Whys and Wherefores - Some HLO Insights
 

There’s been some discussion between those who welcome the new HLOnline model and those who dislike it, and this dialog has uncovered a variety of areas where misconceptions appear to exist. My objective here is to increase everyone’s awareness and understanding of the path we’re pursuing and how it will work. To that end, this post will hopefully clarify some things, better explain parts of the rationale for proceeding down this path, and provide reassurance in a few places. So, in no particular order, here goes…

1. Our #1 biggest request from users has been Android support, followed closely by support for the full spectrum of device types and sizes (phones, tablets, etc.). We had a huge contingent of consumers telling us that they can’t buy our product until we support the devices they use. Consequently, a key reason we chose the HLOnline model is to make the product accessible to all users on all platforms, including Android and everything else.

2. A second key reason behind the HLOnline model is that we can leverage the server-based model to introduce numerous new features that were simply not practical – or even possible – on the HLClassic platform. We’ve been laying the foundation for these capabilities for some time, but they have not yet begun to surface within the product. That should start to change in the months ahead, especially as we debut aspects of the completely re-envisioned replacement for the old HLClassic Tactical Console.

3. There has been some fear that we would hike the hosting service rates in the future once users are “hooked”. While we understand that fear, we have absolutely nothing to gain by doing something like that. In fact, we would have everything to lose. All of our products have succeeded thanks to word-of-mouth recommendations from gamers. If we don’t put out a product that gamers endorse, we’re going to fail. And I can’t think of a better way to turn gamers against us than to begin extorting them. With HLOnline, we have to keep the servers running and managed, so we need to charge a nominal fee to cover those costs. But there’s no intelligent business case for us to jack up the price for hosting.

4. On the subject of the hosting service, many have been confused regarding whether or not we are actively charging for that service with HLOnline. At this point, those who purchased HLOnline when it first launched should have already had to purchase additional months of hosting service. They haven’t. That’s because we’ve simply been quietly extending everyone’s license and not making a big deal out of it. We have an internal definition of when we feel HLOnline will be substantive enough to justify charging users for the hosting. We aren’t there yet. Until we reach that point, users clearly know when they purchase the product that they will one day encounter the hosting service fee. However, it’s not currently being assessed, and we will absolutely be making an announcement well in advance of when users will begin seeing their existing hosting service periods begin to lapse.

5. The very existence of the hosting fee has been challenged by a few users, since the content is already being purchased. The reality is that, if a user purchases HLOnline today, the expectation will be that the service can be used years down the road – without any further purchases. We have to keep the servers running and properly managed, and that incurs an ongoing cost on our part. We need to pass that on to users in some form. So we’ve split out the hosting service separately from everything else. The hosting fee is independent of how much content a user has acquired. It’s the same amount for everyone, whether a user has purchased a single item or everything we’ve released, since it’s solely a reflection of using the servers.

6. Some users have asked why we don’t just increase the one-time cost of content to build in the costs of hosting. That approach won’t work on multiple levels. First of all, while increasing the content cost might be desirable for some, the majority of consumers are on a budget and would reject a front-loaded purchase model. Consider the number of people who pay for other services on a monthly basis instead of a cheaper annual basis. For many, their budget constraints dictate the purchase model they employ, and we have to be mindful of that to be successful. To complicate matters further, all content is done under license from the publisher, which includes royalties, so building the hosting costs into the content would need to be inflated further to account for the associated royalty obligations. Most importantly, though, the hosting fees are usage based, and there is no correlation between content purchased and frequency of use, so adding the cost to content does not yield an equitable model.

7. Another recurring concern is the lack of internet access that some users experience. Without getting into a debate over how many users fall into that category today, let’s focus on the future. The new HLOnline product is intended to take us many years down the line. Every year, internet access becomes increasingly more accessible and less expensive for everyone. At some point, not too far out, it will be nigh ubiquitous. We have built HLOnline on the premise that those without internet access today will have it in the relatively near future – lonely cabins in the woods, notwithstanding – and that the meager bandwidth requirements of HLOnline today will be perfectly reasonable for the vast majority of prospective users.

8. On the subject of internet access, another claim that’s been leveled is that internet access at conventions is a huge problem, with GenCon being a primary example from past years. At GenCon last week, we ran our entire Character Creation Station (8 computers) on a single mobile hotspot from within the Sagamore Ballroom (Paizo’s Organized Play hall). Our performance was excellent, and other users reported the same experience on our forums, including users who reported using the WiFi service offered by GenCon. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that every convention has excellent connectivity today, but it definitely serves as a concrete example that internet access at conventions is steadily becoming more accessible, just like everywhere else.

9. A few are worried that we could pull the plug on the product at any time and leave everyone “screwed”. While it’s theoretically possible that we could go out of business, the reality is that the company has been in business almost 25 years (founded in 1994). We’ve been creating digital tools for tabletop games for 20 years, starting with Army Builder back in 1998. Hero Lab itself has been going strong for more than a decade. So the likelihood of HLOnline just disappearing is extremely slim.

10. The question keeps being asked whether we will be bringing Starfinder and now Pathfinder 2nd Edition to HLClassic. It’s possible, but it won’t occur anytime soon. Porting those games to HLClassic will entail a significant chunk of work and derail our focus, which is squarely on getting HLOnline into a mature state that includes all the cool features that we have mapped out. Once we get much of that into place, we could potentially port games from HLOnline back to HLClassic. However, those games will then be missing numerous capabilities that are present on HLOnline and not available on HLClassic, so it remains to be seen whether there will be enough demand to justify the substantive development work to do that.

11. Some folks have twisted the preceding position on Starfinder and Pathfinder 2nd Edition into somehow meaning that HLClassic is dead. That couldn’t be more wrong. We’ve got some meaningful improvements to HLClassic – both on the desktop and iPad – in active development and due out soon. All the game systems that are currently on HLClassic continue apace, with new books coming out shortly for multiple game systems. HLClassic is a solid product that remains a core component of our offerings and we don’t expect that to change for a long time to come.

12. An understandable concern that’s regularly voiced centers on how HLOnline behaves if internet connectivity suddenly disappears in the middle of a game. We’ll be addressing this in the months ahead, in a series of stages. The first stage will allow users to proactively “snapshot” their character for offline viewing. This is useful when a user knows he/she is about to enter an area where no internet access exists, or the user knows that access may disappear at any time. When viewing a “snapshot”, the character will remain fully navigable and viewable, although no changes will be possible, as those are made through the server. The second stage will have the HLOnline application constantly maintain a “snapshot” of the character in the background. If internet connectivity ever disappears, the character will still remain fully navigable and viewable, albeit not editable. Further stages beyond this are on the drawing board, but it’s premature to delve into any of them at this time.

13. Various comments have centered on what happens when a user stops paying for the hosting service, with claims going so far as saying that everything is automatically deleted. I can understand how that would cause fear, but it’s far from true. Another claim is that we’ll hold your material “for ransom” and deny all access to it. That’s also absolutely not true. The reality is that, when a user’s hosting service is suspended, that user can continue to access all his/her characters normally, albeit in “demo mode”. That means the character is fully viewable, printable, and will even be exportable once that capability is fully integrated for all users. The key restriction is that a character can’t be further edited if it’s beyond a “starting” character (e.g. 1st level).

If there are significant questions or concerns that weren’t covered above, please let us know. Thanks for taking the time to read through all this. I sure hope it's useful! :)

P.S. Before actually posting this, I went ahead and numbered everything, but it was only to make referencing specific items in the ensuing discussion easier. :)

Thank you for the detailed notes you have provided, Rob. While I am firmly in the group of those who welcome the change to HLO I find it reassuring nonetheless.

Need Like button.

I agree, we need a like button

Rob.

Is there any plans for having a mini app to just view a character instead of logging into HLO? Ofcourse, one would need to use this with the export feature that is upcoming, perhaps something that would use less power and resources?

Thank you for listing these concerns, and I believe I will eventually purchase this product at some point. Hopefully, the ability to print a filled out character sheet is on the horizon.

I think the "snapshot" feature we'll be putting into place shortly (#12) ought to provide almost exactly what you're describing. You'll be able to bounce around the existing character freely, with all the data cached locally. So there should be very little power or other resources utilized.

Printing is already in place, although it's still a bit rough in places, and there are plenty of improvements we have on our todo list. In the top right corner of HLO, click on the gear icon. You should see a Print option there.

Fair warning: Firefox has some glaring bugs in their printing that Mozilla has elected not to fix for a very long time. Consequently, printing on Firefox is not nearly as nice as on Chrome/Edge/Safari. If you are a Firefox user, like me, you may want to do the actual printing with one of the other browsers. You'll likely get significantly better results. :)

Rob,
Thanks for posting. However,
#7. Your wording tells me that you don't have and don't want to know actual numbers of people who don't have internet access. You don't want to argue about it. You just state as a fact that everyone will eventually have it, but you're unwilling or unable to back it up with proof.
#8. There was a 3 hour or so outage during Gencon. It was reported to the forums. Part of the problem with this model is one can't report issues directly when the server is down.
#1. What it boils down to with this is that the rest of your customers get taxed to support Android instead of creating and supporting a tool for that user group. It seems like the licensing cost should go down since your customer base has increased dramatically. But my cost goes up and I get no benefit......I'm not an Android user (anymore).
Bottom line: I can create anywhere with Classic. I'm limited with Online. And, for that, I have increased cost.
Flyteach

Question, if you have the license for custom content in classic, nothing really stops you from creating the Starfinder ruleset yourself in classic and using it as you have indicated offline, when no internet is available. Is this not accurate? Is there something that would prevent creating HeroLab in Classic(sans the shared Starship functions?) as a character creation tool?

There's an old adage about "lies, damn lies, and statistics" (popularized by Mark Twain). There are different statistics on how pervasive the internet is today, and there are even more diverse statistical projections on how the internet's reach will grow over time. If I picked one projection to "prove" our position, I'm sure someone else could readily dig up a different projection to counter it. So any attempt to “prove” our position would likely devolve into a counter-productive debate that neither side would ever "win".

At the end of the day, we have to pick a path forward. Every company on the planet makes its best guess based on the data that it has available, and we’re no different. We use whatever hard data is available, anecdotal evidence, and anything else we can get a hold of. In the end, it all comes down to a gut check. Sometimes, those guesses are wrong. We've done our homework, we’ve chosen our path, and we're banking that our "educated guess" is right. Only time will tell. :)

When the server went down on Saturday, we knew about it within about 1 minute. We have various mechanisms in place to automatically detect and notify us when something goes sideways. Unfortunately, our messaging to users in those situations is poor. That's something that was sidelined in the push to get PF2 into place for GenCon, and it’s near the top of the pile to address now that we're back. We were just discussing it on Thursday. :)

The problem that hit us on Sunday was the epitome of Murphy's Law. There had been a subtle issue lurking for a while that we had not properly identified. The issue could have just as easily struck a week earlier or three weeks from now, but it chose Saturday afternoon at GenCon to rear its ugly head. To compound things, the developers who needed to identify and fix the problem were both in the booth at GenCon when everything went down, meaning we had to scramble to rearrange schedules and get people back from breaks so the developers could go tackle the problem. Then those developers only had their laptops from hotel rooms to operate from. The net result was that it took us significantly longer to sort things out than if we’d all been at home in front of our development machines. :(

There are days I'd like to strangle Murphy for that stupid law! :)

On this point, we may just have to agree to disagree. But allow me to ask a couple questions first. Do you intend to only ever use a desktop or laptop for your gaming from now into the indeterminate future? Do you have no desire for a more connected and streamlined experience with the other members of your gaming group during games? If your answers are both yes, then what we're doing with HLOnline doesn't match your personal requirements, and that’s unfortunate.

Just about everyone I see at Cons, the FLGS, and in local games is abandoning bulky equipment in favor of tablets and even their phones. The HLOnline model allows us to readily support all of these devices with a responsive UI design. On top of that, the HLOnline model fundamentally connects all players and the GM, which lets us streamline the overall experience. For example, a fireball damages multiple participants in an encounter, or a Cleric's Bless buffs the entire party, etc. Those are things that would never be achieved with HLClassic but that we'll be able to make available soon within HLOnline. And those are things that every gamer I've ever spoken to has been excited about. So that's where we're headed with HLOnine.

As above, we may have to agree to disagree here…

You can create anywhere with HLClassic, provided you utilize devices (desktops/laptops) that are cumbersome to transport and that are used less and less by the overall gaming population when playing. For the vast majority of gamers, HLOnline is undeniably more accessible, as they can use just about any device they want to use.

You are limited with HLOnline to areas with internet access, and we believe that limitation will diminish greatly and in relatively short order in the years ahead. For a large number of gamers, we believe it’s already a non-concern.

You have increased cost, but only once we start actively charging for the hosting service, which we have not yet done (#4). When we begin charging, users should start seeing added value to the product in terms of nifty new features, which add value beyond just the device accessibility offered today. And that added value should continue to increase from there. So the increased cost of roughly $2/month should, from our perspective, be offset by increased utility provided by the product. At that point, users will be able to make their own informed assessment of whether the added cost is worth it. We believe they’ll feel it is.

Thanks!

That is absolutely correct. Using the Authoring Kit, anyone could create their own version of the Starfinder game system (or Pathfinder 2nd Edition). And those data files could then be shared with other users. So there is nothing stopping a user-created version of either game system on HLClassic.

That said, I'm guessing most users that are asking for HLClassic support would prefer us to do the work, since it would be a significant effort to put it all together. If it was fast and easy, we would have done it ourselves. :)

Rob, cogent arguments and I'll let it sit except that I never said I wasn't a device user. I only said I was not an Android user. HLClassic (on a lightweight laptop like a surface or an iPad) run great while on a cruise boat, beach, camping trip, whatever. HLOnline, not so much. Also, in many cases while internet may be available, it's not always free or inexpensive. The exorbitant fees hotels charge is one example (my experience being anywhere from $10 to $30 per day).

As far as the outage, while the page said "see the forums for information", until today that outage was never acknowledged and nothing posted on the forum about status. So, while you new about it within a minute, it took 3 hours (or so) to fix and no post on status (like, that LWD was even aware and/or working on it). What's the point of directing people to the forum if we can't get information about what's going on with our data? Bugs will happen, I get that, and Murphy always prevails. But at least tell us what's going on.
Flyteach

Rob agrees and already mentioned this in his post:

Sorry about that! I misinterpreted the "anymore" when you said "I'm not an Android user (anymore)". :)

Fair points.

With the iPad, the reason we never added more game systems is because each new game required months to implement the UI. Then each game became a maintenance load as it evolved with new mechanics for us to support. So that wasn't a viable path forward for us without a massive change to how things worked. The current HLOnline approach obviated that need.

For Android, we had two real choices if we stuck with the HLClassic model. Option #1 was to develop a native application in parallel with the iPad, with it's own maintenance burden. Option #2 was to switch to a completely new technology stack like Unity. Both of those approaches entailed huge ongoing investments, while the HLOnline approach obviated them both, as well.

So while the Surface works nicely with HLClassic, the two largest platforms (Android and iPad) represented problems for us that we had to address with whatever path we chose. The HLOnline model emerged as the best path forward to address all of our needs.

I forgot to mention above that BJ was speaking on a GenCon panel when the outage occurred. More Murphy's Law. :( So the coordination of things from the CS side was seriously hampered, as well. I know we posted some basic info on social media, but none of us thought about the forums in the midst of scrambling to cover the busy booth with a skeleton staff while also getting the problem figured out and fixed.

So we definitely dropped the ball on that. Sorry! :)

Before BJ is back from vacation and Rob is not allowed to talk anymore I have a opposite opinion to say. :) Normally I 100% defend LW but I have to say I have a frustration myself as it relates to both HLO and HLC.

In the last year+ LW has gone to CIA level of secrecy with what it is doing. I recently stumbled across huge and exciting new features in HL for its scripting capabilities. While this is great news its not good that I had to find it by chance.

Granted this is not news worthy to everyone. Except it would be to many of the dedicated Community Editors. It also helps to show that LW had NOT given up on making improvements to HLC and HLO at the same time. That is important for letting people know that LW had not given up.

In the last few months I have gotten PMs and emails asking if LW was going under. From the outside world it looked, because of the silence and key people leaving, that LW could be going away. I had to point to the new features added in stealth updates and features as proof it was not. But honestly why should we as customers have to "dig" around "hoping" to find such info?

Where are the developer blogs or posts talking about the features LW is adding? Paizo has posts introducing new employees and even interns. This would help with the new employees that LW hired to show again that they are not going away but changing. But all the forums had been told was that people like Colen and Ion had left. I recently learned a guy named Gabriel works for LW. Who is he? What does he do? Shrug no clue...

What about all these "taking servers down" posts about? Why do they not contain at least a tidbit of information about WHY it is happening. What features are being added in all these "servers maintenance posts"? IMHO this would at least let people see progress or changes if we knew "something" was being changed or added.

This is just my personal opinion of course and maybe other's don't care about knowing about improvements or employees. I can only point to the fact that years ago I didn't get emails/PMs asking if LW was going under. To me that should be a concern... :(

+1 Shadow.

The last year has been really damaging to LWD's reputation. I have also received almost weekly messages questioning the health of LWD. People wanting to know how risky it is to invest in your software with concerns that the company is on the brink of going under.

I know you guys have had a really tough year, don't need to speak to anyone to see that writing on the wall. But it has been handled in a really poor way. Communication dropped off and you went silent. Just need to look at the Newsletter page to really see that.

https://i.imgur.com/9JlMZeh.png"]htt...om/9JlMZeh.png

You hired a 'communication' manager which was the perfect opportunity to start fixing this but then he moved into manning the support mailbox and never communicated anything. At this stage I don't know if Rone knows any more than us as all we see him do is repeated known information and post his attempt to calm the masses with RPG tid bits.

As a company who...

You have done everything possible this year to ensure that the 'word of mouth' advertising has reduced. You cannot see a conversation on Facebook without someone piping up about how unreliable the company is and the risk that therefore places on a purchase.

While we are on feedback.

• Your website is confusing customers. It's an overly complex web of pages with too much information that is laid our in a fashion that has not been used since the early 90s. It's clear you are working to fix that with the new store, just don't forget it's there. Close down the bits you don't need and push everything as quick as you can to the new store. You can literally takes guesses on the year products came out based on their web sites.
• Your company feels splintered. It's clear that all resources have moved on to HLO leaving the lights off with everyone else. Without your newsletter bringing that all together people people are already thinking they have been forgotten.
• No news can still be news. We all suspect nothing has happening in the LWD office for Realm Works this year but there's some great community tools keeping the pulse beeping. These are things that could create content for your newsletters.
• For the love of god give people visibility on what you are doing. Consumers have higher expectations these days and they want a Road Map to have an idea of what you are working on. People will invest in your tools if they feel like it's moving in a positive direction.
• Monthly Dev Updates are needed. Just have a look at D&DBeyond and the community they are growing. They have suffered their own delays this year and yet the community behind them is stronger than ever. Their monthly Dev Update Videos are creating magic for them.
• Clean up your forums. Some of the sticky posts have not had relevance in years. If you don't have the resources empower some of the key members of the community to help you get on top of them.
• Clean up your YouTube Channel. That Realm Works video showing the Web Version with discussion of it coming out soon is doing you no favours at this point.

And Rob. It's good to hear from you.

Rob,
Thank you for your engagement! We may not agree on everything, but we can probably agree that the discussion is good and keeps all sides more informed (I think you're reading more about that above) <grin>
Flyteach

Thank you for taking the time to provide more detailed explanations. As well, I appreciate the consolidation of this discussion to one thread. I have some comments/questions/critique. Know that I do so with the upmost respect in the event that the phrasing does not read that way.

2. While I understand the need to innovate and add new features. Many of those features aren't things I would use. I use HLC for PC generation, sometimes GMing. While I recognize that having shared starship HUDs or similair group features could be useful. Most of my games have a hybrid of play styles (some use paper/pen, some use a free community excel sheet, some use hero lab, etc.). Even now, trying to open up someone else's HLC file when they have different packages throws off errors in HLC. I just feel like these communal features are better/easier to track ad hoc on a group-by-group basis. Alternatively, some of this functionality is already offered via products like roll20/fantasy grounds.

3. So would you be willing to build in a defined fixed rate as part of consumer's contracts for switching to HLO? Perhaps establish a 5 year rate with a set maximum you are allowed to increase the rate at the end of the 5 years on a per annum basis (e.g., $20.00 per year for 5 years with the right to increase the annual rate by 5% every year there after as the market requires?). Would a similair agreement be put into place for content prices?

5. You've made a decision to increase your overheads against the forecast of new user base that you will obtain. Its a bit of a slippery slope. It would be one thing to offer a product in two platforms. But at this point you aren't doing that. You are only offering new products in the new platform, which leaves your existing base in an awkward position (many of whom have asked for you to continue supporting your existing platform for this new content). Many of us might be more understanding if we knew what the increase in market was (e.g., 25,000 users to 50,000 users in 3 years) that drove you to this descision. Have you 'thrown' the baby out of the bathwater to appease 10% of the base who want to use an android phone or are you actually going to make a much better/more sustainable business from this decision? Have you guys developed off ramps for your 'road map' if you discover the change is not as popular as your forecast?

6. This approach would work better if you hadn't moved to a server heavy platform for providing services. The suggestion is implying that if your company was doing poorly financially that the fan base would be willing to support you by accepting increase content cost. However, if the subscription fee is only to pay for the addition of your servers and you aren't making money off of that change (except some risk based margin for server maintenance that might not get used) then you have only increased customer cost as any other business upsets will still require content cost increases to pay for your companies increased costs. This hasn't saved anyone money or made a positive impact on budget conscious customers who would just wait slightly longer to afford the more expensive content package.

It sounds more like you are making profit off of the subscription in addition to the increase in overhead due to your platform switch. That means that you have made a business decision that precludes the suggested solution being equitable. That would be all acceptable if new content was being released in both HCL and HLO platforms, but that isn't true. As it stands if your existing customer base wants to use your product for the 2e playtest or Starfinder, they HAVE to move to this new business model even if it doesn't provide any feature addition that they would use. This is a big complaint of HLC users. That those bells and whistles, the server cost, etc. is being treated as a catch all reason for why you need a subscription fee. That doesn't feel completely honest. It is like saying that the new Android phone generation/model has now made the phone 20% louder. It is indeed an improvement. But is it a improvement that warrants purchasing a new phone and did we really need that upgrade? Or is this improvement a means to pushing a new product cycle?

7. So one of your presuppositions is "internet is or will be ubiquitous' for all your user base. It indeed makes it difficult to discuss the validity of this presupposition if you are not willing to state that it is wrong or that it is wrong for a non-negligible portion of your customer base. Clearly, from your forums, my small sample size of hero lab users, and my own anecdotal experience this presupposition is not fundamentally or necessarily true. This presupposition, I expect, will be the largest reason for any loss of customers going forward unless you commit to maintaining both platforms (timelines, milestones, etc.)

8. I applaud you designing proactively to minimize bandwidth in the future to help with 'bad' internet connections. That is good design and something you should do for all of your products. That being said, it doesn't address the presupposition in item 7. and fails to address the main concern. Performance at one convention is not ubiquitous with experiences at other conventions (or at homes/gaming areas) that take place internationally at sites with a varying degree of integrated telecommunication services. A online only model can't address this issue and your presupposition in 7. states that it is a issue that does not exist.

9. That is good to hear you say. However, that critique is purely a risk based hypothetical. Whereas steps can be taken to ensure subscription or content prices are not increased, consumers can't assess whether a private company will fail in the near or long term. The critique still stands that the customer base would not readily be able to recover content/service because everything is server side. One would expect there would be a lot of warning prior to a failed private business. But anyone who has investigated buying a custom wood gaming table knows the story of how quickly Geek Chic went out of business. This critique is based on the hidden unknown risk to customers buying into a long term subscription based product.

10. Let me be the first to say that 95% of what I want from HLC is a PC generator/character sheet for use in live play (spells, conditions, etc. included). If GM aids like campaign encounters can be added then that will be welcomed too. But if all you can achieve is a port that gives me the same reliable, stable, quick, and efficient PC generator then I accept that ANY other features (shared space ships, GM trackers for parties, etc.) can only be offered online! Perfect. That is the dual platform support that I want. Strip those 'bells and whistles' that I won't ever use and give me the HLC features for those new RPG rulesets. We understand that you have a small company and have put focus on HLO. I also recognize that you have not definitively stated that HLC is dead or will never have support. But you need to recognize that if the generation of new content (new rulesets, not adaption of existing content into pre-existing rule sets) is solely focused on a different platform, then you have somewhat abandoned the old platform. As HLC waits in limbo for you to decide if we are worth getting the new RPG rulesets it will still 'feel' like you have abandoned HLC. Perhaps even just increasing company communication can help. I only found out that the 2e playtest was on HLO by reading strange 2e posts in the forums. I didn't realize you were even supporting 2e until after you had thrown something out there. Again, it makes HLC feel somewhat abandoned.

11. Again it is good to hear you say this. But instead of more features, I want to use your existing product (HLC) to explore these new rule sets. My players and I haven't picked up Starfinder largely because it isn't being supported by you in HLC. That is a powerful sentiment. Your product is so integrated with our use of RPGs that we would rather be left in the dust (or move to other supported systems, like 5e) than play the new systems we actually want to play. My warning to you is that this likely won't last forever. If someone enters the market place with a comparable product, I think a lot of frustrated HLC users will move. Although, likely not feasible, I would much rather that your company had expanded your team to fully support both platforms than move 80-90% of your support to the new platform with no clear roadmap as to how the old platform would receive these new/exciting rule-sets.

12. So while a snapshot is nice. I think a lot of headaches or complaints could be removed if the snapshot was also minimally editable. That would mean allowing a 'lite' version of your server to be run client side as an offline application. But if I was in a no/bad service area I could at least modify bonuses via things like spells or conditions. Until then, the loss of connectivity won't be solved by a 'snap shot' because it basically means I am stuck in paper and pencil mode during active play. That means the average user needs to really understand their character and the mechanics behind them and the 'crutch/aid' that your program is providing is immediately nullified. Please keep moving forward with your solution, but if the snap shot can't achieve some of the stated goals above, it won't be fit for purpose for the strongest critiques of HLO. Some might even be willing to pay a little bit more to have that lite server app so we have assurances of uninterrupted offline play (although some might describe that as extortion).

Again, I thank you for taking the time to have this discussion. I really appreciate having this much voice as a customer and think it reflects very highly on your company. It is part of the reason that I want to remain a loyal/committed customer to your company (even though we currently disagree on HLO).

Sorry for resurrecting bits of your post, Tim, but you raised some valid points, and Josh’s post kinda ties in, so I’m just going to bite the bullet and provide some answers. I really didn’t want to discuss some of this stuff, but Josh isn’t really giving me any choice in the matter, so it’s time for me to just suck it up. Here goes…

About two years ago, I started getting sick with great frequency. As has always been my custom, I shrugged it off and kept working my usual hours anyways (often 90+ hours each week). The ailments continued to get more serious, and I just continued to work through them. After a few months of that, I found myself in the hospital with some very serious issues. I spent a few weeks effectively doing a guest star appearance on the TV show “House”, with multiple doctors trying to figure out what was wrong and making all sorts of wrong guesses along the way. They finally figured out WHAT was wrong, but to this day they still don’t have a clue HOW I got it.

Without going into further details, I believe I essentially broke myself. I’ve spent the past 20 months on huge doses of brutal meds that have taken a massive toll on my body. I've been a shell of my former self, and that's had a profound impact on everything we've been trying to do as a company. But I’m still alive and kicking, so that’s better than the alternative, right? :)

One unfortunate aspect of the meds is that I can barely sleep. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep in 20 months, and sleep deprivation on this level puts a serious crimp in one’s ability to have clarity for in-depth coding. It also makes a person pretty irritable. Another aspect of the meds is that it puts users on edge all the time. I’m sharing all this, because it’s pertinent in multiple ways.

Needless to say, my ability to get stuff done was seriously compromised. The doctors provided misleading information in some key ways, so I mistakenly thought that the situation would improve “any month now”. In conjunction with this, there were ongoing problems with obtaining a viable implementation of the API we needed from Paizo to get the Realm Works Content Market completed and launched. So we operated for a while from a place of hoping that things would get better shortly, and we outwardly remained hopeful and positive in our communications. After that wore on for a bit, we realized that the positive thinking we were projecting was starting to be viewed as misinformation by users – and understandably so.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team focused their energies on getting HLOnline into place. We experienced some setbacks along that path, which resulted in everything taking longer than intended, but it DID all come together. The problem was that our credibility was basically shot. Between HLO delays, the mistaken belief that I’d be getting better quickly, and continuing to not have what we needed to complete the RW Content Market, few believed us anymore, so the simplest solution was to “go quiet” and just release things when they were in place. This is what I’m assuming you mean when you refer to a “CIA level of secrecy”. It wasn’t intended to be secrecy. We simply stopped talking about anything until it was actually released, lest mere comments about upcoming products and features would be misconstrued as more empty promises. As part of this shift, our notices when things DID get released were typically centered on brief announcements on social media.

I’ve finally crossed an important milestone, so I’m slowly getting off the nastiest meds and beginning to feel a little bit better, and that means I should be able to contribute significantly more than I have for the past 20 months. We successfully got the Pathfinder 2nd Edition Playtest out the door at GenCon. And we theoretically now have enough pieces available of Paizo’s API that we can rework some things on our end and hopefully get the Realm Works Content Market launched. <fingers crossed> So things are looking up. That said, we weren’t planning to discuss that stuff publicly until this thread made things difficult for me to NOT disclose it.

When I saw many of the comments being made in various threads about HLOnline, it frustrated me to see some of the misconceptions that existed. I figured we needed to provide at least a modicum of clarity on what we’re doing at this point. Fortunately, the fact that I’m feeling a tiny bit better allowed me to write the original post. I just hope I don’t say anything that belies my inherent irritability as this thread progresses. :)

I’d love to write about some of the things we’re putting into place, but it simply hasn’t been feasible. I was asked to turn in my forum posting privileges once the sleep deprivation and edginess from the meds started to bleed through into my forum posts. That was a long while back. This is my first time back on the forums since then, and there’s a lot of trepidation about it, since the sleep deprivation and edginess still persist. :)

Everyone here is working long hours to get everything into place, so taking out the time for developer blogs would delay getting critical functionality into place. Besides, most of the folks here are classic software developers that aren’t ideally suited to writing blogs. The CS team also has a full dance card already, so allocating time from them to write blogs would similarly incur delays on the things they’re dealing with. I’m NOT disagreeing with you that the blogs would probably be helpful in some ways, but we’ve been operating from the perspective that any such blogs would be taken by most with a huge grain of salt, so we figured it was more productive to focus on getting code into place and support tickets answered. We can revisit that thinking and re-assess.

Since you specifically asked about staff, here’s the quick rundown. Over the past year, we’ve lost two developers and one CS person. Within that same span, we’ve hired four new developers and two people for the CS team. So we’re absolutely growing. As for names on the developer side, Josh and Gabe have joined the UI team working on the HLO front end. Dave has taken over the HL Engine – not to be confused with David on the Server stuff. And Ryan is a jack-of-all-trades who’s wearing multiple hats right now. On the CS side, Rone and Ryan (another one) are now working with BJ.

Immediately after each of these instances where we take the servers down, you should be seeing release notes posted that highlight the key things introduced within the new release. The outage last Saturday was an exception to this, since that was just a nasty problem that we fixed. There’s usually a sticky thread with these details that remains until the next release is deployed. For example, there’s a thread entitled “Gen Con Update” present right now. If we haven’t done that in some cases, that’s a problem that we’ll need to rectify, so please let us know when that occurred so we can figure out what’s gone wrong in the process and get it corrected.

Hope this helps!

See my reply to Tim above for a lot of context.

The decision to "go quiet" was a collective one. It's quite possible that it was a poor decision - hindsight is 20/20, as they say - but we were also hurting ourselves with the previous approach. And I REALLY did NOT want to go public with my health issues. But that's happened in the end, anyways. <sigh>

I will make sure that BJ sees your list when she gets back, and we'll take it under advisement. :)

Apologies for putting you in a position where you felt it necessary to tell us the details of your personal issues Rob. That was not my intention at all. I just felt it was necessary to ensure you are aware of the impact of the last year as the silence is being talked about in places outside of LWD circles and is impacting on your brand and consumers faith in your products.

I am really happy to hear you are coming out the end of it and wish you nothing but the best wishes.

Yeah I totally feel I caused this and I am SO sorry right now. I really need to learn to just shut my damn mouth.... :( :o

Doing this on a group-by-group basis within HLClassic relies on each gaming group having someone knowledgeable enough to manage everything for the group. It also requires the entire group to trust and empower that someone to manipulate each device they use – and for that person to then perform that duty. That’s unfortunately not commonly achievable within most groups. In contrast, with the way we have things mapped out for HLOnline, these types of issues should be readily manageable at the group level.

I also find it intriguing that you mention Roll20 – an internet-only tool – in a post that seems to not be in favor of an internet-based solution for HL. :)

I don’t mean to be disrespectful here, but is that a request that would be embraced by any other existing business? I’m certainly not aware of any business that would assent to something like that. There are simply way too many variables in an indeterminate future. Theoretically, hosting costs will go down over time, which could allow us to decrease the costs to users, but who knows whether that will actually occur. With the elimination of net neutrality, that could potentially play a factor in the future, but who knows how it would impact things at this juncture. I could come up with a half-dozen more examples if I spent a few minutes here. And that wouldn’t address the myriad possibilities that could emerge in the future.

The only option that I can think of at the moment – and that might make sense – is to give users the option to pay for a longer period of service up front at a further discounted price. There may be other possibilities, but that’s one that came to mind.

Offering the new game systems on both platforms would entail a significant cost. It’s not just a dollar cost. It’s an opportunity cost of having those same staff investing many months of effort on HLClassic that derails progress on HLOnline. That’s why our focus right now is on bringing the new game systems to HLOnline alone.

With respect to discussing the data upon which we based our decision, and the tradeoffs we assessed in coming to this decision, please see the reply I gave @flyteach at the top of post #9 in this thread. 

As for “off ramps”, there are a few that we’ve identified in our planning. Depending on how things unfold, we can employ one or more of them, as needed.

I believe this is the same basic question/concern posed by @flyteach. Please see the rest of post #9 in this thread for my reply on this subject.

Our goal is to broaden the reach of Hero Lab to as wide an audience as possible, and we see HLOnline as a way to achieve that objective. The number of gamers who use laptops and desktops at their games is dwindling in favor of tablets and phones. And as I’ve outlined upthread, sticking with the HLClassic model and targeting those consumers/devices was not a viable strategy. So we had to adopt a completely new approach if we wanted to pursue supporting gamers on the devices they are using more and more.

There is definitely a downside to this. In the process of switching over to the new product model, it is likely that there will be some number of existing users that choose not to embrace the new model – and, in some cases, can’t. Is that ideal? Of course not. It’s an unfortunate reality of the situation. However, if we stick with the old model, we’ll lose a different – and we believe much larger – set of users as they abandon us because we don’t support the devices they choose to use in their games. We have to pick our poison, as we sadly can’t “do it all”.

We’re not saying “it doesn’t exist”. However, it’s something that we believe impacts a limited subset of gamers, and we further believe that the impact will rapidly diminish over time for those who do experience it. Nobody can create a product that caters to the needs of every possible consumer on the planet. Tradeoffs always exist. So we’re faced with choosing a consumer profile that we believe gives us the broadest reach possible, both now and into the future. The HLOnline model achieves that. I would love to create a product that appeases everyone’s wants and needs, but that’s just not realistic.

I appreciate this concern, yet I’m not sure how things are different for HLOnline from HLClassic. The exact same concern should apply to HLClassic as for HLOnline. If we suddenly went out of business, HLClassic would begin to stop working for users. Without the ability to contact the server to secure a new keyfile, HLClassic would revert to demo mode the moment a user has something substantive change on their computer. Or the moment that a new computer is acquired. Or anything else that occurs and requires a new keyfile. The effects wouldn’t be immediate for most users, but they would begin soon after the server went down and would continue from there.

I’m sure the thinking is that a suitable hack could be instituted to get HLClassic working. Well, that might prove a bit difficult, as there have been very capable hackers who’ve tried to crack HLClassic (and Army Builder) over the years. To my knowledge, none have yet succeeded – one who proclaimed success didn’t actually come close to succeeding.

So allow me to present a counterpoint. Let’s say there was one product that ran on a server that was continuing to pay for itself and another product for which the revenue stream completely stopped. The first product could be allowed to continue operating in its current state for a very long time. The second product would be losing money the next day after the revenue stopped and would make no sense to continue operating the servers. In this example, the first product is HLOnline, which could be kept running pretty readily if the hosting revenue continued to come in and cover the costs of running it. The second product is HLClassic, for which all revenues would stop the moment that new sales of content stopped. From this standpoint, I view HLOnline with the separate hosting fee as the vastly safer avenue for any consumer to prefer.

While this may sound like a simple request, it’s far from it in practice. It all boils down to the opportunity cost of tasking staff members to focus on HLClassic instead of HLOnline. As a small company, we simply don’t have enough staff to afford the luxury of dedicating staff for many months to bring each game system to the HLClassic platform – at least, not right now. Once we get HLOnline into a more mature state, we can re-assess the option of investing many months of effort into bringing games from HLOnline to HLClassic. For now, we need to focus those particular resources on the new product and continuing to support all the existing games on HLClassic – for which books continue to be published.

It’s absolutely not a question of deciding if you are “worth” getting the new game systems on HLClassic. It’s the harsh reality of severely limited resources, balancing our priorities, and practicality.

Increasing company communication is definitely an option – this was echoed above by Tim and Josh.

Alas, we don’t have significant funding resources available to us. We’ve built ourselves up from our bootstraps and must operate within our means. So expanding the team as you would have preferred was sadly never an option for us. That left us in a position where we had to make a lot of very hard choices. We did that, and HLOnline is the path we chose.

Writing a capable character creation tool is not easy. In the 12 years that Hero Lab has existed, there have been numerous tools that sought to usurp it. The only commercial one that I’m aware is still standing is D&DBeyond, and it’s had its share of difficulties, even though it’s funded with an annual budget many times larger than ours. Creating an initial tool is vastly easier than ensuring the tool can evolve with the complexities and vagaries of the game system. And a tool that supports games like Starfinder and Pathfinder is an order of magnitude more complex to write than for D&D5e. Consequently, if another tool enters the market, I like to think we’ll be able to see it coming and have the opportunity to make adjustments if it’s something to worry about.

Running the HL Engine on most devices is simply not practical. As such, putting a “lite” server on the local device is similarly not feasible. That said, we have some ideas that we’re exploring that could work to allow in-play support along the lines you’re seeking. Those are what I referred to as “further stages”. We’re definitely not planning to stop at the snapshot stage, but we’re also not at a point where we can publicly discuss those further stages.

Thanks!

Tim/Josh:

If you guys didn't ask the questions, then I'm sure someone else would have. So it's water under the bridge now...

NOTE TO EVERYONE:

As valuable as this dialog is, I also have a ton of development work I need to do. I spent a huge chunk of the last few days writing the initial post and responding to all the questions here. So I now need to focus on all my development tasks.

I think that the most common and pressing questions/concerns have been expressed and answered in the dialog above. So I'll return here to answer further questions in probably a few days.

Thanks for your patience!

Thanks, Rob. I had had some serious concerns about the direction and viability of the company. You've laid them to rest, and I appreciate your candor. Carry one with your good work, and I'll await further news about the products that you guys create and that I love.

I really appreciate you spending the time giving some info. I can only speak for myself but it made me feel better knowing what is going on.

Please take care of yourself Rob. I struggle with my own medical issues and I understand totally. :)

+1 for these sentiments....

Rob,

Having been around since the old AB days with you and a developer for those, I fully understand the point. My point, as you confirmed, was that everyone making a complaint that the HLC tool is forgotten for Starfinder or PF2 need to be reminded from time to time that the tool is an authoring kit and with the correct licensing they are fully able to create any system then want/need.

But it takes effort and that is the key part. The assumption is that LWD has the time to do that effort, and forget that you are a business and have determined to place your effort elsewhere (for now).

{nods} HLO won't really be a thing for me without either Mutants and Masterminds or Authoring Kit support, but I appreciate your willingness to innovate.

And, since you were discussing personnel changes, is Colen entirely out of the game, replaced by DaveM? That's the impression I'd gotten, but I didn't want to jump to conclusions.

Please, for the love of Gawd, if you begin feeling like that again, go see a doctor and tell him about it, in great detail, with footnotes.

Thanks Rob. I really appreciate you taking time out to respond to my comments and concerns. I recognized prior to posting that many of my comments, suggestions, and observations are not easy to implement or economically feasible for a company of your size. However, I hoped that putting out some of those ideas would help convey customer feedback that would be of use and allow the open discussion of issues that I or many of my players have identified. Perhaps some essence of the feedback will help the development team moving forward. Whether that be increased communication, putting a focus on certain features, or opening up an internal discussion about what can be done to minimize barriers for HLC users to transition to HLO.

With respect to any personal life disruptions. While it is no one's business to know about these things, I think you'll find that many of us have a healthy respect for your position. My wife has only recently beaten a 2-3 year stint with cancer which has exacted various tolls on our family, her career, and things we previously took for granted. At the end of the day the most important thing is your health and happiness. Making sure you have a good work life balance and avoiding burnout are important. If it is the difference of product/feature delay or your health, I can at least speak for myself and say that you are much more important!

Your time and candor are appreciated. Thank you.

This is simply the best piece of communication I have seen come out of LWD in ages... I applaud you for it.

Would be nice if you could post a link to this in the RW forums (where I usually lurk), and I only came in here because I was looking for any details on when/if PF1 may be ported into HLO :D and stumbled on it by accident.

I saw a comment about blogs and how developers don't have time to do that sort of stuff... totally get that - I wouldn't want my dev's doing communications, especially when we pay them to write code....

So I thought I would suggest that you do have some serious champions (aka Shadow, Daplunk - who makes absolutely kick*** videos I might add, and I am sure there are many more) that may be (or already are ) used as beta testers who could take some of that load and could help ?

I use a similar approach when running my applications projects, to get business champions to help with the comms - it really helps keep the peasants from finding pitchforks.... although some of my lot have only recently discovered fire :D

As with others I'd like to add - please look after yourself.

I would have been extremely happy if Hero Lab could work as the 'server' for a web based UI. This is not something I feel the need to pay to have 'hosted' elsewhere, if I could do it myself. Long ago there was discussion of an API to have other programs access the Hero Lab back-end - this would have been the quickest path to an Android client. Throwing out everything and starting from scratch, while completely changing the business model - just makes no sense.

@HappyDevil:
I'd caveat community contribution with that it often adds the stress of working with contractors, and not knowing if they'll hit the deadline, with the additional problem that people working for free often get distracted by other projects, especially paying ones, necessitating grooming another person. I don't know that that will drop Rob's stress level. :)

The main problem I have with a server fee is if it's monthly.
Unfortunately my group doesn't play every single month, and we do tend to go on months long breaks. So paying a monthly fee for something I won't use doesn't appeal much to me.
It's the reason I stopped paying for Premium Roll20 and Syrinscape.
I'd be more than fine paying it yearly though.

Hmm... at least as stated thus far, it seems like there's no real penalty to stopping and starting the service (Rob has explicitly said all of the data remains available if unmodifiable), so the current model may still work for you. :)

That said, I feel your pain on the difficulty of getting the group together. I get once this month and once the next. We didn't play the last two months.

Ah. That's good. I sure hope the fee is "nominal". Don't really care for $20 a month if I can only play one session.

I have connection issues here, and the fact you can view your character without internet is a huge plus.

I'm very excited about fully implemented HLO though. The possibilities are awesome.

Current listed price is $2.50 a month paid in either 6 or 12 month batches.

People have been asking for the ability to actually pay month per month.

In addition the monthly fee has not started yet for anyone.

They have upped it to two Fifty instead of a flat two bucks?

Hopefully, there is a discount for getting the 6 month/year buy in.

You can choose 180 days of server access at $14.99 or 365 days of server access at $24.99. The latter equals out to $2.08 a month.