Player Tokens

[claedawg]

Why are token sets purchased from the Store or the Forge by players not able to be used by the player? Only portraits are able be chosen by players.

[damned]

Its a long ago design decision that hasnt been unpicked.

[claedawg]

[LordEntrails]

Did you check the Feature Request list? I bet there is already a feature request for it that you could upvote

[claedawg]

It is, only 5 votes including mine. There needs to be a warning listed for all player facing items (third party or otherwise) stating that players will not have access to their purchase in the program when in a game run by a GM.

Not sure how many GMs allow players to make characters outside of the campaign they are running (I've not experienced a game where character creation was allowed outside of the GM's campaign).


EDIT: REMOVED portion of comment for accuracy. Apologies for my error.

[Zacchaeus]

Players can access their purchases if they start a campaign and import their character into that campaign. Once the character has been given a token it can then be imported back into the DMs campaign with the selected token. Any portrait can then be chosen once the character is imported into the DM campaign.

[Muagen]

I might be missing something, but how does the INFORM Act apply here? Are you suggesting that the "online sale of stolen, counterfeit, or unsafe merchandise" is occurring when a player can't use their tokens in a GM's game? Or are you shortcut-ting to when the player sends the GM the image so that they can play their purchased token in the GM's game? I don't think it would apply there, either.
Again, I could be totally wrong about that. I'm no big-city law-ologist. And as it stands right now I have no idea why a player would bother paying money for tokens if this situation persists, so a broader market really should be all the impetus SmiteWorks needs to fix it. You don't make more money by limiting the number of people for whom your product is relevant.

[damned]

From what I can see this is not even close to being covered under the INFORM ACT.

[LordEntrails]

The reason this can not be done directly (as Mr. Z pointed out, it can be done, just not directly) is because of an architecture decision that was made almost 2 decades ago by the previous owners of FG.

It's not that the architecture can't be changed, it just that as exhibited by the number of votes on the request, very few people care about this and SmiteWorks feels they can add better customer value adding or enhancing other features.

Software development is all about choices. Very few things "can't be done" but everything that is done is done because something else is not done.

Take a look at the release notes and ask yourself, What would you wish that they did not fix or deploy so that player tokens could work in a more direct manner? That's the type of question SmiteWorks has to deal with every time they decide what to work on. They have to make that decision for all users, not just a handful.

[claedawg]

First off, I apologize for my error regarding the link I had posted.

As for players not asking about it, I've only had 1 or 2 players (out of a I understand what would be a small sample of 2 or 3 dozen) that even know the forums exist or want to take the time to come here, but all of them have made comments about wanting to be able to add their characters' token themselves.

An example of something that SW can drop instead of adding functionality on the player side would be faux 3D. I don't remember people asking for it, but there are a lot of comments against it. There are several requests with hundreds of votes that have not been implemented. It would be nice if SW would comment on those requests as to why they are not being implemented. There's not that many feature requests compared to the number of forum posts (I understand not being able to reply to every forum post, as they number in the 10s of thousands or more).

Another thing that would sway the voting for the feature requests is that I imagine the vast majority of feature requests come from GMs. Most players are not actually invested in FG and are only here because the GM requires it. Players, generally, have very little understanding of FG. If more functionality is added for the player side of the game, they "might" be more interested in actually investing the platform (meaning more money for SW to do their own pet projects, like faux 3d). Although, going by the history of TTRPGs in general, players rarely invest the game. Over the last 30 or so years of running games only about half (I'm being generous here with my estimation) of the players even owned a copy of the players handbook. So the "build it they will come" mentality in my comment here is probably wrong, lol.

I started off in FG as GM and only recently started being a player. I never noticed the issue with token selection until I started being a player, other than hopping on one of Rob2E's streamed games many years ago (seems like a lifetime ago) on Classic. In the early days, I thought it was just the players not being savvy enough to figure out how to add the tokens on the CS. Like with effects, I just did it for them. I do wish players would take a little time to learn at least some basics of adding the effects for their characters. I've only had 1 or 2 players that can do the effects themselves from the start and still come across players who "can't" do the effects themselves even after showing them how multiple times, lol.

Basically, what I'm trying to say in this reply is that the Features Request site is likely not indicative of Player wants. I would be willing to bet the majority (if not all) of the requests are from GMs going by the requests that are there.