My first experience

I'm not sure whether this is the right place but I wanted to share my first experience of Roll20. It was terrible. We kept losing players, We had horrible lags. Some players didn't get sound at all and some only heard and couldn't speak. My internet connection is fine and Skype works flawlessly. I don't know if there are available optimizations to be made and even if there are I doubt it will be enough. Forget about the swags. Please make the basics work.

Shy A., were you using native Roll20 or Roll20 in google+ hangouts?  If you were using the native Roll20 it uses the audio/video program Tokbox and the general consensus seems to be that it is terrible. Right now everyone pretty much avoids it like the plague and unfortunately there is not much that the Devs can do about it since Tokbox is a third party program. The new audio/video system called WebRTC is hopefully going to be the replacement for Tokbox someday but until it is fully ready many people use Google+ Hangouts for video/audio chat and others use Skype for just audio chat.  With that said, if you were having any other issues please let us know. Was the game itself lagging or just the audio/video?  - Gauss

Was anyone using the 3D dice also? I had a player that was experiencing all the problems you listed and we didn't know that he had the 3D dice on. Once he turned it off, all the problems went away. Take a look at the suggestions that Gauss listed for the audio/video. My group uses skype for our audio needs but we don't do video since half the group doesn't have webcameras.

We've had occasional drops in my game and I've suspected it was associated with the 3D dice. No one wants to turn it off though, the chat window RNG just doesn't feel the same as virtual dice rolling across the screen.

Yes just use Skype (or any other VoIP) if that fixes the problem. We didn't even try the Roll20's voice or video communication. We automatically used whatever we where used to and knew would work. As a sidenote I have never understood why people would like to see the faces of other players while roleplaying. I mean it just helps staying in character if you don't see them and there isn't any informational value anyway at least I can't think of anything. The video quality is way too low to use it for proper acting, it's a lot easier to share notes/pictures/etc virtally, etc. Sorry for slightly highjacking your thread Shy A. but could people tell to me why they use video chat while roleplaying?

All right. So Google hangout next time. The map wasn't lagging but we didn't get to use it that much. It took us almost 2 hours to set up the game because we couldn't hear and see each other. Matco - for people like me who's native tongue is not English seeing the speaker helps understanding what he's saying. I'm sure that with practice I could manage without the video but so far it's been helpful when it was available. I wish someone would have warned me beforehand. How about making the hangouts the default option?

We use video in a G+ hangout for our game. I like it because I play a game with friends of mine from college (we all live in different parts of the US now) and it makes for a more social, around the table kind of feel. Plus it makes it really easy to know if someone is AFK for a minute.

Shy A. said: Matco - for people like me who's native tongue is not English seeing the speaker helps understanding what he's saying. I'm sure that with practice I could manage without the video but so far it's been helpful when it was available. That's actually something I haven't thought of; non-verbal communication, not for roleplaying reasons but just so people would understand each other. Thanks for your answer.

Seeing faces also does help do determine emotions a bit easier than just voice. There are cues for when someone is being sarcastic or silly. Also as the GM its much easier to tell if someone is paying attention with video clues. Another thing I have found is video can reduce crosstalk a bit. I think its because you can pick up on the non-verbal cues when someone is done talking or when someone is wanting to interject.

That is right, I still use both FoW and DL in my campaign. Its just that with DL I don't need the snap to grid precision with FoW reveal. I just reveal whole areas as the PCs move around. That prevents accidental movement into areas I don't want them to see but is really easy to deal with reveal wise as I just select a large rectangle around the area and reveal the whole thing since DL is still providing coverage.

I did have to reload a couple times. Once to get audio to work right, 2nd time because I stopped being able to click on tokens when DM was setting it up (I'd gotten a little click happy which might have had something to do with that one).  Voice is a bit laggy, could hear myself in feedback, but once everyone got it working the only problem I saw was the time delay. 3d dice didn't work for me testing, didn't undraw themselves, so I've avoided them

3d dice are 'experimental' but many people forget this. They are highly dependent upon the computer the user is running on. On my older computer I cannot use them for more than 5-10 rolls before it crashes. On my newer computer I can use them but it is a bit slow.  - Gauss