Future of TeamSpeak

[numma_cway]

Well, yeah. That user totally didn't understand what he was talking about. If he pays the 100 bucks for an AAL, he can take donations. 300 dollars for a website is ridiculous, same for 600 for a TS server. You can run TeamSpeak (in the size of an AAL) and a static website (like most clans don't have a forum nowadays) on a VPS with 128 MiB RAM for 1 euro a month. Or you spend 3 euros a month and can install a dynamic website and a game server on it. But one does not spend 1000 dollars a year on that.

Different topic:
Ventrilo actually did release Ventrilo 4. I didn't download it and based on the info on their website, I have no idea what it is. No v4 server software is available and no company seems to host v4, so where does on rent a server? Instructions are available for v2 only. So yeah, I have no clue what this is all about. I don't think this poses any threat to TeamSpeak or Discord.

[MastricX]

As the title states our HUGE community can no longer function under the ts3 business model anymore. By this i mean $100 freaken dollars a year for the ability to have more then 32 people supported!! rubbish!! Not to mention the fact that ALL gaming communities survive on donations/out of pocket alone. But if we are to support more then 32 people we cant bring in money to keep our server running? WTF!. But that's not all folks in order to "qualify" pfft for a license we must have a domain and e mail but not a free e mail nooooo we have to pay for an e mail domain too???? again WTF!!

As it stands now for the last year we have been in a fight with ts3 to get them to wake up!! But we are met with their frankly nazi rules "papers please"!! and we are sick and tired of it period.... We love ts3 we really do but this is frankly BULLSH!T and we have had enough! so here is the math for us to maintain a ts3 server with 512 slots. Tell me if this is stupid we think it is so here goes.

domain=20$ per year
website=$300 per year
TS3 license= $100 per year
ts3 server rental= $50 per month x12=$600 per year
We are not allowed to take donations at a loss of in 2016 $3,200 (give or take and ALL money goes to our community and not in our pockets)

soooooo.....

$20+$300+$100+$600=$1020 dollars per year!! add the loss of money from donations total cost $1020+3,200=$4020!!!


OR------>Discord=FREE

...


WAKE UP TS3 we are leaving and so are thousands more.

Dang, you are taking yourselves to the cleaners. Aim for this, easily done, could even save another $30.
Domain = 8$ per year
Website = $60 per year
TS3 License = $100 per year
TS3 Server Rental = $60 per year

We run both Discord and TeamSpeak, TeamSpeak is used for important gaming, like raids. Discord is used for recruiting in PUBG type games and text chat.

[Trunkz Jr]

Our community still fully uses Teamspeak, we usually touch 80-90 players a day, 108 players last night (weekend). We do pay a good amount for website (200+ a year) but use https://tserverhq.com/ to run our own which isn't too much. We've raised enough money to get our own Trademark to protect our name + logo as well.

I think eventually tho we will probably move to discord when they offer the things that make Teamspeak 3 great, honestly I see no future with Teamspeak they don't seem to have any news on what they plan to do to compete. For us it's not about the money (we have members that love our community and are willing to donate towards something if need be) but I can tell you right now I've been recruiting for 10 years strong (from the older EA Forums on Bad Company 2) and that 85% if not more of the people Looking for Groups on Playerunknown Steam forums are all Discord, I've never had so much trouble trying to bring in players for such a hot game.



This is a very common thing, which is sad because a large amount of people that use Discord, download it onto their computer which they could do the same for TS3. The times I think have changed and Discord is slowly offering more while Teamspeak changes just aren't that big enough to even care about. I mean wasn't Teamspeak released like 2008-2009? Isn't it about time we got a Teamspeak 4 or something? With no news in site, it's a sinking ship imo, if Discord can offer us the quality voice of TS3 (even if you had to pay monthly) and allow us to have groups to display our amount of awards earned and years served I can assure you we would be moving.

PS: We do have a Discord but it's only used if our TS3 goes down (which it rarely does), we do not encourage our people or even other communities to use both or else you might split the player base. If people love your community they will use what everyone is using but if they see (example) Battlefield players on Discord and DayZ on TS3 they start to wonder why don't they use Discord as well, once people start using discord you'll see much less acitivty on your website & forums so I wouldn't even let people have a chat section on discord or that turns into their new forums.

[Scratch.]

once people start using discord you'll see much less acitivty on your website & forums so I wouldn't even let people have a chat section on discord or that turns into their new forums.

Could be said the same about any alternative communication.
Our forums started to die out when everyone would have their main conversations on TS3 instead of the discussion threads. While our core users were about 40 or so regulars, a prime group of about 8+ would be using a ts3 server that we didn't own (we didn't run one). I think this ended up hurting statistics around new engagements, but this was over five years ago now.

We still use that Teamspeak server today. Forums/gameservers are dead though

[numma_cway]

200 dollars for a website? Do you pay someone who updates it?
I only know prices in Germany, which are <2 euros per year for the domain and like 20 to 40 euros a year for a server that can run a dynamic website and a TeamSpeak server.

Looks like TeamSpeak's problem is people paying ridiculous amounts of money and therefore considering TeamSpeak expensive...

Anyway, from the YaTQA download numbers, I cannot see any decline. (Spikes are dates when users are forced to update.)

[Toine]

You can use easily the chat server on your website, you just have to publish messages through serverquery interface and link the TS3 account to your forum account and you get the messages like this on TS3.

<14:07:38> "tchatbot": Toto say: hello world

You can also allow your users to generate login/pass for the serverquery and use their account instead of your admin serverquery account, so users can send their messages with their account from your forum.

<14:07:38> "Toto": hello world

[Schlumpi]

This is a very common thing, which is sad because a large amount of people that use Discord, download it onto their computer which they could do the same for TS3.

These days, you need to have this: A link that can be posted anywhere by anyone that, if clicked, does something invisible in background that makes the person who clicked the link connected to the Teamspeak server that was linked by that link. A zero-installation Teamspeak client that works seemlessly within the browser. This is state of the art, this is the kind of voip application that is expected by users.

I know, there is something like client identity, authentication and so on, but you have to work out a system that works without any interaction by the user. Not one click for 95% of the users; the defaults must work. The user just wants to talk. He doesn't want to or is even unable to install and configure things. If you need to dumb down the server and the permission system on the server to support these kind of users: do it! For heaven' sake, do it! Implement what users want and support them up to their capabilities, and their capabilities with computer handling lessens each year with each new generation of computer users, so you need to dumb down and automate software more and more.

If you can have a standalone installable client with more options, fine, but the default app these days must be zero-install and zero-configuration. It should just work without even one click of configuration, if the user set up his headset as default device or default communication device in Windows. Which is the default in Windows, if you plug in the headset.

A modern voip workflow must be this:
1. plug in headset
2. click on link in website
2.5 authenticate or connect as guest
3. talk

This is possible. I work in an enterprise that uses collaboration systems that work this way, so even guests can join immediately and seamlessly without any prerequisite on their client besides headset device and modern browser.

[Dimos]

These days, you need to have this: A link that can be posted anywhere by anyone that, if clicked, does something invisible in background that makes the person who clicked the link connected to the Teamspeak server that was linked by that link. A zero-installation Teamspeak client that works seemlessly within the browser. This is state of the art, this is the kind of voip application that is expected by users.

I know, there is something like client identity, authentication and so on, but you have to work out a system that works without any interaction by the user. Not one click for 95% of the users; the defaults must work. The user just wants to talk. He doesn't want to or is even unable to install and configure things. If you need to dumb down the server and the permission system on the server to support these kind of users: do it! For heaven' sake, do it! Implement what users want and support them up to their capabilities, and their capabilities with computer handling lessens each year with each new generation of computer users, so you need to dumb down and automate software more and more.

If you can have a standalone installable client with more options, fine, but the default app these days must be zero-install and zero-configuration. It should just work without even one click of configuration, if the user set up his headset as default device or default communication device in Windows. Which is the default in Windows, if you plug in the headset.

A modern voip workflow must be this:
1. plug in headset
2. click on link in website
2.5 authenticate or connect as guest
3. talk

This is possible. I work in an enterprise that uses collaboration systems that work this way, so even guests can join immediately and seamlessly without any prerequisite on their client besides headset device and modern browser.

110% This.


Teamspeak is just old and doesn't show much effort to change things.

I mean when I look at this TS3 marketing picture the first thing I think about is a IDE software/code editor. So much wasted space. So clunky.

[Lelling]

I think unless Teamspeak offers an in-browser solution the future of it isn't very bright.

Also, I'm not sure if the phone app still costs money (?) but it should be free - people want to connect with phones more and more today and on a platform where TS is still on equal footing as Discord, it seems to be shooting itself in the foot by charging money.

The world is changing and people don't want to download random bits of software anymore - more and more stuff is done in-browser. And we know that once people start using Discord they're more likely to also download it, but there's no way to hook people on Teamspeak right now because people will just flat-out refuse to join.

We run events on our Teamspeak every day and used to get over 100+ people to events easily, since discord came out, those numbers have halved and many similar communities have felt the same.

Luckily for Teamspeak, it's still superior in voice chat and the permission system, but with Discord upgrading regularly it's only a matter of time before it reaches the TS standards.

We need a browser solution - that's the future of TS if it wants to have one!

[Donaramu]

I don't need or want all that flash discord offers. I want something I can trust to be stable and not make millions selling my data... But I am not most. Most people will sell their data because they're told the server is free. Most people don't care about stable if they get pretty flashy bs. I am not most, nor are people of the people still using teamspeak... But because of our communities, we can't hold out forever... While I am not a hardcore recruiter like that Trunks guy, I also noticed it has become harder to recruit... I've just been lucky that I don't like 100 people in teamspeak, so we only recruit as needed. lol. But yea, still much harder.

[Dimos]

it seems to be shooting itself in the foot by charging money.

More like, in the face.

I don't need or want all that flash discord offers. I want something I can trust to be stable and not make millions selling my data... But I am not most. Most people will sell their data because they're told the server is free. Most people don't care about stable if they get pretty flashy bs. I am not most, nor are people of the people still using teamspeak... But because of our communities, we can't hold out forever... While I am not a hardcore recruiter like that Trunks guy, I also noticed it has become harder to recruit... I've just been lucky that I don't like 100 people in teamspeak, so we only recruit as needed. lol. But yea, still much harder.

And whats so bad about "flashy new things" ?

I pay for teamspeak, yet I have less features. Discord gets like one huge feature per month.

[RandomHost]

Discord has the advantage that it was developed when WebRTC had "matured" enough to be used in large-scale cloud-based products. Therefore, they are able to provide a consistent and more modern user experience across all platforms including web browsers since they developed the whole thing with browser based clients in mind.

TeamSpeak on the other hand is somewhat stuck with it's old-fashioned server / client model and QT based user interface because it's much older than Discord. On top of that, my impression is that the TeamSpeak developers have always been more interested in shaping the software the way THEY think it should be like rather than actually listening to user feedback.

Staying in touch with their "community" is a big problem. To this date, most people don't have a clue what "MyTeamSpeak" even is because TeamSpeak failed to promote that somewhat "promising" new feature set appropriately. Discord got a dedicated "What's new" window with comprehensible summaries of new or changed features which affect the user. All that TeamSpeak got is a plain text "changelog" that was hidden inside the "Help" menu and an annoying 1995 style news ticker in the status bar that takes ages to scroll to the somewhat interesting parts and is only updated every couple of months.

The MyTeamSpeak platform is a problem on it's own. The idea of having everything "in sync" and being able to extend the software with sort of an "in-app workshop" is a great idea (as Steam has proven with it's cloud savegames and workshop integration), but it's destroyed by the fact that they did almost nothing to actually support developers who want to start developing for the TeamSpeak platform.

There is almost no documentation, the review process takes ages and plugins / themes / icon packs / whatever disappear from MyTeamSpeak completely while being "in review". That's a major design-flaw from a developer's point of view.

To me it seems that TeamSpeak is missing a clear direction where they want to go and what they want to do in order to be able to keep up with their more modern competitors.

[fspower]

The MyTeamSpeak platform is a problem on it's own. The idea of having everything "in sync" and being able to extend the software with sort of an "in-app workshop" is a great idea (as Steam has proven with it's cloud savegames and workshop integration), but it's destroyed by the fact that they did almost nothing to actually support developers who want to start developing for the TeamSpeak platform.

Sync is nice and all, but I have never had the desire to sync Teamspeak addons or identity. It is simpler to either: ask someone to give you back your rights; or give them yourself in case you are the server admin. Reinstalling your OS seems like a rare case to justify the sync thing. Same goes for addons, although I am not using many addons myself, so there might be a usecase there.

[Fireside]

Today marks a sad occasion for me. Like so many in this thread, I've been a long time TS user and fan. Hosting or renting TS servers since early TS2 days. I've come here today in the hope of finding some news about the next big thing for TS or anything about how they plan to combat what looks like a massive loss of market share from where I'm standing.

I guess I'm not even terribly surprised to find this is it.. Nothing from the company, just a few threads like this one, written by fans. Occasionally scolded by staff like Nope!. I can accept that things move on, but I am disappointed that the company has been unable to develop the product in a way that it might keep up with the times. And I blame the devs for failing to listen to their community or support the 3rd party developers who tried valiantly over the years to create the functionality through plugins that people want. The staff on here are rarely even polite, let alone helpful.

It doesn't matter how loyal I am to the brand. Or how much I value the privacy and security aspects of running my own server. Without a community to use the resource, there is simply no point paying to host a server. After all, this is all just about talking to people.

[zzzkeil]

This is quite an interesting update. The manpower performed in the 1.5 years since the last major release 3.0.13 seems to have been spent with:

85% making legal to produce the new license agreement. This has become quite a document! Still looking for a translation service to translate incomprehensible legal gibberish into english (or german).
10% implementing a new licence enforcement system into the server
4% bugfixing
1% new or changed features within the server

Continuing this way, Teamspeak will perish, and apps like Discord will flourish.

You are uphold by existing communities, but there is no incentive for new and rising communities to choose Teamspeak over Discord.

How long will or can TeamSpeak Systems GmbH survive, if the don´t release there own new and real Competitor to other Products like Discord.......