Yeah lacking all of those, ie the whole reason why they switched to online model. Also no editor, the reason why I loved HLC so much.

We are still shooting for a November SR6 release, but we aren't sure if it will make it or not (so please don't take this as a promise. Software development is full of surprises and hurdles). We've made rapid progress internally, but in general it's a big game with lots to do.

Because SR6 is of significantly different game design lineage than PF2/SF, it's needed some extra love and attention to get everything up to snuff. We didn't just want to cobble together something out of scraps, so we built a number of new pieces to make the SR6 experience feel like it was designed specifically for Shadowrun players. We hope you'll enjoy it!

Also, even though SR6 is somewhat streamlined compared to previous editions, it's still a Shadowrun game, and that means lots of crunch any complexity, which always takes longer to implement than something fluffier.

In general, the layoffs have been difficult. But we are still trying to hit our goals as best we can. We (the leaner crew) appreciate your patience as we do our best to deliver.

I understand your frustration here. Trust me, no one is more disappointed that this stuff is taking as long as it is than we are internally. I want to clear up some misconceptions here:

Campaign Theater is being actively worked on. See my reply in the Campaign Theater thread regarding our progress there.

Player-to-player interaction requires campaign support to implement, as it builds on top of it.

In order for us to do Starship support well, we need campaign support as a foundation. If we were a bigger team, we could build a "throwaway" version of Starships pre-campaigns, and then rewrite it with campaign/player interaction support. But we're not a big team, and we need to spend our effort wisely.

So the chain of dependencies is something like this: Campaigns -> Player Interaction -> Starships. This unfortunately puts Starships out farther, but that's the reality of the situation.

Another aspect to this is our personnel and their areas expertise. Roughly speaking, we have datafile authors (DFAs) and developers, and they do different jobs and have different skillsets. Putting out a new game like SR6 is very roughly 80% DFA work and 20% dev work. Adding a feature like Campaigns or player interaction is 80%+ dev work. Focusing everyone 100% on one of those projects wastes a lot of our productivity, as one group or another would be "twiddling their thumbs" a lot of the time (metaphorically speaking).

In some ways it's like the video game industry. You've got developers vs artists, level designers, etc. So a game might release an update with new levels or items, even if there are still lots of bugs or core game issues that aren't addressed. This is because both "teams" (technical and non-technical) are working on what they are best at to improve the overall experience. The dev team puts out their updates when they have their things ready, and the design team puts out their updates when they have things ready.

Joe, thanks for your response. This was far more helpful (and reassuring) than any of the "official" statements from LW honchos!

There will always be new games or updates that can keep DFA busy. But taking away dev work from core functionality to support new content sure makes me feel that Starfinder will never get finished.

From what I've read about it, I'm not sure I'd want to move from SR5 to SR6. Seems like it would not be a step forward.

Can't help but wondering how much money they threw away not having Starfinder, Pathfinder 2.0 and Shadowrun 6th available on Classic. Seems like such a waste.

Lets be honest here, PF2 has some aspects that would be difficult to code into the Classic program. Right now, I think getting the online app up to the quality of the classic program should be priority as they get set to transfer everything over.

For that, though, I still think some on device files need to be used to provide offline functionality for the App, and a way to save characters other than the fast freeze of App choice locks.

Print outs also need vastly improved to represent the character sheet.

I understand the want for new licenses and keeping newer material on the online model rather than going back to the classic program. I am hoping that improvements will bring much of the function and stability that the program has to the App, but it is not there as of yet.

You're going to have to be more specific than "some aspects." I can't think of anything that would be difficult to implement into HLC; at least, not more difficult than any other system.

This thread is getting far off it's original topic (SR6's ETA, which at this point, we hope will be this week). If you want to continue discussion of some of these branching topics, please start a new thread.