And yet it's all negative somehow....
Gee... I wonder why...
* looks at WotC's trackrecord the last 25 years *
Look, we can all stick our head in the sand and pretend the last 25 years of WotC software program/services didn't happen, but that's just foolish imho.
When a company tries to make a new software/services ecosystem (what WotC is doing here) there needs to be trust, because you're not buying a product you can use independently, you're paying for a 'live' service, if the company stops the 'live' service, you can't use it anymore. You can have spent hundreds if not thousands on such a 'game' with everything you 'own' going
poof without anything you can do about it. Almost 50 5e books @$30 each, almost $1500 right there, subscription? Another $400 over the last 7 years... Then you have the potential to buy a TON of 3rd party stuff as well, all directly linked to DDB. And what exactly happened to D&D Insider for 4E? Is that still available? What is going to happen to DDB when the eventual D&D 6e hits? When is that ever going to happen? Another 10 years, what if sales aren't as good as they were and 'corporate' sees an opportunity to do a 6e early and kill off everything, so they can sell you everything again? It's not as if WotC doesn't deserve to have it's business model and potential new future products held to the light.
So, basically an update of the NWN engine with a bit more system agnostic thrown in?
If only! Neverwinter Nights #1 and #2 were great for people making their own computer game adventures, there were even systems available where you effectively could create a persistent world (tiny MMO) and you could hop characters between worlds. It's was janky as all heck! But that was because capable fans went so far outside of what everyone thought possible, that it was wonderful/insane!
So the GM gets to take a week or more to build a set (or find and import a prebuilt) just for the players to spend 10 minutes there, kill everyone there, then burn it down and go somewhere else that they did NOT have prepared.
How exactly is that different from a DM scratchbuilding his own terrain, building/paint his miniatures and players doing the same thing? Or how much time do you think some DMs spend on good 2D maps? Self made adventures, etc. It's not different. But just because some DMs do this, does not mean everyone does this. And this is also true for building 3D scenes, it requires skills that the average DM doesn't have, it requires quite a bit of dedication and time to do it yourself and to do it right. Just converting a published adventure (like Vecna Eve of Ruin) to a (Foundry) VTT module takes a TON of time, and that's without having to make any of the resources (like encounters, the adventure, maps, tokens, etc.). Making anything beyond basic 2D maps also takes a TON of time, especially when you want the maps to have a consistent artstyle throughout the adventure. If you then start adding things like audio, effects, and new images to the mix the rabbithole is very deep...
Taking time to map things out is no different from any other VTT.
Well, that depends... Are we talking about a 2D or a 3D VTT? Expecting that making a map in 3D is as much work as making one in 2D is either comparing two different levels of detail or a gross miscalculation. Many different VTTs either have themselves prefabs available you can use (ready to go rooms to ready to go buildings) and some VTTs allow third party developers, thus allowing WAY more then a single publisher can produce.
The advantage of most 2D VTTs is that you can easily import jpgs, PNGs, Webps, etc. as maps. You can use the many paid for or free maps that are awesome or you can make them yourself and export them to a compatible VTT format (either with walls or just the image). How exactly do you think that's going to work? There is no mentionm yet of third party content, there is no mention of importing files yourself, etc. Even if the later is possible, how exactly will you make those 3D files? How will everyone else? Which 3D Dungeoncraft can you use? I suspect many are thinking, but there's this awesome 3D AI tool that makes awesome 3D maps in a jiffy! Sorry to disappoint, but that's a no-go, many of these 3D tools can't export to formats that are useable for a 3D VTT, they are just build the wrong way...
3D is just immeasureably more work then 2D. And too many people are expecting others to pick up the torch and make stuff for them... There will of course be people who'll do that if allowed to, but not as many as in the 2D space due to the lack of easy tools, high skill requirements, and just a darned lot of time! WotC can pay people to do that, but again, a lot more expensive then doing 2D assets and WotC/Hasbro wants to see a healthy profit... When a physical book costs $60 and the DDB electronic version costs $30, can we then expect a "D&D Icons of the Realms: Kobold Warband" 8 kobolds for $45 to cost $22.50 in digital form for their 3D VTT? And it isn't about how much it takes to make, it's about how much are you (and the rest of us) willing to pay? Chances are good that many a person that isn't a kid on minimum wage is going to buy those digital monsters at that price, because doing that yourself is probably going to take hours, if not more and the quality is going to be horrible if they do it themselves...
That is also the reason why I suspect WotC won't allow your own imports, because they can't control the quality #1 and they can't control the performance hit #2, resulting in bad press for their application #3. I would see many a clueless player/DM just importing a million vertices and then complaining loudly everywhere how much the D&D software sucks because it runs so badly... They might set a limit per model and how many are present on the screen at once, but that's also going to be badly interpreted by players/DMs that are just unfamiliar with the material.
I guess it sounds like rules integration is being an issue with this version of the VTT like others. I guess I'd just suggest trying out an option like Foundry. I have only run some test battles with their 5E integration, but I see a lot of the stuff that is in the PF2 version, which is entirely phenomenal.
I don't know what the 5E designers over at Foundry are going to do once the books and 5.5 officially launches, but if they are able to get to where they are with PF2, it will be incredible. The PF2 game I run (with PF2 having many more fiddly bits to it) is about 95% automated. I don't see any reason why 5E won't be similar.
There's a big difference between D&D5E and PF2E, it's the SRD. The community team can freely use all the PF2E rules content they publish (Archives of Nethys) for the PF2E core rules in FVTT. D&D5E has no such luck: #1 the core rules SRD is already not complete and #2 it doesn't contain any other books, PF2E has all the rules published. And while Foundry Gaming, LLC. will create the new core books for D&D, the community developers can't do much independently from Foundry Gaming, LLC./WotC. And while D&D has seen much improvement since the announcement earlier this year, it still has a long way to go. D&D5E is also less crunchy then PF2E, and not every player/DM want complete automation. That's why the 'complete' automation has been left to third party developers and that's janky at best, it often doesn't work with the latest version, sometimes months behind and even then often not working with other 3rd party modules.
