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A List of Grievances

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I am looking for some explanations for a number of complaints/questions I have. While I appreciate what Roll20 does, I still cannot find myself willing to purchase a subscription for only access to the API (the only worthwhile feature to pay for, in my opinion). Why are units 70 px²? This isn't any known standard I'm aware of and I express my horror in designing/using artwork that fits into 70 px lengths, oftentimes resizing elements to constraints they're not designed to fit in. It's just a terrible base to work with for any kind of art. It could just have easily been 72 px as a clean standard that's thoroughly divisible by eight (and aligned with a web standard resolution of 72 px per inch). Never in my design life have I gone, "Man, if only I could divide this tile by seven." It's just well and cool and all and I can modify the size of the grid, but I can't actually modify the size of units. Is this a paid feature I'm not aware of? WebRTC Integrated voice chat is great and all, but it doesn't function that well regardless of whether I use Chrome or FF. FF in particular seems to be a pile of crap, but I find myself continually having to refresh the page so my players can hear me properly. To Google Hangouts I suppose? I don't even know at this point. Slow and Unresponsive Despite a relatively beefy computer, I'm finding Roll20 to be a tad slow and mildly unresponsive. I'll also find it can glitch a lot. It works slightly better in IE over Chrome, but MS doesn't use WebRTC (and based on my experience, a valid decision). For instance, I may have trouble dragging art assets or tokens onto the board. This is particularly true of the interactive character sheets, which I have found to be so frustrating that I refuse to use them for anything. Also, why does the pan tool not behave as expected, instead acting jittery? Why must I zoom in to pan on the map? Unorganized Things just seem sort of cluttered around instead of packaged nicely where I would expect them to be. I can tell that things were meant to be intuitive, but it just doesn't feel that way and ends up feeling off. Why can't I separate the chat client from the rest of the tabs? Why do I have to click on a star to access my uploads folder? It's all so weird! There are likely many others I'm just forgetting right now. I've just simply found myself going, "WHY, ROLL20 WHY!" far too often.
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Stephen S.
Pro
Marketplace Creator
Sheet Author
API Scripter
I have some... but they all can be summed up in one word "Vince."
I also cannot edit my thread title. Now it's stuck with Greviance instead of Grievance ;_;
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Pat S.
Forum Champion
Sheet Author
Sacrieur, This is something you should email the devs about at <a href="mailto:Team@roll20.com" rel="nofollow">Team@roll20.com</a>
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The Aaron
Roll20 Production Team
API Scripter
Sacrieur said: I also cannot edit my thread title. Now it's stuck with Greviance instead of Grievance ;_; Fixed.
Is it Festivus time again already?? Actually, I agree on the WebRTC thing... which is why my games use Skype instead. Skype works well; WebRTC eats up ALL of my computer's resources and is therefore unusable, even for voice-only. Granted, this is an old computer, but still... As far as the 'disorganized' thing, well... that's a direct result of the numerous changes and upgrades that have happened in the few short years that Roll20 has been alive. March 2013: Added rollable tables and visible dice April 2013: Added the Roll20 API June 2013: Started selling modules July 2013: Transmogrifier, Inline Rolls, and more added August 2013: Status Effect Icons, Roll Queries, and more added December 2013: Rugged Reroll update which did all KINDS of nifty things! May 2014: Character Sheets added (The Reason I Subscribed!) September 2014: Card Deck improvements the "Zoom" feature November 2014: Dynamic Lighting upgrades This Month: Bag of Holding upgrade, with the long-awaited Folder organization system and lots of other stuff I don't even know about yet! Yeah, with all that stuff added in, it's gonna be a little bit messy fitting it all in! Remember, this is stuff WE asked for, that the Roll20 team gave us. If they'd designed it all in from the start, it would have fit better, but who knew? -Phnord, who can't wait to see what comes next. Now watch me lift this CRT Television over my head! MANDELBAUM!
Pat S. said: Sacrieur, This is something you should email the devs about at <a href="mailto:Team@roll20.com" rel="nofollow">Team@roll20.com</a> Eh maybe I'll compile a list and email it when it's more comprehensive and useful. The Aaron said: Sacrieur said: I also cannot edit my thread title. Now it's stuck with Greviance instead of Grievance ;_; Fixed. Thanks! I thought of some more things. This in the left corner: No drawing permissions? While my players are extremely nice people who don't draw penises all over my map, it still bugs me that they could. Seems like an obvious feature that would be added. Also I can't delete the stuff they draw? ;_; OH and I have a question about the API. Would it be possible to color the Token Bar Color based on its value?
Sacrieur ... you know that Roll20 allows you to play dozens of tabletop RPG titles with 10,000s of people around the entire planet in many languages in real time 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right? :o) Your greviances (sic ... ha! too funny!) seem small compared to the vastness of what this site offers. Stick with it, relax, and enjoy the ride. Don't sweat the small stuff. After all, five years ago you would have been stuck alone in a public or school library hoping other D&D hobbyists stop playing video games long enough to show up. Roll20 is awesome.
Why are units 70 px²? I suppose it is odd, but took me no time at all to adapt. It would be interesting to hear the design rational behind this. WebRTC Can't agree more, actually. Maybe if the video boxes are one of the things that will be "pop-outable" in the ongoing Update of Holding it will be more useful, but for right now third party clients are the way to go. Slow and Unresponsive Now we are parting ways. My group and I run Roll20 over a wide range of machines, from "uber" to downright crappy. One of the reasons we use Roll20 is due to its ability to run acceptably on substandard machines. Folks always get defensive when you tell them this, but, you might want to spend some time/money looking to your own software/hardware. Unorganized Roll20's Organizational Philosophy is not always my own, but others seem to find it completely intuitive. One thing I have to give them though -- when a substantial portion of their user base requests a feature that does not entirely mesh with said organizational philosophy they are willing to divert course and code in the requested feature (see the recent addition of Folders instead of just Tags for assets). But as others have said the last couple of years has been an avalanche of new capabilities and features for Roll20, so they could probably use a Quality of Life pass to streamline things a bit -- and immediately have to put up with all the complaints from old timers who have learned the old systems and don't want to change (also known as the "Can't win for Losing" conundrum.) Why Should I Subscribe? Well, the additional storage is nice, and rather necessary if you are going to be running long or multiple campaigns, plus the added Tablet support is/will be useful. But I suppose the main reason I subscribe is to support all the cool features I see frequently being developed and put into place for the use of Subscribers/Free Users alike (you're welcome). One thing we might all want to consider when asking for more and more features is to remember that this is a web client, and bloat is its enemy. A (functional) web client will always be "lite" when compared to dedicated stand alone programs, but as one who has had to deal with trying to get one of those dedicated feature packed standalone programs running on all my group's machines, well, let's just say I really appreciate the accessibility and reliability of a slim web app nowadays...
Sterling Cutter said: Sacrieur ... you know that Roll20 allows you to play dozens of tabletop RPG titles with 10,000s of people around the entire planet in many languages in real time 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right? :o) Your greviances (sic ... ha! too funny!) seem small compared to the vastness of what this site offers. Stick with it, relax, and enjoy the ride. Don't sweat the small stuff. After all, five years ago you would have been stuck alone in a public or school library hoping other D&D hobbyists stop playing video games long enough to show up. Roll20 is awesome. None of this is relevant to what he said, nor is any of it helpful. It saddens me when I see replies like this. Thinking something is good means there is more reason to bring up perceived flaws; if it was a pile of crap, no one would care about it enough to bother. Maybe the devs never considered that 70x70px would distort/skew nearly all images in existence. No matter what, you're going to end up with an image that has a different pixel ratio than the original. The idea that "I like something, so no one should ever suggest ways to improve it" is both counterproductive and pretty baffling.
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Az ... if Sacreiuer's intention was to bring make a bug report to improve performance, he would have used the Bug Reports & Technical Issues forum. That would have been constructive participation in the community. He posted in the General On-Topic area because he did not really intend to be helpful. He simply meant to vent his frustrations and question the intelligence and professionalism of the Roll20 Team. He is not trying to help or get help. Also, he was very careful to call his list "grievances" ... according to m-w.com, a grievance is: a feeling of having been treated unfairly a reason for complaining or being unhappy with a situation a statement in which you say you are unhappy or not satisfied with something There is no attempt to be constructive here. He thinks he is entitled to "something more" and Roll20 is failing. I disagree and said so. If this was in Bug Reports and not so inflammatory, I would have ignored it.
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PaulOoshun
Marketplace Creator
I take your point Sterling, but perhaps we can all agree that it is not always helpful to read intentions into internet posts, but also agree that there are some valid points to consider regardless of how they are presented? I think perhaps a mod could move this to the appropriate forum where it can be considered in a more positive light, and help Roll20 continue to be the best platform around.
This thread has been closed as it contains both Bugs and Suggestions, (items that should be in those forums only) and is off-topic for this forum. Sacrieur please visit the Bug Report forums to see if the issues you presented are already posted. Many of the issues you mentioned are known bugs that are being worked on by our dev team. If you'd like to visit the Suggestion Forums you can use your votes to make suggestions or search for others who share your views.