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.
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 stripped 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. 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 friend 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.
Also, there's no text. Only voice. Not even any anemojis.
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 a list where you might need to bust out your credit card.
If you like being a 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 role-play
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 Stoat, 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, Fluffy Chat
or Cine, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
But you can mingle with users from anyone since they all run on Matrix.
Matrix is the one that's recommended most often though and I'm gonna have more on that
a little bit later. Stoat, 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 Stoat, 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, uh, corporate software, right?
But hey, if you're willing to live with some of the trade-offs that come with using the
free tier, you can have a great organized chat experience with threaded conversations
as well 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? Because 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 gonna 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 two 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 Comet, 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, because 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 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.
If you guys enjoyed this video, go check out the time that we compared other VR headsets
to the unreleased Steam frame. 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.