As mentioned, this group is composed of techies who have an innate distrust of proprietary platforms, and the Reddit debacle (following so close on the heels of Twitter's ongoing debacles) was enough to tip the scales against continuing to operate the Discord. For groups of non-techies who care about convenience over all else, sadly I just think you're going to have to wait (or contribute yourself!) until Element/Matrix adds more UX polish.
That said, one thing that did help a lot was having the server host a default client. Anyone can still connect to the server using any client they want, but now they can also go to the server's URL and get a good client without any hassle. We chose Cinny as the default client because it's solid and extremely familiar to any Discord users.
That said, one thing that did help a lot was having the server host a default client. Anyone can still connect to the server using any client they want, but now they can also go to the server's URL and get a good client without any hassle. We chose Cinny as the default client because it's solid and extremely familiar to any Discord users.