The Pulse: Community Catch Up | 2WC 16 Oct

[Doctor Internet]

I've always loved the forums, however, is there a point in using this anymore?

I know scripts are used or hooks that tie some functions to them or something like that. I feel the old gaming community relied heavily on a website, but now everyone uses discord.

Why spend money to keep this running rather than a seriously integrated discord that can mimic a website?

An interesting and important question. Let’s go over it.

• Firstly, the forums don’t really cost extra to run. We need to run our admin and game panels, so having the forums alongside that isn’t really a big issue cost-wise.
  
• Secondly, there’s a huge amount of history on the forums, going back so many years, we wouldn’t want to just delete that.
  
• Lastly, we’ve seen that discord doesn’t really work well for longer-lasting “discussions”, such as suggestions, bug or appeals.
  

With all of this, we wouldn't really be able to integrate a discord to the same level, we'd still need a site for a variety of things, ban listings, changelogs, steamid looks, character / dupes management.

Fair enough. So what would be the benefit of using the forums as opposed to Discord?  

They're two different platforms intended for player interaction. It's essentially splitting up the community into the ones who love to use the forums and the ones who will only use Discord. You have discussions on both platforms. 

I remember when the lowering player count was an issue in the community, and the solution was to remove a server and have everyone on one which caused an increase for a period of time. Why not do the same thing now? Don't delete the website or Discord, but make one or the other very limited so there is a clear option on what to use for everyday use, and what is only for essential items.

It is. Announcements, Suggestions, Bug Reports, Discussions, Appeals, etc etc are all on the forums. Discord only has a general channel, and a couple of off-topic channels.