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This forum is so quiet

TheMaskedFerret

TheMaskedFerret

Well-known member
Does anyone else still use HLO for Starfinder? These forums are so quiet here. Is it due to lack of response from Lone Wolf?

- TMF
 
I've been kind of wondering as well. I figured I'd reemerge from being super busy to a lot of posts, but alas.
 
I've been busy with other things myself. You guys would know about the traffic on HLO, but all of the people that I talk to online seem to be using other software. The missing ship support that was promised a while ago, as well as people being salty about the monthly costs, has really driven people away.
 
All I wanted to do was to use HLO to build some awesome NPCs, but with the issues I had.... I may need to build them by hand. What is the point of HLO if I have to do that?

Also, I have seen very little HLO marketing recently. And with convention season hardly happening...
 
Aside from the above factors, Lone Wolf asking for all bug reports to go through their link in HLO takes eyes away from the forums. I'm sure it's a better process for them to be able to track the bugs, but when a company actively discourages its customers from using their forums, it shouldn't be surprising when the forums wither.
 
alientude said:
Aside from the above factors, Lone Wolf asking for all bug reports to go through their link in HLO takes eyes away from the forums. I'm sure it's a better process for them to be able to track the bugs, but when a company actively discourages its customers from using their forums, it shouldn't be surprising when the forums wither.
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Telling people to bug report through the official bug reporting channel does not seem like discouraging them from posting on the forums, seems like common sense.

Having the forums go down for weeks does discourage it though.
 
From my point of view, it is discouraging people from using the forums. I could be wrong, just my opinion.
 
Lack of communication, lack of visible development (starship), lack of new content (AA4 only thing published in over a year).
 
flyteach said:
Lack of communication, lack of visible development (starship), lack of new content (AA4 only thing published in over a year).
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Fair enough, and makes sense. Until a few days ago, I had not been doing any significant character building since 2019, Soon as I get back... started finding the issues.
 
alientude said:
Aside from the above factors, Lone Wolf asking for all bug reports to go through their link in HLO takes eyes away from the forums. I'm sure it's a better process for them to be able to track the bugs, but when a company actively discourages its customers from using their forums, it shouldn't be surprising when the forums wither.
Click to expand...

Not really trying to discourage, but it is a better process to make sure we get them logged for fixing. Ryan is sometimes able to help with matters before even recording them for us, and is aware if he's already gotten similar reports. Nothing wrong with asking questions here, we just want to be sure they are also officially logged. I'm usually pretty happy to give some feedback if it's something I handle and an odd matter, but oftentimes they're just things we have to look into.
 
Daniel V said:
Not really trying to discourage, but it is a better process to make sure we get them logged for fixing. Ryan is sometimes able to help with matters before even recording them for us, and is aware if he's already gotten similar reports. Nothing wrong with asking questions here, we just want to be sure they are also officially logged. I'm usually pretty happy to give some feedback if it's something I handle and an odd matter, but oftentimes they're just things we have to look into.
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I've usually found that submitting a bug report and putting in a forum post at the same time, about the same issue, is often helpful (especially if you confirm that you put in the bug report first), as it allows others to engage if they are having the same issue. They sometimes point out additional issues with the same thing that I noticed.

Or I end up putting in a long chain of bugs around a similar issue, because that issue is what I am working on at the moment.
 
I salute this attempt at a community resurrection. I've been visiting once or twice a week to see if anything came up. I'm using Herolab at least once a week (with a gaming session every 3 weeks). Eagerly waiting for the addition of the missing adventure paths and the Starship support
 
Daniel V said:
Not really trying to discourage, but it is a better process to make sure we get them logged for fixing. Ryan is sometimes able to help with matters before even recording them for us, and is aware if he's already gotten similar reports. Nothing wrong with asking questions here, we just want to be sure they are also officially logged. I'm usually pretty happy to give some feedback if it's something I handle and an odd matter, but oftentimes they're just things we have to look into.
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I totally get that it's a better process, both for Lone Wolf and the user (since the bug report will be tracked through whatever system you use). I don't think that invalidates my impression, but again, this is just my opinion.

Let me see if I can be a little more clear on why I get the feeling Lone Wolf is discouraging people from using these forums:

  • LW staff used to be very active here, but recently, just about the only posts we see from them is the requests to use the in-app bug report feature.
  • There's a lot of posts from paying customers asking for updates to content, updates to features, or even begging for more ways to give LW money. These posts are seemingly ignored.
  • Updates to HLO are no longer posted on the forums.
  • The recent issues with the forums being down. The first time they came back up, LW posted about it. Since then, the forums just kind of silently started working again and there was no acknowledgement of the downtime or anything.

There's probably some other reasons that I can't remember right now. To be clear, I'm not accusing LW of any kind of malfeasance or anything. It just feels to me like these forums are no longer in favor and LW would rather people not use them.
 
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alientude said:
From my point of view, it is discouraging people from using the forums. I could be wrong, just my opinion.
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The forum crashing every month probably isn't helping either!
EDIT: Got a Database error just posting this, so I think May's crash isn't far off.
 
Unfortunately, I feel like they're at that awkward stage where they've got enough subscribers to overload the servers, but not enough to pay for the necessary upgrades. A number of webcomics used to run into the same problem, and that was kind of why Green Ronin had to shut their servers down.
 
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