Really terrible performance, even on a high end machine.

[JohnQPublic]

I'm a KS backer and I'll preface my criticisms of FGU a bit by fully admitting that things have gotten much better since the closed beta. Things are loading faster in general, the cloud lobby has been stabilized significantly, and the LOS is actually usable now compared to before when using the map would cause crashes. Devs aren't sitting idle by any stretch and the improvements in functionality they actively spend time on are great. But some of the design decisions they have made and bugs/issues that still persist are baffling.

I think the choice to match the FG classic UI/UX and not redesign or innovate is a major contributor to the issues, expectations, and perceptions in this thread. When you have a fully clean slate to work from and a chance to cement yourselves as the unquestionable leader in the VTT space I cannot fathom why you would go with the same UI/UX from classic? I realize you have a user base that is used to things working a certain way and you want to easily transition them into the new product. But isn't that exactly the role FG classic plays in your offerings? The people that already love that system can stick with it. How is that growing the user base? This choice ends up with carrying a lot of legacy baggage around that shouldn't be necessary. Don't misunderstand me there is excellent feature functionality in classic and it's automation of game mechanics is the gold standard, but the way users get to and use those features is outdated and non-intuitive. Many of my players are brand new to FG and they have to spend time learning all the eccentricities so we can benefit from all the fancy automation. The idea behind making the content you own in classic available in unity without dev work is a time savings but once again you get stuck dragging that data structure around.

When you look at the performance problems and bugs this same decision leads to a lot of the frustration people are feeling on here. If this looked and flowed entirely different from classic I think there would be a lot more understanding and forgiveness from users. But a product already exists that looks exactly like this, works exactly like this, but performs significantly better. It's called FG classic. Read through many of these post and you'll find a common benchmark being used throughout them. "This takes forever to load. X is way faster in classic." or "Y used to work in classic but it's broken in FGU". You're having to compete with your own product. If FGU doesn't achieve performance parity to classic by launch that's a major problem. If Apple released an iPhone with a new camera feature but the phone was slower than the last generation you would absolutely not buy it. The same applies here. Based on what I understand from these forums and the KS listing the main thrust of moving to Unity was for 64 bit cross platform support and better mapping tools like tiles and LOS. It seems those were the primary focus of development and I happen to like their wall drawing tooling better than any of the competition! It's well thought out and works great. But those are only a value add if the existing functionality works at or above the performance of the original which it clearly does not. After FGU crashed on my group over and over a few weeks I had to throw together a session on the fly in Foundry VTT's beta and it went almost flawlessly. A single developer in his apartment put together a more stable and performant product in javascript and electron than Smiteworks with years of VTT code knowledge and a half a million dollars in kickstarter funding? This was in beta exactly like FGU at the time. A month later Foundry is live and adding features while the bug list and timeline for this seems to be growing despite their best efforts.

This probably came of as a tirade and for that I apologize as it wasn't intended to be one. I genuinely want FGU to succeed and all those sweet new features off on the horizon to arrive. Despite the criticism I truly don't mean to come off too harsh as things have genuinely gotten a lot better lately. I use FG classic and FGU every week and I'm not jumping ship. I want Fantasy Grounds to continue to be my VTT of choice because absolutely no one has achieved the same built in automation. But while the team is busy rebuilding decade old legacy software in a new technology their competition is busy re-defining what is possible with a modern VTT in 2020.

This is much better than I could've said it. Trying to make FGU be FGC, but with Unity was a mistake. I know that the backward compatibility is a big deal, but I think a completely new engine and some import tools would've been a better route. I'm here for the long haul regardless.

[jackkerouac]

FGU is not, was not, and really can not be, a 'clean slate' product. One can question the business decisions SmiteWorks has made. One can question the design decisions behind FGU. As financial advisors say, 'past performance is not proof of future value', but remember, FG is the only commercial VTT from 15 years ago that still exists. It was the first to do many things. I still believe in 5 years it will still be the best, and out of all the new VTTs that have sprung up in the last year I suspect only 1 of those will still be viable & supported.

I think you are probably right on the five-year thing. Of course, SmiteWorks will probably be releasing their first FGU RC1 five years from now as well.

From my perspective, FGU has been awful. It continues to be, albeit less so, just as awful. I think they should have waited to release what was obviously an alpha product until it was at least semi-stable. Of course, you are right - that was a business decision. A bad one.

[DenverDrew]

This is exactly why Astral, Foundry et al can make a VTT that at first blush seems superior to FGU. Because all they are doing is the image display and LOS.They don't (and can't) support automation for a dozen licensed rulesets (and another dozen or two unofficial ones). They don't have 1500 official DLC products to support (and thousands more unofficial ones), they don't have any licensed modules. They don't have tens of thousands of current users they have to support. In effect they are functioning technology demonstrators that are close to 'minimal viable products', they are not trying to re-architect the most feature and content rich VTT in existence. That takes thousands of developer hours to do something as simple as 'add in automation' to the level FG has on the number of rulesets FG supports.

This reinforces my point. No other VTT comes close with automation but they are making big strides in UI/UX that FGU just isn't. This is precisely why I don't understand the decision not to innovate there. I had hoped for that powerful automation to be driving a modern UI that supports animated maps, spell template drop to target, day/night cycle (that was in classic but got removed), token vision distance, dynamic light sources, dynamic audio sources, audio playlists, etc. If all of these "image display and LOS features" were in FGU on a slick intuitive UI why would anyone ever choose a different platform?

FGU is not, was not, and really can not be, a 'clean slate' product. One can question the business decisions SmiteWorks has made. One can question the design decisions behind FGU. As financial advisors say, 'past performance is not proof of future value', but remember, FG is the only commercial VTT from 15 years ago that still exists. It was the first to do many things. I still believe in 5 years it will still be the best, and out of all the new VTTs that have sprung up in the last year I suspect only 1 of those will still be viable & supported.

I did not mean to say that this was a ground up redesign product, sorry if I gave that impression. I meant a new product is a clean slate to take a different direction with the look and feel. It's also a clean slate reset of user expectations. By making the UI match classic and making the functionality Classic+ user expectations got baked in because they already know what classic does and how it performs. When FGU falls short on performance of course they will be frustrated and ask the question "why doesn't this work better than what I have?".

You are absolutely correct most of these other platforms will die off for this reason or that. I hope FG will still be around long after they are gone. I'm being critical because I want it to be.

[LordEntrails]

This reinforces my point. No other VTT comes close with automation but they are making big strides in UI/UX that FGU just isn't. This is precisely why I don't understand the decision not to innovate there. I had hoped for that powerful automation to be driving a modern UI that supports animated maps, spell template drop to target, day/night cycle (that was in classic but got removed), token vision distance, dynamic light sources, dynamic audio sources, audio playlists, etc. If all of these "image display and LOS features" were in FGU on a slick intuitive UI why would anyone ever choose a different platform?

UI/UX has been discussed in depth many times before. I'll let you go there if you want except to say UI/UX is based upon personal opinion. No one UI/UX is perfect for everyone.

I did not mean to say that this was a ground up redesign product, sorry if I gave that impression. I meant a new product is a clean slate to take a different direction with the look and feel. It's also a clean slate reset of user expectations. By making the UI match classic and making the functionality Classic+ user expectations got baked in because they already know what classic does and how it performs. When FGU falls short on performance of course they will be frustrated and ask the question "why doesn't this work better than what I have?".

You are absolutely correct most of these other platforms will die off for this reason or that. I hope FG will still be around long after they are gone. I'm being critical because I want it to be.

Again, discussed in length before. Changing the UI would have meant re-factoring all the rulesets and would have added a substantial amount of time, amopng other considerations.

[celestian]

UI/UX has been discussed in depth many times before. I'll let you go there if you want except to say UI/UX is based upon personal opinion. No one UI/UX is perfect for everyone.

I really wish you'd stop using that as the reason that no changes should be made. Whether "everyone" will be happy with a UI change isn't the point. If MORE people find the changes to the UI effective and helpful (and there is tons of data out there to direct those sorts of changes as I've pointed out before) then those changes should be made. It's more accurate to say "You can't make EVERYONE happy, so don't try."

As to the rulesets refactoring, I get why they wanted to keep the API and language the same to reduce the man hours to reproduce those in the new system (say JavaScript/CSS and JSON) however... hasn't FGU been under some sort of development for 5-6 years? In that timeframe, had they not decided to keep the API language/methods, they could have much more quickly developed the "New Platform" and developed the rulesets for the newer system... However we're still waiting for FGU AND the developers are having to update code to make their rulesets compatible with FGU anyway. If one gentleman can produce an entire new VTT in a year with several cutting edge features, the mountain of experience in FG would be able to do much more if not tied to backwards compatibility.

Yes, I am "arm chair quarterbacking" and maybe there are behind the scenes issues that make the long delay and issues reasonable but from the perspective of someone that loves FG, it's really disappointing to not even be able to use FGU for my games JUST to get at the great map features.

[DenverDrew]

UI/UX has been discussed in depth many times before. I'll let you go there if you want except to say UI/UX is based upon personal opinion. No one UI/UX is perfect for everyone.

Again, discussed in length before. Changing the UI would have meant re-factoring all the rulesets and would have added a substantial amount of time, amopng other considerations.

My apologies I was aiming for constructive criticism but it seems I missed the mark. I was not trying to upset anyone or get into a heated debate over UI/UX. I wasn't aware of all the previous discussion on the subject but I will go read up on that. I appreciate your stance and I understand the time needed to re-factor code limited the UI change possibilities. Hopefully the features I'd like to see most get added along the way.

[jackkerouac]

As to the rulesets refactoring, I get why they wanted to keep the API and language the same to reduce the man hours to reproduce those in the new system (say JavaScript/CSS and JSON) however... hasn't FGU been under some sort of development for 5-6 years? In that timeframe, had they not decided to keep the API language/methods, they could have much more quickly developed the "New Platform" and developed the rulesets for the newer system... However we're still waiting for FGU AND the developers are having to update code to make their rulesets compatible with FGU anyway. If one gentleman can produce an entire new VTT in a year with several cutting edge features, the mountain of experience in FG would be able to do much more if not tied to backwards compatibility.

THIS is what I don't get. Why try and exactly duplicate your current software without at LEAST taking a look at the UI and the baseline coding language, etc.? It makes very little sense, for reasons that have been posted above. And I get that once it is ported over to Unity, there will be new features 'in the future,' but at the rate they are currently going, 'in the future' is going to be 2035.

[LordEntrails]

I really wish you'd stop using that as the reason that no changes should be made. Whether "everyone" will be happy with a UI change isn't the point. If MORE people find the changes to the UI effective and helpful (and there is tons of data out there to direct those sorts of changes as I've pointed out before) then those changes should be made. It's more accurate to say "You can't make EVERYONE happy, so don't try."

I really wish you would stop misconstruing the statements I make. EDIT: delete further comments, not needed.

My apologies I was aiming for constructive criticism but it seems I missed the mark. I was not trying to upset anyone or get into a heated debate over UI/UX. I wasn't aware of all the previous discussion on the subject but I will go read up on that. I appreciate your stance and I understand the time needed to re-factor code limited the UI change possibilities. Hopefully the features I'd like to see most get added along the way.

No offense taken. But as you can see, it is an issue that gets people riled up. If you would like links to some of the previous discussions, let me know and I can look them up for you.

[niknas]

No offense taken. But as you can see, it is an issue that gets people riled up. If you would like links to some of the previous discussions, let me know and I can look them up for you.

Here's one https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forum...e-old-UI/page3

[CrawlingChaox]

What pains me most about FGU’s current status is that Fantasy Grounds has an awesome community, and the folks SmiteWorks are genuinely great people, but these points are moot if the product does not deliver. Unfortunately, at this point, I feel that FGU is really starting to lag behind other VTTs (not Roll20: that one still sucks, heh). I still use FG Classic regularly, but I’ve also had to explore other options, and I know I’m not the only one.

The hard truth is that SW only has so much time before people get invested on different platforms, and each day FGU does not deliver on basic functionalities (such as stable software and acceptable speed) they’re losing out on potential customers. That’s why, even though I know next-to-nothing about software development, I am really surprised the lengthy load times for lists hasn’t been addressed yet. I understand it might not have been the optimal choice from a development standpoint, but given that the product is being sold, it’d probably have been better (sales-wise) to make it usable from the get-go and have a lengthier development cycle, than to leave these very pressing matters for later updates.

I spent several years recommending FG and being very vocal about its quality over the competition. At this time, I feel I’m not able to keep doing it. I will definitely check it out again once the current issues have been fixed.