D&D (2024) BG3 and the new VTT

[Vaalingrade]

Given that monetization was literally one of the first things out of their mouth re: the 3D VTT (honest at least, I guess!), I think they're going to go pretty goddamn hard, at least on DMs, who I suspect they think are "whales", from the get-go, with the 3D VTT.

They've specifically said they think players aren't being 'leveraged' enough.

Presumably that they aren't being abused to the point of needing Hardison, Parker, Elliot and Sophie to come help them out.

 

[tetrasodium]

Of any of the potential pitfalls... this point I think does have a bit of merit for at least a certain segment of the gaming population. We could almost think of it as the "Uncanny Valley" of online Dungeons & Dragons. The same way we consumers were more readily able to accept cartoon CGI of human faces in Pixar films versus attempts at 'photorealistic' human faces in other films. There does come that tipping point. The more WotC tries to make their VTT look like a video game engine... the stronger the judgement will be if they fall short, especially among those players for whom they lean more heavily in the video game space versus the tabletop space.

Now granted... there will probably be large swathes of people who are primarily from the tabletop space who won't care about the graphic fidelity one way or the other. So long as the player communication is strong, the rules implementation is on point, the UI and piece movement is easy and intuitive, and the whole "lobby" of the game to find tables and players online is a positive experience... how the graphics look for them will be several places down on their list of concerns. While comparing the VTT to BG3 would have it be seen as a pale imitation... the 3D models of the WotC VTT versus the pogs of our currently available VTTs could be a very wonderful upgrade for many players-- especially if you could customize your character miniatures.

So I agree there is a potential risk here for WotC by going full 3D... but I don't think we can say one way or another yet whether it was ultimately a mistake to make that jump.

It takes some fairly nontrivial hardware to handle maps over a certain scale* even with those "2d pogs." Wotc's VTT was using multiple ultra high end laptops with each of them clocking in with a several thousand dollar pricetag. When asked if the vtt would work with lower end hardware they literally asked if that was a feature people would want. Even if they get the hardware requirements down to just needing a mere high end laptop when released for each player it's still dramatically more than any other vtt uses today. It won't matter how many players might consider 3d to be a "wonderful upgrade" if they can't usefully run it. the incredible 4e Surface VTT techdemo was years ahead & even today could still be a serious contender if finished... but it depended on a 10,000$ table sized bit of hardware & never had a chance.

* the scale & conditions tipping things will vary from vtt to vtt mapsize/dynamic lighting/etc

 

[Ondath]

The company -- probably well-funded -- that makes a robust VTT truly easy is going to do great business, because there are a lot of customers out there who find the existing VTTs merely "good enough" or -- probably many more people -- not worth the enormous hassle.

The sad thing is, I think Owlbear Rodeo was basically this. Very simple, barebones tabletop, neat box for 3D animated dice, intuitive and not-too-detailed tools for fog, tokens and map grids. It hosted all the images on your browser's cache, so you didn't need to worry about hosting space or anything either. It doesn't really automate anything, sure, but I think it captured the pen & paper, friends around a table kind of TTRPG experience really well.

And they just threw that away (supposedly they'll release the source code of the old version some point in the future, but no exact date for now) and went for a detailed VTT that has character sheets, automation and so on. Also, they now host everything on their servers, so the free version is limited to only 200 MB of storage. It turned me off completely from their product.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The sad thing is, I think Owlbear Rodeo was basically this. Very simple, barebones tabletop, neat box for 3D animated dice, intuitive and not-too-detailed tools for fog, tokens and map grids. It hosted all the images on your browser's cache, so you didn't need to worry about hosting space or anything either. It doesn't really automate anything, sure, but I think it captured the pen & paper, friends around a table kind of TTRPG experience really well.

And they just threw that away (supposedly they'll release the source code of the old version some point in the future, but no exact date for now) and went for a detailed VTT that has character sheets, automation and so on. Also, they now host everything on their servers, so the free version is limited to only 200 MB of storage. It turned me off completely from their product.

Yeah, and that may be the issue here: Doing it right isn't as profitable as doing it wrong.

 

[ninjayeti]

The sad thing is, I think Owlbear Rodeo was basically this.

Have you tried the new version OR? The baseline version is still dead simple, it just allows for adding extensions to do more stuff if you want. If you just want the bare bones, it has not gotten significantly more complex.

Yeah, and that may be the issue here: Doing it right isn't as profitable as doing it wrong.

Well, in the case of Owlbear Rodeo in think the issue was that doing something for free and asking people to support a Patreon is less profitable than a subscription model.