D&D (2024) I am highly skeptical of the Unreal VTT

[UngainlyTitan]

Will there be a VR market for this? Maybe I've been living under a rock, but to me VR remains a very niche product, both because of a lack of killer apps and the sheer expense of good set ups. VR would probably be a very small percent of the overall user base.

Also, is a D&D vtt a good use for VR in the first place? I don't see the advantage.

To be honest not at this point in time but there have been a few apps in Kickstarter or elsewhere targeting the AR market and I do think there is a potential AR market and if you can do AR you can do VR and Sony have appears to have sold quite a few VR sets. I would be tempted to buy VR for this purpose, though I would prefer headset base AR (I like to see my environment).

 

[Reynard]

To be honest not at this point in time but there have been a few apps in Kickstarter or elsewhere targeting the AR market and I do think there is a potential AR market and if you can do AR you can do VR and Sony have appears to have sold quite a few VR sets. I would be tempted to buy VR for this purpose, though I would prefer headset base AR (I like to see my environment).

Not just in gaming but broadly, I MUCH prefer AR and am looking forward to a heads up display and holomeetings. I won't wear a VR headset, though.

 

[Hussar]

Hmm, my feeling is you'd be surprised how much takes place online, especially since COVID and the potential inertia of getting groups back around the table who have discovered that (IMO) the game works perfectly well with a VTT or on the end of a Skype call. I'd guess more than that.

Oh, I'm sure. But, even if we go with 20%, it's still a minority of gaming.

Do you think it would be anywhere near 50%? That's 30 million online gamers. That would mean that 90% of online games aren't using Fantasy Grounds or Roll20, based on their sub numbers. It's possible. True, but, I rather doubt it. We have some idea of the number of gamers playing on Fantasy Grounds - the last stat I found showed about 100 000 games. That's far, far less than a million players. So, yeah, unless there's this enormous group of online players that are not using either Fantasy Grounds or Roll20, I really do think that probably about 5-10% is a fairly accurate guess.

 

[Hussar]

WotC also said D&D Beyond had 10 million registered users at the time they bought it.

Those are relatively high-value as well because you can only register with Twitch, Google, or Apple accounts (and Twitch is now deprecated I believe).

I think that's largely where I'm coming from too.

If 10 million registered users are on D&D Beyond, that's still only a fairly small slice of the gaming population. Not even a majority based on the numbers. Although, the numbers are frankly very, very voodoo and tea leaves based. 50 million seems to be the number bandied about, although many of those are "casual" whatever that means.

My point being, that if 10 million are on DDB, how likely would it be that the total number of VTT players would be greater than that number? Again, it's possible, but, I really doubt it.

One thing I do totally agree with @Ruin Explorer about is that a WotC VTT is meant to expand the market, not replace. It's very much like the MtG Arena - they aren't slowing down card sales are they? They're simply making it easier for people to get together with other people to play the game - which opens up new market avenues, not replaces them. There's just zero chance, when they are hitting record physical book sales with every release, that they are going to do anything whatsoever to even suggest moving away from that avenue.

 

[Reynard]

Do you think it would be anywhere near 50%? That's 30 million online gamers.

Why do people keep repeating this "60 millions active gamers" nonsense? No one ever said that. That number is an estimate of all the people that have EVER played D&D. By WotC.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I recall the vaporware 4e VTT.

Well, it wasnt really vaporware, it worked really well. It just never got finished and released for some reason.

More importantly, the internal structure of the company is quite different, and they have a ton of solid video game developers in the company now.

I don't have a particularly powerful PC (I don't play video games that much and when I do it's on the PS4 or Switch) and I'm skeptical about how smoothly it would run an Unreal Engine VTT.

This is my only concern.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Here's what I don't like about it.

• Many players are already invested in a VTT. That investment will be made worthless in a couple years - or you can't play the current edition.

Source?

• You're going to be paying to customize your token (a la HeroForge). We can currently just pull images from the Internet, make our own, or even use generic tokens. I'll bet that's not possible in this 3d environment.

Source?

• My current setup has some lag when a teenager is playing online games, my wife is streaming HBO, and I'm running a game on voice chat and a VTT. This stuff isn't going to work, and I'll bet it's going to require a high end PC to do what you're seeing in the preview.

Definitely not high end. Just, fairly up to date gaming rig. Something that can run Dragon Age Inquisition with good graphics quality.

• We've been burnt before (Gleemax?) I don't believe WotC can even pull this off.

As far as digital content, it’s barely the same company. They’ve bought and formed video game studios, and can give them a real budget.

• Purchasing piecemeal monsters and other components from their adventures means DMs will have to "unlock" creatures to be able to use them in homebrew. (It's like Pokemon Go or something.)

That’s a bit of a jump. I’d bet $30 right now that there is at least one free full adventure on the service, and the ability to make your own stuff.

• It's tied in with D&D Beyond. And I don't use D&D Beyond.

This is the only doom-calling I’ve seen about the vtt that I agree is remotely likely. I’m not super sympathetic, since DDB is free, but sure. Probably.

• 3PP will be screwed unless they can keep up with the programming and have access to use the proprietary system.

I extremely doubt this. Like the unreal engine isn’t even owned by wotc, first of all. Secondly, wotc has not behaved like you’re suggesting anytime in the last 8 years.

For an example of how things may change, look at the history of the MorePurpleMoreBetter character sheet. When DDB came out, they told him he could only have SRD content in the sheet, without having paid for a license.

What they didn’t do, is tell VTTs they had to either use DDB or suck it, they just enforced basic IP protection via licensing, which they already do with any VTT you pay for.

If this turns out to be a subscription-based suite of microtransactions like I'm reading, they can keep it.

Again, look into how DDB actually works, as opposed to how people incorrectly claim it works.

What it’ll look like is a space where you can get basic stuff for free (or a simple software purchase), with supplemental content requiring secondary purchase (just like anywhere else. You don’t get expansions for free when you buy a AAA video game, either) and the ability to make your own stuff, as well as buy paid content whole or piecemeal.

 

[Hussar]

Why do people keep repeating this "60 millions active gamers" nonsense? No one ever said that. That number is an estimate of all the people that have EVER played D&D. By WotC.

Alright then, let's say you're right. Say 10 million (the number of DDB users) is the current number. Granted, that's not all that solid either since someone could have made an account and then stopped playing, but, sure, let's use 10 million.

Now, again, FG is running about 100 000 tables. Roll 20 about the same number. So, at best, you're looking at 1 million gamers. Let's double that for everyone else. That still puts current VTT gamers at about 20%. Again, unless you think 90% of online gaming is being done by other programs and there's this massive group of silent people who game online but are impossible to count, my point still stands.

Note, also, that that 200 000 tables is of all games, not just D&D. The actual number of D&D tables is about 2/3rds of that (give or take).

Does it really matter if it's 5, 15 or 25%? FFS, the POINT is that online gaming is a fairly small niche of the total gaming community. WotC having a VTT is not really going to change that. It's simply a new market avenue, not a replacement for face to face gamers.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Can't they buy a major VTT player outright?

Yes. They ought to! But they would just buy it, in that case, not show us their vaporware dreams.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's very much like the MtG Arena - they aren't slowing down card sales are they?

Yeah exactly.

I know a few people who play it. All of them are people who don't play MtG IRL or collect cards for it IRL - a lot of them used to when they were much younger and had more time and so on, but some have never played it IRL.

I suspect WotC would very much like it if they could do similar with D&D. DMs are the sticking point, but I would be unsurprised if WotC worked hard to find workarounds for that (specially-designed DM-less adventures, AI DMs, etc.) - but probably not for a few years, I think matchmaking will be the tactic initially.