Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2005
Posts: 222
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Quote:
If the players don't want to buy the Player View, let them live without it - that application is for their convenience, not yours. They can hand-draw the maps as they explore, document the personality differences between Fred the Cleric and Greg the Cleric, keep track of who provided which rumors (and how often their rumors are correct), etc. If the players expect me to spend my money for their convenience (and I'll include Hero Lab), my first question is: what benefit does this provide me compared to how else I could be spending my money? Instead of buying Advanced Class Guide so one of the players can use a couple spells, would I gain more use from another Bestiary, or one of the setting books with more details about the part of the world the players are exploring? When the players could be hand-writing their encounter notes, is it worth $30 of my money for their notes to be more comprehensive, when I could use it for an expansion to the map-making software I use instead? |
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#41 |
Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 12
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I have no interest in promoting this player version to my players since it is taking resources/manpower away from the free web-based player access I expected with the product a year ago.
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#42 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 865
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Im not sure where you get that idea. I think they have always been honest that the web version would be later, and i don't see how its taking resources away from the web version.
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#43 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Texas
Posts: 707
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Quote:
Can you live in it? Sure, but many might place a high value on getting the "finishes" the mortgage check has already paid for. |
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#44 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Texas
Posts: 707
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Those are the challenges of a small business. |
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#45 |
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2013
Posts: 1,458
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As I understand it, they're prioritizing first by what they consider core functionality, and second by user response. And at the same time, they've improved communication with their customers. |
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#46 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 175
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Quote:
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#47 |
Senior Member
Lone Wolf Staff
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 8,232
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Now that we're back from GenCon (arrived home late last night), I'll attempt to address a few comments here...
* The Realm Works team is 100% distinct from the Hero Lab team. This applies to both product development and content adaptation. * Web-based player access has been planned for AFTER Player Edition since the beginning of time. Well, since we first mapped out our plans for Realm Works multiple years ago. I believe we made this clear during the Kickstarter last year, and I know we've stated as much many times since then. * I badly misjudged how long some major components of the product would take to implement, and we never foresaw some of the nasty complications we ran into over the past 18 months. Lots of details about these issues were shared in our Kickstarter updates and in a few updates here on the forums. That's the unfortunate reality of creating a product that's never been done before that is comprised of features that haven't been done before. If we were creating another word processor, it would be a much different situation. * We lost our primary server-side developer just as we were shifting our focus to Player Edition, which amounted to another major delay, as we had to do extensive knowledge transfer and then have team members who were originally tasked with other features drop those to deal with Player Edition. That's not something you can't really plan for, and it's another reality of having a very small team. Losing one person can have significant repercussions. The above information is intended solely for context. Are we way behind where we wanted to be? Heck, yeah. Are we doing our absolute best to put out a great product and get everything done that we've promised. Heck, yeah. Is the product solid and highly useful in its current state? The comments I see regularly here on the forums and elsewhere, plus the ENnie Award on Friday, indicate that it is. I completely understand the frustration that some of you feel, as well as the desire to withhold further support until some missing capabilities are implemented. Please believe that we're just as frustrated as you are about the delays, and we're doing our best to get those missing capabilities into place as quickly as possible - but without compromising the long-term future of the product. I think the biggest problem we face is that we've created a product that's truly transformative in potential and for which everybody wants more capabilities yesterday. We could throw features in faster that are hacked together and poorly conceived. But that's not our philosophy, and I think everyone would ultimately lose with that approach. As the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day. We're building Rome, er, Realm Works, to last - as a foundation for the future. We need to construct each building block the right way to achieve that. Player Edition encompasses a few of those building blocks. Once those are in place, we'll focus on the next building blocks after that. I hope this post proves helpful to those of you who've been commenting in this thread! |
#48 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Texas
Posts: 707
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Quote:
Lets look at it in two parts. 1> What is the LW Team 2> Does RW Work Delay other parts of the LWD product line... Quote:
Based on that one could assume that the 2.5 Developers were
What is unclear (and irrelevant to this) is who left in April '14.... A cursory look (using the Forum as a benchmark) the LW Team looks like this... Name Positions / Titles Rob.....................Senior Member, Lone Wolf Staff, President, Lead Developer Liz.......................Senior Member, Lone Wolf Staff, Community Development Manager Colen...................Senior Member, Lone Wolf Staff, Lead HL Developer Aaron...................Lone Wolf Staff, Senior Member Mathias................Senior Member, Lone Wolf Staff Joe......................Member, Lone Wolf Staff, RW Developer Ken C...................Director of Operations, Art Developer Director David P.................Software Support, RW Developer Community Support ShadowChemosh....Volunteer Data File Contributor, Senior Member RavenX................Volunteer Data File Contributor, Senior Member Lawful_g .............Volunteer Data File Contributor, Senior Member (AKA Aaron) Jlong05................Volunteer Data File Author, Senior Member Duggan................Volunteer Data File Contributor, Senior Member Sendric................Senior Member Chiefweasel..........Senior Member AndrewD2.............Senior Member Bodrin..................Senior Member Zarlor..................Senior Member Silveras............... Senior Member Nigel_Fogg............Senior Member AEIOU................. Senior Member MaxSuperNova...... Senior Member Mirtos..................Senior Member Kendall-DM...........Spy? LWD have "specialists" on Herolab and Realmworks, but it is unlikely that they have the resources to have their developers set to only a single task. There is simply not enough of them to go around.... Further, if it were not for the efforts of the Community support (some but not all listed above) the Herolab side would certainly suffer more. Delays incurred examples- http://forums.wolflair.com/showthrea...ost+programmer http://forums.wolflair.com/showthrea...ighlight=delay Android support NADA.. see http://forums.wolflair.com/showthrea...t=delay&page=3 And lastly just for morbid interest ( yea Im a left brained engineer) below is a list of Primary Focus (based on Forum Response) for the above during their last 100 posts. Rob-
So based on that, Colen, Aaron, and Mathis have their response focus on HL, but even Colen has conceded that the work is impacted by RW (see delays attached) That leaves Rob, David, and Joe... I don't think they are doing the RW without the support of the rest of the LWD team. NOTE, this does imply structure based on Forum response, which is a pretty poor benchmark, but the only common Benchmark readily to be found... For example.. if David (RW Developer) is responding via Forum, I am unsure under what avatar, I simply added him via problem solving thru bug fixes, so I know he is integral to the team. Based on Linkedin, LWD is a company that has between 11-50 people.. (I would wager to guess between 11-20) So the above list isn't missing many of the LWD team members So, to conclude that there are separate stand alone "teams" is unlikely... More likely they have leads for each Software Branch, and the others support when / where they can... Last edited by Dark Lord Galen; August 19th, 2014 at 11:07 AM. Reason: Added Linkedin Data |
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#49 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Oak Harbor, WA, USA
Posts: 616
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I'm guessing, Dark Lord Galen, that you were still typing when Rob posted.
Have any of you looked at the big picture outside of your little kingdom you're building on RW? LW is a very small company that invented the wheel when there was no wheel. No one has created a program like HL and particularly RW. I don't care if the staff at LW are working only on one program or split between the two, they have done and are doing a great job and I'm sure they will continue to do so in the future. I understand your grumbling about promised features not added yet, I've done my fair share of grumbling too. But I'd rather have features working right before being added than to have to deal with a lot of bugs and crashes. There are a LOT of things that can be done in RW right now and I bet most of us have enough to keep us busy entering our information into RW without worrying about what we can't do yet. As Rob said, "Rome wasn't built in a day." I know our world's data won't be entered in a day. Over the years we have all managed to keep track of our realms on everything from little scraps of paper to whatever program we make do with, surely we can continue along a few more weeks or a couple of months until our various desired features are completed. Ok, I'm done with the soap box. You can carry on with the soap box. |
#50 |
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