Im not saying we cant all grow to adapt to Discord because im sure we can, but overall it seems we're trying to adapt to new members rather than involving new members in the TeamSpeak and were trying to appeal to them when in reality, if they were truly interested they would make an effort to download TeamSpeak to stay updated. If they didnt care enough, they could always check the forum post that is later posted for summarizing.
Downloading it for the meeting opens them up to the people within the TeamSpeak that may use it often. It opens up a new form of communication and interaction with other members and it all may start with that one meeting.
I quoted these 2 separately because I have different opinions on both.
In terms of ghost's second statement, I'm going to copy an old reply I made on this thread. "this is a good point, when I did start using TeamSpeak, it was because of the community meeting I had gone to in October of last year. probably wouldn't have met the friends I have now without it " (shoutout to the squad). This may very well happen as it happened with me, but ever since then, every one of those members who followed that same path as me (being active on TS, forums, servers, and specialty teams) has either been promoted to admin or just fallen out of the community altogether. So of course this is a good instance, but it's definitely not a common one considering not every single active member has to be an admin.
In terms of adapting to new members, I understand that it may seem that we're "ignoring" the opinions of our more active members for those who "aren't interested enough". But in reality, I doubt that the community management team has ignored the voices of everyone who has wanted to switch back to Teamspeak since the first Discord meeting in April. And in terms of interested people making the effort to download Teamspeak, I'd say that is an opinion with only assumptions to back it. And here's why
So jimmy is on jailbreak and wants an e tag. I proceed to steam message jimmy
https://edgegamers.com/join and tell him to follow all the steps including making a forum account. So 24 hours pass and now he has an e tag, he comes into the game, sees he has it, and then rolls around with the tag. Now here's where the first split comes.
When your application to eGO is first accepted, this is the message you are greeted with. It has awesome information about getting involved in the community, like learning how to get promoted, getting connected to Teamspeak, and a thread talking about how to get in contact with LE and MS. But wait, when I, the member who is making the effort to join Teamspeak clicks on that link! It takes me to an error page. Let's say only 50% of applicants click that link, they don't get anything out of it. Now, let's say 50% of those members decide to further pursue finding out how to connect to Teamspeak. Maybe they could ask in our Discord server! But where do they figure out what the link to our discord server is? It isn't on the front page anymore, and the links on their response go nowhere. At this point, nearly 85% of new members who apply have most likely closed out of the forums and headed back onto the servers (The other 15% found the
New to EdgeGamers? - Start Here page). Now after a week of playing, Jimmy loses his =(e)= tag and asks the server what happened? After someone tells him MAUL marked him as inactive and he needs to sign-in on the forums, he goes to the website and scrolls down to Counter-Strike. If he's lucky enough to come at a time where the most recent post is announcing an event later that night, he can click on it and see another way for people to get involved in the community. But oh no! It's on Teamspeak, which as covered most people don't know how to get to or just don't care about. So again, he logs off the website, plays for another week, and the process repeats.
Now nitro, you may ask, why do you tell us all this information when it doesn't pertain to a community meeting?
Great question. Originally, Michael Bolton made a post that said every member of the community can see the forums because they have to come through the forums to join. Sure, every member does have to come through the forums to join, but as explained above, it doesn't mean that they will use them. And even if we are lucky enough to have a member who is interested and wants to get really involved in the community, the tools we give them are lackluster because they either don't work, are too confusing, or just simply don't interest them any further.
As stated multiple times throughout multiple posts "pubs" arent in TeamSpeak because they don't know how to use it. Id personally love to see a video from media on the ways to access it, (it being ts) and maybe some of the settings you might have to change, maybe go over the channels or what you might find where (channels how to make a DS channel how to join a DS channel, etc)
Kaden
Video coming Soon™
Section 1 TL;DR | The voices of active members most likely aren't being ignored, and we aren't adapting to members who aren't interested in getting involved in the community further. Considering joining our Discord is still a way of getting further involved, we should at least try and hear out their voices too. Not every member uses the forums even if they go through them to make an application. When we say that the majority of people in this thread have voted for Teamspeak, we're also forgetting that the number of people who have replied on this thread is less than 20, which definitely doesn't speak for the majority. As well, after chilling in the discord channel for a couple days with
Maruchan
like I typically would in Teamspeak, we had a few people join who I had never seen before, and they were all super cool and chill! In terms of getting new members involved, we should work on getting those links fixed in whatever system replaced DAPS, work on bringing back the old forum Home page as seen
here (Which Don already said is in the works by the way so that's nice), and try to figure out a way of restructuring things to make it really easy for new members to meet new people and to get involved, including the way people perceive current inactive members which might become the LE of the future. Can't judge a book by its cover!
Additonally, talk power. Something that is not as simple in discord as it is teamspeak. it allowed for a much easier conversation. Much easier to interact and discuss things as a community. You can request talk power and be granted it so much more easier which allows for better communication. I dont know why were making this more difficult for ourselves than it has to be.
But, when it comes to meetings, TS is far superior. You can very clearly see who your leaders are (because it does matter to know who they are) and you get a chance to request talk power so you can verbally speak to those leaders easily. When it comes to this argument, it is a lot of opinions for the most part, but opinions of the community should matter right?
Ah yes, because we sure like telling our newer members (who have the same amount of say as an older member) to just not participate in our meetings because they don't want to download an about 18-year-old piece of software to just listen to voices for an hour and a half and never open it again
It really should not be this big of a deal to just move over to Discord, the last couple of meetings were fine in my opinion. It's a learning experience for everyone. Of course, everyone prefers TS but you cripple divisions like D2 and WoWS and literally any pub in any division who want to listen to what's coming up for eGO.
In my personal opinion, only taking into consideration what I want, I prefer Teamspeak. TS3 is fairly easy to navigate once you know what you're doing. It's voice quality is superior, the permissions system is much more customizable, and the ability to grant and request talk power just puts it on top for me. But Teamspeak is
old. Even if TS3 looks more modern, it still shares a resemblance with its previous versions hailing from the turn of the century. I know how to navigate Teamspeak because I use it every day, I know that its voice quality just can't be beaten because I have heard it for myself. And like Michael said, it is important to know who your leaders are, and the ranking system in Teamspeak allows you to much better see that. Honestly I like both, but I would prefer it on Teamspeak if I only cared about myself.
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This does bring up another point in regards to using TeamSpeak: we who use Discord can chat with our friends simultaneously in Discord during the meeting! That sounds so cool, like whenever Larry slips up (can't mention a certain punk-free moment) we can laugh so loud with our friends! For example, literally every single JB gang has their own Discord, as do many groups in other servers and divisions.
Woah, this idea's so awesome I would pay to have it! Let me just go grab my moms credit card.
All jokes aside though, this is what it comes down to, for me at least, at the end of the day. I just want to talk to some people during the meeting, congratulate my friends through more direct means, laugh at a joke someone cracked. Whatever platform does get chosen at the end of the day, I just hope people are still happy. You decide how to look at this at the end of the day, so try and make the best of it.
