Lone Wolf - Please stop auto-adding free packages
 

Dear Lone Wolf,

I've tried to raise this issue before, and I believe the response was "we auto-activate stuff so people don't forget to do it."

This weekend I've been gaming with a Hero Portfolio that I haven't used for some time. I've had to spend time going through configure hero on every character in the portfolio turning off free packages that I don't want/use and resetting the default on each character.
On each hero I had to deactivate 7 packages that I haven't got outside HeroLab, and likely will never use - The Grande Temple of Jing, Kobold Quarterly, Midgard Players Guide, Ironfang Invasion, Return of the Runelords, Ruins of Azlant, War for the Crown.

I'm happy to see you advertise/publicize the fact that you do offer free content with updates (and it's great that you do), but can you please NOT auto-activate it on all our heroes. This seems to happen with nearly every pathfinder update. If I wanted any of these packages or options, I can activate them myself.

They auto-activate so that people don't complain that their new purchase isn't immediately available on their existing characters.

It would be good to have an option to switch between the two behaviours.

As has been discussed here before...

I agree that I'd like a checkbox that says "auto-enable new content", because I would turn it off also.

I'm going to file a bug report right now. For anyone else who cares about this, do the same — they've said before that they rate importance by how much email they receive on various topics. Sending an email to support@wolflair is all you need to do. (That email address is obviously missing the .com for spam prevention purposes.)

Considering how many posts I see from people who can't find stuff they have just purchased - I don't think LW is auto-activating all purchased content. Even so, its the FREE content that I'm repeatedly disabling.
A 'switch' would be great. +1 for that.

I have complained about the addition of new purchases to old portfolios before, because I also re-use portfolios prepared beforehand. It drives me bit batty to have to go through and turn off the undesired new content that is almost always irrelevant to the portfolios I am working with.

I think part of the issue, though, is that HeroLab is primarily a Player-based tool. Players would understandably want new content to be available for their characters most of the time. GMs, though, would usually NOT want NPCs prepared ahead of time to suddenly have access to new spells, feats, and such - that's just clutter on them.

And that's where my complaint comes from. I've prepared my NPCs ahead of time, sometimes years ahead of time, and re-use them when I re-run an adventure or campaign. For those, auto-enabling new content is just a hassle on my end.

It would be awesome if the default was to auto-enable anything purchased, and to not do so for free content.

Then maybe have toggles to change the behavior as well.

However, I'd rather their limited resources go towards Pathfinder and Realm Works.
But that's just me.

This is a situation we have to avoid - this is the main reason we don't turn on packages automatically:

A player who doesn't own many HL packages emails their character to the GM for approval - the GM owns more packages, opens the character, edits it a little, and sends it back - HL can't automatically turn on all the packages the GM owns, or the GM might accidentally add a feat or item that the player doesn't have the package for - the player would get errors when they opened the portfolio once it was sent back.

As a note, if you're careful with how you set up your defaults, you can avoid the problem Dami is describing in the OP - if your default profile has those sources turned off, and you open the portfolio, it will see there's a source in the portfolio it doesn't have a record of (because that portfolio didn't exist back when the portfolio was last saved), and it will look at the defaults to see what to do with that source. You can also relatively quickly enable/disable a set of sources for a set of characters by setting up the right defaults on the first one, and then just doing "use defaults" on the rest - it'll cut down on the clicks required to fix this up, since you won't need to find each book on each character.

Also, if you need different defaults in different situations, you can use Tools...Duplicate Game System - each copy maintains its own defaults.

But LW *is* turning on packages automatically, which is why I have concerns. I have 3 copies of the Pathfinder system, each with their own defaults. The auto-activation of free packages ignores my defaults - they still get turned on when I open a portfolio that I haven't used since a free package was added by an update. If this doesn't actually over-write my defaults then clicking on "use defaults" for each hero is going to help, but I still have to do it for EVERY hero.

Perhaps Mathias meant that the program _shouldn't_ be turning them on, and maybe he thinks it doesn't because it shouldn't?

In any case, if he hasn't misspoken, then he's confirmed the bug! ;)

Two issues are being discussed in this thread. In the original post, Dami has an issue with free packages defaulting to being turned on, and in #6, Ualaa is talking about another source-related issue - that if you have already saved a character while a purchasable package exists, that that package does not automatically turn on for that character if you purchase it later. So I began by answering Ualaa's question (the one right before mine), and then in the third paragraph, I discuss a workaround that will hopefully help minimize the trouble with the issue Dami's encountering.


Dami - you're certain you're setting up and saving your defaults before opening these portfolios? What you're describing is not the behavior I'd expect.