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  1. #71
    Quote Originally Posted by damned View Post
    Everyone has their own preferences for what they like to use and their own experiences as to how things went.
    I personally would never use a lobby to recruit for anything other than a last minute pickup game.
    I understand your point and agree with you there. What I was saying is that this system is non-functional. I've pointed at some functionality options above, and the personal preference to the way players are recruited are another thing. You can always use good system to announce, find and apply for games, then a DM or a player can add more recruitment 'challenges' to it.

    Probably most people here agree that the game organization and calendar should be reworked and updated, else the subjects would not be present here at all.

    What I was mostly refering is this, recent post, which is exactly what i experience:

    I have found it extremely hard to find games and players for fantasy grounds on the actual FG site period. This is pushing me away from this great tool, other sites that shall not be named its almost instant to set-up or join a game and FG is starting to become my least used tool

    I played a few great campaigns but always found the players on other DnD campaign sites. FG forums is to hard to sort and find games.

    The Calendar and LFG functions are critical for game creation imho, a campaign management tool would also rock but there a many of those you can use already online.
    Last edited by Gruber; October 17th, 2017 at 12:16.

  2. #72
    LordEntrails's Avatar
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    If I remember correctly, Doug has agreed that the game calendar system needs to be updated, and that it is on his list to get done. But, it's about priorities and resources.

    I think Doug and the SmiteWorks team has determined that the development and release of FGU, releasing PF content, and continuing the improvements on the core application are their priorities and the effective the limit of their resources at this time.

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  3. #73
    Quote Originally Posted by LordEntrails View Post
    If I remember correctly, Doug has agreed that the game calendar system needs to be updated, and that it is on his list to get done. But, it's about priorities and resources.

    I think Doug and the SmiteWorks team has determined that the development and release of FGU, releasing PF content, and continuing the improvements on the core application are their priorities and the effective the limit of their resources at this time.
    IMHO - They need to push this up. Expanding the user base should be every bit as important as adding features to a product that is working fine. Of course, there are many things I would like to see fixed or added, but it doesn't mean anything if I'm not playing because I can't find anyone to play WITH.

  4. #74
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    Quote Originally Posted by AlohaJerry View Post
    IMHO - They need to push this up. Expanding the user base should be every bit as important as adding features to a product that is working fine. Of course, there are many things I would like to see fixed or added, but it doesn't mean anything if I'm not playing because I can't find anyone to play WITH.
    SmiteWorks has to look at the big picture and has data that we don't, but we can look at some reported number (2015, 2016) and see that the number of games is growing at a healthy rate. So, even though the calendar system could (and should) be vastly improved, it is working well enough that a large number of people are finding games.

    You are certainly welcome to (and I would encourage it) to voice your opinion (and this is just coming from another user with no inside knowledge or influence), I will suggest that if you think there is something people can do to help you find a game, that you pursue that. There are several threads and blogs about how to get a group together that may interest you. (one link, two link, three link, and I'm sure there are others)

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  5. #75
    /disagree
    There are thousands of posts desperately looking for games/players in their available times. Many people have strange availability due to shift work or family obligations. Most try to post on forums, but go mostly unanswered and slowly sink into obscurity. It is amost impossible to search the forum looking for specific play times, considering that the player base is scattered all over the world, so what do you search for? I am in an odd time zone and have spent dozens of hours trying to find a game, to no avail.

    Now let us look at FantasyGrounds competition, Roll20. (now I have spent SooOOOOoo much $$ on FG that I am not converting, but...) It took me 30 seconds to find 5 games in the time period that I want to play ( https://app.roll20.net/lfg/search/ ) using the advanced options. If I were new to online RPG, where would I go??? We (and FG as a company) should want to draw new people here and keep people here. How can we do that with a LFG system that looks like it came from the 90's?

    Look at head to head here: https://www.gamebynight.com/?p=4126
    Wouldn't it be nice to win on "Finding a game", break the tie and be the clear winner????
    Last edited by AlohaJerry; October 24th, 2017 at 02:20.

  6. #76
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    I'm curious what options you used to search on Roll20. Imagine that same search on our Game Calendar. Adding additional search filters beyond Game System and day will simply make even fewer results show up.

    Looking at the options that the Advanced Search on their site adds:
    On any of these days: Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
    > that is already available on the visible calendar. GM's posting their game need to schedule the sessions for it to show up

    Game Type: Audio / Visual
    Language:
    To be played: Once Weekly Every other week Monthly
    Starting at approximately:
    > The rest are more granular searches, that while fine, further reduce the number of games that get shown. Returning a bunch of empty results is not going to satisfy anyone's needs.

    A better interface to make it easier for GM's to post games to the calendar might help, but new search options doesn't seem like the solution at this stage.



    gamecalendar.jpg

  7. #77
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    Ultimately the primary issue is that most GMs do not use the calendar for recruiting so no matter how good the search is there is a dearth of games listed.
    How to change that is another question altogether.

  8. #78
    First problem is that most GMs don't schedule their sessions in the calendar! It would be MUCH better to be able to set reoccurring day/time for your campaign. Amost all campaigns have a set schedule. GM could set time, check day(s) of the week, then Once, Weekly, Every other week, or Monthly. This would show more campaigns on the calendar. I am very sure that there must be more than THAT many campaigns accepting new players!!!

    The only filter option is Game System. Manually, you CAN do day of week. Time is made very difficult by only showing in this calendar as GMT. The Roll20 search can look for Starting at approximately X:XX time (your time zone) and does all the timezone conversion. you can also find To be played: Once, Weekly, Every other week, and/or Monthly. The ability to filter for Mature Content would likely be appreciated, but not necessary.

  9. #79
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    The difference is that Roll20 *forces* a GM to put a game time in when they setup their game session - and many of these games change the game time initially posted as it was just a placeholder for a lot of games. So, even if you find 5 games that run in the time you're looking for there is a good chance that time will change because the GM was forced to enter a time just to get their game up there.

    FG gives the GM flexibility to setup and advertise their games as they wish - if a GM doesn't want to use the game calendar they don't have to. And if they do, while they're getting players sorted and discussing times, the GM doesn't have to enter a fictitious time into the game calendar - forcing a GM to enter a time before they've confirmed can cause confusion or disappointment.

    The feedback I've heard from a lot of Roll20 gamers is that a lot of sessions simply don't go off - either on the published time or at all. I'd much rather see a much lower number of confirmed game times, that have a much better chance of games happening, than see frequently changing times or cancelled sessions because the GM was forced to enter a time before they were ready.

    I also don't want to see every single FG session forced to use a game calendar/scheduling system either. Let gaming groups use the setup they want to use - Facebook groups, Obsidian Portal, emails, Discord, game calendar, whatever they want to organise and run their regular FG games.
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  10. #80
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    Quote Originally Posted by AlohaJerry View Post
    First problem is that most GMs don't schedule their sessions in the calendar! It would be MUCH better to be able to set reoccurring day/time for your campaign. Amost all campaigns have a set schedule. GM could set time, check day(s) of the week, then Once, Weekly, Every other week, or Monthly. This would show more campaigns on the calendar. I am very sure that there must be more than THAT many campaigns accepting new players!!!

    The only filter option is Game System. Manually, you CAN do day of week. Time is made very difficult by only showing in this calendar as GMT. The Roll20 search can look for Starting at approximately X:XX time (your time zone) and does all the timezone conversion. you can also find To be played: Once, Weekly, Every other week, and/or Monthly. The ability to filter for Mature Content would likely be appreciated, but not necessary.
    I suspect that the need to schedule a time (which is optional on our calendar) is one of the bigger reasons why it seems so sparse. Adding a simpler checkbox with the days of the week and frequency would definitely simplify proposed scheduling. There is a difference between proposed dates and finalized dates that are scheduled. FG GM's either don't use the date field at all or they wait until the date is finalized before they add an actual date. Based on feedback from you and others, there is a lot of value in unofficial dates as well. The number of games that are Accepting Players and the number of games that are Accepting Players and have a future date scheduled are drastically different. We lose the majority of them by only showing the ones with scheduled dates on the recruiting calendar.

    Proposed Day of Week does get a little hairy when you factor in timezones as well. My Saturday might be your Sunday.

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