Matt Colville weighs in.

[Parmandur]

Paizo subscriptions are very different though. You subscribe to a certain line of products and you basically auto-buy each new release them and you get a free PDF included.

Different, somewhat, yes. But...having loked at what getting the Pathfinder subscriptions cost ($27 a month for the Adventure path, cost of each book for the standalone lines, all four subscriptions coming to way more than $30 a month), if we want to lend credence to the $30 number at all...rather than being corporate greed, I could believe that WotC is ramping up to undersell Paizo here, with a number itnwntionally chosen to be lower. They are increasing the rate that they put out books, and an all access to those books subscription...well, if it's cheaper than Paizo, and comes with e-tool integration via Beyond...I can see thst being attractive to people who don't just like books.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Any way you slice it, they're asking people to pay more for less. I don't think it will work.

A lot of RPG gamers don't want any part of it. Especially the older, more plugged into the hobby and industry folks.

Honestly, if they hadn't Eff'd this up with 1.1 and doubled down to show their true colors with 1.2? I'm the older grognard that TOTALLY would have gone for at least kicking these tires. High performance graphics VTT for a FRPG? Hells yes! I'm your guy. I would have huffed and puffed and done what I could have to impress the hell out of people with my online stuff. I would have had your jaws dropping with what I could have done with that.

But that was then, this is now. I don't care anymore if it works , if it doesn't, or if the business model is good, bad, or indifferent. I don't care if Gary Gygax is flipping in his grave (or not), Dave Arneson's shade is freaking out -- or the ghosts of Leonard Lakofka and Kim Mohan will tag-team haunt Chris Cao's bathroom and turn his pee-pee green with pink polka dots when he's not looking -- or better still, when he is.

None of that matters to me anymore. 1.1 was a cynical calculated betrayal and strong-arming of people I personally know in this business. 1.2 was only an improvement in the sense that it tried to screw over less people I know -- while still screwing people I know. There is literally NOTHING they can do to make it better for me now. I understand the business motivations, I really do. That doesn't make it better, or excuse the OGL nonsense. It was unnecessary for them to do it to succeed with their core business plan -- and it probably will materially HARM their chance of success now.

I'm out. I wish utter misery, ruin, and failure upon them all.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

That’s all he’s right about lol

Eh, more like old man yells at clouds, in this instance.

How?

And he’s super wrong.

I don’t know anything for sure. This is a worst fear: that the proportion of people who go online with “one” will diminish the player base of do it your selfers and old fashioned players.

If they only allow official stuff, people will get funneled into that and the homegrown stuff will be less common.

If newer players skew that way, fewer pick up games during recess fewer people enculturated into what we have now…

Amplified by media and all manner of stuff this becomes the new “normal” vs. more homebrew on the fly stuff.

Or maybe not.

But make no mistake: paying for character advantages is coming. And paying is the only way since official is the only gate…

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The person who made the fake slide thought it would be obviously absurd, wildly over-the-top, and therefore hilarious. That it also happens to be the exact number picked by WotC for their top-tier subscription to their VTT is a cosmic irony to be sure.

The leaks suggest it would be access to the full library of 5E/OneD&D content, all books, all modules, all supplements, etc. It would also include the full VTT and monthly "loot drops" that would amount to new bits of rules, adventures, etc.

Even with all that it still sounds utterly ridiculous to me.

Exactly. That's partially the point. WotC wants to make more money. A lot of people playing these games simply cannot afford to. Which is why so many players don't buy all the books and only, if they can, buy the PHB. That's why sharing books has always been a common thing. Why photocopying books was a common thing. Why pages in old official books were printed in blue...to prevent old-school photocopiers from working on those pages. And why sharing PDFs is so common today. It's an expensive hobby that is really attractive to people with more imagination than money.

I figure the $30 tier (which I think they walked back?) would be full access to VTT assets, as well, like high quality 3D maps, digital minis, etc, that you’d otherwise buy individually, on top of the same sort of access to the game supplements.

Loot drops as bits of rules would be pretty foolish. It would almost certainly be things like special edition type assets (Tiamat in more vivid color or with automated animations, cosmetic skins for characters, mounts, etc.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don’t know anything for sure. This is a worst fear: that the proportion of people who go online with “one” will diminish the player base of do it your selfers and old fashioned players.

If they only allow official stuff, people will get funneled into that and the homegrown stuff will be less common.

If newer players skew that way, fewer pick up games during recess fewer people enculturated into what we have now…

Amplified by media and all manner of stuff this becomes the new “normal” vs. more homebrew on the fly stuff.

Or maybe not.

But make no mistake: paying for character advantages is coming. And paying is the only way since official is the only gate…

I mean, probably not, though.

Sure, they lie, but I see no reason to doubt that the platform will allow homebrew, and that what you’ll pay for is access, not character advantages. how would they even try to enforce such an absurdity? It isn’t a video game, there is still a DM!

It’s not even a worst fear, it’s just flailing and doomsaying.

 

[Parmandur]

I figure the $30 tier (which I think they walked back?) would be full access to VTT assets, as well, like high quality 3D maps, digital minis, etc, that you’d otherwise buy individually, on top of the same sort of access to the game supplements.

Loot drops as bits of rules would be pretty foolish. It would almost certainly be things like special edition type assets (Tiamat in more vivid color or with automated animations, cosmetic skins for characters, mounts, etc.

Well, we have no idea, because the tumor, beyond being a shady rumor, gives no details on what the $30 would be for. Having now reviewed Paizo's subscription offerings, I am not so sure the number is total BS, at least, since it would represent comparable market rates.

 

[mamba]

Having a ton of developers can actually make things slower.

I am aware, that is why I said churning out assets in parallel is simple

I’m not sure if you’re familiar with “The Mythical Man-Month.” I’m going to paraphrase a little here, but it was basically a software engineering case study that came out of IBM, and it showed that throwing developers at a software project that was behind schedule only made the scheduling issues worse.
I’m not saying that it’s behind schedule, but adding manpower to a software project does not necessarily make it go faster.

Yeah, I have been doing this for 20+ years, so I know the limits of this The whole mythical man month is from the 1970s when computers were new and no one knew a thing, and didn't apply what they knew from 'real life'. E.g. 5 barbers are not going to cut your hair much faster than one, they mostly get in the way of each other. The same is true for 5 developers working on one function module, it just doesn't work.

For software many people at the time did not realize that the same holds true, because the whole thing is abstract, but this is really not rocket science / different from anything else in that regard.

As to projects running late, the problem with adding people then is that they do not know the project, so you 'waste' your productive part of the team on training the new part instead of actually working on the project, thereby causing further delays, which you either manage to catch up afterwards or not.

This is not the scenario here, they already have 350 or so people working on it. You break it down into manageable pieces and make sure they integrate well together. Chances are most of them work on something simple (from a dependency / integration perspective) like assets anyway.

 

[darjr]

Honestly, if they hadn't Eff'd this up with 1.1 and doubled down to show their true colors with 1.2? I'm the older grognard that TOTALLY would have gone for at least kicking these tires. High performance graphics VTT for a FRPG? Hells yes! I'm your guy. I would have huffed and puffed and done what I could have to impress the hell out of people with my online stuff. I would have had your jaws dropping with what I could have done with that.

But that was then, this is now. I don't care anymore if it works , if it doesn't, or if the business model is good, bad, or indifferent. I don't care if Gary Gygax is flipping in his grave (or not), Dave Arneson's shade is freaking out -- or the ghosts of Leonard Lakofka and Kim Mohan will tag-team haunt Chris Cao's bathroom and turn his pee-pee green with pink polka dots when he's not looking -- or better still, when he is.

None of that matters to me anymore. 1.1 was a cynical calculated betrayal and strong-arming of people I personally know in this business. 1.2 was only an improvement in the sense that it tried to screw over less people I know -- while still screwing people I know. There is literally NOTHING they can do to make it better for me now. I understand the business motivations, I really do. That doesn't make it better, or excuse the OGL nonsense. It was unnecessary for them to do it to succeed with their core business plan -- and it probably will materially HARM their chance of success now.

I'm out. I wish utter misery, ruin, and failure upon them all.

I'm with you until that last sentence. And I did not want a 3dd vtt.... I would have passed anyway. I do wish the folks who hatched this plan, nursed it, and are now fighting the internal dissent to keep scraps of it, would lose all power and influence, at a minimum. Everyone else I hope they land on their feet.

 

[Vivificient]

For those who know about video game development:
I don't know much about that industry and I don't recall exactly when WotC hired all those devs. But it seems like their timeline would be rushed even for an experienced studio.
Is it realistic that WotC could have their new VTT up and solidly running - worth paying a sub for - by the end of 2024?

I'm a game programmer. The schedule seems pretty tight to me, though not necessarily impossible. I think it depends a lot on:

• How much do they want it to do? Do they want to track initiative, integrate with character sheets from another app, roll dice, display rules tips, automate hundreds of attacks and abilities, track rations, calculate XP, advise the DM on encounter difficulty, etc? Or is it just going to mostly let you move miniatures around and roll dice?
• How clearly defined and planned is the game design? I.e., how much work are they going to throw out? Do they have all the menus, screens, and interactions planned out, or are they working it out as they go?
• How experienced are the people in charge of development? Do they know how to use Unreal Engine properly? Are they doing things right (to save trouble in the long term) or hacking stuff together (which will make it harder and harder to make progress in the long term)?

For a reasonable comparison: the OGL-based RPG game Pathfinder: Kingmaker took about 2 years to develop and was developed by a team of about 350 people (according to this Moby Games page). It presumably shares a lot of features with the planned VTT (i.e., it's a D&D simulator with 3D graphics). A major difference is that the VTT will need the full suite of online features: matchmaking, friend invites, streaming integration, store integration, etc. Those things take a fair bit of dev work. On the other hand, it probably won't need some of the CRPG features that Kingmaker had, like overland travel, NPC dialogue trees, quests, hundreds of hours of narrative... unless, of course, WOTC intend to support a full single-player experience, as some have suggested.

Kingmaker was also buggy as heck when it launched and for at least 6 months afterwards. So WOTC could shave some time off their budget if they were willing to emulate that aspect. : )

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I mean, probably not, though.

Sure, they lie, but I see no reason to doubt that the platform will allow homebrew, and that what you’ll pay for is access, not character advantages. how would they even try to enforce such an absurdity? It isn’t a video game, there is still a DM!

It’s not even a worst fear, it’s just flailing and doomsaying.

Hope you are right. As to how do they enforce it? If you don’t allow people to enter certain data into a VTT, it’s enforced.

Are you suggesting they cannot block no official content from their virtual tabletop?

I say they can.

Will they? We shall see.

As to not being loot crates…maybe not at first. But if they can get the VTT popular and insert pay for advantage things in there they most certainly would if allowed.

Unless the backlash means it’s not worth it. I don’t care on some level. I have dice minis and terrain. It’s not me I am worried about. I just worry people might lose interest in the traditional game.