You must have a much more limited system and Internet connection that I have. The analysis paralysis can be a thing, but I'd have to say I've never seen my players prone to it are worse through VTT. And I can't say loading a map takes any longer--or even as close to as long--as physically placing down or drawing a new one. Usually its faster.
I'm 10m from the wifi, which is 1m from the router, which is 50m from the fiber-to-DSL neighborhood router, the Fiber to DLS shared with exactly 2 other homes.
One of my players, however, has constant problems with internet reliability – not speed, per se, as he gets good VOIP stream – but that stream cuts out routinely.
Well, individuals always trump the general in any given case. I gotta say this is very contrary to my experience.
It's been my consistent experience in every remote game I've ever run save one - and that was with 1 player over VOIP in a game system we both were quite familiar with.
And this goes back to running remote over speakerphone in the 80's. Yes, I did have a few remote sessions even then.
Further, I'm not a terribly fast-running GM to begin with, so it's VERY much more apparent. I've also run the same adventure for both the remote and local groups in the same weeks... Specifically, for Sentinel Comics (SCRPG) and for Alien. In both cases, the remote group took longer for every scene. Both of these were run with a ship map, but TOTM zone based combat, and usually only one zone involved in SCRPG.
A 3 hour FTF takes my remote group 3.5 to 4hours. It's been consistently so since the 80s, with various groups. So, either it's me, or it's the medium, and given the exception... my wife has complained about it with groups I'm not involved in, that she's played with FTF and remotely.
I suspect most simply are not aware of the relative timing as much; teaching and being a musician both have forced me to be very time aware over short durations. My wife was a broadcast technician/master control operator, needing fractional second accuracy of actions and discrepancies above 2 sec being things requiring paperwork... We both have been.
For comparison:
Local sketch map: 2-3 sec to grab the marker, 10-15 to grab the blank side. 10-15 to draw the sketch.
Foundary (remoted into the server): 2-3 sec to trigger the menu item to select new map, 1-2 sec per map for the thumbnails to show (10 in the ALIEN adventure run), 10 - 60, size dependent,for the map to show on my end, 10-60 to get the fog, and 10-60 for the players to then see it. Plus, while loading for them, 3-10 sec per token to put it on the map.
Given that the adventure in question is a hexless hexcrawl, I couldn't preset scenes because I couldn't predict where they were going to be.
Local play getting the map: different alien adventure... grab meeples off the current map: someone else's 5 sec, while I take 5 to 30 sec to get the new one on table, I then take 5 sec to point to where the meeples go, and they put them on.
Now, counterpoint - running TFT. Map? 20 sec to wipe. setup? if I have the counters, 5-10 sec. If I don't, up to 60 sec to find them. This is part of why I switched to abstract cubes instead of counters or minis. Reduces setup time by reducing needed search.
