The Sigil project is basically dead. They fired most of the staff, the system requirements to run it are way to high (which prices out most of their potential user base), and it is the most complicated to use of all the VTTs i've looked at.
What started as a great idea, an in-house VTT to leverage WoTC & DnD Beyonds existing resources suffered from mission creep and ... well... they bit off way more than they could chew.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (original Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
I didn't think constructing the maps was that hard to be honest, if you were just going with basic stuff. Not like you had to make a work of art with a 2D map-making tool either; I didn't find it that much more time-consuming to just lay down floors and walls to construct a basic 'dungeon'. You could put in as much detail afterwards as you wanted.
My biggest issue was that they didn't really know what they wanted Sigil to actually be. Its like they started off as a map tool and someone higher up pushed them to make it work like a 'video game' and it ended up being neither!
That is, the players had to import their characters into Sigil and use everything in there, where you ended up with some horrendous interface where you couldn't even see what features or inventory your character had (everything was tidy identical icons). And when they attacked or whatever, Sigil tried to do everything for you like a video game. Which just...didn't work. Because it's supposed to be a map tool that enhances the basic playing of a table-top RPG. There was no way for me - the DM - to decide the outcome of a dice roll or adjust for cover etc etc. At one point, while we were beta testing, a player tried to use a cone spell (Burning Hands I think) and we just couldn't get it to damage a monster in range due to a slope! And I had no was to simply apply the damage myself.
It was basically unusable for what it was supposed to be.
Unfortunately, Hasbro chose to invest more in hiring people to make a whole new program from scratch instead of partner with somebody who already had a VTT up and running Instead Of hiring creatives to create new ideas for campaign settings and subclasses. Not to mention the leadership was at odds with itself about it despite investing years and millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, Hasbro chose to invest more in hiring people to make a whole new program from scratch instead of partner with somebody who already had a VTT up and running and hiring creatives to create new ideas for campaign settings and subclasses. Not to mention the leadership was at odds with itself about it despite invest years and millions of dollars.
Well, that's the irony. Larian helps WotC makes millions of dollars, but now Larian doesn't want to work with WotC anymore b/c WotC fired a huge number of the WotC staff that worked so well with Larian to make BG3 happen. And just before Christmas, to boot! Short-sighted profit gains at the cost of long-term damage to both profits and reputation. "Now let's take a moment to pray to our shareholders."
I just tested out Sigil and frankly I was amazed. It looks incredible. So much of it is ready to use, it just needs more content. I hope it's not really dead. It has incredible potential.
I just tested out Sigil and frankly I was amazed. It looks incredible. So much of it is ready to use, it just needs more content. I hope it's not really dead. It has incredible potential.
Its not dead, news are usually on the official Sigil discord. There is also a Sigil Architects Discord where a lot of fan made maps can be seen and you can import those. Along with helpul advice for building maps.
You know, despite what was said to be going against it, I was still hoping it would become the program it set out to be.
I liked the idea of an official digital version of the tabletop game using 3D models, especially if it meant you could make your own Baldur's Gate style campaigns across the web. Sadly it was cut short before it could be anywhere on par with Talespire, RPG Stories or other VTT programs, which really sucks in my opinion because the graphics in Sigil were amazing, and I wanted an official DnD VTT that allowed players to visualize their experiences to their fullest potential without making the Tabletop experience too expensive.
While they've given up on Sigil, I just hope they use this as a learning experience to make something even better. For now, I think we should stick with other VTTs.
If anything this is a huge reason not to trust Hasbro with any future VTT.
Sigil was a mess but those that actually used it had to have put immense time into creating usable maps. It would be different if you signed up, used some premade map packs, etc but anyone who was actually using it had to have dumped countless hours into it. I never followed the micro transactions they were trying either or if any were for sale or purchased but refunds weren’t mentioned in the announcement.
Again… it was an awful product and shouldn’t have been released but you did and you wasted your most loyal fans’ time. I can’t imagine any world where they could try another VTT. No one will trust them.
If anything this is a huge reason not to trust Hasbro with any future VTT.
Sigil was a mess but those that actually used it had to have put immense time into creating usable maps. It would be different if you signed up, used some premade map packs, etc but anyone who was actually using it had to have dumped countless hours into it. I never followed the micro transactions they were trying either or if any were for sale or purchased but refunds weren’t mentioned in the announcement.
Again… it was an awful product and shouldn’t have been released but you did and you wasted your most loyal fans’ time. I can’t imagine any world where they could try another VTT. No one will trust them.
The people who wanted to use it are the same people who were okay putting in the time to make the maps. Talespire didn't drop 100 map packs either but you can go onto their site and see literally thousands of fanmade maps. FYI, Sigil also allowed map sharing. We also have no idea if official map packs would have been a thing. People were so determined to reject it from the point that it was introduced, that we have no insight into what it would have been had it been allowed to complete development and launch.
If anything this is a huge reason not to trust Hasbro with any future VTT.
It makes absolutely no difference to my trust (which was, to be fair, not particularly high to start with), because I'm entirely aware that projects fail.
If anything this is a huge reason not to trust Hasbro with any future VTT.
Sigil was a mess but those that actually used it had to have put immense time into creating usable maps. It would be different if you signed up, used some premade map packs, etc but anyone who was actually using it had to have dumped countless hours into it. I never followed the micro transactions they were trying either or if any were for sale or purchased but refunds weren’t mentioned in the announcement.
Again… it was an awful product and shouldn’t have been released but you did and you wasted your most loyal fans’ time. I can’t imagine any world where they could try another VTT. No one will trust them.
If anything this is a huge reason not to trust Hasbro with any future VTT.
Sigil was a mess but those that actually used it had to have put immense time into creating usable maps. It would be different if you signed up, used some premade map packs, etc but anyone who was actually using it had to have dumped countless hours into it. I never followed the micro transactions they were trying either or if any were for sale or purchased but refunds weren’t mentioned in the announcement.
Again… it was an awful product and shouldn’t have been released but you did and you wasted your most loyal fans’ time. I can’t imagine any world where they could try another VTT. No one will trust them.
The people who wanted to use it are the same people who were okay putting in the time to make the maps. Talespire didn't drop 100 map packs either but you can go onto their site and see literally thousands of fanmade maps. FYI, Sigil also allowed map sharing. We also have no idea if official map packs would have been a thing. People were so determined to reject it from the point that it was introduced, that we have no insight into what it would have been had it been allowed to complete development and launch.
That is definitely all true (in my opinion), but the issue was always that VTTs are not something for a universal D&D audience, and I think as a product, it sort of made that assumption, and more specifically, calculated the expected economic performance of that tool based on that assumption. It's an understandable assumption for two reasons.
First, DnDBeyond functions like that. It's not exclusive to any part of the D&D audience; anyone, whether you play online or offline, gets benefits from DnDbeyond.
Second is that for a time, because of the pandemic, the D&D audience was forced online, because there was no other way to really play the game during this period. We were all forced into isolation so if you wanted to keep playing D&D with your group, online play was pretty much the only option. This gave a false positive that universally everyone does, in fact, play D&D online, but this is simply not true. The online audience is but a tiny fraction of the D&D community. I mean, according to Wizards of the Coast, about 85 million people engaged with D&D just last year meanwhile, at the peek of the pandemic, Roll20 reported around 3 million users, which today is well under a million. These aren't hard or presumably even particularly accurate numbers, but suffice to say the difference between online and offline audiences is massive and to an offline audience, a VTT is a completely useless technology that serves no purpose at all.
Post pandemic, there is not much of a market for VTT's, especially expensive 3d ones that demand a lot of time to setup. Add the fact that there is a lot of competition in this limited market of many already well-established and easy to use VTT's and it's not hard to understand why Sigil, no matter what they did or how they marketed, was effectively created for an audience that doesn't really exist and never has. At least not in the numbers they were sort of expecting. I would expect a tool like that if they have 200 people using it every day, its a booming success, aka... Talespire reaches an audience of about 290 players per day on average and it's a far superior tool to anything Sigil was ever even planning, let alone had hope of executing.
The issue is that online gaming is a sub-section of D&D and this is not the "default" way people play D&D. Its a small business, which is fine for the many companies running VTT's, they do really well because they don't need a big audience to be successful. Sigil however, was planning to be this next BIG Baldur's Gate 3 level success, which was about he craziest expectation imaginable. I mean.. this was never going to happen; there was ZERO chance of Sigil reaching anything even approaching such a level of success.
At its absolute best, it would have been a niche tool for a tiny audience and that is all you can ever expect now or in the future from a 3d VTT. Its a cool concept, I ran a Talespire online game once for 3 years (during the pandemic) and I was extremely proficient with the tool and the average prep time was excessive. Generally, I would run a session once every other week and it took about 6-8 hours of work to prep for a 3-4 hour session. It was effectively 2 hours of work to prep 1 hour of play.
If anything this is a huge reason not to trust Hasbro with any future VTT.
It makes absolutely no difference to my trust (which was, to be fair, not particularly high to start with), because I'm entirely aware that projects fail.
It should.
Trust isn't really about moral failure or whatever in this context. It's about believing that if you invest in their project (whether that's in money, time, effort, hope whatever), that it will workout. I don't back Kickstarters unless I known the company or person behind it, because otherwise I don't trust them to follow through and I'll end up with my goodies. I don't think they're going to con me per se, but that the project has a reasonable chance of falling through.
Likewise, I don't impute some kind of moral failing on this. As you say, projects fail. Spending more cash on something that's not going to turn a [large enough] profit is irresponsible and there's no money that's been invested by customers to create a duty. However, it's another data point on the "If they say they're going to do something, will they do it?" graph.
I really think companies need to cool their heals on things like this and not announce stuff when they're in the "we have an idea" or "we have a mock-up of an idea" stages. Instead, they should wait until shortly before they're ready for customer involvement (whether that's for beta for large audience testing like they did for 1D&D or release or whatever). Unfortunately, they get excited, announce super early and that causes problems. My biggest gripe with this is computer games. They declare they're making something...then nothing appears for years. Sometimes, it never does.
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 anything this is a huge reason not to trust Hasbro with any future VTT.
Sigil was a mess but those that actually used it had to have put immense time into creating usable maps. It would be different if you signed up, used some premade map packs, etc but anyone who was actually using it had to have dumped countless hours into it. I never followed the micro transactions they were trying either or if any were for sale or purchased but refunds weren’t mentioned in the announcement.
Again… it was an awful product and shouldn’t have been released but you did and you wasted your most loyal fans’ time. I can’t imagine any world where they could try another VTT. No one will trust them.
That isnt really true. I built a few maps real quickly, a simple dungeon was easy and quick to do for me (and I am not a computer savy person). Village ruins was also real easy, the ability to combine uploaded 2D maps with 3D terrain got you good looking maps real quick.
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I just looked into Sigil. Downloaded it. Opened it. Saw one demo “map” aka a tavern… and that was it.
I’m running Strahd. Can you imagine making just one of those maps in this thing. It would take weeks. Making ravenloft would be months.
Maybe someday when the maps for the modules you own are in there I’ll consider it but this is a very hard pass. Deleted it.
The Sigil project is basically dead. They fired most of the staff, the system requirements to run it are way to high (which prices out most of their potential user base), and it is the most complicated to use of all the VTTs i've looked at.
What started as a great idea, an in-house VTT to leverage WoTC & DnD Beyonds existing resources suffered from mission creep and ... well... they bit off way more than they could chew.
Playing D&D since 1982
Have played every version of the game since Basic (original Red Box Set), except that abomination sometimes called 4e.
I didn't think constructing the maps was that hard to be honest, if you were just going with basic stuff. Not like you had to make a work of art with a 2D map-making tool either; I didn't find it that much more time-consuming to just lay down floors and walls to construct a basic 'dungeon'. You could put in as much detail afterwards as you wanted.
My biggest issue was that they didn't really know what they wanted Sigil to actually be. Its like they started off as a map tool and someone higher up pushed them to make it work like a 'video game' and it ended up being neither!
That is, the players had to import their characters into Sigil and use everything in there, where you ended up with some horrendous interface where you couldn't even see what features or inventory your character had (everything was tidy identical icons). And when they attacked or whatever, Sigil tried to do everything for you like a video game. Which just...didn't work. Because it's supposed to be a map tool that enhances the basic playing of a table-top RPG. There was no way for me - the DM - to decide the outcome of a dice roll or adjust for cover etc etc. At one point, while we were beta testing, a player tried to use a cone spell (Burning Hands I think) and we just couldn't get it to damage a monster in range due to a slope! And I had no was to simply apply the damage myself.
It was basically unusable for what it was supposed to be.
Sigil is effectively a dead platform, like it or love it. They are just beating a dead horse at this point.
Unfortunately, Hasbro chose to invest more in hiring people to make a whole new program from scratch instead of partner with somebody who already had a VTT up and running Instead Of hiring creatives to create new ideas for campaign settings and subclasses. Not to mention the leadership was at odds with itself about it despite investing years and millions of dollars.
Well, at least they still have Baldur's Gate 3.
https://www.ign.com/articles/larian-studios-wont-make-baldurs-gate-3-dlc-expansions-or-baldurs-gate-4
Well, that's the irony. Larian helps WotC makes millions of dollars, but now Larian doesn't want to work with WotC anymore b/c WotC fired a huge number of the WotC staff that worked so well with Larian to make BG3 happen. And just before Christmas, to boot! Short-sighted profit gains at the cost of long-term damage to both profits and reputation. "Now let's take a moment to pray to our shareholders."
I just tested out Sigil and frankly I was amazed. It looks incredible. So much of it is ready to use, it just needs more content. I hope it's not really dead. It has incredible potential.
Its not dead, news are usually on the official Sigil discord. There is also a Sigil Architects Discord where a lot of fan made maps can be seen and you can import those. Along with helpul advice for building maps.
Welp...
:(
Sad to see it go. At least people have a year to get some use out of the fantastic maps they made.
I heard the bad news too.
You know, despite what was said to be going against it, I was still hoping it would become the program it set out to be.
I liked the idea of an official digital version of the tabletop game using 3D models, especially if it meant you could make your own Baldur's Gate style campaigns across the web. Sadly it was cut short before it could be anywhere on par with Talespire, RPG Stories or other VTT programs, which really sucks in my opinion because the graphics in Sigil were amazing, and I wanted an official DnD VTT that allowed players to visualize their experiences to their fullest potential without making the Tabletop experience too expensive.
While they've given up on Sigil, I just hope they use this as a learning experience to make something even better.
For now, I think we should stick with other VTTs.
If anything this is a huge reason not to trust Hasbro with any future VTT.
Sigil was a mess but those that actually used it had to have put immense time into creating usable maps. It would be different if you signed up, used some premade map packs, etc but anyone who was actually using it had to have dumped countless hours into it. I never followed the micro transactions they were trying either or if any were for sale or purchased but refunds weren’t mentioned in the announcement.
Again… it was an awful product and shouldn’t have been released but you did and you wasted your most loyal fans’ time. I can’t imagine any world where they could try another VTT. No one will trust them.
The people who wanted to use it are the same people who were okay putting in the time to make the maps. Talespire didn't drop 100 map packs either but you can go onto their site and see literally thousands of fanmade maps. FYI, Sigil also allowed map sharing. We also have no idea if official map packs would have been a thing. People were so determined to reject it from the point that it was introduced, that we have no insight into what it would have been had it been allowed to complete development and launch.
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It makes absolutely no difference to my trust (which was, to be fair, not particularly high to start with), because I'm entirely aware that projects fail.
Psst. Maps is a VTT.
That is definitely all true (in my opinion), but the issue was always that VTTs are not something for a universal D&D audience, and I think as a product, it sort of made that assumption, and more specifically, calculated the expected economic performance of that tool based on that assumption. It's an understandable assumption for two reasons.
First, DnDBeyond functions like that. It's not exclusive to any part of the D&D audience; anyone, whether you play online or offline, gets benefits from DnDbeyond.
Second is that for a time, because of the pandemic, the D&D audience was forced online, because there was no other way to really play the game during this period. We were all forced into isolation so if you wanted to keep playing D&D with your group, online play was pretty much the only option. This gave a false positive that universally everyone does, in fact, play D&D online, but this is simply not true. The online audience is but a tiny fraction of the D&D community. I mean, according to Wizards of the Coast, about 85 million people engaged with D&D just last year meanwhile, at the peek of the pandemic, Roll20 reported around 3 million users, which today is well under a million. These aren't hard or presumably even particularly accurate numbers, but suffice to say the difference between online and offline audiences is massive and to an offline audience, a VTT is a completely useless technology that serves no purpose at all.
Post pandemic, there is not much of a market for VTT's, especially expensive 3d ones that demand a lot of time to setup. Add the fact that there is a lot of competition in this limited market of many already well-established and easy to use VTT's and it's not hard to understand why Sigil, no matter what they did or how they marketed, was effectively created for an audience that doesn't really exist and never has. At least not in the numbers they were sort of expecting. I would expect a tool like that if they have 200 people using it every day, its a booming success, aka... Talespire reaches an audience of about 290 players per day on average and it's a far superior tool to anything Sigil was ever even planning, let alone had hope of executing.
The issue is that online gaming is a sub-section of D&D and this is not the "default" way people play D&D. Its a small business, which is fine for the many companies running VTT's, they do really well because they don't need a big audience to be successful. Sigil however, was planning to be this next BIG Baldur's Gate 3 level success, which was about he craziest expectation imaginable. I mean.. this was never going to happen; there was ZERO chance of Sigil reaching anything even approaching such a level of success.
At its absolute best, it would have been a niche tool for a tiny audience and that is all you can ever expect now or in the future from a 3d VTT. Its a cool concept, I ran a Talespire online game once for 3 years (during the pandemic) and I was extremely proficient with the tool and the average prep time was excessive. Generally, I would run a session once every other week and it took about 6-8 hours of work to prep for a 3-4 hour session. It was effectively 2 hours of work to prep 1 hour of play.
It should.
Trust isn't really about moral failure or whatever in this context. It's about believing that if you invest in their project (whether that's in money, time, effort, hope whatever), that it will workout. I don't back Kickstarters unless I known the company or person behind it, because otherwise I don't trust them to follow through and I'll end up with my goodies. I don't think they're going to con me per se, but that the project has a reasonable chance of falling through.
Likewise, I don't impute some kind of moral failing on this. As you say, projects fail. Spending more cash on something that's not going to turn a [large enough] profit is irresponsible and there's no money that's been invested by customers to create a duty. However, it's another data point on the "If they say they're going to do something, will they do it?" graph.
I really think companies need to cool their heals on things like this and not announce stuff when they're in the "we have an idea" or "we have a mock-up of an idea" stages. Instead, they should wait until shortly before they're ready for customer involvement (whether that's for beta for large audience testing like they did for 1D&D or release or whatever). Unfortunately, they get excited, announce super early and that causes problems. My biggest gripe with this is computer games. They declare they're making something...then nothing appears for years. Sometimes, it never does.
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.
That isnt really true. I built a few maps real quickly, a simple dungeon was easy and quick to do for me (and I am not a computer savy person). Village ruins was also real easy, the ability to combine uploaded 2D maps with 3D terrain got you good looking maps real quick.