No Macs? Holy crap did WotC do the math wrong!

[CharlesRyan]

You're not accounting for clustering.

Clustering is a hypothesis, just as the oft-cited view the Mac use skews higher among gamers is a hypothesis. I think the two are a wash.

And frankly, that doesn't alter the underlying point. When the basic unit is a group of 6 users, rather than a single user, the percentage of basic units affected by Mac exclusion is much, much higher. Is it 50%? 90%? 30%? I don't know. But I strongly suspect that it's higher that the "negligible" level that WotC (and many other companies) often ascribe to Mac usage.

 

[CharlesRyan]

The VTT isn't for existing groups. Why would I target existing groups?

The VTT feature has very much been promoted as a way for gamers who have dropped out of gaming for lifestyle reasons to get their groups back together.

You're right, the VTT is not intended to replace the face-to-face play of my current Thursday-night group. But it has been promoted as a way for me to get my old Seattle gaming group back together, now that we live in disparate cities.

And it may well replace face-to-face play in my Thursday group, once Alex gets around to having a baby and too many of us are parents to make a regular evening out of the house practical.

In both cases, if any member of the group is a Mac-user, we're faced with the prospect of no game, or of kicking the Mac user out of our gaming group.

 

[Archmage]

The VTT feature has very much been promoted as a way for gamers who have dropped out of gaming for lifestyle reasons to get their groups back together.

You're right, the VTT is not intended to replace the face-to-face play of my current Thursday-night group. But it has been promoted as a way for me to get my old Seattle gaming group back together, now that we live in disparate cities.

Not quite accurate - I don't see any blurbs from WotC that say "this will enable CharlesRyan to get his old Seattle group together." (I'm sorry if this sounds snarky - don't mean it to, just trying to make a point) And it will very likely do what it is promoted to do - for folks with Windows PCs. HD TV is promoted as pretty much the same thing as "being there" visually - but if your favorite channel doesn't have a HD feed, not so much. Having a subset of potential customers not being able to use a product's features doesn't mean that those features don't work as advertised. If that subset of customers turns out to be larger than WotC expected, then we'd likely see them take steps to rectify that.

And it may well replace face-to-face play in my Thursday group, once Alex gets around to having a baby and too many of us are parents to make a regular evening out of the house practical.

In both cases, if any member of the group is a Mac-user, we're faced with the prospect of no game, or of kicking the Mac user out of our gaming group.

You forgot a third option - use one of the other virtual tabletop solutions that is cross-platform. If it turns out that Mac use is as proliferate as some folks state here, then Klooge and its ilk will have nigh as many users as the VTT. That would surely spur WotC to begin cross-platform work, no?

 

[RFisher]

The fact that Randy Buehler in his Gamer Radio GenCon interview came off as having no clue that there have been tools in the same vein since 3e was released--or that people have been doing essentially the same thing for quite some time with general purpose tools--doesn't give me warm fuzzies about the Wizards' virtual table anyway. Even though the demo did look pretty good.

In the end, the good news is probably that the Wizards' tool is going to inspire even more improvements in the alternatives.

The really striking thing to me about the Mac these days: From 1984 until a few years back, nearly every Mac user I knew was someone I either met through a Mac context (like a users group or working at Apple or another "Mac shop") or someone that I convinced to try a Mac. These days, I know lots of Mac users even though I don't really spend any time in "Mac contexts" or bother to evangelize.

Not only do a lot of my co-workers have Macs at home, we've got an awful lot of them on desks around here too. & I'm working in embedded software--not DTP, graphic design, or any of the other places you traditionally find Macs in business.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

You forgot a third option - use one of the other virtual tabletop solutions that is cross-platform. If it turns out that Mac use is as proliferate as some folks state here, then Klooge and its ilk will have nigh as many users as the VTT. That would surely spur WotC to begin cross-platform work, no?

Here's a question. If VTT support is such a critical issue for mac people, why are they complaining about the lack of mac support by the DDI, and not already using a mac-compatible VTT provided by some other company?

 

[akaddk]

I think one of the most significant things about the multitude of threads like this that have pages and pages of responses is that there are multitudes of threads like this with pages and pages of responses.

That pretty much says it all, I think.

 

[(contact)]

I think one of the most significant things about the multitude of threads like this that have pages and pages of responses is that there are multitudes of threads like this with pages and pages of responses.

That is so Zen, you must be a Mac user.

I'm not in any position to question whether or not WotC made the right business call to use DirectX, and therefore cut Mac users out of the equation, but I've already had to turn down three offers for virtual gaming from far-flung friends because I don't have a PC. That sucks a little, but I'll get over it. It does sour me on dndinsider, and predisposes me to judge with my rose-colored glasses off when it finally launches.

I am hoping that the app does what it says it will without any major drag or bugs -- I think for people on Windows machines, this will be a really cool tool. It's a great way to bridge geographical disatance for a few hours of D&D with your far-flung buddes.

But the development decisions so far seem kind of dodgy. For me, James Wyatt says it all when he quotes Charlie Trotter in his blog: "This is how I see excellence. It embraces generosity, humbleness, and sincerity of effort. At its heart, it's about never being satisfied. It has nothing to do with perfection. I'm not a perfectionist—but an excellence-ist. . . . Excellence means always trying harder and never growing complacent."

I think that love or hate the rules/setting changes, we have seen a sincere desire for excellence among the 4e game designers. Among the software developers? Not so much. Again, it might be in WotC's best short-term interest (although certainly not D&D's best interest) to do things the way they are; we aren't really privvy to the information we'd need to judge that. What I do think we know is that cutting corners and a "git 'er dun" mentality only very rarely produce excellence, and even then, only in the hands of master craftpeople.

My current best-guess is that they had their timeline shortened by several months-- it's a theory that seems to hold water when you look at some of the squirrely decisions:

- Cutting out cross-platform development
- Announcing at GenCon rather than D&D Experience (after telling us all announcements would be at D&DE)
- A seemingly very short public playtest cycle

 

[Hussar]

Here's a question. If VTT support is such a critical issue for mac people, why are they complaining about the lack of mac support by the DDI, and not already using a mac-compatible VTT provided by some other company?

Bingo!

There are half a dozen or more VTT programs out there right now. They all work.

WOTC can say whatever it wants publicly, but, at the end of the day, it's going to be new groups that drive the VTT, not disbanded groups from ten years ago. If those groups wanted to play together, there is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so right now. The existence of the DDI does nothing to change that.

Yet, people are only now starting to talk about getting the old group together? Must not have been much of a priority. I'm thinking that it will remain a pretty low priority after the DDI as well.

No, it's going to be new groups, all of which will be PC users (because that's the only option right now) driving the VTT scene. As I said before, I can really see the RPGA driving this forward. Being able to play RPGA sanctioned games for prizes 24/7 is going to be a major draw. And, if it's RPGA based, then existing groups don't really matter at all.

 

[Stormtalon]

Here's a question. If VTT support is such a critical issue for mac people, why are they complaining about the lack of mac support by the DDI, and not already using a mac-compatible VTT provided by some other company?

Howabout because we'd like to be able to subscribe to the Digital Initiative and get all of the functionality out of it, not just a subset? That's the big kicker, really. Dragon & Dungeon are great, yes -- and probably worth the price, but still there's a large chunk of it that we'd be effectively paying for, but unable to use.

This is not a reason to be vocal?

 

[Hussar]

Howabout because we'd like to be able to subscribe to the Digital Initiative and get all of the functionality out of it, not just a subset? That's the big kicker, really. Dragon & Dungeon are great, yes -- and probably worth the price, but still there's a large chunk of it that we'd be effectively paying for, but unable to use.

This is not a reason to be vocal?

Certainly, and I fully agree with you that Mac should be supported.

But, that's not what this thread is about. CharlesRyan is claiming that because many groups will contain at least one Mac, the DDI is doomed to failure. This assumes that the DDI will primarily be made up of existing groups. I feel that this assumption is badly flawed.