DROP WEBRTC and Voice & Video Efforts

Hi , This might not be your normal "recommendation" but I see what appears to be a lot of development effort trying to make voice and video work in ROLL20. I also see in this month's development update more challenges for your team in that area. You guys are great but I feel you are wasting your time in area we just don't need.  I would like to recommend that ROLL20 drop voice/video effort completely. With so many acceptable and free solutions already in use by so many people I just don't see the value. If you have unlimited development resources, which I know you don't, no worries - but otherwise I would love to see development in other areas that are your CORE business platform and that we the users need!   Thanks  

I don't claim to know anything about the roll20 team, but if this helps make the tabletop experience more featured or faster, I'm all for it. Between Skype and Discord, I never use the inbuilt roll20 chat in any of my games.

A gentle reminder to keeps things civil and in line with the  Suggestions & Ideas Posting Guidelines (for the added expectations above and beyond our standard Code of Conduct ).

I am actually a fan of the built in tool when it works. For one, I only need one login, the one the players are logging in for the game anyway. This keeps things super simple for my less tech savy players. I mean simple is why we use Roll20 as opposed to other installed VTTs. Also, the whisper player feature is awesome for sharing bits of information with specific players and not others. Totally removes the need to actually type whisper them. We used Google Hangouts the other night, and although it's simple enough to have everyone log into another application, no one is watching the video feeds because they're now in the background. I still like to show things on camera on occasion, and it gives me a way to see how engaged my players are. I have one player who doesn't use a webcam, and for the most part, I never even know if he's there.

I would like to second this suggestion too. No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to topple dedicated services that offer voice and video chatting platforms. All of their resources are focused on doing just that, whereas Roll20 has a multitude of features that it needs to keep track of. A cut of the current development resources (which I heard Roll20 is outsourcing) should be done and those forwarded to other areas for improved user quality of life.

+1 and I second Brother Sharp.

+1

I really hope this gets to somewhere. The latest updates in Roll20 have been about the new WebRTC and they are still struggling. Now imagine if that effort was used to say, give us a foreground layer or page toolbar folders, or even a custom compendium.

Unfortuntely all evidence points to the contrary.

although I personally use a 3rd party solution, I do agree with the devs working on an internal solution. It makes sense to use a single login. Here's to a fast solution.

Tom S. said: Unfortuntely all evidence points to the contrary. I don't know how I feel able this suggestion. I'm honestly 50/50. My groups personally use no video / outside audio solution for game play. I understand the point and goal of Roll20 is to be a one-stop-shop, but I'm curious what percentage of the games run utilize the functionality?

When I originally started using Roll20 I felt that it was great that they were implementing an integrated solution for VoIP. Then I realized that it didn't work. Then they did a huge overhall to the tech, after which I was excited again, until I realized, that it still didn't work. Now apparently Chorme update broke it completely (for all Chrome users) vs "it doesn't work" and again a lot of effort is being used to get it to work. Unfortunately my money is on "it still doesn't work" after the update. When I started using Roll20, the need for an integrated system was a lot higher, since back then there were no free server based solutions available (at least I couldn't find any). Now there are (at least is, I won't name names, but you all know which one I'm writing about). Even if the dev team finally would get the integrated system to work, I'm pretty sure they cannot compete with dedicated solutions (that are nowadays great). Therefore +1

I'm using discord.  I'd love to see the WebRTC work, but for now it might be better to let other projects do the heavy lifting, and thing bring in some code once it isn't quite as much of an emerging technology. We tried to use WebRTC for several sessions, but kept having players randomly disconnecting.  We did the whole "are you using Chrome?  The most recent version?" game, but the problems that we were having just made it impossible to keep using it.  I wanted to be having battles with monsters, not arguing with players about what chat solution is best.  (it might not have been so bad, except one of my players /is/ pretty tech-savvy, so arguing with him about when "good enough is good enough" was getting pretty exhausting). As for whispering, what I've found works is having a separate room in discord.  When I need to whisper someone, I can yank them out of the campaign room and talk to them there, and then put them back when we're done.  It's worked pretty well so far.

I know this would probably be a controversial move (then again, as JLeeBly asked, how many folks are using this?)... But with enough lead-time and information for the community it would be probably a huge relief for the dev team. Maybe Roll20 could even partner with a company like Discord to make external chat even easier to access.  As it is, I know there is a lot of frustration on my group's end when trying to connect everyone (even when it is working, once you get more than 2 folks over video it suffers, even with decent internet). I'd love to see what could get accomplished if the devs didn't have to mess with this anymore...

Well I know some think if Mr. Bob the audio technician stops working on audio technician stuff then more important features might be developed... but Mr. Bob is a audio technician he might only work on audio stuff.  I don't know I think maybe we don't have all the knowledge and background information that roll20 has as far as there plans. The only reason I don't use it is because one person can't...  ill be honest I use firefox and it seems to work perfectly... :p -Chris

Bob the audio technician is receiving money to do his technician stuff. If they stopped paying Bob the technician and gave the money to Aaron the scriptomancer, then we would have a happier world.

I suppose it's a new player feature. You want to have all the tools available to communicate from the get go. I remember when there was Google Hangouts integration, not sure why that was dropped. Maybe it's a selling point in comparison to other tabletop web based games? Kinda hard to compete with Discord, Skype and other dedicated companies whose sole purpose is making the best Voip/Video chat.

Brother Sharp said: Bob the audio technician is receiving money to do his technician stuff. If they stopped paying Bob the technician and gave the money to Aaron the scriptomancer, then we would have a happier world. ah yes but if you get to know The great and powerful OZ you would know that he is a busy man outside of roll20 and i think his enjoyment comes from doing roll20 as a Hobby in between Real life issues and his day job as a coder already if i recall correctly. personally i just wish alot of those API workarounds where features you could turn on or off.  To paraphrase As Nolan said in another thread roll20 takes a lite approach to what they are planning behind the scenes and then does a heavy "hey look at this update" cycle style so it is best to vote on what you like and when making a suggestion make sure there is not already an older one that you could vote on. 

Please fix the WebRTC issue, do not give up. Roll20's video and voice feature is the key feature(for me) that separates itself from it's competition. Having one login is huge.

The Roll20 stance on developing Voice & Video capacity will not be changing.  I will close this thread to refund peoples votes.