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Hero Lab Online and Starfinder Q&A

daplunk said:
To be fair... if someone hacks my debit card they won't get much either ;)
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This may have changed, but with U.S. banks, the default settings for a debit card were that a bank would let it go into overdraft to offer you the "convenience" of completing your purchase. One fraudulent charge, if you don't catch it in time, could cost you hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees from the bank, and bounced-payment fees from the vendor.

Banks (some, at least), offer you the option to turn off the overdraft convenience, but not all. Still, if you have direct deposit, and your debit card is linked to that account, then even if they don't get much today, they could get more on payday.

Any individual's level of risk depends on how they've configured their accounts.
 
I live in a poor neighborhood and have had my cards stolen several times in the last 2 years. The bank always turns them off when there is a series of suspicious purchases (the theives around here seem to favor running from one Wal-Mart to the next), then returns the disputed charges. Maybe I just have a particularly generous bank though.
 
I have a meth lab across the road and an illegal chicken farm two houses down... but it sounds you like should move ;)
 
Aaron said:
I live in a poor neighborhood and have had my cards stolen several times in the last 2 years. The bank always turns them off when there is a series of suspicious purchases (the theives around here seem to favor running from one Wal-Mart to the next), then returns the disputed charges. Maybe I just have a particularly generous bank though.
Click to expand...

If you've been the victim of this sort of thing, why were you saying you've never heard of it being dangerous?
 
Aaron said:
Because you and I have different thresholds for what we consider dangerous, I suppose.
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How about "potentially dangerous," then? The fall-out may be minimal or negligble in some situations, and it may prevent people from being able to buy food and medicine in others. Not all incidents are as easily resolved as yours.

I've had friends who've had to borrow money from me just to be able to eat until they got their accounts sorted out and got those refunds from their bank. It was much more of a process for them
 
In the US banks are required to refund fraudulent charges. That's the law. However they can dispute and investigate charges to confirm whether they are fraudulent and that can take a while. Chase took 8 months to confirm some charges on my card were indeed fraudulent and return my money. The letter from a lawyer may or may not have spurred them along.

When making an online purchase try to stick to vendors you trust and verify that their security certificates are valid. Generally speaking trustworthy online vendors will have done their due diligence and will do things in the accepted standard manner.
 
EightBitz said:
Some vendors have poor security. Hell, the news just broke that Equifax got hacked. I think debit cards have also historically suffered from a lack of the types of fraud protections that credit cards have had. I think that's been changing, though.
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This. Its generally easy to get bogus credit charges blocked. Debit transfers--not so much. And while in-store purchases are not perfectly secure, the history of online scamming and interception does not suggest the two are comparable.
 
Thought I'd chime in here, as I do this kind of thing for a living.





First time poster here, coming after looking for starfinder content for HL.

For the credit card questions, I do cyber security for a living, and there is a lot of incorrect information floating around, confusing common practice and legal requirements or liability limits and timing. It's complicated and can vary by state to state. Suffice it to say that you're always safer with a credit card than a debit card, which is why I recommend against carrying or using one.

More to the point, Folks should assume that their credit card will be compromised at some point, and it's highly unlikely you'll know where it was stolen from. Monitoring transactions on a weekly basis and immediately reporting it generally results in no cost to the consumer (even though the law allows for it). The annoyance is having to get a new card and update all the automatic payment sites. Non trivial for sure. These guys have run ecommerce for a while, and I'll bet they use a third party payment service. I'd love to see an ApplePay option, but I've no hesitation to subscribe using a credit card if necessary.

For folks interested in some thoughts on staying safe online, you can check out this post: https://douglhotka.com/2017/08/21/armor-up-personal-cyber-safety/

Specifically for the recent breach, I strongly recommend a security freeze (a real one, not the app based service some of the agencies are offering). Credit monitoring is largely useless.

Now back to the topic at hand.

Cloud and subscription services are the future. But it takes a lot of work to get them right, scalable and stable. They allow new features (which my group won't use as we don't all use HL but some will)and in their case, definitely reduces development costs. Price of progress.

My concerns for HLO are much more to do with availaibility than anything else. Between application defects, typical server outages, potential for a DDOS attack, I'd always want to have a printed copy in hand. That's disappointing to have to do, as I really like the automatic changes when I buff or nerf the character. It'd be fair to say that it's made me a lazy player because I no longer really know how to calculate all that quickly. If there's lots of outages, then the company will lose subscribers and be at risk of failure. If it's rare, then the printed copies won't be used much outside of conventions and other locations without internet service. That's common in hotels, less so elsewhere if you don't mind using cellular data.

They have every incentive to get it right.
 
Douglhotka said:
My concerns for HLO are much more to do with availaibility than anything else. Between application defects, typical server outages, potential for a DDOS attack, I'd always want to have a printed copy in hand. That's disappointing to have to do, as I really like the automatic changes when I buff or nerf the character. It'd be fair to say that it's made me a lazy player because I no longer really know how to calculate all that quickly. If there's lots of outages, then the company will lose subscribers and be at risk of failure. If it's rare, then the printed copies won't be used much outside of conventions and other locations without internet service. That's common in hotels, less so elsewhere if you don't mind using cellular data.

They have every incentive to get it right.
Click to expand...

You forgot power outages. We had one here a few weeks ago that lasted for six hours. In that situation, you're going to want to conserve your cell phone battery rather than using it for data.
 
I would like to second the comment(s?) about keeping WIFI off for all-day gaming at conventions, for the sake of maximizing battery power, as well as point out that many (few/some/most?) small local gaming stores frequently do not have robust public WIFI to support multiple tables of players. I have, on many occasions, fed my computer WIFI off my phone, but that's a very drain on the phone's battery, phone's data plan, on top of laptop battery, because the laptop has no idea that it's on a limited connection, so it's just as likely to try to download giant Windows updates as it is to just talk to LWD's servers. There won't be a perfect solution for everyone, but even in our weekly home-game, we have a tendency to overload the WIFI router, preventing players from getting online, so having some sort of offline functionality would be really appreciated, even if it doesn't happen with the initial releases.

Additionally, from a bill-paying and tracking perspective, I, for one, would like to see some sort of bulk billing, to be able to buy one or even two or more years of subscription at a time, rather than having either a manual or recurring minimal charge. Since that would reduce LWD's credit card operating cost, I hope this has already been contemplated.

I am very excited to see the public beta, and what LWD has in store for us for Starfinder. Since it's being touted as system-agnostic, and sounds like it will be based in a web browser(?), or similar interface, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to bypass the laptop completely, and reference and/or run my characters directly from my phone.

Sending positive vibes to the LWD team, and trying to wait patiently until I can throw money at HL/Starfinder :D
 
Sir_Scott_A_Lot said:
I would like to second the comment(s?) about keeping WIFI off for all-day gaming at conventions, for the sake of maximizing battery power, as well as point out that many (few/some/most?) small local gaming stores frequently do not have robust public WIFI to support multiple tables of players. I have, on many occasions, fed my computer WIFI off my phone, but that's a very drain on the phone's battery, phone's data plan, on top of laptop battery, because the laptop has no idea that it's on a limited connection, so it's just as likely to try to download giant Windows updates as it is to just talk to LWD's servers. There won't be a perfect solution for everyone, but even in our weekly home-game, we have a tendency to overload the WIFI router, preventing players from getting online, so having some sort of offline functionality would be really appreciated, even if it doesn't happen with the initial releases.

Additionally, from a bill-paying and tracking perspective, I, for one, would like to see some sort of bulk billing, to be able to buy one or even two or more years of subscription at a time, rather than having either a manual or recurring minimal charge. Since that would reduce LWD's credit card operating cost, I hope this has already been contemplated.

I am very excited to see the public beta, and what LWD has in store for us for Starfinder. Since it's being touted as system-agnostic, and sounds like it will be based in a web browser(?), or similar interface, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to bypass the laptop completely, and reference and/or run my characters directly from my phone.

Sending positive vibes to the LWD team, and trying to wait patiently until I can throw money at HL/Starfinder :D
Click to expand...

1. Yes you can run HLO from the browser and yes from ANY device, in the FAQ.
2. I agree with the billing option to buy bulk. I hate recurring monthly charges.
3. If carrying a laptop to a convention hall: A. Bring a usb charging cord for phone/tablet, B. bring an extension cord and a power strip so you can be the hero/heroine for all the people who are huddling around the scarce outlets, C. If you happen to be using windows 8 thru 10 just set the wifi to your phone as a metered connection and no more heavy data use will occur in fact metering blocks windows update entirely even on windows 10.

I am now looking forward to them getting this up as I have plans to get all the software they offer as I am seeing a need for it in my games. Darn my players and their plans! :D
 
Any ETA on the beta? Looking forward to give it a spin. And, faq really doesn't answer this: In HLC, if you had multiple devices paid for, will the additional devices be converted to unique logins with their own passwords? Or will it be one account that can have simaltaneous logins?
 
Geodragon said:
Any ETA on the beta? Looking forward to give it a spin. And, faq really doesn't answer this: In HLC, if you had multiple devices paid for, will the additional devices be converted to unique logins with their own passwords? Or will it be one account that can have simaltaneous logins?
Click to expand...

From the FAQ:

Q: How will my Hero Lab Classic secondary licenses transfer to Hero Lab Online?
A: In Hero Lab Classic, secondary licenses allow users to access their content on multiple devices. Hero Lab Online will employ a similar concept, allowing simultaneous access to your account from multiple devices (e.g. multiple family members). Migration from Classic to Online will convert your secondary licenses to simultaneous devices in the new environment.
 
Yes,i saw the FAQ, still doesn't answer my question.
Current model: each device has it's own key/password.
HLO - one account, but, will it be single login with one password, or will each license have it's own username/password?
 
Do we have an update on the timeline yet? "Late September" is kind of here. 2 weeks remain. Do we know if we're looking at this week, next week or pushed a bit into October?
 
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