Babble: An embedded chat

#1

Hi everybody,

We’ve recently been testing a new chat amongst the @team, and are now expanding the test to other groups within the community.

This new chat is called Babble. Although not as slick as Discord, it offers a few important advantages:

  1. We own all the data and history, which means we are not at the mercy of an external company.

    • This might not be an obvious issue, but other communities have lost their Discord servers, members, and chat history before. This is always a risk when any 3rd party owns your community’s data.

  2. The community can self-moderate via the post-flagging system.

  3. It can eventually be hooked directly into the game.

We still have Discord for now, but we will be slowly moving specific groups and channels onto Babble to continue our testing. As always, your input is welcome in #support:feedback, #support:questions, and #support:bugs.

Thanks.

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#2

Just don’t PM anyone with it. You can’t actually see them, at least on phone unless you specifically look up a person, and hope it was them that sent it.

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#3

That’s probably why I have a notification I cant get rid of…

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#4

Ditto

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#5

Xenon slaps @TheBigOne around a bit with a large trout

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#6

Soooo can I use it now? @moderators

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#7

It should be usable for everybody now. If it doesn’t work for you, please post any relevant details in #support:bugs.

Thanks!

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#8

@I_like_pie… I have to admit, I’m not convinced by babble. I understand the motivations for adopting something other than Discord, but this feels like a step backwards…

For me, Discord works as it is a native app, meaning I can get alerts on the go. A pure browser-based chat doesn’t seem to be able to offer the same capability. It feels as though adopting an industry standard tool such as Discord would mean you can focus on the game…?

I get that a consolidated community forum and chat feature would be amazing… but for me, Babble just doesn’t seem great in terms of functionality, or use ability.

I appreciate that “I don’t like it” is never useful feedback…!

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#9

It’s useful feedback if it’s constructive. :slight_smile:

I admit that Babble falls short in its current form. I am exploring ways to help this, including seeing how viable it is to use it (and/or Discourse) purely as backend for a new in-game communications interface.

Despite Discord, people still do use our in-game messaging system quite a bit, so there is clearly a need for an integrated experience. It wouldn’t have to be complicated, just accessible.

Fwiw, I don’t ever intend to shut down our Discord server; it’s especially useful if/when the site goes down. The change I see is to what extent can we move those conversations into the game. Babble or otherwise, there is a lot of value in doing so.

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#10

I keep wanting to read it as Babbel, I guess because I keep hearing ads for it on the streaming stations I listen to. B A B… B E L DOT COM. Is Babble a European-made learning app? :stuck_out_tongue:

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#11

I do like the idea of using Discord as a backend.

For me, one of the key benefits of the forums in the “old” incarnation were the ability to create threads.

Right now on Discord, most of the chat drowns out things that I should have read… so it does come with its own negative points.

It’s almost as if building a game is easy, but building the community is much more difficult…!

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#12

So, I think we can all see this is a failed test. The proof is in the lack of activity.

I do think there is something here eventually, but we will put this on hold until it is ready to be directly integrated into the game.

Our Discord server remains in use.

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#13

Failure is too strong a word. How could we expect to be using something new when we had zero idea how to even access it?

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#14

That’s precisely the problem; accessing it was clunky and using it was not much better.

“Zero idea” is a bit much, but even amongst those of us who used it, it just didn’t work so well.

There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging failures. It’s not going away forever, just being put on hold until it can be made more user friendly.

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#15

My point was that you posted about Babble and said it should be usable but did not tell us how to access it to use it. Maybe in private you told others, but not in here.

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#16

There was a prominent bullhorn icon on both Desktop and Mobile. I also @mentioned people, which provides a direct notification.

I suppose I could have provided an access guide, but if a feature needs that level of instruction just to try it, it isn’t well designed.

Several people did try it though, and nobody really liked it. I don’t think an access guide would have changed that. For those who tried it and then ignored it, the ability to access the chat clearly wasn’t the issue.

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#17

Ah. I see. Saw that icon but had no clue what it was for and never investigated it.

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#18

Babble is gone now? Removed? :-/

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#19

Just temporarily. :slight_smile:

I may give it another attempt in its current form if I can think of a proper setup. @Terror_of_the_Night does have a point in that it maybe was’t properly “promoted”.

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#20

Well, yeah, I love Discord. But sadly, you don’t own data on chat there. It’s on discord company’s server, not yours. I understand there is need for your own chat run on your own server. It’s good idea.

Yeah, everyone need to be aware of it. I think it’s tough to promote it. Good luck.

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