RedFin
February 6th, 2011, 20:49
This is just intended as general feedback for the developers.
Me and some friends are currently looking for a VTT to use ... a familiar story around here I guess :)
There are quite a few out there, and we have tried a bunch, including the Fantasy Grounds demo.
One of my basic points of evaluation is "how easy is it to demo"?
Unfortunately, with Fantasy Grounds, the answer is essentially, "not very". Sure, I can download a demo version easily enough, but the key problem here is that it is 6 .versions behind the current release. Also, it is considerably restricted in some important features and for the life of me I can't understand this in the modern days of simple time restricted demos.
I want to be able to try out other rulesets. I want to be able to look at how they are created. I want to be able to try creating and playing a game of my own.
And what's more, I have to stuff around with routers and port forwarding ... this is something I am comfortable with but surely this is going to turn many others away? There are VTTs out there that don't have this requirement.
My tester and I have been having considerable issue with the demo not refreshing .... something that might be resolved in the latest version etc etc etc. Where it not for this particular problem, I was considering forking out the dollars on a whim and giving a full licence a go, but with this kind of problem being experienced, I am very unlikely to.
I don't usually go to this sort of effort for something that has proved a problem for me ... I usually just go with the fact that it's a problem you've created for yourself and there's no incentive for me to help you out by giving you feedback. The thing is though, there is a lot about Fantasy Grounds that I like, and there is a lot that I would probably like if I could test it. I actually want to like it, I want it to be good ... but it looks like I won't get to find out :(
It's worth noting too that FG is not the only VTT that has this issue, and unfortunate to note that the VTT we have had the most success with is free and works wonderfully! FG has a lot of very cool capabilities, but they are things I can do without in favour of stability.
Me and some friends are currently looking for a VTT to use ... a familiar story around here I guess :)
There are quite a few out there, and we have tried a bunch, including the Fantasy Grounds demo.
One of my basic points of evaluation is "how easy is it to demo"?
Unfortunately, with Fantasy Grounds, the answer is essentially, "not very". Sure, I can download a demo version easily enough, but the key problem here is that it is 6 .versions behind the current release. Also, it is considerably restricted in some important features and for the life of me I can't understand this in the modern days of simple time restricted demos.
I want to be able to try out other rulesets. I want to be able to look at how they are created. I want to be able to try creating and playing a game of my own.
And what's more, I have to stuff around with routers and port forwarding ... this is something I am comfortable with but surely this is going to turn many others away? There are VTTs out there that don't have this requirement.
My tester and I have been having considerable issue with the demo not refreshing .... something that might be resolved in the latest version etc etc etc. Where it not for this particular problem, I was considering forking out the dollars on a whim and giving a full licence a go, but with this kind of problem being experienced, I am very unlikely to.
I don't usually go to this sort of effort for something that has proved a problem for me ... I usually just go with the fact that it's a problem you've created for yourself and there's no incentive for me to help you out by giving you feedback. The thing is though, there is a lot about Fantasy Grounds that I like, and there is a lot that I would probably like if I could test it. I actually want to like it, I want it to be good ... but it looks like I won't get to find out :(
It's worth noting too that FG is not the only VTT that has this issue, and unfortunate to note that the VTT we have had the most success with is free and works wonderfully! FG has a lot of very cool capabilities, but they are things I can do without in favour of stability.