What does roll20 do for an encore?

Not that I'm trying to push our Devs any harder, especially after their Ennie win…. BUT, I was wondering if there was any discussion about what comes next for roll20? I've not been on the forums much the past couple of weeks and thought I might have missed something.

The most recent Dev blog talking about new features was June 10, Character Vault. Not sure when the next batch/round of updates is coming, or what it will contain. It hasn't been touted yet.

At the Roll20 seminar at GenCon, they talked about the new features for decks that they are making. Decks are getting a lot of love in the next update, apparently.

It's going to be an update where they ignore all other requests and focus exclusively on Decks. It'll be called "Deal With It" X-D (I'm kidding I have no idea, I just can't resist terrible puns) I'm so excited because there's huge scope for development even while it's a nice solid product as is.

Alan H. said: It'll be called "Deal With It" X-D Nyuk!! :-)

Alan, what you said was funny, but to me, that is almost exactly how I feel about the devs. Nowhere on this site can I see what the devs are up to. Their blog is an advertising space more than it is informative about their future plans. That is a pity, because as users, supporters, and mentors, we all have an interest in how the site grows. There is a suggestions forum that has a lot of great ideas, many of them "over 2 years old." Many of the same suggestions are submitted again and again, often unintentionally by a new user that simply saw a way to improve things. This leads to a lot of frustration (at least for me) as it feels the best suggestions and ideas are ignored by the devs. What it comes down to is the devs and a lack of communication. I want to be informed where Roll20 is heading, so that if they continue to diverge from my own ideas, and it appears they aren't addressing my needs, I can go elsewhere. It's good manners really. Other than that, yes, I'm very interested to hear future plans by the devs.

I am curious why you think the Blog is primarily for advertising when much of it is showing what new features they are working on? (example: Character Vault in June, Data Delve in May, etc).

I've suggested in the past that there should be a requested features page that just lists what has been requested, possibly grouped in areas, possibly flagged with feasible/infeasible, and a guess at timeline.

I don't even think it needs to be a dev that necessarily does this either. It could be given to a mod/community manager that acts as a mediator between the dev team and the users since the dev team is undoubtedly busy. This would give us the chance to see what's going on with Roll20's development while still giving the devs the time and space they need to do said development.

Could be a wiki page...

They could put some work into the marketplace layout, so when you go to it, you see more distinct categories and ways to browse that are more intuitive. The 'tag everything however you want' is fine, but the system should try to present them better.

What they are working on right now: they just went to GenCon and did a lot of PR work. This is on the blog. Seriously though, most companies do not usually announce what products they are working on until they are close to the release of that product. Roll20 used to have a 'constant development' process where the Devs were rolling out new features regularly. However, this caused problems so they went to a 'big release' method where they roll out a number of new (usually related) features all at once. That takes time. Finally, remember that Roll20 is a very small company (3 guys with only Riley programming) and still they have pushed development at a rapid pace.

So lets do a hypothetical for a moment. Lets assume that the Devs respond to each suggestion. I state each suggestion because they cannot respond to some and leave the others without a response without upsetting people. Then they publicly state which suggestions they will and will not implement. This results in those proponents of the ideas not implemented demanding why and since the Devs are personally responding to suggestions they have to also respond to the unhappy people who are upset because their idea isn't being implemented (which will take even more time). Then we can assume something screws up their timetable. People get upset because of 'promises not kept' and so the Devs have to take time to respond to all of that. (And that does not include the loss of respect for the 'promises not kept' which can kill a buisiness.) When do the Devs code again? (end hypothetical) The Devs do read the suggestions, the Mods also read the suggestions. It is not a black hole. Suggestions have been implemented. But there are many suggestions that, while they seem good to the users, are either not the direction the Devs want to go (for whatever reason) or they have consequences that the users are not thinking about (such as additional layers), or even that the Devs do not have the time to do in favor of other improvements. That does not mean the suggestions will never be done (example: character sheets were done after a long period of people asking for them). Regardless, you will do what you want with your time and money (although Roll20 is free unless you want certain features) and if Roll20 doesn't work for you that is up to you. Edit: marked the end of the hypothetical.

development is hard. Tender loving care for your issue is pretty hard to pull off in general. Considering this economically speaking, A good developer is worth $40 dollars an hour or more. If your a mentor and pay $10 dollars a month, your worth about 15 Minutes of their time a month. IE, unless your suggestion has a huge set of use cases behind it, it will most likely not be implemented because the return on time invested is to low. Just responding directly to your issue takes that time. This is the nature of software. It is time consuming and expensive to make, and you need many many users who will benefit to justify most improvements even for something that appears simple. A week of development work costs thousands in labor costs. A complex project like this has alot of moving parts, and so they prioritize. Their proprieties aren't the same as yours. For the most part, the devs here are pretty responsive, but don't expect your issue to get top billing. They have to weigh multiple concerns, from many sources. And some suggestions sound good on the surface, but when you dig into them, there are dangers that make them less worthy of persuing.

Bryan W. said: A good developer is worth $40 dollars an hour or more. A good developer gets paid salary. =) Also owners of a small business like Roll20 tend to put in a lot more hours than the employees of a larger company. You have good points, but the size of a company changes things a bit, too.

Brian said: A good developer gets paid salary. =) Really, it depends on where you work and how you got there. There's a heavy trend in modern corporations to hire contractors that are paid hourly. Also, there are times you really don't want to be salaried ( cough game industry cough ). Back on topic, good points Bryan and Gauss!

Quintus said: It is more important to me to have a roadmap from the devs to show us where they're heading. It is the same thing as what the OP is asking What I was asking was to have my (presumed) ignorance corrected -- I had not seen anything (which doesn't mean there wasn't something to see) lately. I thought that announcements of upcoming features tended to come out more frequently in the past, but I'm expecting that to slow as the complexity of the project grows. That's always the way on these things because it's easier to break stuff. I think I got my answer from Aaron's first post: Decks. Sure do like that idea of a community driven requested features page...

This is meta, but I'm curious why this thread doesn't show up in the community forums main page--the one where all the different forums are shown. The timetable of more recent posts should put it at the top of the General On-Topic forum.

Quintus said: This is meta, but I'm curious why this thread doesn't show up in the community forums main page--the one where all the different forums are shown. The timetable of more recent posts should put it at the top of the General On-Topic forum. I can answer that, but I won't... Gauss said: (...with only Riley programming...) Well shit. I've been PMing back and forth with Riley. If I'd known he was the major doer, I would have stuck with -*blanks out*- 'the OTHER one'...