VTTs Feel the Strain

Gamers are increasingly turning to virtual tabletops (VTT) to network with other players around the globe. Thanks to the pandemic, virtual gaming platforms are experiencing an unexpected surge that is stressing servers and causing lag. How are VTTs holding up?

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

With the pandemic pushing more and more people to shelter in place, gamers are using online tools to role-play with others when they can't game in person. The video game industry is already experiencing this surge, with Steam reaching 20 million concurrent online users, with 6.2 million in-game at the time. D&D Beyond's usage is up too: doubling its active users in the past few weeks with a threefold increase on its Discord server.

They're not the only ones experiencing increased interest. Ed Diana, owner of NBOS Software, which produces the free online gaming tool, Skwyre, noticed a change:

"There has been a slight uptick in sales of our mapping and notes applications, which I assume is due to people having some more free time to work on their campaigns. Hopefully people are finding world building to be a great way to keep their minds focused on something creative during this stressful time."

Joe Lesko, creator of Fabletop, saw a sharp increase:

"The number of new users has roughly tripled so far, but the system can handle much more than that, so we should be fine. With extra time at home, I've been working on some new features that players have been asking for."

Tobias Drewry, CEO at Mesa Mundi and the lead developer for D20PRO, definitely noticed an uptick in activity.

"D20PRO is not a web based application so resources used to create a game in D20PRO are retained on the GM/Host's computer. Additionally, D20PRO is only being impacted by networking issues related to ISP's rather than commercial server infrastructures. There is a learning curve to setting up D20PRO for remote play as it can suffer from aggressive firewall rules and the like, however, with a short amount of work to create an exception, our customers are nearly all up and running with a few odd-case exceptions. To help folks, our team is spending a lot more time watching and responding to our discord and forum support channels. A little one-on-one support is almost always appreciated!"

Like D20PRO, EpicTable has experienced an increase in interest but since it runs on the user's computer the load isn't a problem, according to John Lammers, the creator of EpicTable:

"Yes, there's been a noticeable uptick in EpicTable downloads, new customers, and active games. Handling the load is not a problem. EpicTable is a Windows app (though some play on Macs under Parallels or on Linux via Wine), so really, most of the work is done on the GM's and players' computers. The services that must be in the middle, like messaging and sharing of resources like maps, are minimally used; plus, they're cloud-based and scale automatically with the load."

Tom Lackemann, founder of AstralTabletop, saw tremendous growth in activity over the past weeks.

"This recent growth has been remarkable for our 3-person team to handle but we're going strong! We've been fueled by user feedback since the beginning and it's been great hearing from new users who are just starting to dip their toes into the online world of tabletop roleplaying."

Fantasy Grounds has seen a tenfold spike in users and Roll20 has seen an increase as well. Roll20 saw this coming, according to Amber Cook, Director of Business Development at Roll20:

"We have seen an increase in traffic as a result of people staying inside, and moving their in-person games online. We noticed a significant spike in traffic from Italy, Spain & other European countries and shortly thereafter in North America. Roll20 has seen a lot of growth in recent years, so we were already working on improving our efficiency & planning new features but the recent increase in traffic has caused us to speed up some of that work to accommodate new users. Our ever growing development team has dramatically reduced the speed at which our servers respond and our capacity to scale."

Whatever platform you choose, VTTs have been preparing for this moment. They're ready.

 

[teitan]

We will be using good ol' Skype for our Swords & Wizardry game starting in a few weeks until we can get back to our Waterdeep campaign. I didn't feel it was worth it to buy all the stuff for a month or two, 4-5 sessions to run Dragon Heist. Plus, ya know, I want my wife to experience what I played when I was a kid (14 year age gap) playing D&D. Pig FACED ORCS!!!

 

[Hussar]

We had a player not be able to connect to our Fantasy Grounds game yesterday. Never had any problems before, but, another player did notice significant lag on his account as well. So, yeah, I'm thinking that it was a server issue.

 

[Reynard]

We had a player not be able to connect to our Fantasy Grounds game yesterday. Never had any problems before, but, another player did notice significant lag on his account as well. So, yeah, I'm thinking that it was a server issue.

You are the server with FG, assuming you are still running Classic. My guess is general traffic might be cuasing folks with imperfect connections to drop out more.

 

[Hussar]

You are the server with FG, assuming you are still running Classic. My guess is general traffic might be cuasing folks with imperfect connections to drop out more.

It still needs to run through Fantasy Ground's servers though. There is no direct connection, otherwise the books would be easily transferred between users.

It wasn't a case of dropping out, it was a case of could not connect at all. Nothing had changed from the years we've been running this (note, I do run through Hamachi because of port forwarding issues) yet the player simply could not connect. Pings were going through, but, no matter what, he could not connect.

 

[Reynard]

It still needs to run through Fantasy Ground's servers though. There is no direct connection, otherwise the books would be easily transferred between users.

It wasn't a case of dropping out, it was a case of could not connect at all. Nothing had changed from the years we've been running this (note, I do run through Hamachi because of port forwarding issues) yet the player simply could not connect. Pings were going through, but, no matter what, he could not connect.

We have a player who drops out every time he goes idle, but I think that's a him issue. Otherwise we have been stable two nights a week.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

It still needs to run through Fantasy Ground's servers though. There is no direct connection, otherwise the books would be easily transferred between users.

It wasn't a case of dropping out, it was a case of could not connect at all. Nothing had changed from the years we've been running this (note, I do run through Hamachi because of port forwarding issues) yet the player simply could not connect. Pings were going through, but, no matter what, he could not connect.

As far as I know Fantasy Grounds Classic has nothing to do with Smiteworks servers expect for the storage of the IP alias. I used FG before they added the login to Smiteworks in the settings. I bought it from Steam. the books are stored on your machine in an encrypted files. These are decrypted in session and read by the DM client and uploaded to the player clients. You have no access to the encryption keys.
This is why there is a considerable upload on the DM network connection. Sufficient that when I was about half way through Princes of the Apocalypse I had to stop as at that time my network connection could not handle the upload of the shared rules modules and all the maps etc that had been shared with the players.

Network traffic has been so high since the pandemic that both Youtube and Netflix in Europe have reduced stream quality. I was watching the second half of Stranger Things season one last night and it was the first time since I got fiber broadband that I have seen Netflix buffering.

FGU will have more cloud dependence as iy is brokering the connection between the DM and players clients in some fashion

 

[TheSword]

I’m going to be honest. I was fairly dismissive of online portals feeling it was overly complicated and fiddley. After playing three or four sessions I can truly say I’m a convert.

In many ways roll20 is easier to DM than a standard game which involves battlemaps and minis. The prep can be done in advance, rules are on tap, calculations done in game. I’m almost tempted to try Pathfinder again if only they had the full rule set available.

It also suffers less from distractions and players talking BS because people have to concentrate a bit harder. Love it! Will definitely be keeping at least one of our games to a weekly sesh online even if lockdown ends.

 

[Reynard]

It also suffers less from distractions and players talking BS because people have to concentrate a bit harder. Love it! Will definitely be keeping at least one of our games to a weekly sesh online even if lockdown ends.

How easily players are distracted is the one thing I dislike about playing online. I am actually looking to finally implement using webcams (we usually just do voice over Discord) just to make sure players are more present during play. The guy who is always checking his phone at the table is five times worse at his desktop.

 

[TheSword]

Oh yes the Webcams make it far more person if it was just voice I might feel different.

Though if people are in a quiet place and you take regular 5 minute breaks for drinks, toilets and to stretch it is all good.

 

[R_J_K75]

I just tried loading my game on Roll20 for the last few minutes and its stuck from the launch game to ...loading. Anyone else experiencing this today?