The last few posts here kind of illustrate just some of the problems that WotC has to find a solution for if they are going to continue with Sigil. This tool just doesn't have an audience; its very much a concept built for a part of the community that doesn't exist anywhere.
Now that doesn't mean they can't foster a community. Talespire has had minimal success, they have about 300 active users and that number has grown slowly but surely over time, but its a long, hard and very economically shaky road. Talespire manages to be reasonably successful but it has to do with the fact that they only have a couple of mouths to feed, so they don't need to be a huge economic success. These are indie developers making indie developer money.
The people making Sigil as a product have to accept that they are taking a risk, they are trying something pretty new and outside of the scope of normal and with that comes the potential for failure but also potential for a real evolution. We don't know what's going to happen until they produce something that actually works and people start exploring it.
We can theorycraft about it, but if you really want to know, you have to deliver.
I got the mail and did not claim the minis. Instead I came here to explain why I didn't claim the minis and don't currently plan on using Sigil. My group already has a VTT. I won't mention which one, but I will say that we use it because:
It supports more than just D&D, so the people in my group, including myself, don't need to find and learn a different VTT for every system we might want to run a game in (I run D&D, but am a player in a CoC and a Mutants & Masterminds campaign on the same VTT).
It offers additional features if you pay, but doesn't require payment to use and doesn't gate off the ability to use content we already own elsewhere in our game behind an additional payment. (Guess I just at least confirmed we're not using Fantasy Grounds).
It lets GMs and Players add their own tokens or other visuals and link them to character sheets and/or stat blocks.
It doesn't stubbornly override house rules, third-party or homebrew content. (This is our issue with D&D Beyond in general and D&DBeyond Maps in particular, and we get around that with the VTT.)
Now, the VTT we use also has disadvantages, the main ones being:
Visually it's very bare bones.(A consequence of being customisable)
Customising it can take a lot of effort and getting it to automate things that aren't offered as free templates requires either some amount of knowledge of coding or paying for non-free templates.
Because it's so customisable, it's not well-optimised. Using it requires a decent internet connection and a desktop computer.
In order for myself and the members of my group to consider using any other VTT, it would need to outperform the one we're currently using on at least some of those points. Now, Sigil will be meant for just D&D, so that's a point where it's already behind compared to what we use now. And it's built around using what's available on D&D Beyond as a framework for what content you can access in it, which means that it both inherits the issues present in D&D Beyond with regards to being hostile to homebrew and third party content outside the very limited scope of what D&D Beyond allows you to homebrew and the limited library of third party content D&D Beyond offers.
So all in all, we're not likely to use Sigil in any case, but what will definitely not change our minds is a bunch of pointless visual spectacle. The fact that it's 3D counts against it for how much more difficult it'd make adding custom tokens/minis, assuming that's even possible, which I'm going to guess it's not. The way that the e-mail offers free minis makes it very clear that, in general use, minis are going to require payment.
Honestly, the issue that most VTT developers run into is that they forget they're making a Virtual Table Top. What they're trying to compete with is, at its core, a bunch of people sitting around a table with a sheet of blank graphing paper and some pawns or meeples scavenged from a board game. Statistically speaking most groups don't use store-bought terrain or minis (though, of course, statistically speaking most don't use battle maps at all).
If you want to succeed making a VTT, you need to offer something that's somehow more attractive than that.
Got the email for the Sigil content, and I claimed it! Came here to say that my group is very excited for Sigil to continue development. We're running from DNDBeyond Maps for now, since its so good for tracking encounter initiative, stat blocks, and automating rolls. I'm VERY excited for Sigil to come out with a seamless way to share builds with the community, and download community builds.
Rumors are that Sigil is DOA. I agree that it had some serious potential to be beyond amazing, but the fact that it's only available to Windows users and that it takes FOREVER to load is already enough to drag it down. I hate to admit in, but Wizards dreamed up something amazing, over promised on performance and under funded the project. Could it have been the best? potentially. Will it though? Never.
Rumors are that Sigil is DOA. I agree that it had some serious potential to be beyond amazing, but the fact that it's only available to Windows users and that it takes FOREVER to load is already enough to drag it down. I hate to admit in, but Wizards dreamed up something amazing, over promised on performance and under funded the project. Could it have been the best? potentially. Will it though? Never.
Eh, I’d say it was always a long shot. A 3D terrain sounds nice, but doesn’t actually offer much practical value to typical play, and they’d be fighting the well established VTT sites. It might have made a modest cash cow, but frankly nothing it was slated to offer is truly revolutionary.
Rumors are that Sigil is DOA. I agree that it had some serious potential to be beyond amazing, but the fact that it's only available to Windows users and that it takes FOREVER to load is already enough to drag it down. I hate to admit in, but Wizards dreamed up something amazing, over promised on performance and under funded the project. Could it have been the best? potentially. Will it though? Never.
Eh, I’d say it was always a long shot. A 3D terrain sounds nice, but doesn’t actually offer much practical value to typical play, and they’d be fighting the well established VTT sites. It might have made a modest cash cow, but frankly nothing it was slated to offer is truly revolutionary.
If you could interact with the terrain, maybe. As is, there doesn't seem to be much different between a table in game and a sticker on a table top matt in meat space. Or if it took into account its in the computer, maybe show some flying/floating foes and allies doing that.
Overal If I had to guess, it needed another year to work out the bugs
In general the options are competing with custom build RPG VTTs like Talespire, and competing with something general purpose like Tabletop Simulator. The first would be better for D&D, the second would have general utility for all of Hasbro's games. Both would be hard but not impossible -- I wouldn't give them no chance of succeeding, but I also wouldn't give them a high chance. It sounds like the Sigil team wasn't entirely sure which lane they were actually taking, which wouldn't have helped either path.
A fully flushed out level builder, integration with the site for official content, the ability to run any ruleset I want via homebrew, custom stat blocks if desired for homebrew, custom model builder for PCs/NPCs, and the ability to run on a server so players could access the game from any device. Anything less and there are already better options available.
I don't expect nor foresee Wizbro allowing or enabling "any rule set" on this site, Heck they won't even fix things that make using their rule set work on the site. Sigil seems cool if you have the hardware to run it, but with them giving away things that could be monetized coupled with the subtle release and dumping 90% of the devs the writing is on the wall for Sigil, and DDB is getting so convoluted to use that it is not the new player onboarding tool it once was. All of this leave the D&D official digital (DDB) experience lacking in many of the areas it excelled at just before Wizbro bought it. DDB was far from perfect pre Wizbro, but now in most cases it is just as easy if not easier (especially in the long run if the player stays at the table) to onboard them with physical books, a pencil and a decent character sheet. The marketing department has ruined the character generation tools in the sense of onboarding new users to D&D.
Just out of curiosity, what would we have considered a successful launch? And what would we have wanted as D&D fans
It would have been nice to have gotten what was advertised over the last couple of years. Short of that, something that would run on a computer not built for triple A gaming. Maps is just fine if the rest of the site wasn't so bent on forcing the new rules at the expense of ruining the user experience for those using the OG 5e rules to finish existing games using the DDB they bought and paid for. So many people I play with that had used and promoted DDB before the 24 stuff was implemented on DDB now totally ignore and in some cases outright ban from their tables now due solely from the the way wizbro chose to implement the new ruleset on DDB has been astonishing to me. Most of the DD groups I play with are planning to play through the content they own without using DDB and the transition to other TTRPG's like Pathfinder, or OSR games if the can't settle on one of the many OG 5e 3PP adventures, or just homebrew and dump Wizbro all together like they feel Wizbro has dumped them in the digital market. Download Sigil and all the stuff they give away, it will not be better than it is now like all of DDB.
Just out of curiosity, what would we have considered a successful launch? And what would we have wanted as D&D fans
If it had:
- implemented all the 2024 rules - have all the 2024 monsters as minis - directly sync from the game to dndbeyond and back - enough assets to create a myriad of adventures
The reality, it is really missing a ton of features, like a massive ton of features, to be a viable product. I don't even think they had the right team working on it. Pretty sure I could have 3 developers and have built what they produced in 1 year. The speed they were going it would be years before it was finished.
Judging by the number of people on the Discord, there is absolutely no interest, wrong product, wrong decade.
I don't expect nor foresee Wizbro allowing or enabling "any rule set" on this site,
I’d actually heard the opposite. They were going to make sigil rules neutral. For one, they’d gotten feedback that the more tightly they tied it to the RAW, the less people liked it. Considering that pretty much every table has house rules, they found people wanted flexibility more than automation. And then they realized if it is rules neutral, and you’re just building, basically, a digital dwarven forge, that could make it attractive to pathfinder and other game systems. Selling access to people who don’t even play D&D. Could be (pure speculation here on my part) that was one of the internal conflicts they were having.
One thing that I don't think WotC and customers would have seen eye-to-eye is cost. To really compete, I think it would have to have been freemium. The basics are free, then you spend money to get extras, like you do on Roll20. I felt the entire time that WotC was going to expect a rather hefty subscription in order to play it (either a costly sub for the DM like a Super-Master Tier or cheaper ones from every player). I don't see them making such powerful graphics engine, especially with Maps being run, and not asking for that.
The problem is that I think customers would prefer free/cheaper and be happy with the lower graphics. There's a reason why Roll20 is pretty much dominant compared to Foundry.
So in that way, I'm glad they pulled out. At least they didn't sink massive capital into something that was never going to be viable. The only thing is that I wish that instead of going for this boondoggle, they'd invested that money on keeping on some of those laid off staff from a year or so ago and gotten an adventure or two out instead.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
If the service provided is a time saver, not a time sync then the cost becomes moot, but with the direction DDB is going cost is very much a concern, and for many people I play with it has become an issue of not supporting the site based on the direction it is going. Every thing DDB offers is just better somewhere else, or at the very least users are not being punished for not adopting the fastest offerings as is the experience on this site.
Said it before and I'll say it again: If WotC had been smart they would have forked over like 10 million and just bought Roll20 followed by them tinkering to make the system more stable.
As a bonus they'd get a cut of other company's pies by continuing to host other systems.
Just out of curiosity, what would we have considered a successful launch? And what would we have wanted as D&D fans
Personally would be happy with:
The species found in the 2024 phb (others to be added over time)
More assets and perhaps a pre-built adventure per book purchased (added over time)
Ignore everything from books made before 2024 (work on at later date during spare time)
An unarmed and improvised attack options added to each character (haven't found yet)
An updated sigil clip addressing people's concerns and expectations (there's alot of outdated/misinformation clips out there deterring potential users)
Eventually work on partnerships and support for importing custom assets (rule modules, assets, etc)
Sigil doesn't need to do everything straight out of the gate with all the bells and whistles and could instead be grown over time into quite the formidable vtt.
If they ignored everything prior to 2024 then they would never find time to develop the prior versions for inclusion because they would find excuses not too.
The fact that currently the program barely supports 2024 or 2014 and is not even close to full support means it would be D.O.A. Before it even left Beta if it focused solely on the 2024 rules set.
Wizbro wanted a new BG game but got a VTT that wasn’t going to rake in a billion a year. Project called on accounting going loss till time X, unprofitable.
If they had started small and simple, it had a chance, but gluttony has lead to starvation. Feast well, for the next meal might be nothing more than the scraps of a long dead carcass, beaten to death by neglect and malice.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.
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The last few posts here kind of illustrate just some of the problems that WotC has to find a solution for if they are going to continue with Sigil. This tool just doesn't have an audience; its very much a concept built for a part of the community that doesn't exist anywhere.
Now that doesn't mean they can't foster a community. Talespire has had minimal success, they have about 300 active users and that number has grown slowly but surely over time, but its a long, hard and very economically shaky road. Talespire manages to be reasonably successful but it has to do with the fact that they only have a couple of mouths to feed, so they don't need to be a huge economic success. These are indie developers making indie developer money.
The people making Sigil as a product have to accept that they are taking a risk, they are trying something pretty new and outside of the scope of normal and with that comes the potential for failure but also potential for a real evolution. We don't know what's going to happen until they produce something that actually works and people start exploring it.
We can theorycraft about it, but if you really want to know, you have to deliver.
I got the mail and did not claim the minis. Instead I came here to explain why I didn't claim the minis and don't currently plan on using Sigil.
My group already has a VTT. I won't mention which one, but I will say that we use it because:
In order for myself and the members of my group to consider using any other VTT, it would need to outperform the one we're currently using on at least some of those points. Now, Sigil will be meant for just D&D, so that's a point where it's already behind compared to what we use now.
And it's built around using what's available on D&D Beyond as a framework for what content you can access in it, which means that it both inherits the issues present in D&D Beyond with regards to being hostile to homebrew and third party content outside the very limited scope of what D&D Beyond allows you to homebrew and the limited library of third party content D&D Beyond offers.
So all in all, we're not likely to use Sigil in any case, but what will definitely not change our minds is a bunch of pointless visual spectacle. The fact that it's 3D counts against it for how much more difficult it'd make adding custom tokens/minis, assuming that's even possible, which I'm going to guess it's not.
The way that the e-mail offers free minis makes it very clear that, in general use, minis are going to require payment.
Honestly, the issue that most VTT developers run into is that they forget they're making a Virtual Table Top. What they're trying to compete with is, at its core, a bunch of people sitting around a table with a sheet of blank graphing paper and some pawns or meeples scavenged from a board game. Statistically speaking most groups don't use store-bought terrain or minis (though, of course, statistically speaking most don't use battle maps at all).
If you want to succeed making a VTT, you need to offer something that's somehow more attractive than that.
Got the email for the Sigil content, and I claimed it! Came here to say that my group is very excited for Sigil to continue development. We're running from DNDBeyond Maps for now, since its so good for tracking encounter initiative, stat blocks, and automating rolls. I'm VERY excited for Sigil to come out with a seamless way to share builds with the community, and download community builds.
Rumors are that Sigil is DOA. I agree that it had some serious potential to be beyond amazing, but the fact that it's only available to Windows users and that it takes FOREVER to load is already enough to drag it down. I hate to admit in, but Wizards dreamed up something amazing, over promised on performance and under funded the project. Could it have been the best? potentially. Will it though? Never.
Eh, I’d say it was always a long shot. A 3D terrain sounds nice, but doesn’t actually offer much practical value to typical play, and they’d be fighting the well established VTT sites. It might have made a modest cash cow, but frankly nothing it was slated to offer is truly revolutionary.
If you could interact with the terrain, maybe. As is, there doesn't seem to be much different between a table in game and a sticker on a table top matt in meat space. Or if it took into account its in the computer, maybe show some flying/floating foes and allies doing that.
Overal If I had to guess, it needed another year to work out the bugs
In general the options are competing with custom build RPG VTTs like Talespire, and competing with something general purpose like Tabletop Simulator. The first would be better for D&D, the second would have general utility for all of Hasbro's games. Both would be hard but not impossible -- I wouldn't give them no chance of succeeding, but I also wouldn't give them a high chance. It sounds like the Sigil team wasn't entirely sure which lane they were actually taking, which wouldn't have helped either path.
Just out of curiosity, what would we have considered a successful launch? And what would we have wanted as D&D fans
A fully flushed out level builder, integration with the site for official content, the ability to run any ruleset I want via homebrew, custom stat blocks if desired for homebrew, custom model builder for PCs/NPCs, and the ability to run on a server so players could access the game from any device. Anything less and there are already better options available.
I don't expect nor foresee Wizbro allowing or enabling "any rule set" on this site, Heck they won't even fix things that make using their rule set work on the site. Sigil seems cool if you have the hardware to run it, but with them giving away things that could be monetized coupled with the subtle release and dumping 90% of the devs the writing is on the wall for Sigil, and DDB is getting so convoluted to use that it is not the new player onboarding tool it once was. All of this leave the D&D official digital (DDB) experience lacking in many of the areas it excelled at just before Wizbro bought it. DDB was far from perfect pre Wizbro, but now in most cases it is just as easy if not easier (especially in the long run if the player stays at the table) to onboard them with physical books, a pencil and a decent character sheet. The marketing department has ruined the character generation tools in the sense of onboarding new users to D&D.
It would have been nice to have gotten what was advertised over the last couple of years. Short of that, something that would run on a computer not built for triple A gaming. Maps is just fine if the rest of the site wasn't so bent on forcing the new rules at the expense of ruining the user experience for those using the OG 5e rules to finish existing games using the DDB they bought and paid for. So many people I play with that had used and promoted DDB before the 24 stuff was implemented on DDB now totally ignore and in some cases outright ban from their tables now due solely from the the way wizbro chose to implement the new ruleset on DDB has been astonishing to me. Most of the DD groups I play with are planning to play through the content they own without using DDB and the transition to other TTRPG's like Pathfinder, or OSR games if the can't settle on one of the many OG 5e 3PP adventures, or just homebrew and dump Wizbro all together like they feel Wizbro has dumped them in the digital market. Download Sigil and all the stuff they give away, it will not be better than it is now like all of DDB.
If it had:
- implemented all the 2024 rules
- have all the 2024 monsters as minis
- directly sync from the game to dndbeyond and back
- enough assets to create a myriad of adventures
The reality, it is really missing a ton of features, like a massive ton of features, to be a viable product.
I don't even think they had the right team working on it. Pretty sure I could have 3 developers and have built what they produced in 1 year.
The speed they were going it would be years before it was finished.
Judging by the number of people on the Discord, there is absolutely no interest, wrong product, wrong decade.
I’d actually heard the opposite. They were going to make sigil rules neutral. For one, they’d gotten feedback that the more tightly they tied it to the RAW, the less people liked it. Considering that pretty much every table has house rules, they found people wanted flexibility more than automation.
And then they realized if it is rules neutral, and you’re just building, basically, a digital dwarven forge, that could make it attractive to pathfinder and other game systems. Selling access to people who don’t even play D&D.
Could be (pure speculation here on my part) that was one of the internal conflicts they were having.
That flies in the face of anything Wizbro has done since buying the DDB site, it's hope you are correct.
One thing that I don't think WotC and customers would have seen eye-to-eye is cost. To really compete, I think it would have to have been freemium. The basics are free, then you spend money to get extras, like you do on Roll20. I felt the entire time that WotC was going to expect a rather hefty subscription in order to play it (either a costly sub for the DM like a Super-Master Tier or cheaper ones from every player). I don't see them making such powerful graphics engine, especially with Maps being run, and not asking for that.
The problem is that I think customers would prefer free/cheaper and be happy with the lower graphics. There's a reason why Roll20 is pretty much dominant compared to Foundry.
So in that way, I'm glad they pulled out. At least they didn't sink massive capital into something that was never going to be viable. The only thing is that I wish that instead of going for this boondoggle, they'd invested that money on keeping on some of those laid off staff from a year or so ago and gotten an adventure or two out instead.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
If the service provided is a time saver, not a time sync then the cost becomes moot, but with the direction DDB is going cost is very much a concern, and for many people I play with it has become an issue of not supporting the site based on the direction it is going. Every thing DDB offers is just better somewhere else, or at the very least users are not being punished for not adopting the fastest offerings as is the experience on this site.
Said it before and I'll say it again: If WotC had been smart they would have forked over like 10 million and just bought Roll20 followed by them tinkering to make the system more stable.
As a bonus they'd get a cut of other company's pies by continuing to host other systems.
I doubt Roll20 could be bought for anywhere close to 20 million. Heck I could come up with that to buy it and I live paycheck to paycheck lol!
Personally would be happy with:
Sigil doesn't need to do everything straight out of the gate with all the bells and whistles and could instead be grown over time into quite the formidable vtt.
If they ignored everything prior to 2024 then they would never find time to develop the prior versions for inclusion because they would find excuses not too.
The fact that currently the program barely supports 2024 or 2014 and is not even close to full support means it would be D.O.A. Before it even left Beta if it focused solely on the 2024 rules set.
Wizbro wanted a new BG game but got a VTT that wasn’t going to rake in a billion a year. Project called on accounting going loss till time X, unprofitable.
If they had started small and simple, it had a chance, but gluttony has lead to starvation.
Feast well, for the next meal might be nothing more than the scraps of a long dead carcass, beaten to death by neglect and malice.
" Darkvision doesn’t work in Magical darkness, and if something is magical, Never Trust it acts the same way as a non-magical version of that same thing!”- Discotech Mage over a cup of joe.