Disappointing Update Progress

[D4RK1]

I just wanted to come on here and express my disappointment in what it feels like the development path for FGU is prioritizing.

I play and DM 5E only, so my perspective is coming mainly from that side of things.

I'd like to begin by expressing that there are several things in FG to FGU that have been updated and are greatly appreciated. Line of Sight and Lighting for example were great updates and later on they even added onto LoS by giving the option for certain things like Windows and Doors to cut through other LoS, making previously frustrating things much easier. Though I have noted that a glitch of laving a sliver of LoS uncovered when connecting different LoS types remains unresolved since this mechanic's conceptions.

This sort of leads into my chagrin that I felt like needed to be voiced (though I'm sure my opinion is not the first, last, nor most well-informed).

As FGU has been updated through the years, I am finding several Extensions on the Forge that I love because they add a very simple addition that just makes running and playing the game so much better and easier that are being outdated meanwhile FGU just gets a new gimmick or aesthetic update.

Here again I would like to shout out that a few of these extensions have just made it into the Core of FGU, such as being able to be dropped onto a map in marching order or using ALT + Scroll Wheel to be able to show Altitude (The latter of which used to be an outdated extension which AFAIK was then added to the core system after some time).

Now animated Token and Asset support was great, however, I would gander to say that no one asked for the strange 3D token view that was added a while back. I definite won't say no one is interested now that it has been added, myself included, but honestly both as a player and DM, I would much rather just see more updates focused on making the user experience better and relegating projects like the 3D view to the side.

What do I mean by this?

-Pinging: I'm not sure when Pinging became a thing. I really don't and I recently only just discovered it despite using FG/FGU for years and I feel like the issue here is that using it is not very intuitive. You either need to have the toolbar up, find the ping button, and toggle it on (and not forget to toggle it off when doing something else) OR you can use the shortcut [Spacebar] + Double Click. Now the shortcut isn't bad, but I really don't understand why Pinging isn't an option on the Right Click options as all of my players and myself have always found that to be the most intuitive thing to try for pinging.

- Ease of Use: I know for sure this has been the same since Fantasy Grounds and I'm really not sure why this hasn't been updated, but there are a lot of things that are just needlessly difficult or unintuitive. Pinging above is one prime example. When calculating Save DC on the character sheet, you can have it based of the Base Stat, the other character stats, character level, and each vanilla class level, but choosing this option is based on painstakingly going through each previous option individually. At the least how come this isn't a drop down menu? There are many other areas like this too such as when selecting options for the game, such as the number of attunement slots. Honestly, a drop down would be nice, but how come there isn't a calculator dedicated to calculations like this? Lion's Den and their calculator for Fight Club 5 and Game Master 5 apps comes to mind where it is a very intuitive calculator which includes dice rolls and various stats which could then potentially be used pretty much anywhere calculations need to be made including Attack Rolls, Damage Rolls, Save DCs, or anywhere else that might need a number really.

- Versatility: There are so many areas that have been needlessly constrained. For example, your options for maximum number of Attunement Slots in 5e is 2, 3, 4, 5, or Proficiency Bonus and I can't for the life of my understand why it doesn't give you more options. It's nice to be able to have Attunement scale with proficiency bonus, but what if I just wanted to start players out with 6? (If a calculator was implemented, you could even do something like 1/4 character level). There are yet other things that simply can't be changed, such as the Proficiency Bonus which can't be altered in any way, including the DM for some reason. While Vanilla doesn't support much in regards to changing the Proficiency Bonus, I don't see why the option can't be there for Homebrewers.

-Base-Game Support: I can think of several mechanics even just from Vanilla 5E which shouldn't be too difficult to add support for, yet have been neglected. Resources (like Ki Points, Sorcery Points, and Psi Points) are one glaring example that have been neglected. While the "uses" of an ability system implemented can work for this, it honestly works better for abilities that only have a few uses and only consume 1 use at a time, such as Superiority Dice or Action Surge or Rage. When it comes to things like Ki Points, Sorcery Points, and especially Psi Point where you can use several points at once, the "Uses" system is tedious. There used to be an extension called "Capital Gains" which supported Resources simply by adding a new resources area to the Actions tab of a character sheet and to NPC sheets where you can simply add a Resource, specify it name, specify its maximum if any, specify if you regain or lose any upon a specified time (such as Long Rest, Short Rest, Start of Turn, End of Turn), and specify the amount gained/lost, then it allowed you to add a new action to Spells or Abilities that just allowed you to consume a specific resource. This wasn't a perfect system, but it was a hell of a lot better than the uses system and it covered for such a wide variety of things included charges of magic items (considering you could usually consume more than 1 charge of a staff or wand to cast/upcast different spell) or even Wards. Friend Zone (Now Pets) is also a very great and simple extension which allows a player to have NPCs added to their sheet to allow them to keep and control things such as Familiars and Mounts. Another 2 extension that have aspects that are extremely useful are Constitutional Amendments (now Life Ledger) and Mad Nomad's Improve Character Sheet. From Constitutional Amendments/Life Ledger, one aspect of it simply adds an ADJ section to the Hit Points area, allow you to input a positive number to temporarily increase Hit Points (without affecting and thus having to remember the character's base Max Hit Points) or a negative number to temporarily decrease it, which is extremely useful for things like fighting creatures with Life Drain or for the spell Aid. Mad Nomad's Improve Character Sheet makes it so you get to have BOTH a Current Hit Points AND a Wounds section on the character sheet so you get the best of both worlds rather than getting to only pick 1 or the other in Options.

A little while back, the price of FGU and the Ultimate License were GREATLY reduced and I can't say I wasn't upset when this happened considering I purchased FG Ultimate when it was on sale, purchase FGU Ultimate at full price, and then also purchase FGU Ultimate on Steam when it went on sale, but it wasn't necessarily because I had to pay more. I felt upset because this was meant to pull in more users which usually is good thing, but when there are so many aspects of FGU that have been there since forever that are hostile to the player experience and haven't been updated in forever, it just feels a bit neglectful of a system I want to see thrive and that I want to see more people actually enjoy learning to use.

[Zacchaeus]

I'm only going to mention one thing; the right click menu that you mention comes in for a lot of hate and is branded unintuitive. So you can't win them all when it comes to the UI design. Some are going to hate it; and others will like it no matter what you do. Same for drop down menus; people don't want it and do want it.

[johnecc]

There’s a saying “you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”

[claedawg]

I think Pinging came out this year (or at the end of last year). I actually like it and use it a lot.

I completely agree with your assessment on the faux 3d thing. It makes no sense why that has been a focus. EDIT: If SW really wanted to go the 3d route, they should have partnered, merged or bought out Berserk Games for the rights to combine FG and Tabletop Simulator as they both run on the Unity engine.

As for the Proficiency bonus thing, I think that is more on WotC than it is on FG. I absolutely hate the skill/proficiency progression system in 5E (which I believe is a holdover from 4E, if I remember correctly). One of the reasons I have stopped playing 5E (running Shadowdark right now), but the main reason was how WotC hogtied FG into incorporating the 2024 rules into the 2014 rules which has messed up a lot of the functionality of the extensions (it does look to be getting better though from the posts I've been reading). It would probably have been an easier transition if they had been able to do 2024 as a separate ruleset that allowed the loading of modules from 2014 (I believe that was FG's original gameplan, but I could be mistaken).

Truthfully, the skill progression in 3E is what brought me back to D&D, as a fan, in the first place in the early 2000s. I had switched over to Rolemaster (I still have most all of the books from 1st - RMSS) in the late 80s / early 90s with some playing of Pendragon (1st - 4th). Had to stop playing completely through most of 90s due to working 70+ hours a week, lol. Messed around with BRP when 4E came out (especially the LOTR stuff that used to be available on the EN website). But, I did run and play a lot of the D&D 4E Adventure League stuff at the local gaming store (until it switched over to the 5 room combat simulator League play).

I would probably still running Against the Darkmaster if it actually used a decent money system instead of the completely abstract way many newer games have been doing it (basically how Call of Cthulhu handles money and items). I do prefer how Against the Darkmaster did the attack and critical tables compared to how the Rolemaster system was ported over to FG.

Another issue with Against the Darkmaster is that they were not really able to port the "initiative" system properly to FG (same issue with Rolemaster) due to the limitations presented by the Combat Tracker. The CT really needs to be reworked to allow more flexibility (for all rulesets) and multiple CT and Party Sheet instances that could be tagged to specific battle maps (especially for westmarch style games) would be great.

[LordEntrails]

First, let me say D4RK1's feedback is great in that they have taken the time to put their thoughts together and presented them here for us to discuss. IMO it means they value FG and are brave enough to open their own opinions up to scrutiny.

Here some answers as I see them. Note I'm just a user, so these are simply my perceptions.

About the current 2.5D Camera View. SW has stated that this is a step towards full 3D. If you are familiar with Agile Software Development Methodology, this approach follows that with new feature releases and development. i.e. you release the Minimum Viable Product as you work towards a new feature like full 3D. This MVP approach allows for early and frequent user feedback and results in usable enhancements earlier and a better final feature when its all done (Who would want to wait years to finally get a fully featured 3D system and have it not have the benefit of continuous community feedback. As for the later comment about buying a 3D company like Beserk; First, SW is a tiny company and probably doesn't have the capital to be buying other companies. Second, they already bought a 3D Unity company, TableTop Connect, it's where 'we got' Carl from.

Pinging: Why isn't it under the right mouse? Well, because pointers are under the right mouse and the right mouse is limited in the number of slots/options it can have. Pointers, and quick pointers are pretty darn simple and quick, but people have still been wanting pinging so now we have all 3 options. Space double-click is pretty simple. But to me the implementation isn't really worth fretting over. Besides, everyone at our table still uses Quick Pointers because its easy and we know it.

Ease of Use: I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask for drop down/pull-down selections rather than the click through. Doesn't seem painful to me (how hard is it to click the same place a handful of times?) But hey, make a suggestion on the Feature Request list and see what others think. I'm not familiar with Lion's Den, will try to look up this calculator you mention.

Versatility: I get this. I can see improvement in this area being beneficial. But is it a big deal to me? Nope. But, that's why SW created the Feature Request list, so the community can make suggestions and vote on them.

Base Game Support: Sure. Again, hence the feature Request list. But be aware SW has already been adding in a lot of these types of things as they have been rolling out the 2024 rules updates. And they have said they intended to keep making such improvements. It's not like SW hasn't been making improvements, we, the community, have to realize they have limited resources and we can't have everything at a schedule of our our time and choosing. (Time, Resources, Quality. Pick 2, and resources are already chosen in this case.)

[BadEye]

While I've only the time for a quick reply right now, I'll share a few things in response.

• I appreciate you taking the time to share the feedback you have in a clear way without the vague rumbling that is so characteristic of modern web criticism.
  
• While you mention that "no one" asked for the current camera view, that's just not accurate (additionally, often it is important in software development to anticipate what people might not even be asking for yet to be successful) On top of that, the current implementation of 2.5D is an iterative step towards 3D support, which definitely has been requested. One more note on 2.5D - it is certainly something we have some of our team (mainly one person) focused on currently, it is by no means the whole team, and we're working plenty of other things in parallel (like several of the improvements that have been released that you mentioned in your post).
  
• Regarding popular extensions, we have very recently reviewed the top ones and are working on bringing some of that functionality into the core program. So, more and more of those things are going to be baked in over time. This is a pretty standard practice (I remember it happened all the time with my old favorite game WoW, for instance), as it allows us to gauge community demand for which functionality is most important or the lowest-hanging fruit for us to incorporate something that will have a strong impact. Everyone will hear more on this not too far down the road.
  
• As for enhancing automation and mechanics support in priority rulesets, this is also something we have decided to focus on in our recent planning sessions - so more of that will come to light in the months to come as well.

While I can't speak to anything other than the last few months since I joined the team, I can strongly confirm that we have plenty of effort and momentum going into improving the user experience right now, but it will take some time for those efforts to come to fruition. We have some things in store that are going to make you really glad of your investment.


Thanks!

[D4RK1]

I'd like to thank everyone so far for their kind and constructive responses so far!

@Zacchaeus: Honestly the right click menu isn't super intuitive, mainly because it's a menu that pretty much has all of its options then link to another menu. But in all honesty i think this is ok because the right click, to me and what I've observed of my players, tends to be more of a "what are my options" sort of deal so they're willing to read through it. But I do have to say I constantly have players who are surprised a Ping exists when they don't find it on the right click menu. As for the drop down menu, I can agree that there will be people who prefer things to be kept the same, in which case I suppose a option could be set to switch between them, but in all honesty I feel like the implementation of a Calculator such as that used by Lion's Den's apps would kind of be the first real step towards global compatibility.

@claedawg: I also really like the presence of the ability to Ping and have been using it much more often once I found it existed, but have always been just as perplexed as my players about how it's not present on the right click menu. Personally I feel Proficiency was implemented to help make certain areas of the game feel less intimidating and take less time, which is of course at the cost of less modularity and making Intelligence have less of an impact in a character's overall stats. Personally I don't have a problem over Proficiency itself as it has its ups and downs, but I do wish DMs at least could modify it in some way to give us the option of using blessings/curses/items which modifies it.

@LordEntrails: In terms of Pinging, I feel as though it is one of the more intuitive forms of communication for players who are new to VTTs or coming in from different VTTs. I think this likely comes from several other games having a sort of "Ping" or "Marking" manner of communication where you essentially do a quick 1 tap of a button lets your buddies know there's something of interest here. Just off the top of my head, Vermintide, Darktide, Payday, Helldivers, LoL, DRG etc... all essentially have that kind of "Ping" mechanic as the quickest form of communication. Quick Points are nice and I also have been using them before the discovery of Ping, but I feel as though Ping is a more "universal" concept that most players would expect to have super quick reliable intuitive access to. As for the click throughs, it isn't necessarily difficult to click through a number of options, but it definitely can be frustrating to accidentally click 1 more time than intended either due to a slip of the finger or due to lag or FGU having a temporary freeze while it saves a backup only to be forced to click through the entire list to get back to where you need to be. A drop down system to me would be more of a band-aid really as I find most players find it unintuitive to drag and drop dice for damage rolls and click through options for others, I'd say the calculator really would be a truly universal solution.

@BadEye: Saying no one wanted this feature was definitely hyperbole on my part and I apologize for that. I am happy to hear that the 2.5D has relegated as a side project, though I guess the misconception likely comes from it essentially being the only major part of a past update. Not to mention I consistent have new players who find out about this, explore it for a couple seconds, then complain about some other part of the FGU UI.

In all honesty, I'm especially happy and humbled to hear from a member of the SW staff and to see they're readily interacting with their community to assuage anxiety. I'm especially happy and excited to hear that more extensions will be looked at to be added to the core system and look forward to seeing FGU's progress in the future as there are many parts of it that I love. I just also hope to see improvements that will get new players excited to explore FGU's interface.

[BadEye]

Saying no one wanted this feature was definitely hyperbole on my part and I apologize for that. I am happy to hear that the 2.5D has relegated as a side project, though I guess the misconception likely comes from it essentially being the only major part of a past update. Not to mention I consistent have new players who find out about this, explore it for a couple seconds, then complain about some other part of the FGU UI.

No worries, though I do want to further clarify that I didn't say it was a "side project," as that carries other connotations that could indicate we aren't taking the development seriously. I said that we have a team of developers and that we're working multiple things in parallel. This is also the reason that you might see that the 2.5D placeable objects are the bulk of the most recent update, as even though other things are in progress, they're not all going to complete at the same time. The next few updates could have other things as they are ready to release.

In all honesty, I'm especially happy and humbled to hear from a member of the SW staff and to see they're readily interacting with their community to assuage anxiety. I'm especially happy and excited to hear that more extensions will be looked at to be added to the core system and look forward to seeing FGU's progress in the future as there are many parts of it that I love. I just also hope to see improvements that will get new players excited to explore FGU's interface.

We've got some great stuff ahead - thanks for coming along for the adventure!

[claedawg]

"About the current 2.5D Camera View. SW has stated that this is a step towards full 3D. If you are familiar with Agile Software Development Methodology, this approach follows that with new feature releases and development. i.e. you release the Minimum Viable Product as you work towards a new feature like full 3D. This MVP approach allows for early and frequent user feedback and results in usable enhancements earlier and a better final feature when its all done (Who would want to wait years to finally get a fully featured 3D system and have it not have the benefit of continuous community feedback. As for the later comment about buying a 3D company like Beserk; First, SW is a tiny company and probably doesn't have the capital to be buying other companies. Second, they already bought a 3D Unity company, TableTop Connect, it's where 'we got' Carl from."

I was not aware of that. Thank you for the clarification, it makes much more sense now.

I am a fan of FG and try to promote you guys all the time, especially when recruiting new players for my game. There have been a great many updates to the system (I started with Classic) and I am really loving the new "World" sidebar menus and that it is available in rulesets other than just D&D.

I am currently attempting to update my overland map using the Locations instead of the Player Agency. I would like to see it built up a bit more to may be a little more like Player Agency, but I know that will take time and I remember reading another thread that you guys are waiting for the DMG to come out as the Locations menu is intended for use with the Bastion rules. Hopefully, any changes made due to those rules will also be applied to other rulesets as much as possibly (without stepping on WotC's toes of course).

I am also really excited about the upcoming update that will include being able to add text to images. That is something I have been waiting on for a long time.

[SilentRuin]

I never knew or even have heard of the ping feature - so thank you very much for pointing that out!!!!

spacebar + doubleclick = AWSOME PING!