Derin

It doesn’t.

It has features for video/voice calling - E.g. Background blurring and stuff like that. It just lacks the stuff that would make it usable for gaming.

Works great if you don’t want/need PTT.

I meant for video. The classic coturn connection is fine for voice - though I wish it had push to talk. 🥲

Or they could choose to host their rooms on some existing server, I guess.

I mean, that’s sort of the point, right? Don’t host unless you want to.

There are lots of great, long lasting servers with open registration out there. This blog post has some good examples:

• envs.net
• tchncs.net

“something running” - do you mean the server binary? Because, yes, if you’re using your own server you do need it to be running. Same for the client, I guess? I guess I don’t really understand what you meant by that.

Some obscure service relied on it as a support channel and last thing I remember is that matrix server stopped working.

That’s an issue with any federated service, yeah. If the server is down, it’s down. But as a bonus, unlike Discord, when a server is down you can just move to another. So, honestly, I see that as a boon.

As far as p2p goes, there was an effort to make that a while back, but it looks like people lost interest.

Though, personally I think federation is good enough. That’s why I’m on Lemmy/the Fediverse, after all.

Technically speaking, Element does have “voice and video rooms” available as an experimental feature, but until it’s out of prime time it totally makes sense to wait.

Gotta remember that Element/New Vector (the company spearheading Matrix’s development) is getting funded mostly by orgs who are looking for a replacement for internal comms like Slack or WhatsApp.

This is outdated and no longer preferred, it now has its own internal system called Element Call (aka an implementation of MatrixRTC).

Yeah, I’ve done the same and it works quite well.

The only thing I was really missing from Discord was Ai noise cancellation like Krisp - and I got that by installing Easy Effects

The issue has been there for ages. Sadly gamers aren’t really Element’s target audience.

Makes more sense to wait for MatrixRTC to enter the spec cleanly, then wait for a custom Discord-like client to implement it.

God, I just wish they’d add a fucking Push to Talk option to a client… Any client 😅

Only option available is Matrix. It has its problems, but they’re being worked on.

Right now it lacks the gaming/voice chat parts of discord - so for an OSS alternative for that part of discord specifically, there’s Mumble.

For everything else, Matrix is a good alternative. Just be sure to pick a discord-like client. (E.g. Commet or Cinny)

(it’s a joke)