What's Old is New

[ddavison]

If you feel that this system should be given more development and expansions, then you should reach out to the publisher and let them know, so that they can find a developer to improve the experience. Ultimately, they are the ones who pushed to release on the FG platform, and worked with the developer.

I believe I need to jump in here to post an update. Moon Wizard does not handle the publisher relationships and he is not privy to the details of communications that I and others in the company have with individual publishers. It is rare that a partnered publisher has much impact in how converted products end up on the system. Some publishers have a degree of interaction with developers and a few publishers even seek their own developers to conduct work. In the case of EN Publishing, they did not choose or direct any of the development on WOIN. They did provide access to resources that we could use for the conversion and they did occasionally write in to say that they liked the progress that they saw, or to comment when there didn't seem to be much progress.

• In Nov 2015, Russ reached out to ask us about converting WOIN into a ruleset for Fantasy Grounds. We said that we would be happy to send it out to a list of developers who do work on FG. One of our community developers (Foen) jumped in and began work.
• In July 2016, we original dev stepped down and we handed the project to MadBeardMan (Colin)
• In 2017, Russ conducted a test session with the developer to test out the ruleset. We should note that Russ was not familiar with Fantasy Grounds at the time and at various times he responded that things looked awesome or great whenever Colin or I shared stuff with him.
• We launched in Oct 2017 with N.E.W. and followed quickly with Trailblazer 9 Heavy (N.E.W.)
• We launched Xenomorphs: The Fall of Somerset Landing (N.E.W.) on Jan 18, 2018

Throughout the process, we had positive interactions between us, the community developer and EN Publishing. I will tell you that no publisher likes to hear complaints about their products and especially not complaints in an area where the publisher has no way to correct or accommodate the customer. In 2019, Russ received a handful of complaints about the system on FG and it reflected poorly on both companies. I recommended possibly expanding our refund policy beyond 30 days to cover this but didn't get a response from Russ on whether or not that was acceptable. The ruleset didn't really sell many copies.

OLD was supposedly nearly done many times in the past but never made it to "fully complete". The expectations of the fan base for this system play an obvious role here. OLD would be very much like NEW and people don't like the degree of automation in the ruleset for NEW. The amount of work required by the developer to support each new product has been cost prohibitive. Modeling the contents of a new game system where mechanics can drastically change for each new book presents obvious challenges. As Moon Wizard stated, SmiteWorks does not have resources to devote to these projects and therefore we rely upon a large host of community developers who tackle these projects.

I have always thought that it is better to have an automation lite version of a game system than to not have any support for a game system at all. Our product page should always be accurate and this is what you should use to justify whether or not you want to buy a product. If you are unhappy with it for any reason, you can ask for a full refund any time within 30 days. You can ask for a refund outside of this period and we sometimes honor it within reason. You can play any game you want on Fantasy Grounds even without a ruleset. The N.E.W. products we sell essentially give you the entire contents of a PDFs but with more functionality. Could it have even better functionality and support for the other related products? Sure. Does it make financial sense for the community dev to spend hundreds of hours adding those things when they can get a better return on their investment elsewhere? No.

Maintenance mode means that SmiteWorks is devoting resources to fix reported bugs with the ruleset but that we will not be adding new features.

I can reach out to Russ to see if he would mind us moving this out of the vault so people can crack it open. If he is okay with that and someone else wants to take up the reigns to lead the development of new projects and products for WOIN, then that is perfectly fine with us. I would love to see WOIN grow from a loyal fanbase of the game system.

[Viper007]

I believe I need to jump in here to post an update.

After five years, looks like you should have jumped in more often, but hey, it's your company!

Moon Wizard does not handle the publisher relationships and he is not privy to the details of communications that I and others in the company have with individual publishers. It is rare that a partnered publisher has much impact in how converted products end up on the system. Some publishers have a degree of interaction with developers and a few publishers even seek their own developers to conduct work. In the case of EN Publishing, they did not choose or direct any of the development on WOIN. They did provide access to resources that we could use for the conversion and they did occasionally write in to say that they liked the progress that they saw, or to comment when there didn't seem to be much progress.

• In Nov 2015, Russ reached out to ask us about converting WOIN into a ruleset for Fantasy Grounds. We said that we would be happy to send it out to a list of developers who do work on FG. One of our community developers (Foen) jumped in and began work.
• In July 2016, we original dev stepped down and we handed the project to MadBeardMan (Colin)
• In 2017, Russ conducted a test session with the developer to test out the ruleset. We should note that Russ was not familiar with Fantasy Grounds at the time and at various times he responded that things looked awesome or great whenever Colin or I shared stuff with him.
• We launched in Oct 2017 with N.E.W. and followed quickly with Trailblazer 9 Heavy (N.E.W.)
• We launched Xenomorphs: The Fall of Somerset Landing (N.E.W.) on Jan 18, 2018

Throughout the process, we had positive interactions between us, the community developer and EN Publishing. I will tell you that no publisher likes to hear complaints about their products and especially not complaints in an area where the publisher has no way to correct or accommodate the customer. In 2019, Russ received a handful of complaints about the system on FG and it reflected poorly on both companies. I recommended possibly expanding our refund policy beyond 30 days to cover this but didn't get a response from Russ on whether or not that was acceptable. The ruleset didn't really sell many copies.

OLD was supposedly nearly done many times in the past but never made it to "fully complete". The expectations of the fan base for this system play an obvious role here. OLD would be very much like NEW and people don't like the degree of automation in the ruleset for NEW. The amount of work required by the developer to support each new product has been cost prohibitive. Modeling the contents of a new game system where mechanics can drastically change for each new book presents obvious challenges. As Moon Wizard stated, SmiteWorks does not have resources to devote to these projects and therefore we rely upon a large host of community developers who tackle these projects.

It seems like Morrus and Russ don't talk to each other, according the reply I got, but hey it's whatever you say!

I have always thought that it is better to have an automation lite version of a game system than to not have any support for a game system at all. Our product page should always be accurate and this is what you should use to justify whether or not you want to buy a product. If you are unhappy with it for any reason, you can ask for a full refund any time within 30 days. You can ask for a refund outside of this period and we sometimes honor it within reason. You can play any game you want on Fantasy Grounds even without a ruleset. The N.E.W. products we sell essentially give you the entire contents of a PDFs but with more functionality. Could it have even better functionality and support for the other related products? Sure. Does it make financial sense for the community dev to spend hundreds of hours adding those things when they can get a better return on their investment elsewhere? No.

It's not the automation, that's just another excuse for not doing your job! It's the fact, that it took five years to get it to the point it is now and it still has problems, albeit some are minor! FIVE YEARS, how long did you expect someone to wait for an unfinished, NOT AUTOMATED, product to be corrected. I repeat FIVE YEARS!!!

Maintenance mode means that SmiteWorks is devoting resources to fix reported bugs with the ruleset but that we will not be adding new features.

NEW FEATURES?? Hell, do you read the posts in the last five years? It's not new features that we are talking about, it about stuff that should have been in it from the start, look at Colin's post, are they too much to ask for? Sure everyone wants NOW and OLD and if you had a brain, you could be selling three rulesets instead of one, which by the way, you are still selling in it's current state. But it's about the money, right??

I can reach out to Russ to see if he would mind us moving this out of the vault so people can crack it open. If he is okay with that and someone else wants to take up the reigns to lead the development of new projects and products for WOIN, then that is perfectly fine with us. I would love to see WOIN grow from a loyal fanbase of the game system.

Sound decision, a little late, but hey what's five years? I have very little time to be waiting on a company that I once thought was a very good investment and defended to others when they complained about the cost and the age of FG. Being very near my life's end, it really bother's me that a company has more excuses than action. Do I want you to loose money, no, do I want you to continue investing and making FG one of the premier VTT's in the business, YES. Will I be a part of that, sadly, not anymore!! I went to my purchase list and I personally have spent $616.51 with FG!!! Since, we are talking excuses more than action, perhap's I will take my next dollar and spend it on another VTT, you know Roll20, Foundry VTT and others will gladly take my money.

As I said before, done with it!!

[ddavison]

I'm sorry to hear that you are unhappy with the product and the support for the ruleset you wanted to use. This is why we offer refunds. You should only buy a product based on what it does today and not by what you hope it will be one day. The entire contents of the PDF is included in each of these products and you have the ability to roll any dice you need, take any notes you need, and fully play the game. Character sheets, combat tracker automation, ship records, etc. are all extra features that are very nice to have but none of those is required to play a game on Fantasy Grounds. If you were unhappy with the amount of extra features provided for the ruleset, you should requested a refund much, much earlier in the process.

Development does not always go as planned and businesses regularly adjust resources and plans based on revenue projections. No other VTT attempted to produce a ruleset or products for WOIN that I am aware of.

[taalo]

As a side note, we don't have all the dice we need. The d66 has been implemented as a d60 in which we roll an additional d6. d66 is commonly used in many RPGs and modules (including D&D) so getting that right will help you when you come across that again.

We're all familiar with the woes of development and you can tell that emotions are running high around here. Continuing to imply that it's our fault that we own the game when you made the active choice to make it abandonware is a bad move. I've worked in the (video) gaming industry for years and am very familiar with choices made to rush out products. Even with the now popular choice to release an unfinished and buggy mess, the games have to be finished or the backlash is great. The early adopters of any product are always going to be the biggest fans of that product and if they don't sign off on it no one else will, and that's a long-established business practice regardless of the product. Don't burn that audience, it always affects more than just the one product they're behind because they're also often the whales. Developing an apologetic tone will soothe more than saying we should've gotten a refund. We're still here because we love WOiN and want to have a place to play it and you made promises that it would be here in selling the product. When we showed up and saw that it was a mess we all offered to help because we were your early adopters. So don't chase us off, find a way to make it right in a way that you can afford. If that means opening it up so that we can do it ourselves, awesome. If that means you're gonna spend time to complete a product you sell at full price, awesome.

As far as people willing to spend the time fixing the game... I was one who volunteered and was pushed off because another had already stepped up. I imported most of WOiNs books into the system and my feedback was based on not only limitations in the foundation of how WOiN was implemented but also on NOW and OLD. I also had feedback that would affect other modules and splat books. The only thing ever fixed was adding poisons into the game, but the rest were never implemented (including the rest of the equipment section for NEW). The response we got back was that there was no real way to change the system until it got onto the schedule which couldn't be disclosed to the public - leaving us wondering when changes are going to be made. All that it really means is that WOiN has always been on the back burner, and the person given the ability to make changes had limited access. There's been this big game of smoke and mirrors and I think we just want more straightforward answers from here on out.

[ddavison]

Russ, aka Morrus, at ENWorld is okay with us moving this from the vault to the data folder. There are currently a set of changes queued up in development around the sidebar, theming and a few other things though that we are investigating. To be safe, we will look to release it out of the vault on the Test channel after we do a big global release on Dec 7.

[Moon Wizard]

Our target is Dec. 7, though the date may shift slightly depending on the testing and delivery cycle.

Regards,
JPG

[ColinBuckler]

Russ, aka Morrus, at ENWorld is okay with us moving this from the vault to the data folder. There are currently a set of changes queued up in development around the sidebar, theming and a few other things though that we are investigating. To be safe, we will look to release it out of the vault on the Test channel after we do a big global release on Dec 7.

This is great news.

Thank you very much for looking into this and discussing with Russ. This is a huge step forward.

[Viper007]

I was going to quote ddavison's post, but that would be redundant and quite frankly, my faith in him and his company is completely gone. I made a setting for N.E.W. and presented it on DTRPG, it included a toolkit to make quadrants, planets, moons and more. I even included a FG module which had everything the toolkit included and tables to create the aforementioned items even easier. Hell, I even made a little money, too! I was intending to create some adventures (which were in the works), especially when I learned of the forge, but that's going to go somewhere else now! The possibilities were endless, but some people can't honestly say "Yep, we messed up!"

My thanks go out to those who hung on as long as I did or more, it was a long painful journey! Taalo's, ColinBuckler, and others (who I cannot remember, getting too old) may your future with this company be better than mine. I use the tag Viper007 almost always, so if you all are in another VTT, look me up!

Take care,
Viper007

[Trenloe]

@Viper007 - I've been very, very surprised by your level of anger in the last week. Your post a week ago was full of "let's be real" statements - and that's mostly what people have tried to be here - realistic. You see realism as negativity, not helping, sticking their nose in where it doesn't belong, and have asked posters why they care and if they have some other agenda. Quite frankly I'm flabbergasted at the conclusions you've jumped to in your micro dissection of everyone's posts in the last week, and the borderline insults you've thrown at some people. You're frustrated and very angry, that's clear; but I think you've gone off the rails a bit here and have contributed to any negativity yourself.

I don't want to get into a war of words with you, because it seems you've completely made up your mind and have way too much time on your hands to sit and mull this over. I like to look for solutions, so I'll put this back to you (if you care at this point). Since this discussion blew up a week ago Doug has already been in touch with Russ at En World and has their permission to move the code from the vault to be unencrypted - so within the last week there has been progress made with one of the big things mentioned recently in this thread. Once this is released, currently planned for December, this will allow people to modify the code via extensions (as many community developers do for other rulesets) and will also hopefully provide some fixes and updates that users feel improve the ruleset use. Other than this, what else are you realistically looking for in this ruleset?

[ddavison]

I was going to quote ddavison's post, but that would be redundant and quite frankly, my faith in him and his company is completely gone. I made a setting for N.E.W. and presented it on DTRPG, it included a toolkit to make quadrants, planets, moons and more. I even included a FG module which had everything the toolkit included and tables to create the aforementioned items even easier. Hell, I even made a little money, too! I was intending to create some adventures (which were in the works), especially when I learned of the forge, but that's going to go somewhere else now! The possibilities were endless, but some people can't honestly say "Yep, we messed up!"

My thanks go out to those who hung on as long as I did or more, it was a long painful journey! Taalo's, ColinBuckler, and others (who I cannot remember, getting too old) may your future with this company be better than mine. I use the tag Viper007 almost always, so if you all are in another VTT, look me up!

Take care,
Viper007

We have 2,069 products in our store and the vast majority of these are built and converted by commissioned developers. We built a platform that allows any game system to be played and the customization of rulesets that make gameplay for those systems even better than they would be with a more generic ruleset. Not every product has the same level of features or polish as every other system. We require that the store page descriptions are accurate and that if bugs are not being addressed, we maintain the right and ability to shift it to another developer. We can't create new, interested and experienced developers out of thin air. These are not our employees. They are members of the community. Two different developers from the community looked at this and the first one walked away and the second one did his best attempt at the ruleset. It is up to you decide if you wanted the product or not. Some people requested refunds for the product and others did not -- just like every other product on our platform. We offer a 30-day no questions asked refund policy and we extend this beyond that period on a case-by-case basis specifically for this reason.

Are you saying that you think we should have never offered the WOIN ruleset at all? Or are you saying that we should only offer products that our internal developers can devote the same amount of time that we do to premiere rulesets like D&D fifth edition?

We frequently get people who complain that we don't support every popular Kickstarter or game system of the month. I'm not sure where these people think the resources come to support all these systems. I'm very proud of the amount of support that our community developer approach has created and I will never feel the need to apologize for that. Our approach has empowered a lot of gamers to play their favorite system, it has allowed a lot of community developers to make money doing something they enjoy, and it has helped provide an extra source of revenue for hundreds of companies and indie authors. I would certainly prefer for every ruleset or conversion to be top notch and well received by the community, but I am very much in favor of imperfect options versus no option. There is not a single VTT that does it better IMO.