Down right Mad!!!
 

I am down right mad at the way the direction of Lone Wolf is going. I have been buying material for years now and have tried to spread the word about the system. This is going to stop. I refuse to use the pay to play type systems. Charging for the material, THEN....THEN....THEN have the audacity to charge to continue using the martial that I bought. Oh, it's just a little bit here and a little there. All I can say is they better make it available to original platform.

I will not make big threats. No, I will just stop my support and stop buying products. The game store I visit will know my feelings and the gaming conventions I go to as well.

I know I am only one, but there is bound to be more with the same feelings as I.

A thing to remember, before you really get a head of steam up here, is that HeroLab Classic still works just fine. All of the datasets that are currently available for it are still available. LoneWolf have stated no plans to stop developing content for HeroLab Classic and the game systems it supports. If you don't want to have a pay-to-play product, just don't buy it, and continue to use the excellent product(s) that you already have.

At present, the only thing that you won't get, if you don't subscribe to HLO, is Starfinder. We haven't been given any ETA for Pathfinder content in HLO that I know of, and your ability to use the Classic product hasn't been impacted ONE IOTA. If you prefer, you could simply ignore the fact that HLO has been created in the first place, and continue to enjoy your usage of the fine products you have already purchased, even telling others how excellent they are. Even when Pathfinder is released for HLO, they've said that content purchased on one platform will translate to the other, as long as that content has been produced for both. I suspect that it will take a while to get all of the HeroLab Classic Pathfinder content, along with the basics of the rule system itself, converted to a usable form in HLO because there's just so darned much of it (which is part of why we all love the product).

I'm also not thrilled by the ongoing subscription model, but they are planning an offline mode, and I somewhat suspect that we'll eventually see Starfinder content for HeroLab Classic (although I don't believe I've seen this as a specific promise from the company, so don't quote me on that).

While Lonewolf is asking for money for the product at this time, it's quite clear that it's still under heavy development, and I'm viewing my subscription as something akin to getting early beta access. The product really isn't ready for primetime, but I'm not letting that bother me. If it bothers you, you still have HeroLab Classic.

They specifically said they're not bringing Starfinder to desktop Hero Lab. (Hero Lab Online FAQ)

They've stated that Starfinder won't be offered at first, but have left the door open to the possibility later (without making any promises).

From the linked FAQ:

Q: Will Hero Lab Classic support Starfinder.
A: Starfinder is a unique system with various aspects that are much better suited to Hero Lab Online. Heck, that’s why we’re focusing on Starfinder first! Consequently, we will not be offering Starfinder in Hero Lab Classic, at least initially, as it wouldn’t be as powerful or enjoyable to use.

$25 a year is dirt cheap. It's to keep there servers running. If you can't afford it then you probably should find a different hobby that isn't as expensive.

There are other people, including myself, who would rather not see a subscription model like this. Lone Wolf knows that not everyone is going to be happy and that some people are going to leave. They also know that some people, including new customers, are going to be excited about the new features and functionality.

That being said, it's going to happen regardless. The harsh reality is that LWD has a financial bottom line. Every company does. They see this as the way forward.

As much as I don't like the change, I don't want to see them go under. So I hope this works out for them.

As far as making things available for the original platform, that's going to happen for games that are currently supported on the original platform. New game systems will not be added to the original platform, but any game that the original platform currently supports will continue to get new content.

And if you use both platforms, you only have to pay for that content once to have it available in both places.

$25 a year is nothing. I'll pay that for the benefits it will provide. The next day I'll probably blow twice that on junk food which won't give me anywhere near as much satisfaction or enjoyment.

This!

Plus $25/year is a very cheap subscription, I suspect it won't even pay for the costs of maintaining the servers to support this.

I also highly doubt that those who are against subscription services don't already have several of them, i.e. Netflix, cable/satellite, hulu, HBO, a music service, cell phone, etc.

I have a cell phone and internet, because they're necessary for job hunting.

The rest is for food and shelter.

Good luck on the job hunt, my company is in the process of being bought out so I may be in the same boat soon. Losing a job always sucks.

Thanks. I had a 2.5 hour technical interview last week, and that same company wants to schedule me for another round. They also have multiple openings, so it's not as competitive as other jobs I've interviewed for where they were just hiring one guy. It's not a sure thing by any means, but it's the most promising lead I've had so far.

Anyway, don't want to hijack this thread. I just wanted to offer a quick update as more than one person here has sent good wishes my way. And some have even given me leads and tips. Thank you.

Cost is a big factor when you truly add up in this world. As I said before the biggest thing that bugs me is I don't really own the copy of the material. I am renting with a initial down payment. If I don't pay the rent I don't get to take it with me when I leave. I even had an issue with World of Warcraft using this model...pay for a product that you have to only us online with $12.00/m fee.

Now I do have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Internet Service, Cable, Cell phone, Rent, electricity, water, trash, misc others, and most importantly food for my family. So what is and extra $25 a year access? Another weight on the scale of bills that I have to determine if it's worth it.

The idea that it will not be enjoyable to use on classic is a cop-out answer. Upgrade the platform and/or develope a new one that we can use at home that doesn't cost use to use.

Comes down to a business decision and the case for or against the options.

1. Understand that your market share is not necessarily growing and that the market has shifted significantly to platforms you don't support. Assess how you can support the players that you are missing out on, understand the dynamic environment you work in and the limitations of your company and complete a business case on which type of customer will be better for your business. Based on your findings, implement the solution that will be better for your company in the long run.

VS 2.

Dont Rock the boat because a portion of your customer base don't like change and can't afford the subscription model.

LWD arent in this game for free. They are running a business and quite frankly... They need to decide it is it better for their business to support the needs of mass players or buckle to the wants and needs of a few.

Hero Lab users are a minitory. Sorry guys but it's true. There is a huge number of players out there using other products because they are simpler, easier on the eye and they work on the devices the players use. They have the most advanced product but they aren't appealing to the majority of potential customers.

I would have done the same thing.

If I had a Starfinder data package in Hero Lab Classic I'd be able to print out my character sheet for conventions because I don't have a tablet I can consistently get Wi-Fi on.

How soon can this be a reality?

About 40 days ago. HLO has a print character sheet option. It works best in Chrome but that is not a LW issue its a Microsoft/Firefox issue to fix.

Attached is a sample character sheet from one of my players characters. I just used a free windows program called PrimoPDF to print to a PDF instead of a real printer.

It's not going to be just 25 per year. You'll also be paying for expansions and upgrades and unlike classic, you're going to be paying it all FOR EACH SEAT. No secondary license deals here.

secondary license just let you use another pc though right? If that is the case, you have an unlimited seat license, its just 1 at a time since you can switch devices as necessary.

It was mentioned for those that have multiple HLC licenses that in the future HLO will allow for multiple signons at the same time. This would allow a person to let "family" members in the same house use HLO at the same time.

I don't think we will see that feature until Pathfinder gets moved over to HLO though.

This, and I agree. I forgot to mention that.

I honestly hope they don't offer extra licenses. With an online model it is really not needed, unless you are trying to steal from LWD by buying 1 copy and distribute licenses to the rest of your gaming group.

I am repeating info from the Official HLO FAQ. Of course some people will steal or find a way to exploit it. But many others want it for using in the correct way which is to not be required to have multiple accounts for people living in the same house.

I think that's just an extension of the HLC history. They sold extra licenses and so many people have purchased them that they want to offer some value to the people that transfer over.

I just hope they update their terms and agreements to allow the DM to purchase the licenses and share with their table. That just makes sense given a lot of DMs will purchase the technology they want their players to use at their table.

no we are asking for concurrent licensing I know i covered this in another post but they could make a group product make it cost 60 dollars to purchase and 9 dollars a month for continues access for a group of six (25 percent discount on access.) the system logs the email addresses you want to assign and only those email addresses can access. which is a legitimate way to deal with sort of thing ... you don't believe me look at adobe, google,dropbox,and microsoft they all offer similar options.

While I have no firm answers for you at the moment, we are currently discussing group licensing and how we might handle it. If we do implement it, it will be down the road a ways. :)

I have no problems with an online subscription model ... if online works. I play Starfinder once every two weeks on Tuesday night, and last night I couldn't use my character. We had a late outage notification, and zero explanation of why. If we're paying for an online model, I'd like to see a certain level of online service.

I agree with this statement. Paying for online means that certain usage levels should be expected. Outages and planned maintenance should be well communicated as well.

I absolutely understand your frustration Zarberg! You can learn more about what happened on Tuesday here.

While this was an isolated incident, once we get offline view properly implemented it should help eliminate some of the frustration for maintenance times. Also, be sure to keep an eye on our announcements area as we do post when we will be doing our scheduled maintenance.

As you guys move more and more into the "Online" model, I hope you guys grow and learn. Hopefully we'll start hearing words like Load Balancing, Disaster Recovery, and Multi-site High Availability.

I don't necessarily mind monthly "server" fees but in this day and age, I don't want to hear about maintenance windows. We're spoiled now and 0 downtime is somewhat expected.

I know this was a one off with your provider but still "avoidable".

PS Please don't take this as an angry post, I'm not. Read this as a friendly post as encouragement and hope that your experience will be growing over the next year as you manage your 24/7 server farm. :)

Even with load-balancing and high-availability, up-time is guaranteed up to a certain number of nines. Let's say it's five nines, 99.999% up-time. There's still a 0.001% chance of things going down.

Disaster recovery, if we're separating that out from multi-site high-availability, have recovery-point and recovery-time parameters, meaning that things won't necessarily be back up instantly, and won't necessarily be back up with up-to-the-second data, or even up-to-the-minute.

This shouldn't have happened. They've admitted that. They've isolated the issue. They've addressed it.

Going fully online even with distributed DNS or multi-site hosting can't prevent the occasional outage, it just limits the number of people that might get affected with an outage, especially malicious hacks and denial of service attacks that might only deny a particular ISP or region. It's good to see that offline viewing is "in the plan" though.

I'm just hoping that if I do decide to pay a sub for HLO, that I don't get hit with a throttle or paywall down the road due to the slow death of net neutrality. My current ISP throttles netflix and sling already when they can get away with it. I would hate to pay a sub for software and an additional sub for tolerable access to the same software.

So I get there is a business to be ran but at the same time, these costs are down right outrageous. First of all I have to pay $34 to upgrade my account. Then I have to pay $24.99 a year. AND THAT IS JUST FOR THE CORE PACKAGE. Then I have to pay or each subsequent package. That is outrageous.

I was pissed when you all decided to raise the prices on HeroLab classic. $4.99 for 3 packages, then its 4.99 for 2 packages. Now $5.99 per 3 packages. While it wasn’t a huge deal it was still annoying. Then with as many errors and inconsistencies and not up to date with current rule set.

I feel so cheated right now and I will not support this anymore.

Down for less than 1 hour per year requires a reliability of 0.0114155%

It would be down for longer due to periodic program updates.

Planned, scheduled maintenance isn't considered downtime when tracking a KPI though. So program updates done during that maintenance is ok.

Lets be honest here guys. Every online company does maintenance and far more business that Wolflair ever will be. I don't see people screaming when MS, Apple, Amazon, etc are running their planned maintenance, so why would anyone EVER expect Wolflair to maintain a five-9 stability rating.

If your gaming group can't accommodate planned maintenance, I think you all need to get out more.

When the planned maintenance coincides with your regular weekly gaming session (which you might have been doing for the past 30 years) then you have no character sheets for that game session.

(Just check out the RW mandatory updates which are published just prior to a gaming session as reported in other forums to see what a hassle it causes.)

Well, yes, sure. But this is all a bit of a tangent from the far more common issue of poor or no connections at game stores, conventions, and homes.

I love "cloud"-based tools and don't mind paying subscriptions for services and software. But anything important needs to have offline.

I run my business on G Suite. I have offline access to critical documents.

Other services I use include:

Evernote - I can use on or offline and on multiple platforms.

DnD Beyond - On iOS devices, all my rules, and adventure content is available offline. The character sheet will be after they've revamped the online version.

Apple Music

Podcasts (I just use the default one on the iPhone but afaik all the major podcast applications support downloading for offline consumption)

My task-management service

Actually, the more that I think about it, the harder it is to think of online services I use that DON'T have offline capabilities.

About the only thing that comes readily to mind for fully online is streaming video services like Amazon TV, HBO Now, Netflix, and Hulu.

Gaming isn't a cheap hobby, if you can't afford it you probably should find a different hobby (or a second job).

It can be. All depends. There are free offerings, not the least of which are GURPS Lite and the D&D 5E equivalent (whatever it's called). There are freely available SRDs for various systems, and there are pay-what-you-want systems.

There are quite a few choices and resources for someone who wants to engage in gaming as a low-cost hobby.

I agree. However HeroLab Online isn't one of those free options. As for low-cost, that is in the eye of the consumer. Some have already said that the cost they are charging for their online functionality is minor(less than a cup of joe a month), while others are outraged by that cost. As such, I would add that HeroLab Online isn't a tool for those looking for the free/low-cost path either.

And this is the point that Hockyman68 was trying to make. So we've kind of gone in a circle now. His point was criticized with an argument that gaming, in general, is a necessarily expensive hobby, so if you can afford the hobby, you can afford Hero Lab Online.

My point was that this is demonstrably untrue.

Then your point is again that Hero Lab Online is not cheap. And that closes the circle.