Why no general / support discord?

[Excessive Paranoia]

This is something I've been confused about for a while. SS + Addons is one of the, if not the, single biggest mods for Falllout 4, yet there is no discord to promote its general community or to offer a real-time place for people to get support from the community. Is there some reason this isn't a thing yet?

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

I know one thing for sure, if I was on the SS team I wouldn't join that discord.
They would get constantly spammed all day by people with "Bugs".

Plenty of people turn up here daily to report bugs, when in fact the problem is entirely something their end. The easier you make it for people to try get you to fix their problems for them the more they'll use it it.

Plus, you have more chance of getting support for an actual bug when your problem doesn't disappear from chat.

 

[1ae0bfb8]

i've never been on a discord server that actually serves a viable purpose and the support required to filter out jerks means that its an overhead like no other. plus, it's an horrendous medium for any kind of viable support for an issue.

 

[Excessive Paranoia]

I know one thing for sure, if I was on the SS team I wouldn't join that discord.
They would get constantly spammed all day by people with "Bugs".

Plenty of people turn up here daily to report bugs, when in fact the problem is entirely something their end. The easier you make it for people to try get you to fix their problems for them the more they'll use it it.

Plus, you have more chance of getting support for an actual bug when your problem doesn't disappear from chat.

See, I can agree with part of that statement. You are correct that having your issue exist in a persistent form on a forum page means that given enough time, someone who knows what they are doing might look at it and help you find a solution, but there is a key point in this that support sections of forums are, in general, the least visited sections. I always loathe when I have to post a question in a help / tech support section or when a question I ask gets moved there because it then will often languish for days without anyone even bothering to look at it and all too often will get almost no replies. Posting the same question in the support section of a discord could have hundreds of views within a few minutes just because people notice a new post in that room and have a casual glance at it. For most common problems, especially user-end mod conflicts, this exposure is exactly how one might find help in sorting out the issue quickly instead of having to wait for someone to bother looking at the support page of the forums.

As for the rest of your post, I feel you've taken a pretty negative attitude towards the users of the mod. If you're correct and most "bugs" are user created through mod conflicts or some other reason, the quickest way to get people to stop posting about them is to provide an environment where the collective user base is more likely to see the posts and be able to jump in with information that could help find a solution. You seem to have completely discounted that idea by assuming that the only way a discord would work is the 10's of thousands of users of the mod would be constantly pinging the dev team for answers to questions that other people might already have, but will never contribute. In my experience this is not the case at all... most of the time the devs don't even have to participate in the discussion as the community tends to help itself quite well when there is an environment conducive to it. The only time the devs would likely need to participate is in particularly difficult situations where the user base isn't able to come up with an answer.

 

[Excessive Paranoia]

i've never been on a discord server that actually serves a viable purpose and the support required to filter out jerks means that its an overhead like no other. plus, it's an horrendous medium for any kind of viable support for an issue.

I'm not really sure why our experiences are so different because most mod support discords I've been on (which isn't many to be fair, but still the majority of them.... 5 out of the 6) have been helpful environments with mature users. Common problems are able to be identified easily by the user base and resolved, while more difficult issues are quickly seen by the devs so they are able to help when needed. And jerks / trolls rarely make much of an appearance since most, though not all, in the mod community are at least halfway mature adults, at least in my experience.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

I'm not being negative of users of the mod, it's a simple fact that if someone thinks they can quickly get a question answered they will take that option rather than read a long post and learn how to fix the problem themselves. That is human nature, not a reflection of SS users.

"my game keeps crashing please help"

Even with the most well intentioned people on a discord the above quoted text will simply not get support on a moving chat. If 10 people all try to help that user just tease out information out about their problem, the user will be overwhelmed and nothing will get solved.

 

[Excessive Paranoia]

I'm not being negative of users of the mod, it's a simple fact that if someone thinks they can quickly get a question answered they will take that option rather than read a long post and learn how to fix the problem themselves. That is human nature, not a reflection of SS users.

"my game keeps crashing please help"

Even with the most well intentioned people on a discord the above quoted text will simply not get support on a moving chat. If 10 people all try to help that user just tease out information out about their problem, the user will be overwhelmed and nothing will get solved.

That's not true at all.... In most cases someone with an issue like that who is looking for support simply does not have all of the tools necessary to solve the issue. In your example, the response that should be given 99% of the time is a link to the post in question because its very likely that person did a google search for an answer to their question and did not come up with the thread you're referring to, which is why they are there to ask the question in the first place.

 

[Phil_T_Casual]

I don't know whether you're looking for an argument or what..... But for the last few months I answer as many questions as I can and try help people with problems here. If I know something about it I'll reply if I don't I stay away from it. I do this for 2 reasons.

1. I hate to see people not get help with a problem.
2. The least I can do is try help out KG and the team for all the work they put in to give us these wonderful mods.

If there was a discord with potentially 10k people on it I would not even attempt to do this because it would just be too hectic.

I'm saying no more on the matter.

 

[VersusXV]

The main thing is probably needing a whole lot more Moderators including covering all time zones. With a public Sim Settlements server, you will get thousands of users joining up and hundreds online/active at any time. It would be quite similar to the Nexus discord I imagine, which I think has over 9000 users. The Sim Settlements team is extremely busy so it'd be quite difficult to add in a public server on top of that. I personally would be willing to be a Moderator though I would think that highly experienced moderators would be sought.

This server would be cool, though may not be realistically doable.

Even with the most well intentioned people on a discord the above quoted text will simply not get support on a moving chat. If 10 people all try to help that user just tease out information out about their problem, the user will be overwhelmed and nothing will get solved.

Dividing by topic can help with that, the Skyrim modlist server I use has general helpdesk then channels for every tool. There are 9 tools, not counting the mod manager of course.

If a server is extremely busy you could create further "Situation Room" type channels and have people take it to there if needed(for things that aren't a one and done fix). People with the helper role could in reply link to the one they're helping and specify one to use.

Of course, this idea of a Public Sim Settlements is on a whole other level since that Skyrim server I believe is like 2000 users with probably 500 online typically.

1. I hate to see people not get help with a problem.
2. The least I can do is try help out KG and the team for all the work they put in to give us these wonderful mods.

That is great! I try to also help out, though I try to keep it to only answering where I know the answer very well as well as ideally the why behind it. If my knowledge is incomplete about something I may refrain from answering so as to avoid the possibility of incorrect answers.

 

[1ae0bfb8]

you seem to deal in absolutes, which are nothing like my experience.

i can only give my opinion on my experience, and that experience is coloured by over 25 years of programming and support of complex systems.

in all that time, the defacto best solutions for problem solving were not rolling chat channels that are unfiltered and very easily spammable and rendered unusable without quite diligent policing. not once, not ever.

discord has a purpose. i don't actually know what that purpose is, but it ain't as a viable and workable support medium for issues that may come out of a mod or a program or whatever that needs slightly more thought than "have you turned it off and on again?"

we had this years ago with irc channels, some of which still exist, and are still used, but they are policed because they have to be policed and despite that, they can be disrupted on occasion and rendered unusable for a time.

I will give you an actual advantage that this suite of forums has over discord or any other rolling chat medium. i am finding answers to issues i've encountered recently, that were worked out 12 months ago.

good luck doing that on a discord where sometimes you can't scroll back 24 hours. and even if you can, the answer you seek may be buried under tons of random gibberish.

 

[Excessive Paranoia]

I don't know whether you're looking for an argument or what..... But for the last few months I answer as many questions as I can and try help people with problems here. If I know something about it I'll reply if I don't I stay away from it. I do this for 2 reasons.

1. I hate to see people not get help with a problem.
2. The least I can do is try help out KG and the team for all the work they put in to give us these wonderful mods.

If there was a discord with potentially 10k people on it I would not even attempt to do this because it would just be too hectic.

I'm saying no more on the matter.

The main thing is probably needing a whole lot more Moderators including covering all time zones. With a public Sim Settlements server, you will get thousands of users joining up and hundreds online/active at any time. It would be quite similar to the Nexus discord I imagine, which I think has over 9000 users. The Sim Settlements team is extremely busy so it'd be quite difficult to add in a public server on top of that. I personally would be willing to be a Moderator though I would think that highly experienced moderators would be sought.

This server would be cool, though may not be realistically doable.


Dividing by topic can help with that, the Skyrim modlist server I use has general helpdesk then channels for every tool. There are 9 tools, not counting the mod manager of course.

If a server is extremely busy you could create further "Situation Room" type channels and have people take it to there if needed(for things that aren't a one and done fix). People with the helper role could in reply link to the one they're helping and specify one to use.

Of course, this idea of a Public Sim Settlements is on a whole other level since that Skyrim server I believe is like 2000 users with probably 500 online typically.


That is great! I try to also help out, though I try to keep it to only answering where I know the answer very well as well as ideally the why behind it. If my knowledge is incomplete about something I may refrain from answering so as to avoid the possibility of incorrect answers.

I'm not looking for an argument per se, but I also feel that you seem quite biased against the idea of a discord and I'm trying to put forth my own experiences to counter that bias. Its really a good thing that you're trying answer as many questions as possible, but one person, or even a few people, taking on that responsibility seems like its not enough at this point. A public discord server would concentrate a lot of people in one location, likely far more than the SS forums, and allow people with questions to have the benefit of not 1-10 people trying to answer questions, but maybe tens or even hundreds. If anything it would likely take much of the burden off of the few who are taking on the responsibility now as common answers to common questions can be fielded by pretty much anybody with even a little more experience than the person asking the question.

I also don't think that a SS discord would have 10k concurrent users. The Horizon discord which has at most a couple of hundred members and that mod has 140k unique downloads compared to SS's 665k. I'd expect the numbers to pan out similarly so maybe the server would have about 1k users, of which most would be occasional visitors at most and there would likely be 100-300 regular users who contribute on a daily basis.

 

[Excessive Paranoia]

you seem to deal in absolutes, which are nothing like my experience.

i can only give my opinion on my experience, and that experience is coloured by over 25 years of programming and support of complex systems.

in all that time, the defacto best solutions for problem solving were not rolling chat channels that are unfiltered and very easily spammable and rendered unusable without quite diligent policing. not once, not ever.

discord has a purpose. i don't actually know what that purpose is, but it ain't as a viable and workable support medium for issues that may come out of a mod or a program or whatever that needs slightly more thought than "have you turned it off and on again?"

we had this years ago with irc channels, some of which still exist, and are still used, but they are policed because they have to be policed and despite that, they can be disrupted on occasion and rendered unusable for a time.

I will give you an actual advantage that this suite of forums has over discord or any other rolling chat medium. i am finding answers to issues i've encountered recently, that were worked out 12 months ago.

good luck doing that on a discord where sometimes you can't scroll back 24 hours. and even if you can, the answer you seek may be buried under tons of random gibberish.

You seem to be the one dealing in absolutes here... I'm not advocating one over the other, but more that they can work in conjunction to provide a better experience. You, on the other hand have dismissed the idea out of hand. As for your statement that live chat has never been a good support solution, I can't speak to your experience, only mine. In all of my years of being a support consumer, and the few times I've been a support provider, I've found chat to be a critical tool to supplement forum based help. For easy answers that are eluding me, either due to poor search terminology or poor thread titling, chat has often provided me with helpful links that forum searching / posting hasn't. For more difficult problems, chat has at the very least helped quickly identify that the problem was not something simple or common and that I should take to the forums with the question. But even with complex issues, I've often found people who've had a similar experience in chat who were at least able to help by indicating what they've done to solve their problem and whether or not it worked. None of these things are exclusive to chat and can be found on the forums, but you're much more likely to get a quick response in chat compared to a help forum.

I'd also point out that there is a very real thing that many forum users experience when trying to solve common problems wherein people who would normally help them on the forum get tired of answering the same or similar questions over and over and so either ignore the question or respond with something unhelpful like "google is your friend". As I've mentioned earlier, a large percentage of the people with common questions just don't have the tools necessary to find the answers on their own. At least in a chat environment you can spread the burden of answering these questions among many people. Heck, you can even set up a discord bot to look for key words or phrases to automate those answers.

 

[uituit]

An Open public Simsettlements discord will prolly never happen.

As part of the support team it can become very draining and one can lose interest in gameing, ive had a few low points in support and many have given up and quit .It takes a lot of time and effort to be a moderator and we have to constantly keep a eye on things.Almost everyday I have to answear the same question. Even with a great community SS has created and a helpful one at that ,a lot of moderators would be needed.

Also it would be another thing we would have to watch, we are stretched so thin as it is . All the nexus mods forums have to be checked everyday ,the youtube vids ,and the forums here.

im on a few other discord servers myself (all fo4 related) and most are good,but it only takes one person to turn it all toxic and that is something we want to avoid.

A public sever may happen but I wudnt hold your breath.

And lets keep this cival

 

[RayBo]

This is something I've been confused about for a while. SS + Addons is one of the, if not the, single biggest mods for Falllout 4, yet there is no discord to promote its general community or to offer a real-time place for people to get support from the community. Is there some reason this isn't a thing yet?

huh,

Long thread: hummmm? I think!

I am grateful

I want for nothing

Ha, but maybe to help the users/community enjoy the mod and to support Kinggath and his vision for his creation.

Then again, being really grateful makes me really happy
I don't really think I can say how grateful I really am

I don't know of a time where I have seen one person consolidate such a following of talented folks to so passionately try to give a community so much at such an expenditure of their own personal time, energy and talent.


Ha! Saying that. I do want something!

To give a little back

It's a good thing

 

[kinggath]

Backing up the sentiments in this, a public discord server is not on my agenda.

I don't disagree that it can be useful, but I have never been a part of any public Discord server that didn't need regular moderation. I have very limited time and am trying to do a lot for the community already, adding a real time support role on top of it all is not in the cards.

During the first 3 months after Sim Settlements came out, I was responding to comments and helping people in as close to real-time as I could, and I nearly burnt out. Will not repeat that again, and I won't ask any of my team to do the same.

I've tried on multiple occasions to gather a team of moderators large enough to even field all of the support questions on a daily basis, and have not been successful. If we're unable to accomplish that, I don't see finding enough moderators to handle support questions AND keep a real-time server troll-free being feasible.

While your experiences may have shed a more positive light on public Discords, mine (and clearly others in this thread) have not, and I only have my own experiences to build on. And my experience tells me a public Discord server would require more energy and time than I have to give.

All that said, for the folks that are passionate about Sim Settlements and develop content for it, or contribute to Patreon, they do get access to fairly regular support on our Developer and Supporter Discord channels, respectively. Those people have all shown each other that they are in it for the long haul, so it's rare that anyone there doesn't get near-instant support from each other (or myself, time-permitting).

 

[Whisper]

Having burned out doing support on IRC channels, it requires huge amounts of time and energy. <_<