Disabling updates? Restricting packages?

[Ablefish]

Hi,

Sorry to grumble, but we have like a two hour window to game each week, so it's really painful to have to spend the first 30 (and counting) minutes doing an update for a million packages we don't care about.

I know we don't have to hit the red button, but as humans that is a pretty tall ask And as soon as one person does it, everyone else does of course. It would be wonderful if we could opt out of package updates or something. We literally only use 5e. That's it.

[LordEntrails]

There is no option to do this with the rulesets and store products. Unfortunately, it would cause a huge number of support issues as people would disable things and then forget about them being disabled etc and then not have things work.

As you know, the best solution is to not update prior to a game session. For our group, I always post in our Discord channel about 30 minutes prior to game if it is safe to update or not. That way it's a recent reminder to folks to not just always hit the red button.

[Zacchaeus]

There isn’t the option to opt out at this time (and may never be since it’s tricky allowing people to opt out and then finding they need some stuff because other stuff won’t work without it). If you only play 5e however there is very little that should be updating on a weekly basis. Other than updates to modules you own the only likely updates would be to some of the rulesets that come with the license and those don’t change very often. There have been changes to a lot of the 5e modules recently.

If you are all on very slow networks causing you to need 30 minutes to update I would suggest that you all log on much earlier than the session start and do the updates before the start time.

[Lo Zeno]

There isn’t the option to opt out at this time (and may never be since it’s tricky allowing people to opt out and then finding they need some stuff because other stuff won’t work without it). If you only play 5e however there is very little that should be updating on a weekly basis. Other than updates to modules you own the only likely updates would be to some of the rulesets that come with the license and those don’t change very often. There have been changes to a lot of the 5e modules recently.

If you are all on very slow networks causing you to need 30 minutes to update I would suggest that you all log on much earlier than the session start and do the updates before the start time.

Zacchaeus usually I love you, but this answer sounds very condescending and misguided.
This option (disabling/restricting updates) exists for items purchased on the Forge - so there's very little argument in favour of not having the same option for Shop modules.
Also it doesn't really matter what you play on... what matters is what you bought. He might be playing only 5E now, but if previously he bought modules for other rulesets he will be receiving all the updates from that stuff even if he doesn't play them anymore. And there's no way to avoid it. Did your group move on from Pathfinder 1e to Pathfinder 2e? Tough luck, you'll have to download PF1 updates every time they are available, even if you don't use it anymore!
Let's add situations like today's update where essentially EVERYTHING has been updated, including very old modules, due to the new version of FGU: when those situations happen, they aren't announced ahead of time, they are just released in the network, and there's no way for anyone to say "oh look, looks like there are at least 70 modules that need an update, maybe let's skip it" - all we see when we open up FGU is a red line around "check for updates", it doesn't tell us what modules/rulesets we own need updating, or even just a number showing how many of them have updates.
It's also already extremely hard to have a group show up in time at the agreed-upon time weekly to play (seriously, the n. 1 problem that every TTRPG group complain about is being able to schedule a game in the few precious time slots that adults have available between work, kids and other responsibilities and have everyone show up at the scheduled time), and you suggest "maybe you all can log in earlier". That's not helpful.

At a minimum it would be nice if we could do with Shop purchased items the same things we can do with Forge items in the inventory - I'm referring to the Disable and Disable & Hide buttons. This would also prevent the problem that Smiteworks will eventually have to tackle: customers who have been using Fantasy Grounds since the first years and have continuously bought modules will eventually face a disk space issue due to FGU.

[LordEntrails]

IMO, if the shop were to adopt an ability to disable updates, I would suggest that it only be available by ruleset (with dependencies accounted for). And then all content for the disabled rulesets would be disabled including updates to the ruleset. i.e. everything for that ruleset (and any child rulesets) would get frozen in time. This would help with the support issues (to some extent).

As for notification on updates, I will again suggest a pop-up window warning prior to the start of the update with the ability to cancel. (I'd add this to the Idea Informer Wish List, but the FG project seems to no longer be accessible?)

[Moon Wizard]

This is exactly as @LordEntrails has said. Performing that sort of update locking would require us to have a way to toggle by entire ruleset across the entire FG catalog. The Forge is not a good example of what is needed for what you are asking, because each Forge item is theoretically independent. Unfortunately, this is a large amount of work vs. limited gain; as most people prefer to stay up to date with the latest changes.

Regards,
JPG

[Ablefish]

Thanks for the replies, folks. I too want to stay up to date with latest changes generally... but that will never include rulesets I'm not using. I understand the simplicity on your side to keep the rulesets in lockstep with the fg version release, wish there was a way to skip tho.