Feedback channel on discord is but one place, but this forum could have been a second more direct line of communication, and compiling the various feedback across multiple social media channels would have given a broader view of the biggest issues.
Feedback channel on discord is but one place, but this forum could have been a second more direct line of communication, and compiling the various feedback across multiple social media channels would have given a broader view of the biggest issues.
Still doesn’t matter, they could have done a better job of realizing it wasn’t going to be a big thing if only a handful of users were able to even get the thing working. First major issue it had was object size when running the launcher for the first time. How many forgot or missed the thing was a PC only windows build? Mac users can workaround, but given the user experience of the program being a system hog, it doesn’t really seem like those “features” where a priority.
I bet the first feedback from closed beta was “it don’t work.”
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.
Got the freebies just incase DnDbeyond is using them to gauge interest.
Looking forward to picking up more in future
In relation to this I've just had an email through about a pack of wild animal minis to claim. The most interesting thing was it was described as "this week's minis" and went on to say "return every week to claim a new pack of minis for your Sigil adventures" so it sounds like it's going to be a regular thing for at least the short term
Small and simple is less of an option for a major company than an indie, as I believe had already been mentioned.
Bringing this back up because I just want to point that this is literally the opposite of reality.
A major company can, if they want, make something that's small and simple and supports play and they can even offer it for free and it will still make them money by making the 'on-boarding' process easier and lead to more people buying the stuff they do sell.
The issue is that WotC under Hasbro doesn't want more money. It wants ALL the money and if something doesn't make maximum buckaroos they simply don't consider it worth doing. But that's crappy corporate culture, not reality.
That's why Sigil will literally never make them money. Most people don't play with minis in physical table-top because of the cost, they're not going pay money for a mini that evaporates the moment the VTT it's a part of stops operating because WotC decides to shutter it because it's failed or because it was successful for a while but now sales are slowing down so they've decided to launch a 'new, improved' version where everyone has to re-buy all the content to stay up-to-date. And the people that are willing to pay for minis mainly do so because a mini is a physical thing that you can paint and/or customise and when you're done using it you can put it in a display case as a conversation piece and reminder of the good times you had playing that character or, as a DM, running the encounter your players had with that monster. Those people are going to be even less inclined to pay for a digital ghost of a thing over the actual thing itself.
And that's the problem, really. If the goal of Sigil was not to be a new revenue stream, but to support play and instead of having to buy digital minis, you would just get digital minis for every monster and NPC in every book you own on D&DBeyond and a bunch of digital minis with customisation appropriate for every species/class combination and a whole load of terrain all for free... Then WotC could make a mint on selling physical versions of the minis and terrain they play with in Sigil. Just so they could have them, not even necessarily to play with.
It takes very little effort to discover how ridiculously lucrative the market for physical figurines of characters and monsters from video games, and anime is. Figurines that get sold for the sole reason that people saw the cool characters and monsters in motion on their screen and now they want to own a physical representation for themselves to display and look at. It would take even less effort to discover this for Hasbro, which already fupping makes some of those.
Small and simple is less of an option for a major company than an indie, as I believe had already been mentioned.
Bringing this back up because I just want to point that this is literally the opposite of reality.
A major company can, if they want, make something that's small and simple and supports play and they can even offer it for free and it will still make them money by making the 'on-boarding' process easier and lead to more people buying the stuff they do sell.
The issue is that WotC under Hasbro doesn't want more money. It wants ALL the money and if something doesn't make maximum buckaroos they simply don't consider it worth doing. But that's crappy corporate culture, not reality.
Welcome to Maps, the virtual tabletop (VTT) fully integrated with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS on D&D BEYOND! Our VTT is designed to easily bring you and your friends closer together for tactical adventures, whether you're in the same room or on opposite sides of the world.
Play with official maps and monsters from your D&D BEYOND library.
Easily upload and scale your own maps.
Add character and monster tokens with ease.
Roll dice directly from Maps or from a character sheet with the shared Game Log.
Use tools like fog of war, overlays, ping, and more to streamline your playing experience.
Only Master Tier subscribers can host game sessions in Maps, but anyone with a free account can join a hosted game. And because it's browser-based, you can play on any device with an internet connection.
A major company can, if they want, make something that's small and simple and supports play and they can even offer it for free and it will still make them money by making the 'on-boarding' process easier and lead to more people buying the stuff they do sell.
The issue is that WotC under Hasbro doesn't want more money. It wants ALL the money and if something doesn't make maximum buckaroos they simply don't consider it worth doing. But that's crappy corporate culture, not reality.
Corporations, and Hasbro is no exception, look at projects in terms of what they cost, how likely they are to work, and what the rewards of success are. There tend to be bureaucratic costs and reputational risks that make larger corporations unwilling to do very small projects, but Hasbro has no shortage of products that are only modest performers. Project Sigil was a gamble that didn't pay off.
Small and simple has the problem that, well, there's already well established competition in that market segment so the odds of success are not great, not that Hasbro is inherently opposed to trying to do something like that.
A major company can, if they want, make something that's small and simple and supports play and they can even offer it for free and it will still make them money by making the 'on-boarding' process easier and lead to more people buying the stuff they do sell.
The issue is that WotC under Hasbro doesn't want more money. It wants ALL the money and if something doesn't make maximum buckaroos they simply don't consider it worth doing. But that's crappy corporate culture, not reality.
Corporations, and Hasbro is no exception, look at projects in terms of what they cost, how likely they are to work, and what the rewards of success are. There tend to be bureaucratic costs and reputational risks that make larger corporations unwilling to do very small projects, but Hasbro has no shortage of products that are only modest performers. Project Sigil was a gamble that didn't pay off.
Small and simple has the problem that, well, there's already well established competition in that market segment so the odds of success are not great, not that Hasbro is inherently opposed to trying to do something like that.
To expand on this, for larger corporations with more resources it can be a matter of opportunity costs- particularly relative to a dev team's man hours. They can try for a small and simple thing with modest returns relative to man hours, or aim for a significantly more ambitious project that if successful gives much larger returns relative to man hours. Hypothetically taking the simple option effectively costs them the larger returns of the more ambitious one. Obviously this is predicated on the big project being a big success which was not the case here, but it's not just the mindless chasing of big numbers- it's an efficiency analysis of time invested against returns. Large corporations have the capacity to take on larger projects which creates the impetus- particularly for publicly traded ones- that they make those attempts.
Got the freebies just incase DnDbeyond is using them to gauge interest.
Looking forward to picking up more in future
In relation to this I've just had an email through about a pack of wild animal minis to claim. The most interesting thing was it was described as "this week's minis" and went on to say "return every week to claim a new pack of minis for your Sigil adventures" so it sounds like it's going to be a regular thing for at least the short term
That would be nice, thanks for the heads up, will be keeping my eye out for them
Maps is actually a perfect example of what's going wrong here.
I won't say that it's a direct clone, but everything from the UI layout to the exact features makes it very clear that Maps is essentially just copying Roll20's homework. And I'm absolutely certain that's not because the people actually working on it are too lazy to be original.
I'm fairly confident that things are this way because someone higher up the chain was informed that Roll20 is the single most popular VTT (and it is. Foundry is arguably better but the ~$50 initial buy-in keeps it from taking top spot) and instead of trying to find out why that is and how to compete with that with the advantages WotC has, they just went 'make us something that does that' to the Maps team.
And the reason that doesn't work is that Roll20 is the way it is because it's designed to offer free, basic support for as wide an array of games as possible.
And... Here's where we're getting in the weeds a little... There's a good chance Maps is 'copying' Roll20 because there's a strategy of actively trying to drive Roll20 out of the D&D market. If you've paid attention to the VTT sphere, you'll have noticed that at the start of 2024 Foundry entered into a 'partnership' with WotC that basically meant the people at Foundry got access to 5.5e (or '5e 2024' if you prefer) content early so that they could offer support for it the moment it officially came out in exchange for deprecating support for 5e (or '5e 2014/classic'). Oh sure, they dressed it up nicely, claiming they were halting work on improving 5e support so they could be ready to add support for 5.5e content the moment it came out, but anyone who thinks about it for even a second would realise that having a team halt work and sit their twiddling their thumbs in January for content that's coming out in June doesn't actually make them more prepared. But the excuse they gave was nicer than We're cooperating with WotC to make support for 5e ever so slightly worse, as part of their continued efforts to get as many people as possible to switch over to 5.5e so they have to buy all new books"".
And then compare that with Roll20 committing at around the same time to offer equal support for 5e and 5.5e and leaving the decision on what to play to the players themselves.
So yeah, it may be telling that Maps, despite only having to support D&D, copies features that Roll20 has because it's trying to support as many games as possible. Roll20 has a basic fog of war system for revealing the map and determining what players can see (and a dynamic lighting system that, when I tested it when I was looking for potential VTTs to replace my group's current one, should that become necessary, doesn't affect visibility at all). Foundry has a lighting system that (if you're using the D&D modules) automatically adjusts visibility, taking darkvision into account. Maps copies the former, despite the fact that having something like the latter would instantly give it a leg up over Roll20 for people playing D&D.
Maps copies Roll20 (and for the most is playing perpetual catch up in terms of when features are implemented). It might be because someone up the chain in WotC/Hasbro is just so myopic that they can't look beyond Roll20 being the biggest and think just blatantly copying that but having their brand attached will let them out-compete it (that would be in line with what Hasbro has done with many of its toy and board game lines for decades) or whether it's a more complicated strategy to try and reduce Roll20's market share as 'punishment' for not playing ball on WotC's strategy to try and get people to switch from 5e to 5.5e without incurring massive reputation loss by making support for 5e gradually worse instead of ceasing support immediately... But what's obvious is that Maps is meant to compete directly with Roll20 and it's the worst choice of which VTT to compete with possible.
And it makes me wonder which existing VTT Sigil is meant to be a copy of/direct competitor to.
I was originally going to use the quote feature, but I think someone went "Why are you quoting posts all the time?" and I didn't want any of that here.
I will say though that the reply feature is useless if it doesn't let others know who I'm replying to.
I was originally going to use the quote feature, but I think someone went "Why are you quoting posts all the time?" and I didn't want any of that here.
I will say though that the reply feature is useless if it doesn't let others know who I'm replying to.
Believe the reply feature only lets that individual know due to the "Re:" at the beginning of the notification, others just get a normal notification.
As for quoting - think they only get annoyed if quoting ever increasing quote chains (could be wrong though)
How do you uninstall this software? It does not appear on my add remove programs list.
I don't believe the install does anything on your computer (like registry entries or anything). So you can just go to the installation folder and delete the files.
They're automatically in the VTT.
I checked.
You DO know I also mentioned a feedback page too.
I even have it right here. https://dddigital-feedback-zbkem2ak.featureupvote.com/
Still doesn’t matter, they could have done a better job of realizing it wasn’t going to be a big thing if only a handful of users were able to even get the thing working.
First major issue it had was object size when running the launcher for the first time. How many forgot or missed the thing was a PC only windows build? Mac users can workaround, but given the user experience of the program being a system hog, it doesn’t really seem like those “features” where a priority.
I bet the first feedback from closed beta was “it don’t work.”
" 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.
In relation to this I've just had an email through about a pack of wild animal minis to claim. The most interesting thing was it was described as "this week's minis" and went on to say "return every week to claim a new pack of minis for your Sigil adventures" so it sounds like it's going to be a regular thing for at least the short term
Bringing this back up because I just want to point that this is literally the opposite of reality.
A major company can, if they want, make something that's small and simple and supports play and they can even offer it for free and it will still make them money by making the 'on-boarding' process easier and lead to more people buying the stuff they do sell.
The issue is that WotC under Hasbro doesn't want more money. It wants ALL the money and if something doesn't make maximum buckaroos they simply don't consider it worth doing. But that's crappy corporate culture, not reality.
That's why Sigil will literally never make them money. Most people don't play with minis in physical table-top because of the cost, they're not going pay money for a mini that evaporates the moment the VTT it's a part of stops operating because WotC decides to shutter it because it's failed or because it was successful for a while but now sales are slowing down so they've decided to launch a 'new, improved' version where everyone has to re-buy all the content to stay up-to-date.
And the people that are willing to pay for minis mainly do so because a mini is a physical thing that you can paint and/or customise and when you're done using it you can put it in a display case as a conversation piece and reminder of the good times you had playing that character or, as a DM, running the encounter your players had with that monster. Those people are going to be even less inclined to pay for a digital ghost of a thing over the actual thing itself.
And that's the problem, really. If the goal of Sigil was not to be a new revenue stream, but to support play and instead of having to buy digital minis, you would just get digital minis for every monster and NPC in every book you own on D&DBeyond and a bunch of digital minis with customisation appropriate for every species/class combination and a whole load of terrain all for free... Then WotC could make a mint on selling physical versions of the minis and terrain they play with in Sigil. Just so they could have them, not even necessarily to play with.
It takes very little effort to discover how ridiculously lucrative the market for physical figurines of characters and monsters from video games, and anime is. Figurines that get sold for the sole reason that people saw the cool characters and monsters in motion on their screen and now they want to own a physical representation for themselves to display and look at. It would take even less effort to discover this for Hasbro, which already fupping makes some of those.
Welcome to Maps, the virtual tabletop (VTT) fully integrated with DUNGEONS & DRAGONS on D&D BEYOND! Our VTT is designed to easily bring you and your friends closer together for tactical adventures, whether you're in the same room or on opposite sides of the world.
With Maps, you can:
Only Master Tier subscribers can host game sessions in Maps, but anyone with a free account can join a hosted game. And because it's browser-based, you can play on any device with an internet connection.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Corporations, and Hasbro is no exception, look at projects in terms of what they cost, how likely they are to work, and what the rewards of success are. There tend to be bureaucratic costs and reputational risks that make larger corporations unwilling to do very small projects, but Hasbro has no shortage of products that are only modest performers. Project Sigil was a gamble that didn't pay off.
Small and simple has the problem that, well, there's already well established competition in that market segment so the odds of success are not great, not that Hasbro is inherently opposed to trying to do something like that.
To expand on this, for larger corporations with more resources it can be a matter of opportunity costs- particularly relative to a dev team's man hours. They can try for a small and simple thing with modest returns relative to man hours, or aim for a significantly more ambitious project that if successful gives much larger returns relative to man hours. Hypothetically taking the simple option effectively costs them the larger returns of the more ambitious one. Obviously this is predicated on the big project being a big success which was not the case here, but it's not just the mindless chasing of big numbers- it's an efficiency analysis of time invested against returns. Large corporations have the capacity to take on larger projects which creates the impetus- particularly for publicly traded ones- that they make those attempts.
That would be nice, thanks for the heads up, will be keeping my eye out for them
Why are you so mean?
? Who...who are you calling mean?
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Maps is actually a perfect example of what's going wrong here.
I won't say that it's a direct clone, but everything from the UI layout to the exact features makes it very clear that Maps is essentially just copying Roll20's homework. And I'm absolutely certain that's not because the people actually working on it are too lazy to be original.
I'm fairly confident that things are this way because someone higher up the chain was informed that Roll20 is the single most popular VTT (and it is. Foundry is arguably better but the ~$50 initial buy-in keeps it from taking top spot) and instead of trying to find out why that is and how to compete with that with the advantages WotC has, they just went 'make us something that does that' to the Maps team.
And the reason that doesn't work is that Roll20 is the way it is because it's designed to offer free, basic support for as wide an array of games as possible.
And... Here's where we're getting in the weeds a little... There's a good chance Maps is 'copying' Roll20 because there's a strategy of actively trying to drive Roll20 out of the D&D market.
If you've paid attention to the VTT sphere, you'll have noticed that at the start of 2024 Foundry entered into a 'partnership' with WotC that basically meant the people at Foundry got access to 5.5e (or '5e 2024' if you prefer) content early so that they could offer support for it the moment it officially came out in exchange for deprecating support for 5e (or '5e 2014/classic').
Oh sure, they dressed it up nicely, claiming they were halting work on improving 5e support so they could be ready to add support for 5.5e content the moment it came out, but anyone who thinks about it for even a second would realise that having a team halt work and sit their twiddling their thumbs in January for content that's coming out in June doesn't actually make them more prepared. But the excuse they gave was nicer than We're cooperating with WotC to make support for 5e ever so slightly worse, as part of their continued efforts to get as many people as possible to switch over to 5.5e so they have to buy all new books"".
And then compare that with Roll20 committing at around the same time to offer equal support for 5e and 5.5e and leaving the decision on what to play to the players themselves.
So yeah, it may be telling that Maps, despite only having to support D&D, copies features that Roll20 has because it's trying to support as many games as possible. Roll20 has a basic fog of war system for revealing the map and determining what players can see (and a dynamic lighting system that, when I tested it when I was looking for potential VTTs to replace my group's current one, should that become necessary, doesn't affect visibility at all). Foundry has a lighting system that (if you're using the D&D modules) automatically adjusts visibility, taking darkvision into account. Maps copies the former, despite the fact that having something like the latter would instantly give it a leg up over Roll20 for people playing D&D.
Maps copies Roll20 (and for the most is playing perpetual catch up in terms of when features are implemented). It might be because someone up the chain in WotC/Hasbro is just so myopic that they can't look beyond Roll20 being the biggest and think just blatantly copying that but having their brand attached will let them out-compete it (that would be in line with what Hasbro has done with many of its toy and board game lines for decades) or whether it's a more complicated strategy to try and reduce Roll20's market share as 'punishment' for not playing ball on WotC's strategy to try and get people to switch from 5e to 5.5e without incurring massive reputation loss by making support for 5e gradually worse instead of ceasing support immediately...
But what's obvious is that Maps is meant to compete directly with Roll20 and it's the worst choice of which VTT to compete with possible.
And it makes me wonder which existing VTT Sigil is meant to be a copy of/direct competitor to.
Roll20 wasn't the first that did this stuff, they were just the most successful. they took insperation from other companies as well.
Paradox_Traveler.
They've been shooting me in the foot.
I was originally going to use the quote feature, but I think someone went "Why are you quoting posts all the time?" and I didn't want any of that here.
I will say though that the reply feature is useless if it doesn't let others know who I'm replying to.
Believe the reply feature only lets that individual know due to the "Re:" at the beginning of the notification, others just get a normal notification.
As for quoting - think they only get annoyed if quoting ever increasing quote chains (could be wrong though)
How do you uninstall this software? It does not appear on my add remove programs list.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
I don't believe the install does anything on your computer (like registry entries or anything). So you can just go to the installation folder and delete the files.
Looks like Sigil is still getting updates. I look forward to seeing what they end up doing with it.
YES!!!
Thank you! I've been wanting these features for a long time. Hopefully they'll keep this going because I want this to be as good as a VTT can be.