You were the chosen one.
It was said that you would unite gamers all under one platform, not divide them.
Bring all services together under this one roof. Give me your Face ID.
Please. Wait, what am I saying?
There was a world before Discord, and with Discord announcing that it will be
demanding government photo ID from a significant number of users as a way to
verify their age, whether that's today or in the future, you can see that by
this search trend, people are wanting to leave. They just don't know where to go,
which is why we are going to be breaking down the best Discord features into four
different categories and identifying three solutions that could be a
replacement for you. Depending on how you use Discord with some honorable
mentions along the way. At the end, we will see if any stand out across the
board as the best all-in-one replacement because, spoiler alert, you might have
to compromise on a feature or two in the name of retaining your privacy. But, you
know what I'll never compromise on? Are these segues to our sponsor.
Previously on The Coding Chronicles.
Where am I? In the realm of Boots THE BEAR DEV.
ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE BEST WAY to learn Python, Boots the Bear Wizard?
>> You will learn to code the hard way. My
name is Boots.
Watch to the end for a new episode.
The four categories that we have decided to focus on today were what we deemed
were Discord's most important offerings for most people. That's voice calling,
text channels, community, and usability. Obviously, there are other important
features like forums and screen sharing, customization, and hey, maybe even the
shop if that's your bag. But, these four strip Discord down to its roots and
highlight why it ended up dominating the market in the first place. So, let's
start with probably the most important one on this list, voice calling. Whether
it's with your close friends or strangers in a community server, our
three programs that we're going to highlight need to prioritize clear
communication first with minimal drops or stutters. And Steam Chat is a real
contender here, featuring high enough bit rate for a casual conversation,
group voice calls, and even channels for these calls if you want to set up
separate chats for multiple teams. The biggest complaint among Steam Chat users
is that it has a bit of a higher latency than Discord, meaning while your calls
are basically in real time, there is a
bit more of a delay. Which can be awkward. Like that.
For the best audio quality, you guys should check out Mumble. It's kind of an
OG and its UI also kind of shows it.
Like Discord, you can join multiple friends servers if you want to hop
between different friend groups, and it even features in-game overlays to see
who is chatting. Unlike Discord though, Mumble has positional audio. So, if you
want to hear where your friends are in game. The catch?
Hopefully one of your friends likes being a server admin because while there
are guides to help, the setup process requires you to get your hands dirty.
TeamSpeak can also require users to get their hands dirty, but it is a lot
easier than Mumble and is probably the closest looking to Discord out of these
three. But, don't think that means it'll be an easy adjustment as it behaves
completely different. Being a voice chatting focused software, you have to,
for example, be in a voice call in order
to type text into the chat. Not to mention it's the first on our list where
you might need to bust out your credit card. If you like being the server
admin, you'll probably end up needing to buy a license before you can host more
than 31 friends. And speaking of friends, we need to talk about one of
Discord's biggest advantages, and that's
community. While Discord is a bit confusing to start out for the first
timers, There is no denying that having thousands of different servers and
communities to easily join and be a part of is incredible. Whether it's a Linux
community to help you troubleshoot or even a financial advice group to help
you plan your retirement, there is probably a Discord server for just about
anyone these days. As for our alternatives to the community aspect,
TeamSpeak gets another mention here. If you're wanting to game with like-minded
individuals and probably go hard on the roleplay in Arma, TeamSpeak is perfect
for that. Sure, it lacks persistent text chats or the forums like Discord has,
but if I'm being honest, Discord forums suck. They often result in three people
answering the same handful of questions because of how terrible they are to
navigate, but let's get back on track. At the moment, TeamSpeak appears to have
the greatest amount of people dedicated to their communities. But, other than
TeamSpeak, that's it. In order for an application to have a community-focused
side, there needs to be community.
And while there are multiple applications that could be great
community hubs or seem to have potential like Stote, Matrix, and Circle just to
name a few, until they see mass adoption from users, they will never really have
the same community momentum Discord has captured. But, if you are looking for
something that is focusing on text channels and the ability to send
messages, organize chats, and send memes with your small community or friend
group, those options I just mentioned are incredible for that. Matrix is one
that can be self-hosted, is open source, features end-to-end encryption, and
allows you to choose from a variety of client-side interfaces because Matrix is
actually just the back end of this messaging service. To connect to
someone's host server, you will need a separate app like Element, FluffyChat,
or Cinny, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, but you can mingle
with users from any one since they all run on Matrix.
Element is the one that's recommended most often though, and I'm going to have
more on that a little bit later. Revolt, formerly known as Revolt, seems to have
a lot of potential. It is in its very early stages, but features community-run
servers, and of course, private DMs and group chats, which they boast very
proudly are secure and confidential. There are some people online expressing
doubt and concern for Revolt, whether it's because of the name change or just
the small user base, but I think it's a program that is worth trying just to see
if it fits your friend group's needs. Our final text-focused application is
Slack, which What? Corporate software, right? But hey, if
you're willing to live with some of the tradeoffs that come with using the free
tier, you can have a great organized chat experience with threaded
conversations, as well as as many free users as you want. And besides, if you
really need more than 90 days worth of message history or larger group calls
and more app integrations, their monthly plan is cheaper than what Discord Nitro
costs, which is kind of funny, right? Cuz you know that if you tried to
convince your Nitro-using friends to pay for Slack, that they would look at you
like you're crazy while their profile badge does a little spin in the background.
Yeah, it's kind of a touchy subject, which I'm going to go on a small tangent
before I get to our final category. I think going a paid route is a totally
valid option. If you or anyone in your friend group really doesn't want to be
the server admin worrying about self-hosting or maybe even accidentally
giving out your IP because of the peer-to-peer nature of some of these
applications, I think it could be worth paying money
to a service if everyone in your group can get behind it. What I would
encourage though, is if you and your friends are upset at Discord and the
whole age verification change, you should cancel any paid services you are
using with them, whether that's Nitro or server boosts. The only chance that we
have at these big companies realizing that what they did doesn't really sit
well with us, the users. We need to hit them where it hurts, man, in their
earnings. Back onto our final category though, I don't even think I would put
Discord in the top three here. That's ease of use or usability. Sure, most of
you are probably used to it by now, but when it was first introduced, I remember
seeing a ton of guides online about how
to navigate the interface. Heck, today I even get confused when I can't find my
DMs before I remember I have to click on the little Discord logo in the top left.
Saying that, if you must have the exact
same interface as Discord because you're used to it, Fluxer, which is about 2
months old, is basically a Discord clone. It's currently in beta, but is
open source and even allows people to self-host their servers on their own
hardware, which unlocks more features than the non-self-hosted free tier
servers. A big downside is no mobile support. Yet, their website does show a
screenshot of what appears to be a mobile app, so fingers crossed on that
one. Matrix pops up here again, but your experience will vary depending on what
client interface you're using. For Element, it's pretty straightforward and
most people will probably not have too much difficulty getting it to work. And
there's even Comment, which looks a lot like Discord if you are wanting that
again. This really does highlight the strengths of something like Matrix,
allowing people to have different experiences based on preferences, but as
someone who is currently going through the Linux challenge right now, sometimes
having 30 different ways to do something can introduce choice paralysis and ends
up doing more harm than good. Whether it's guides looking different because
you're using a different client app. The final choice for ease of use is Steam
Chat. Hey, it's back again, which at first glance is confusing, but when you
stop thinking of it as a Discord replacement and more of a standard
messaging app, it becomes second nature. Having tabs for different group chats or
individual messages is convenient and fast. And when you fully utilize the
Steam integration, cuz you know, it's Steam, being able to invite and join
people's games with ease is a huge plus. With all of that in mind, if we compare
all of the applications that we looked at today, I personally think that the best
all-in-one replacement is probably Steam Chat. Great voice communication, great
chatting experience, integrated well into gaming with the biggest downside
being the lack of a massive community outreach or a hub. But all of these apps
struggle with that because once again, if people aren't on these applications,
it makes it really difficult to mingle. Now, I am very aware that we probably
missed an almost infinite amount of other communication apps. So, please let
us know down below what some of your favorites are. And maybe if there's
enough, we can compile them all into a part two. There is some good news on the Discord
side. Discord did cut ties with Persona, which was the controversial service that
was going to be used for this face ID verification system, as well as delaying
the initial rollout date for this. So, public pressure does work. Just remember
that for when the next time they try something like this. Just like I will
always try to do a better and better segue to our sponsor.
Quickly. Quickly. Shh. It's about to start.
The Coding Chronicles.
Wait, so you want me to believe you're the real Boots The Bear Wizard and he's
not?
Yeah, okay. Larry.
Larry? No, no, no, no, no, NO. THE COUNCIL SAID YOU WERE DE- DEPRECATED.
NO. I'M STILL current enough to stop a
deceitful script kiddie from twisting the magic of this realm.
Boot.dev is the best way to learn to code.
By making it fun, helping you build real projects, and mastering back-end web
development.
Because the smartest way to learn is to make sure you're never bored.
Plus, you can use Codecademy to get 25% off your first month or year. NOW,
BEGONE.
UH SO, he's gone? For now. Something
tells me we haven't seen the last of Larry the lion lizard.
Lizard? Wizard. Ah, yeah. Uh your brain wants to go Come. Wha- What are you
doing? I'm going to find my hat.
If you guys enjoyed this video, go check out the time that we compared other VR
headsets to the unreleased Steam Deck. It was kind of a similar vibe where we
looked at the pros and cons of each of the headsets on the market and compared
them to what the Frame has to compete with.