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Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8742989" data-attributes="member: 18">It's a reasonable fear but given 4E didn't go that way even as the digital tools gradually improved, I don't think it's very likely.However I do expect an update at some point in a few years, and if the VTT somehow succeeds, I suspect we'll see some rules tweaks to make rules work more easily on the VTT rather than making the VTT work with the rules. We'll see.Oh another thing to worry about - if they're really intending to give use the pieces of every map (or even some maps) from official adventures we buy (a specific claim in the video), they're going to end up designing maps to fit existing terrain pieces, not vice-versa, and limiting how maps are designed in general to make them easier to model in the VTT. They might even do stuff like delay publication of adventures or other books to let the VTT team keep up.UE5 can already technically run on an "average" PC. Running isn't the issue. Running well is. Here's the graphics cards people on Steam have right now:[URL unfurl="true"]https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/[/URL]In two years, now the crisis is clearing, will that change? Yes. But Nvidia have shown a very clear pattern, as have consumers, and the average card in normal gaming machine as of 2024 is going to probably be about as powerful as a 3060 (indeed in a lot of cases, it will be a 3060), if we're lucky, frankly. And a lot of people will be wanting to play this on laptops and iPads and the like.So there will be no major gain there performance-wise, beyond what I said.Not that much, from what they're proposing, which is this fancy FX and post-processing-heavy, way of doing things, with what appears to be a free camera, people moving stuff around, likely physics-driven dice bouncing around and so on. That's also likely to be extremely inefficiently streamlined, because they're working with a new engine, and again AFAICT, none of them have done anything like this before.And it's got to be networked - this is a multiplayer game with several players, all of whom can likely be doing stuff, including a DM who can interrupt at any time. That's another whole problem I didn't even account for. Do they even have people experienced with multiplayer networking for that kind of thing? What's very common in AA and indie projects is that they totally screw up the networking, and people are constantly getting disconnected or having other huge problems (on the flipside some do nail as a priority)And none of the "wannabe AAA" teams WotC now owns is staffed up, so we're kind of looking at an AA team trying to do a project which basically is on the borderline of AAA in terms of graphics, UI needs, and so on, and in terms of multiplayer requirements is particularly heinous (you'd potentially be looking at tens of thousand to millions of people using this simultaneously).I'm sure they will, but it won't look anything at all like what they're showing, results-wise. Those are custom-designed models that moulded in a way that shows they absolutely could not be modular. And frankly, if they let you make a fat guy who smokes at release, I'll be very impressed. I bet that pipe gets nixed ("sending the wrong message to the kids" sez PR) and I bet they find out how hard it is to make characters who can be significantly fat/thin look good and not totally distorted. Anyway, point is, the actual thing will look vastly more generic. The Emperor's New Clothes/Low Standards crowd will cheer it even if it looks godawful, but what they're showing here is bullshots wall to wall.They could but they haven't, and there is no possibility of turning any VTT, major or minor, into this within two years. That they're adopting an engine that's only recently become available is good future-proofing but also means they've not really even started to work on this. If it's out in anything but an ultra-simplistic form (tokens and barely-textured maps) by even 2027 I'd be surprised.I'm not too worried about that because people would reject it. On the other hand, the temptation to try and double-dip people by getting them to pay for expensive virtual minis is going to be severe, esp. as some whales would totally go for it. But that requires the product to be out and functioning well, so is kind of a later concern.Less intensive than what? The sort of art/design budget they'll need to make this look like they're claiming is huge, and again, whilst they can skip animating/rigging, they have virtually every other challenge a videogame has, and some more on the side.Getting a really basic 5E VTT up and running would be very doable in that time frame, but getting it user-friendly enough for a mass market (which I'd suggest Roll20 etc. are nowhere near), and then making actually enforce 1D&D rules (which people will want it to do - and those rules will be in flux until 2024 note), but also allowing the DM to override stuff, and giving it this ultra-high-res look, and giving it a networking model and functionality that works well with tens of thousands of players or more? That's going to be very demanding. Easily at the level of lower-end AAA stuff now. Hell maybe even middle-end. With WotC's lack of experience in the field and the fact that they seem to be trying to do this in-house, rather than hiring a studio, costs and time could be much higher too.</blockquote>

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