individuals.

Just don't turn it into another ResetEra 1984 hive and you'll be fine

[Mark_MSX]

Hi Mark—I'm really appreciative of everything you've contributed to the community, but I have to ask, is further fragmentation really a good idea? I feel like this board has slowed down significantly since its heyday and I'm rather skeptical of cloud platforms that partition content into its own, unfindable walled garden. Obviously having a place to hang is great, but when I look at how much platforms like Medium have done to control the distribution of content it does make me cringe a bit and I can envision Discord going down a similar path. Wouldn't discussion about strategies and gameplay serve a larger audience for longer in an independent venue like shmupsforum? Please don't take this as being hostile to your effort; I really do think the aim is very noble but I have to ask if it's the best way to serve the community. I, for one, love to seek out info and discussion about these games and I would never bother combing through a really ephemeral medium like Discord.

No offense taken my dude. Yeah the goal of this discord is just immediate interactions between players to trade knowledge and stuff and to help build motivation to keep playing and going for higher scores.

[Shelcoof]

I love the shmups forum and the contributors here. The exchange of knowledge elsewhere is a loss for guys like me seeing how this is one of the only forums left I frequently visit

[BareKnuckleRoo]

CAVE games already get a Touhou-tier kind of overrepresentation for the genre. I mean, I love most of CAVE's releases but even I know there's way more shmups out there that are AAA quality titles that deserve attention (Takumi games? NMK? Psikyo?), and there's already plenty of discussion on CAVE and Raizing games as it is round these parts and on the more general Discord channels that exist.

It's a pretty niche game genre still, so it doesn't really make sense to fragment discussions further to only two major companies unless like... you're running a fanclub for them sort of thing? In which case go nuts.

The benefit of this kind of forum, and one that Discord will never have due to the different format, is that searching for specific information is a lot easier and generally organized by threads. The strategy forum's index is also a good repository of information (which obviously depends on the popularity of the game in most cases). For quick real-time casual chitchat Discord can be nice, but the forum is usually the optimal format for better quality of discussions due to how discussions can be organized into individual threads, and how this forum wisely doesn't lock threads due to age, which means old but still useful threads sometimes get resurrected with fresh information.

Might just be better to call it The Electric Underground's Discord (which it seems effectively what you're aiming for in terms of community, a Discord aimed at your podcast listeners) and just leave it at that as opposed to focused on two specific companies, and have individual channels for them if you really dig Raizing and Cave.

[odilo]

I joined and got booted for no reason with no explanation. I'm a respectable father so i didn't do anything wrong, still no explanation from the discords owner mark.

[Mantrox]

CAVE games already get a Touhou-tier kind of overrepresentation for the genre. I mean, I love most of CAVE's releases but even I know there's way more shmups out there that are AAA quality titles that deserve attention (Takumi games? NMK? Psikyo?), and there's already plenty of discussion on CAVE and Raizing games as it is round these parts and on the more general Discord channels that exist.

It's a pretty niche game genre still, so it doesn't really make sense to fragment discussions further to only two major companies unless like... you're running a fanclub for them sort of thing? In which case go nuts.

The benefit of this kind of forum, and one that Discord will never have due to the different format, is that searching for specific information is a lot easier and generally organized by threads. The strategy forum's index is also a good repository of information (which obviously depends on the popularity of the game in most cases). For quick real-time casual chitchat Discord can be nice, but the forum is usually the optimal format for better quality of discussions due to how discussions can be organized into individual threads, and how this forum wisely doesn't lock threads due to age, which means old but still useful threads sometimes get resurrected with fresh information.

Might just be better to call it The Electric Underground's Discord (which it seems effectively what you're aiming for in terms of community, a Discord aimed at your podcast listeners) and just leave it at that as opposed to focused on two specific companies, and have individual channels for them if you really dig Raizing and Cave.

For me it's much easier to discuss small details i am struggling with within a specific game on the discord, as it serves as a live community to engage with in real time.
Strategy threads are great for archiving blocks of information, but not that great to give answers to more specific problems a certain player might be having, nevermind trying to sift through conversations in threads.
The speed with which this forum operates, and the level of activity in each respective game strategy OT is not enough to keep me coming back in hope of having my questions answered, while maintaining an active interest in my progress on said game.

A discord channel for the most popular shmup games, which has players on it that can answer questions and motivate the comunity to play and improve is always a good thing. Today Eaglet answers a question about Garegga, tomorrow i'll answer that same question for another player, and so on and so forth. All the while, we share runs, discuss strats, goof off, and have fun.

Having more fun engaging with the community, and learning more about each game is the focus.

[Xyga]

We should create a hundred or so more private discords, twatters, channels etc.

Best thing for the community.

The internet is win.

[Eaglet]

If there's anyone here that actually thinks that there has been any serious, worthwhile discussion going on at this forum for the last couple of years they're severely deluding themselves.
This is an initiative reaching out a hand for those left behind that didn't get with the times. You either jump on the train or hide in your caves.
The choice is yours. Just don't come here and whine like little bitches when there are no better alternatives.

[qmish]

If there's anyone here that actually thinks that there has been any serious, worthwhile discussion going on at this forum for the last couple of years they're severely deluding themselves.
This is an initiative reaching out a hand for those left behind that didn't get with the times. You either jump on the train or hide in your caves.
The choice is yours. Just don't come here and whine like little bitches when there are no better alternatives.

Do you imply that "serious, worthwile" discussion can only be done in chat-like environment (be it discord or telegram etc.), where it will be quickly buried and most folks never see it because they are lazy to read the whole channel (imagine reading the whole year of posts, this is some long scrolling) through the beggining of discord (also that discussion will be inevitably mixed with 5-7 different discussions going on same time that has nothing to do with subject, and people who come later wouldnt even know that such discussion took place coz there are no separate threads)?

[Eaglet]

I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but this is the current state and given how it has been looking for the last years it will not change.

The major problem with this forum now is that there's so much whining and negativity about everything. The ones who actually care about playing the games have long since moved on.

[zakk]

If there's anyone here that actually thinks that there has been any serious, worthwhile discussion going on at this forum for the last couple of years they're severely deluding themselves.
This is an initiative reaching out a hand for those left behind that didn't get with the times. You either jump on the train or hide in your caves.
The choice is yours. Just don't come here and whine like little bitches when there are no better alternatives.

Do you imply that "serious, worthwile" discussion can only be done in chat-like environment (be it discord or telegram etc.), where it will be quickly buried and most folks never see it because they are lazy to read the whole channel (imagine reading the whole year of posts, this is some long scrolling) through the beggining of discord (also that discussion will be inevitably mixed with 5-7 different discussions going on same time that has nothing to do with subject, and people who come later wouldnt even know that such discussion took place coz there are no separate threads)?

He's not saying it can ONLY be done in a chat-like environment, he's saying the reality is that's where it's happening RIGHT NOW. You can argue about disadvantages vs advantages all you want; it doesn't change the fact that a lot of the newer high-level players coming up prefer not to use this place (or forums in general) to discuss their approach to specific games and to collaborate with other players to discover new strategies. They overwhelmingly prefer to use places like discord/twitter/twitch chat/telegram etc to do that. They are simply not interested in participating in forum threads or writing long essays about game strategy. If they want to 'preserve' that knowledge they'll make a video/archive a stream session. Maybe it's all a mistake, who knows. You're not going to convince a bunch of people who see forums as something for old people to start using them, though.

[qmish]

they'll make a video/archive a stream session

I hope they won't make mistake with subs that can die again, though. Like see how many 1cc/strategy/advice videos were injured when YouTube killed Captions
So either hard-sub or talk everything in speech.

or forums in general

Do you even say that thay now mostly browse web from smartphones in 90% of cases and are happy with awful "modern web design" like bootstrap or those recent site redesigns etc. (which look like shiiiiit on big enough screen in most cases, and functions like advenced search are getting cut; though i must admit that after 3 years without any search discord added good search engine)

twitch chat

What i freaking hate, is that modern mindset if "Only Current Matters". Which is why navigation in things like instagram (still no albums.. scroll down forever) and twitter is broken shit, even reddit to some point with autolock and inability to display results by date from oldest, and twitch streams will only live if you can keep it on channel wuthout auto-delete or reup to youtube....

You're not going to convince a bunch of people who see forums as something for old people to start using them, though.

Hilariously, i'm ~27 but i guess i sound like some 60+ grumpy

p.s.
Af for forum, THANKS SHUB-NIGGURATH that system11 is good old phpbb (though there are modern solutions like XenForo or whatever AssemblerGames' successor uses) and not one of those "moder re-imagination" of forums like discourse (ex. https://forum.mutable-instruments.net/ ) or vanilla (ex. https://forum.audiob.us/) which are basically neutered parody of forums that look and feel like reskinned blogs in which you dont even have subforums, just tags, and often have to use google search or duckduckgo, lol, and also they freaking r@pe your damn eyes if you visit them from desktop LMAO. Discord is better than those "subhuman" forum attempts.

[blossom]

The idea of a wiki is oddly shot down in this thread which is indirectly stickied in the strategy subforum by virtue of being the second linked thread. And all I have to ask is... why? Both forums and Discord have their issues. Yes, Discord is clearly a mess if you're looking for preservation of information. However, quite a few threads on this forum have been rendered worthless due to screenshots being hosted on image sites that are long since obsolete. Sometimes more than screenshots, an individual will link to an entire website and not post any of that information to the forum itself - links which are, again, typically leading to nowhere in the year 2019 and beyond. I suppose you could use the Wayback Machine, but really, I'm too lazy to do that and I'm sure the same is true for most of you. I feel like a consistently updated wiki is the best solution and I'm not sure why no one else seems to agree.

[qmish]

The idea of a wiki

It's interesting idea.

Imagine:

- live discussion takes place on discord etc.
- then you get info saved and structured on wiki for easy access etc.

Forum kind of combines both (it gives structure and access like wiki, but also info is being updated and expanded through discussion), but in forumless world you can use combo of above.

In that thread they discuss problem of who updates content of wiki, though? hard question. I just remind you that wiki doesnt automeans that anyone can edit it. On some sites wiki is only edited by admins or whatever group in charge.

Wayback Machine

Sadly it's usually atrociously bad with images.
Wayback didnt preserved Pulstar artworks and scans on that pulstar/blazing star fansite!

Using discord as image hosting is hmmmmmm (need to bookmark those though?), i know people used facebook or its clone for same purpose with thematic groups (russian shmup group in rus fb clone is just 300 people, what a miserable number for a group that exists since 2008, kek, at least all images are there like fanart)

[Xyga]

hide in your caves

Which is, you know, exactly what people who isolated in closed discords/twitters did. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Guess discords and twatter aren't so convenient publishing and communication platforms if you guys still have to come here to use the hi score threads and patronize people...

I mean, the nerve.

Also why do people use the word "community" when the very thing they don't want is pretty much that?

To think people called the farm a hive-mind, what the hell are several private discords and twatters led by e-celebs and cherry-picked members all chatting over a single narrow topic then? Wasp's nests?

I may be a reactionary when it comes to internet design, because I find social media to be utter shit and anti-community as it gets, public forums may be old but to me they're still the better format for hosting and servicing an actual community.
Not even wikis which have been proposed a hundred times are cut for this, they require a lot of voluntary work which people drop quickly, while on forums for some reason they're motivated to publish naturally.
If anything modernizing the website and forums sotware would be the way to go (damn the new french shmup joint is gorgeous)

[qmish]

Wasp's nests?

Angry Leader Bee



Jokes aside, i agree with this quote

Might just be better to call it The Electric Underground's Discord (which it seems effectively what you're aiming for in terms of community, a Discord aimed at your podcast listeners) and just leave it at that as opposed to focused on two specific companies, and have individual channels for them if you really dig Raizing and Cave.

[Arcatech]

I joined and got booted for no reason with no explanation. I'm a respectable father so i didn't do anything wrong, still no explanation from the discords owner mark.

Same. I tried pming Mark about it and he hasn't responded yet. Literally all I posted on the discord is that "I'm not a bot... yet lol" immediately booted...

[qmish]

Literally all I posted on the discord is that "I'm not a bot... yet lol" immediately booted...

That doesn't sound like introduction Mark asked, though.

I think following should be instead:

Code: Select all

"Hi, i'm Hatsuno666, i play shmups since dreamcast games. My most precious memory is 1CCing MARS MATRIX, this is something that burns right into your eyeballs. Nowodays i record videos of scoring plays sometimes, i ll throw a link later if you are interested. Cheers".

Y'know, a club is a club.

[Arcatech]

Of course I'm joking around. I have a pretty dry sense of humor. Don't even want to be a part of this discord anymore if its gatekept this vigorously.

[Shepardus]

CAVE games already get a Touhou-tier kind of overrepresentation for the genre. I mean, I love most of CAVE's releases but even I know there's way more shmups out there that are AAA quality titles that deserve attention (Takumi games? NMK? Psikyo?), and there's already plenty of discussion on CAVE and Raizing games as it is round these parts and on the more general Discord channels that exist.

It's a pretty niche game genre still, so it doesn't really make sense to fragment discussions further to only two major companies unless like... you're running a fanclub for them sort of thing? In which case go nuts.

Pretty much what I wanted to say, but worded better than I would have. Ignoring the whole Discord vs. forums debate, was there a problem with the general shmups Discord that CAVE and Raizing were getting drowned out?

Literally all I posted on the discord is that "I'm not a bot... yet lol" immediately booted...

That doesn't sound like introduction Mark asked, though.

If the purpose is to "cut down on bots and such" as stated, I don't see the point of kicking in this case.

[blossom]

If anything, the other developers and games can get drowned out on Discord. I think I understand Mark's intentions here. Seems like he wants to give a chance for the most commonly discussed games to have their own corner while the other ones are given room to breathe. Maybe I'm being naive, but let's assume for the sake of simplicity this is the goal. I don't really see how a separate Discord will solve that, people are still going to talk about Cave and Raizing in the currently established Discords.

I feel the best option, if anything should be done at all, is multiple channels, for example #cave, #touhou, #raizing, #other-games, etc. Problem with this fragmentation is more than likely #other-games would be fairly ignored compared to the other channels, so I don't see that as a preferred answer, either.

[Plasmo]

Code: Select all

"Hi, i'm Hatsuno666, i play shmups since dreamcast games. My most precious memory is 1CCing MARS MATRIX, this is something that burns right into your eyeballs. Nowodays i record videos of scoring plays sometimes, i ll throw a link later if you are interested. Cheers".

You got a link to that Mars Matrix replay? I wanna archive it.

[qmish]

I wish Hatsuno666 existed...

[Zaarock]

Shmups chat has always had some split to IRC, Discord and similar for quick messaging. But it's only one sub-forum here. Negativity eaglet mentioned is always there if you want to look for it, someone always argues shmups are dying or new games are bad etc. I feel like there's less of it now honestly? Bunch of games being released recently & emulator solutions keep getting better.

I agree with qmish that attempting to put a bunch of guides and resources in discord works poorly, it gets wonky real fast. See this more on fighting game discords though.
ST thread type discussion and (not shmup related) things like BIL and kittens game discussion topics would be totally unworkable on discord and would have to move to something like google docs or more likely their own webpage.

There are other high score board solutions but I haven't seen anything to replace ST content here. I guess wikis like discussed earlier. Japanese communities tend to use these. Somehow I find the ST threads here generally better structured and easier to read than wikis or docs style guides (being on a single page, forum post format instead of something meant for pdf/paper) but maybe it's familiarity speaking.