Not Going To Buy 7th Sea... Even Though I Want To
 

Consumers are always encouraged to vote with their $$$, so that's what I'm doing.

I play 7th Sea - I've got everything that's in print and have kickstarted the upcoming releases - and I'd be glad to pay for HeroLab support for it but... the failure to keep up to date with other systems I've bought the products for: Pathfinder, Shadowrun, Mutants & Masterminds and Starfinder, leaves me feeling that I'd just be embarking on another path of frustration where half the books I have area always missing. Right now, my feeling is that I'm be better off just using a pencil and paper where I can always use the material from the books I own.

I respect Lone Wolf's right to invest their time and effort where they choose and where they believe the best return for their company is. This isn't a complaint, just a consumer telling you how they feel so that - if you believe it is important - you can take that into consideration when making future decisions.

I believe I'm not alone in this: look at the Shadowrun forums, they're filled with "I would use HeroLab but it is always so far behind so I use Chummer which is poor but more up-to-date". Maybe that's just talk, I don't know, some probably is, some probably isn't.

In this case, I went to the download page, thought about it and then decided agains buying the 7th Sea package.

I wish you well, I love your product.

HLC has the FULL editor. This means you can easily add ANYTHING you want to 7th sea or Shadowrun or M&M. D&D 5e has a whole community adding features and content called the Community Pack.

I know I talked to some of the Shadowrun guys before about how to setup GitHub and other resources to do the same thing. I helped create the d20 and Pathfinder community Packs. I would be happy to help explain how to make a 7th sea community pack. But someone else has to be driven to actually RUN and manage the Pack. I personally have no time to take on anything more.

PF2 and Starfinder are both systems in HLO that are locked out of any editor and I could understand not buying those games. But HLC 7th Sea has full editor meaning you can do add anything that is missing. I would LOVE that for PF2.

Guess I am just not seeing the downsides here...

I could write the whole thing, from scratch, myself. I could buy half-written novels and write the ending myself. I could do a lot of things... I don't want to.

I've spent maybe $1500 on content packs and I'd like to pay more to bring things up to date; earlier packs become less useful and valuable to me without the packs covering later releases.

So, I bought content packs, I like using them, then new books come out and I'm left with the options of:

1) Not using the new content until some indeterminate period has passed and a content pack becomes available.
2) Not using Hero Lab at all.
3) Creating the content packs myself, which if it was trivial WolfLair would fire out quickly.

I'm not doing 3. I've been doing 1 but as WolfLair spreads themselves out and the wait becomes longer and longer, the trade-off is no longer worth it for me. For 7th Sea and anything new, I'm going to pick 2. I'm not going to buy any new games that are added when existing lines are left to wither. My faith has been eroded.

You and others can pick different options. That's a perfectly fine choice, and I have no problem with it.

I can respect the situation. And it is worth letting Lone Wolf know, in a respectful way, of sales they're missing out on. Unfortunately, I doubt it's a situation that will be remedied any time soon because there's that equation of profit versus wages and hours.

I hope I have been respectful. I appreciate that they have serious business decisions to make and real employees salaries to pay.

I would guess that new product lines generate a burst of revenue, which is important for all small businesses. Sadly, it feels to me that they're trading existing customers for new customers. That's a strategy that works up to the point of customer/market saturation; then the new customers are also old customers of different products and our expectations of the future aren't based just on the new product but on our experiences over time.

Anyway, I've said what I came to say and I'll leave it there. I wish everyone well.

I long to buy Hero Labs Classic, but I am reluctant to do so because of this slow (or lack of) product support after the initial release and the need to do everything on my own. Especially after HLC has just 2 games I play, the rest must be done from scratch.

With the Hero Labs Online... it is another risk, as the vendor to ditch the classic version and go into the extorsion business :)

LWD didn't put time and money into this btw. It was created by a 3rd party and then given to them to sell.

Which, unfortunately, means that LWD won't support it. I've had issues with third-party content where the third-party just coudln't handle the support. I never got any kind of response from them other than the automated response.

Shadow isn't even a company, and he's more responsive to issues I've submitted regarding the community pack. He's a volunteer, and he has better customer service than that.

How can I discover from within the application from where data file came and who is the maintainer? The interface is quite confusing what is new update or already installed and from where it came.

Once the game data file is loaded there's some information in Help > About These Data Files