The Ads on Load or Why I will not be able to continue using this software.

One of the things I love about roll20 is how fast it is. This is great because I have players with terrible connections playing from places like iraq or alaska. Most my friend whom I used to be able to gather around a coffee table are now overseas or far away. This is why we need a VTT. We have tried other solutions and they have worked well enough but we always ran into the problem of unstable connections. As connections dropped, lagged or flustered we would have to wait for players to reconnect and download all the material again. This was frustrating at the best of times and hindering at the worst of time. We even ended campaigns because of frustrations over the connections. Roll20 solved this problem. While I don't really like how a lot of things work the one thing roll20 does better than any other is being in the browser. This means that internet problems are usually fixed by a simple hit of F5 (refresh) and don't require relaunching (or waiting through a crash) a program simply because of your internet connection. Now this isn't true. Internet problems require 15 seconds of load time, at a minimum, and that isn't really acceptable to me. It doesn't seem like it but it adds up. One of my players disconnects from the internet on average 10 times per game. Normally it isn't on his turn and he doesn't mind missing some combat so it doesn't so us down. Now those otherwise short breaks in his visibility of the game turn into two and a half minutes of waiting for an ad. Yes, I think the sponsor system is great. However if I am going to put money down on something it should be because I love the service not because I hate a part of the service and want it removed. --- WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY: HERE IS MY SUGGESTION Please do not load adds if the page is simply being refreshed. The only reason people are refreshing a page because something went wrong. One should not be forced to look at the same ad over and over because of bugs.

I'm not sure, but I was under the impression that if the GM is a subscriber, then the ads won't show for their games.

Yes, and Austin is saying that if he ever decided to become a subscriber he'd prefer it to be because he loves the service, not because it removes something that was intentionally put in and that makes the service, currently, unusable for him. Personally I haven't seen the adds and do not know if they really take 2+ minutes to load/disappear/whatever so can't speak as to whether or not I agree with him.

they dont take 2 minutes...they take 15 seconds. And if its that big of deal to you use ad blocker until you sub, problem solved since the ad is only to there to tell you to sub

Ok. I checked out the ads. 15 seconds seems to be the time the add delays it, actually loading the game can take longer (or shorter). Might I suggest just making it count down from 20 the moment you start loading (that's when it starts showing after all, right)? Means that everyone gets to watch those adds for a fair bit of time, but those with slow connections don't have to wait their own 1 minute load time and then an additional 15 seconds of "watch this advert".

Ok. On Google Hangouts the loading screen takes much longer time (minute and a half for me on an empty map, usually takes seconds). I'd argue for bugrepping the loadtime in hangouts rather than the 15 second wait.

they dont take 2 minutes...they take 15 seconds. And if its that big of deal to you use ad blocker until you sub, problem solved since the ad is only to there to tell you to sub add blocks don't work at all for it

Yes, and Austin is saying that if he ever decided to become a subscriber he'd prefer it to be because he loves the service, not because it removes something that was intentionally put in and that makes the service, currently, unusable for him. I haven't seen the ads yet. However, these ads are there intentionally for supporting Roll20 and keeping it online for the community. If for some reason that is a big issue, one should consider getting a Backer or Mentor account, or offer some suggestion of a better place or time for the ads, which seemingly fits with what Austin M. said, Please do not load adds if the page is simply being refreshed. The only reason people are refreshing a page because something went wrong. One should not be forced to look at the same ad over and over because of bugs. I don't see the second point here, below, so clear as the first one, because these connection bugs can be due to your own Internet connection or your friends, and not per se bugs from Roll20's side.

Excellent. All issues addressed in one post. Hope we're not nagging you all to death :)

Thirdly, our goal is not to show the loading ad to folks who are having to reload in the middle of the game. We are probably going to add some additional code here shortly so that you will only see the loading ad up to once per hour or something to that effect. This makes much more sense to me, as I think that seeing ads again for simple connection errors may be an unnecessary bother, increased by the frequency of such disconnections. I hope these changes about the ads would be helpful to Austin M. and many others.

The "only once per hour" code should now be working correctly. Nice. I just saw the ads here. I think they are completely suitable and understandable, after all, since all they are saying is "Roll20 needs your support".

Thanks a ton riley! My biggest complaint was them loading when we were just trying to refresh the page to fix something on our end or otherwise. I don't mind the ads and will most likely be going mentor once my next check clears.