Hussar
Legend
To be fair, one only rents beer.
D&D (2024) I am highly skeptical of the Unreal VTT
MonsterEnvy
Legend
Your probably right, though we don’t know which side.
MonsterEnvy
Legend
Given your various comments I can tell.
HaroldTheHobbit
Adventurer
The current evolution of capitalism is to not even let consumers own stuff. Instead we buy the right to, for a limited time, use something that we willingly fill with value that we can lose any minute. Good times.
They could do what Le Petit Chef does…
Just saw an article a couple weeks ago that BMW is rolling out subscription-based plans for heated seats (and other features) in certain countries.
BMW does have a heated seat subscription, but not in the US
Automaker BMW is launching a subscription service for heated seats and other physical features in some countries.
www.verifythis.com
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Me and Hussar will I think, regardless of who ends up being right.
Of course just to screw us both WotC will probably release a VTT that's like 3D and superficially LOOKS like that VTT, but is awful and doesn't work right or do any of the things they said in 2024, so we can both be right/wrong and both disappointed.
That doesn't mean that it's in active development, though, that's kind of my point - the prototyping you do in pre-production includes stuff like that. And "early development" can be either pre-production or early on in active development, I've heard game devs use it to mean either.
We don't know, of course. I certainly don't believe the mini-movement they show is from an actual VTT that functions lol.
They could have, I just don't believe they did from the timing and the way they're talking about it. Usually if a company has done that, they're proud of their preparation and mention it, like "We've been working on this for over a year now and we're proud to show you..."-type stuff. I admit this is more instinct than fact, but we'll see.
I don't think they "always" had those problems. Earlier on, when Curse were running them, they seemed to have plenty of resources, developed rapidly, kept up a ton of information on what they were doing, were highly responsive to questions about what they were doing, and seemed to have relatively little problem implementing UAs. Then they got sold to Fandom and things slowed down a bit, but they kept monthly roadmap updates and kept explaining stuff. However, at this point they seemed to start losing people, as familiar names went away and new ones appeared, and in 2019 they seem to start really struggling with their own product. Stuff which they had thought they'd do easily was just not happening, and we were seeing much more focus on monetized stuff like the development of the digital dice and so on. Then in late 2020 and into 2021 it slowed down even more. The roadmap and all updates basically either ceased or became vague videos which were irregular rather than monthly. Loads of names disappeared and weren't replaced. The one person who was doing comms got sick (poor thing - edit: to be clear that's not sarcastic, when I say "poor thing" I genuinely feel bad for someone!). Indeed they openly stated they no longer had enough people to do some of the updates and so on that they used to. They couldn't handle UA anymore in mid-2021 (even simple stuff). Finally this year WotC bought them. So far there's been no improvement to Beyond (admittedly it's only been like what, three months?). They've not become more responsive, long-promised features still haven't been added (even stuff like Supernatural Gifts), and so on. They did get a changelog at some point though.
That is where I sit. I have no problem in believing that an beta product can appear in 2024 and that it will work well enough with prefabbed maps but am sceptical that it will have a low enough learning curve, particularly to DMs to become popular. When it comes to utility software like this I am a firm believer in KISS. It should also have 2d mapping capability for journey handling.
You think they are lying then.
Ok, I have not been following all that closely. I created an account to test the character builder when it went live and basically ignored them ever since because I went with FantasyGrounds as my on line VTT. I did read, about the not supporting UAs thing, and from what I read that looked like a resource issue and I also read about staff quitting around about the time Todd Kenrick quit.
I would not expect anything from the Wizards acquisition until at least next year. Big investment and development programmes usually kick off in a new financial year.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
So like in the industry I work in, IT products are become a bigger and bigger part, and firms like the one I work at are becoming more and more involved in putting them out, and what I'm seeing a lot of, in my sector is not what I'd call lying, per se, but like, "bad information".
Particularly often you see a company say they're going to do a thing - often having just acquired some brand-new product which they're going to use to make a legal product with, and it'll be super-cool, and they have some glossy mock-ups and so on, maybe even a prototype (made in an entirely different product). Then like, a year later, they release the thing, and it does like, 20% of what they were saying it would, isn't slick or that easy to use, and so on. It might still be worthwhile, because it might do something nothing else does, or it might be useless and quickly forgotten.
Re: the movement, I don't think there was any "This is real footage of a product that really exists" claims". Instead there was a lot of footage and lot of vague, unspecific or even speculative claims ("we might..." re: the dungeon blocks). So I wouldn't call that "lying", I'd call it a "bullshot", i.e. a mock-up or prototype designed to represent how they think it's going to look/work that's not explicitly called out as such (very common in videogames a 5-10 years ago - it's become less common as gamers have become more savvy about them).
Yeah exactly (though to be clear I do not believe it will run well in a framerate/reliable connectivity sense).
What surprised me about this announcement was that I kind of expected, after they screwed up so bad with the 4E VTT, that they wouldn't just jump to the same exact wild goals, but would say they were doing a sort of staged, iterated product, where first they'd have X, then X and Y, then X would become 3D, and so on, and so forth. When I look at the really successful products in my own industry (legal) that's exactly what I see. Not people trying to suddenly land in the market with something fully-featured and ultra-impressive, but doing something right - either something not done previously, or doing a better job than other products. Then they build on top of that foundation (often quite rapidly). I was expecting they'd just be aiming at a fully-Beyond-integrated VTT and talking about how they'd get that right and being humble (because of the huge failures due to previous hubris lol). But I guess they learned absolutely nothing? Or it's different people and the feel no need to worry because of previous WotC screw-ups? Because we got maximum-hype show-off stuff with a spicy hint of monetization instead.
Sometimes you pay for things, but other times you buy experiences!To be fair, one only rents beer.
