Product Pricing Comparison?

[kylania]

Then again, I should just pop over to Roll20 to look for myself.

Good luck. As far as I can tell you can't even view prices till you sign up for an account. There's no mention of cost at all, just free free free!, till you've already given them your information.

[Nickademus]

Thanks for saving me the time.

[kylania]

Here's the roll20 what you get for $5 or $10 list.

[Nickademus]

Thank you kindly.

[Nylanfs]

1. You don't have to learn Java scripting to fully use it.

I think you mean Javascript, Java is something completely different.

[Wazoodust]

I tried roll 20 a couple years ago and fell flat on my face with it, I wasn't going spend a bunch of money on something that looked promising and could work if you were familiar with programming techniques and languages. I have neither the desire or time to invest in that. I wish I'd have found FG then, I'd have been a veteran player by now, anyhow...
I did finally find Fantasy Grounds and in less than 2 months I'll be running a game on here. I know there's things I still need to learn, but I've already done some encounters on here and feel confidant enough to try and do this with complete strangers. I have the subscription PHB/MM and LMoP, so $140ish in 2 months and I can run or play in any game now. Yeah the books have never been cheap, but in the long run you get your bang for the buck, .
Correct me if I'm wrong here but wouldn't you need to get the hard copy books to do the same on Roll20?, the money cancels out on that part right there

[Mask_of_winter]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but wouldn't you need to get the hard copy books to do the same on Roll20?, the money cancels out on that part right there

Not if you have grabbed an ocr'd copy on the internet.

[Findanniin]

The problem with FG and "books" of course is that if you already own them, you'll have to buy them again to use them online.

I understand that it takes dev time, and doesn't magically just appear compatible with the program - but if the base program were more robust, one wouldn't need to purchase truly expensive packs for what are truly mild conveniences over roll20's already there functionality.

Since the point of this thread apparently is comparing price and functionality; FG comes out cheaper after 14 months (!), except you have to pay a large smack of money in one go and provided you're only interested in playing D&D or putting in a lot of time building from scratch in an unintuitive interface.
If you want to play a ruleset that requires packs, it's possible you're paying around 200$ in one go, while roll20 will offer you the ability to rather flexibly do whatever-the-hell-you-want for ... 10$ a month.
Personally, while I know that in a year and a half I will have still spent 200$ on roll20, I find it much easier to justify than having to budget dropping 200$ all at once.

So what functionality do you get for *free*? A playable and robust and easy to learn and set-up system. Interactive character sheets that are simply "input data and click buttons", with auto-resolution of hits and misses if your DM likes settings things up.
Big advantage over FG even free is the flexibilty to roll and calculate w/e the f you want for systems that are more involved than "roll 1 die and add a number."
My free character sheet on roll20 rolls 8 ten sided dice, keeps the 4 highest, explodes 10's until they come up lower, adds it together and either prints it in the chatlog with a description I can easily change "Finny swings from a chandelier using acrobatics [24], or sends it as attack data to a token and lets me know right away if I hit. If I set up a macro to do so, damage rolls can be handled automatically - but I personally am not a big fan of it.
That's for free, and it's something FG can't offer me even if I pay.
A user scripted something for me to let me do something close to that, but I couldn't adapt it to do what I wanted.

Now, if I were to pay 10$ a month to roll20, I'd have a year and a half before I hit the same price point as Fantasy Grounds. And only the GM pays.
Asides from beautiful, wonderful dynamic lighting (seriously, it's amazing) - what else do I get?
A bunch of tokens and art to use in my games in a handy and easy to search library for the time when you go "****, they're fighting a basilisk?".
and ... well...
https://wiki.roll20.net/API:Script_Index

I'm sorry. I've learned how to use FG, and for supported systems - I'll happily join people willing to put all the hard work of DM'ing with as a player, but when I GM ...
There's no comparing the two.
I know I'm on 'your' boards, but you asked for opinions. Here ya go.

[kane280484]

I've bought Ultimate with a group of 4 friends, so it was 30$ per person. Right now I have over 700 hours played on Steam, I guess it's times three since I bought FG some time before it came to Steam. We've played over 350 hours of adventures so far (I track this statistic), so cost is 2,33$ per hour of fun, around half a buck per person. I'd never ever consider FG to be expensive.

You can easily turn around this argument that Roll20 is free against it - there's a lot of people who prefer to pay 150+ $ for FG rather than play Roll20 for free

[Findanniin]

True.
In fact, my argument is that FG is the cheaper alternative *provided* you play a campaign longer than a year and a half. Or longer, if you get more books. 2 years isn't a stretch.

How many people you divide the cost by is irrelevant. If I asked my players to chip in to a roll20 subscription, they would. It wouldn't change the cost.

That said, free roll20 is still fairly robust, and the *potentially* more expensive roll20 gives you more options for your buck.