I usually don't bother replying to anything you say. You've never once accepted that another viewpoint could exist, much less changed your mind as a result of a single criticism or adopted a single feature request as necessary at any point.
I'm glad you chose to respond. Though I certainly don't agree that I have not accepted any of your viewpoints and I know I have certainly changed my mind more than once on this board, even when discussing FG. I would ask if you have not already made up your mind in regards to what I might say and therefore don't actually consider what I do say.
Case in point, not a single point I raised was even acknowledged, everything I said was absolutely 100% (or 99% lol citation please) incorrect, and I am alone in my opinion that improvements can and should be made.
Except I agreed that creating highly automated rulesets is daunting and time consuming. I just disagree as to the reason why. I also think I acknowledged your points by responding to them with my perspective. I think most of the time consuming elements come from automating the actual rules. Figuring out the coding logic for the rules, and particularly all the exceptions and use cases for each rule. Whereas it seems you think coding RPG rulesets would be easy if only their was a GUI ruleset builder? I could be wrong as to why I think rulesets take time to develop, but I don't see you countering any of the reasons I've stated (here and multiple times before).
But I'll point out that at in least one instance, the 2nd Ed ruleset, was aided by the advancement (no, the PUSH) by a skilled developer who stepped in, ignored the gatekeepers and territorial pissing, and patiently but consistently pushed for answers that weren't ever made available in the documentation, but rather held in the heads of a few information hoarders who argue that digging through a decade of forum posts is a rite of passage any ruleset coder should endure. I think it's more like big fish in a little pond keeping the api and tooling obscure.
Oh, and that didn't happen *this year*, it's happened over *several* years. Authoring can't always be easy, but it shouldn't take *years* to refine a system like 2ed on a platform that has three other versions of D&D already. At least not by someone competent, on a platform that's *designed* for building rulesets and has *fully functional examples* of D&D games to examine and/or crib from.
For reference, Vodokar's AD&D ruleset project was announced January 8th, 2017 and was based upon the Castles & Crusades ruleset and last supported May 9, 2017. This hints at some of the challenges any ruleset developer faces. (And can be seen again with the WOIN ruleset challenges as well.)
Celestian's AD&D Core ruleset was initially posted April 13, 2017 and is what became the official 2E ruleset this year. So, roughly 2 years to become official, but the ruleset was functional from announcement, and we can only make assumptions on how long it took him to get a functional ruleset, but since he implies he did not like Vodokar's version, it is likely he began after January 9th, 2017. So maybe 3 months? Though I would normally expect much longer than that, I have nothing but speculation to suggest he took longer than that to get a working ruleset out to the community.
As for 'gatekeeping', 'territorial pissing' etc. that is all one plausible explanation. But certainly not the only one. Rather I see it as a developer looking at the landscape, figuring out what he needed to get a ruleset he wanted, and doing it without drama. And then supporting and enhancing it over a period of years. Years in which from one perspective he showed that the ruleset was stable, had a reliable developer to maintain it, and years in which SmiteWorks could approach WotC and get a license to release it. You do understand that this is the first VTT or non-TSR platform to actually publish anything more than PDFs of in a digital format for almost anything from 2E? Do you think it just took a week or two to get a license from WotC? I bet that took 18 months working with an existing partner with a strong and positive relationship to get such a license.
So, even if one could get it so that a highly automated ruleset in FG could be built in a few months (which by Celestian's work indicates it might already be possible), the difficult part is going to be getting a license for it from the IP holder if you want more than a community ruleset. Look at all the demand for a StarWars ruleset and official content. But that is in such a legal quagmire than even the IP holders don't want to bother trying to figure out how they might license a digital product further. Then look at many of the 3PP's who simple don't want to license their products to a VTT (or anything digital beyond PDFs).
Let me also add, I think time and again those 'gatekeepers' with the secret knowledge you talk about. They are not gatekeeping, they do indeed have this knowledge, and they all demonstrated time and again that they are willing to share the knowledge on the forums, the wiki, the developer guide and in You Tube videos. Sure, much of the documentation of this knowledge is outdated, and may be challenging to find. But what you want, concise, consolidated and up to date documentation is not something that comes free, or is maintained without effort.
Who do you expect to provide this documentation you desire? The community volunteers who know the info? What do they get out of doing something they do not enjoy doing? What motivation is there for them to do it? Instead of creating anther ruleset extension for MoreCore, or creating another DOE extension, or publishing another module for the DMsGuild, they would get kudos and thanks from you and others. Each volunteer gets to decide where they spend their free-time, and who gets to judge if they spend that time well or not? I mean if you or one of these other potential community developers wanted to, you could generate the documentation for the community you desire, but I don't see any of those vocal about what such a thing stepping up and actually doing it, just complaining they don't have what they want. (Sure sure, it might take you 10 times longer than a 'gatekeeper' to create such documentation, but if you want it bad enough, you can do it. I have faith in your abilities.)
Now, should SmiteWorks provide the documentation? Maybe. They too have limited resources and have to judge what to spend those resources on. I think it was pretty obvious for years now that the current FG architecture had to be changed, or the software and community would die a slow death of obsolescence. But, in the end what would have them not do that they have done so that they would have the resources to create and update this documentation you desire? No doubt there would be benefits to SW with such documentation, but, would it be of higher return value than what they have chosen to do?
To me, SW seems that a majority of the time they make the right decisions for the continued health and growth of SW and the FG community. I don't see them making screw ups like the Orr Group or Electronic Arts or so many other gaming companies seem to have a history of doing.
As to the backward compatibility issue, I completely misrepresented myself on that. I'm not saying backward compatibility shouldn't have been a thing. I'm saying they could've done that AND vastly improved the experience. Nothing that is accomplished with the current (ancient) design principles can't be achieved using more modern sensibilities. Like other options for layout than absolute positioning, or a separation of concerns (like layout items and db objects?), or not having 14 sizes of png files in order to scale UI elements, etc.
I guess it's because following along with the "backward compatibility" discussion, it seems not so much that there's backward compatibility (which is sensible), but a direct translation of all the limitations, quirks, and shortcomings as a result of the screaming demands that nothing move forward from a vocal number (way less than hundreds, btw) of traditionalists that don't want anything to change.
Sure, at what cost? Another 12 or 16 months of FGU development? I have no idea how long what you want would add to the development cycle. But, FGU has been in dire need for years now. And over the last 6 months has become painfully obvious the network architecture has needed to be changed to simple allow people to use the software. The mandating of IPv6 and the ISP congregating of IPv4 addresses has made solving these issues urgent if not critical.
Now, I also have faith that once FGU launches, SW will continue to make improvements to it. Just like they have with FGC. But, I also suspect such improvements will be no where near fast enough for some critiques. Though I still have faith SW will make the right decisions for the majority of users.
As for 'demands that nothing move forward'.. that's simply an exaggeration. Their are those (myself included) who like the UI as is and don't want to see major changes to it. I would loathe to see some sort of menu driven UI. But all of those grognards look forward to and regularly praise SW for their continue enhancements to the program over the years.
There is a difference between change, and then complaining that they are not making the changes you want.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope there's no XML schema available 15 years in because they're moving on to something amazing, and not just because six grognards scream it isn't necessary or useful to provide testing/validation and that directing folks to a vbulletin board full of 7 year old posts on how to use notepad++ and "save backups and copy to new folders" version control is some kind of best practice *might* contain a nugget of advice that isn't deprecated or simply broken.
Then volunteer your time to develop and document a better way than vbulletin and NPP. I'm sure the community would be very grateful for such a contribution.
Changing engines was dramatic, and the Unity ecosystem allows them to substantially improve the FG authoring ecosystem as well without requiring them to reinvent any wheels. There's just zero reason why the ruleset or module authoring tasks should require relying on third party software being written to handle the process of formatting text.
As pointed out, it doesn't. I have authored FG modules completely inside of FG. And one of those modules has become a best seller on the DMsGuild.
And, since then SW has actually made significant improvements to the authoring tools within FG. Sure, in some situations and use cases the community tools are a better way to author content, but they are not required, nor are they the only way. (Unless you consider Reference Manual, which I don't consider a requirements for most modules).
But, ya know, any change proposed by a non 12-year-veteran is met with a stone wall of "why absolutely everything you said is wrong, I will not concede a single point" and I imagine that kind of environment can weigh pretty heavily on smiteworks, or bend their development process in a direction (everything will stay the same forever) that really just...sucks.
Funny there. Exaggerating again. Assuming you mean me, I've only been using FG for about 4 years (May 2015). Assuming you mean anyone else you are simply wrong. SW has often made developer changes at the request of new developers, like Celestian and Ken L to name a few.
Is the community less than welcoming when a new person jumps in and immediately starts demanding changing or saying everything is screwed up? And when that person obviously has taken no time to learn why things are the way they are and how to work within the system? Sure.
But that is expected behavior in any ecosystem.
Part of what I do is consulting. I get dropped into new companies and ecosystems all the time. If I took the attitude of immediately demanding things change to what I want based upon my experience, I would have no credibility. You are dealing with people and systems. Both are complex with many moving parts. You have to understand why things are the way they are and understand the implications of the changes you want before you will have any credibility or your change requests will be seen with any validity.
Nice post. I hope they make everything easier to accomplish continuous improvement makes things better for everyone.
Don't worry. SW has a ten year track record of continuous improvement.
