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- The Lone Wolf Development Team
Hero Lab Online and Starfinder Q&A
- Thread starter rob
- Start date
ShadowChemosh
Well-known member
I would like to ask the small favor that this information when released will be in a location that everyone can get too. I refuse to have any social media accounts and when HLO information was only on an individual employees Facebook account I and others where locked out of it.
I then had to rely on second hand info which turned out to only be partially true. So I may only be speaking for myself but I would really appreciate that the beta info is share equally with all HL customers.
NOTHING on BJ's Facebook page was official in any manner whatsoever. She was trying to gather up QUESTIONS for us to properly answer while at the same time trying to stave off a group of angry villagers with pitchforks and torches. In the interest of avoiding the same fate as a certain famous monster, she threw out a few slabs of meat (read: small nuggets of info) to slow them down so that we could get those answers properly published.
The two places I cited will be guaranteed to be where we announce further details on the Open Beta. I'm sure there will be others, such as somewhere here on the forums. If you get our newsletter, then you'll get the announcements, so please make sure that's the case. You can sign up on our website. Beyond that, I don't know the specifics of everywhere the news will be posted.
Note: The announcements will go up on the various locations in rapid succession - not simultaneously. That's simply because they will be handled by ONE person. We're a tiny company, so we don't have teams to do all this stuff.
Everyone was given the opportunity to post questions in places I could see to be answered. Facebook users had our business page and a variety of other groups/pages to post in and the post in question was not private, it was a public post. Any of the nearly 2 billion people who have a Facebook account could have viewed and commented on it. Just as users here had all of our forums as their playground and any one in the world could have signed up and posted questions had they seen fit. I collected questions from ALL of these places, as well as a variety of emails and private messages across multiple platforms. Just as some of you don't do Facebook, some of them aren't interested in what they see as not only an antiquated means of communication but often a bitter and unappealing area in which to communicate what they want to know. The ability to ask questions was granted in areas everyone could get to based on their personal use preferences and comfort level. And the FAQ was made available in all of those areas as soon as it was available.
Similarly, Hero Lab Online beta announcements will be posted here, in a variety of social media places, our website, and in the Newsletter. Everyone prefers to receive their news in different ways and we try to accommodate that.
Similarly, Hero Lab Online beta announcements will be posted here, in a variety of social media places, our website, and in the Newsletter. Everyone prefers to receive their news in different ways and we try to accommodate that.
Hi! Quick question regarding payment for the HLO subscription. Will there be options beyond monthly credit card charges to pay for it? Specifically, I'm thinking of each account having a pool of funds that is drawn on before the monthly CC charge, with various ways of funding the pool (one-time CC charge, Paypal, Bitcoin, mailed-in money order, "gift cards" bought by a friend and applied to your account, etc.) Or will a credit/debit card of some kind be absolutely necessary?
New Coke was a failure because they took away the product millions were used to drinking and gave them no choice but to drink the new product or go somewhere else.
Learning from that Coke Classic was brought back until the new Coke product was dropped and Coke Classic became just Coke again.
However, further learning from that produced wildly successful product lines that are actually better representation of what is going on with Hero Lab. Diet Coke, Coke Zero, and a few other minor variations are enormously successful and run concurrent with the primary Coke line.
So HLC (Coke Classic) will continue, but HLO (call it Diet Coke/Coke Zero for comparison only not that it is anything less than the classic version) will continue and hopefully be wildly successful. Who knows what the future holds for both product lines, but in business the one that generates the most income will eventually win out and we have solid assurances from a reputable company that all of our investments in HLC so far will not be wasted.
I for one trust them and look forward to it with anticipation.
Thanks!
My biggest remaining question is exactly how view-only the offline view is. If I can't do things like apply buffs to characters, deal and subtract damage, add items I find, etc. then a printout is more useful because it's easier to scratch down numbers on the character sheet than pull out a notebook to keep track of everything.
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charlieluce
Well-known member
I understand how this is likely to work for things like the various Community Packs, but how is it going to work for (1) individual groups custom content, and (2) Authoring Kit systems?
While I'm asking, how does HLO work if a group doesn't have all the same data packages? How does it distinguish between the GM and players, and do simultaneous logins on the same account affect that?
At launch, you’ll need a credit card. However, some of the things you’re asking about we fully intend to have available in the future.
This. I'm extremely concerned over this.
My experience with con wifi is that it gets overwhelmed at the absolute worst times.
My present use case for HL is to store all my .por files in my Dropbox account. This lets me use HL on both my desktop and laptop with a single secondary license. In the worst case scenario where I'm playing somewhere and the wifi goes down I simply save the .por locally and then log in at home and Dropbox updates automatically. I never lose anything and having the wifi go down is more of a nuisance than a major catastrophe.
Switching to HLO wouldn't happen for me unless it could handle losing an internet connection at least that gracefully.
Generally at cons I'm talking about Wifi. Right now I use a laptop that has wifi not any sort of cellular modem. Even if I were to switch over to my tablet I'd still prefer wifi over using up my data, I'm very leery of anyone saying an app will use very little bandwidth until I see it, I've burned on that too many times, or dealing with spotty reception inside a convention hall.
MNBlockHead
Well-known member
Yeah, but that won't help on international flights. How am I going to game on a 12-hour flight?
;-) <just kidding>
HahaThe way everything is currently coming together, custom content will be tied to the character. When you create a character, you'll specify what content it's built upon, whether that be different data packages we offer and/or custom ones. Each character can be tied to different sets of data, just like it is today.
The convenient advantage of HLO over HLC is that the GM can view characters from different players and the players can have different data packages. In fact, the players can even own/use packages that the GM doesn't own. [Disclaimer: None of this is 100% finished, so what I'm outlining COULD change, but it's not likely at this point.]
All the characters tied to a given login/account are limited to the set of data packages available to that account. A given character can use a SUBSET of those data packages, but it can't use material that isn't owned by the account. This is exactly how things work today, so there's nothing new with this behavior.
Hope this helps!
charlieluce
Well-known member
That helps somewhat, though I'm still not sure about custom content created by users.
To give an example, in my Iron Gods game I've defined a new Firearm, the Carbine. I created a Carbine.user file in the Editor to distribute to any of my players who want to use this new weapon.
In Hero Lab Online, how would the equivalent situation work?
(More questions occur to me concerning what control a GM will have over what configuration is legal to use in their game, but that may be getting ahead of things.)
To give an example, in my Iron Gods game I've defined a new Firearm, the Carbine. I created a Carbine.user file in the Editor to distribute to any of my players who want to use this new weapon.
In Hero Lab Online, how would the equivalent situation work?
(More questions occur to me concerning what control a GM will have over what configuration is legal to use in their game, but that may be getting ahead of things.)
A lot of people are talking about cons. I only go to one a year, it hasn't had any cell or wifi issues in the last few years (more ubiquitous good wifi). The rest of the year I game at home or friends about once a week. So even if I did have a bad connection at the con it wouldn't be a big deal being only once a year.
So are you guys going a con every weekend or something?
In a good year I get to a couple of regional cons as well as GenCon plus several gaming nights at game shops. Since those involve a lot of travel and expense having them ruined by something like my character sheet would suck.
Due to the Online nature I am unlikely to buy this because the majority of the places I play do not have a reliable internet connection. That said I understand there will be an offline option in the future that will be less powerful. The capabilities of this could sway me to buy this in the future. From that I have a few questions I am reposting (some editing) from the facebook post since it was not answered there.
1. If after I move my content to Herolabs Online and pay the fee and I buy a Data sets later would that data set be available for both version without any additional fees?
2. What functionality will the offline version of herolabs online have? Can I add new items I pick up during play? Gold? Can I add spell effects, ability effects other bonuses/penalties I get during play? Can I add portfolios when connected online of my summoned creatures and use them in offline?
1. If after I move my content to Herolabs Online and pay the fee and I buy a Data sets later would that data set be available for both version without any additional fees?
2. What functionality will the offline version of herolabs online have? Can I add new items I pick up during play? Gold? Can I add spell effects, ability effects other bonuses/penalties I get during play? Can I add portfolios when connected online of my summoned creatures and use them in offline?