WebRTC Video and Voice Chat Issues

I played this weekend , voice only which is how I play, and it was not working well. There was only two of us and I had to constantly keep reconnecting. The frustrating thing was there was no way to know that you were no longer broadcasting, because the blue bar keeps moving even if you are disconnected. Please get the basics fixed.

Karl V. said: Neither of my two groups were helped by this update. After 15-20 min ppl started dropping out again. Please do not consider this closed. There are still issues with WebRTC. Please let us know what data you need to get to the bottom with this. Browser and version, OS, the results of  these tests , and a console log of when the errors happen are the most useful pieces of data to us.

On the brighter side, I've been using the Roll20 audio for a couple months now with six connection on Saturday morning. There was definitely a noticeable improvement this weekend. We still had to click the 'Reconnect' button in the settings tab occasionally, but the whisper option is well worth the temporary inconvenience until the dev team gets it worked out. We have two players who seem to frequently loose each others audio while the rest of us hear them both. It is always fixed when the same player reconnects. I think we're all using Chrome.

I ran my game last night, 4 players (5 total connections) across 3 time zones and it was completely unplayable. We never got in more than 5 minutes of clean connection before either player A would stop transmitting video and audio to myself and player L but could see and hear us just fine, or players C and J would suddenly be unable to see or hear each other, but each ciould see, and hear, and transmit to everyone else just fine. Each time, it took 15-20 minutes of refreshing, reconnecting, browser restarted, etc... before we could get stability ... which would vanish 5 minutes later. We ended up spending the last half of the session testing out and experimenting with other services for audio and video. Edit: I'll get the test/debug info if i can, but frankly it was so painful that I don't know that i'll be able to get the players to all reconnect to roll20 again in the near future to get the testing info. 

I was "Player A" in Michael's game last night. I don't think its possible to express how bad the audio/video stability has been of late. Ever since our groups (we run 4+ games now) had to stop using the Hangout wrapper around Roll20 the experience has been tragic. We have ended at least two games now so frustrated from the technical difficulties we quit hours early. Recently we've focused on looking for an alternative product because the user experience is so poor. As a DM with a lot of run time through Roll20 and a vocal advocate of the software for a long time, it pains me to see it so badly crippled. I assume other groups must not be experiencing difficulties at the same frequency as ours, otherwise nobody would be using it at all.

I went from being able to see half the people in my game to now not being able to see anyone at all now. Reconnecting does absolutely nothing. Not even a flicker. I change through all the settings and yet nothing. I've checked everything, tried different computers, same thing: no video. At least I have Discord for audio.  Did the WebRTC troubleshooter and everything is green for me. I honestly do not know what's wrong. 

So for the past month or so, I've been able to run my game (1 dm, 2 players) connected.  The first game went off without a hitch.  Video and audio worked perfect.  I started delving more into Roll 20.  My group consists of 4 of us gathered around a table physically and 1 other video'ing in from out of state.  2nd game, we couldn't get both of us to work so we skyped.   inbetween 2nd and 3rd game we tried to get it working and after an hour of fiddling with it, it finally started working.  Game night comes up and no dice.  We moved again to skype.  It's really getting frustrating.  I've ran the tests, and the only hiccup I can find is the 1280x720.  I can't imagine you'd pigeon hole us into that resolution on such a small window but hey... I suppose it's possible. I have tried connecting on all speeds of bandwidth.  I will say the bandwidth speed was captured while the appear.in window was open on the 2nd monitor. Windows 10 chrome browser 57.0.2987.133 - all extentions turned off.  14 ms 67.55 mbps 5.93 mpbs appear.in - camera worked great with audio webrtc troubleshooter microphone = check camera = 320x240 check 640x480 check 1280x720 fail [ FAILED ] getUserMedia failed with error: OverconstrainedError [ FAILED ] getUserMedia failed with error: OverconstrainedError check supported resolutions = check network check connectivity relay check reflexive connectivity = ! [ WARN ] Could not connect using reflexive candidates, likely due to the network environment/configuration. host connectivity = check throughput = check

I run a 6 player game (so 7 connections) and we are also experiencing pain in the WebRTC process.  Everything appears to run just fine while there are only 6 of us connected, but once the 7th logs in we receive the warning in the chat window that we may experience issues.  And boy do we. Two users could not fully load the map and after clearing their local brower cache, killing and restarting their browser process, and even rebooting they could not make their player map fully load beyond the "blurry" starting image of the map that hasn't fully rendered on screen yet.  They were able to see tokens, but they couldn't interact with them at all. I too have been advocating this platform as a great place for online RPGing, but since losing Hangouts (and I know that isn't Roll20's fault) the experience has been abysmal at best.  Without improvement soon, we will be forced to use a third party tool for voice and video.

So I have been following this for a couple months now as my game me as DM and 4 other players has been plagued by the same disconnect issues. Some weeks we would have to suspend a climactic encounter to constantly hit the reconnect button, have that stop working, and have everyone refresh the browser multiple times until everyone was connected again. Last week I set up a Discord server for the audio portion of the chat and ran video through roll20. Everything went really well. Obviously the audio worked, and the video cut out much less. When it did, we could just tell the affected person to hit the reconnect button vs. having to type it in chat.

I ran into a problem tonight that derailed my game before I could even start. Everyone else in my game (4 other players) were able to connect and hear each other in game but I could not be heard nor could anyone hear me. I tested my mic in other programs and on other webpages and it seems to function fine. I had not changed any settings in game or on my computer since last night when chat worked just fine and now I have no clue what the issue could be.  Browser: Chrome 58.0.3029.96 System: Windows Windows 8.1

Today, I was able to see all the other players however my own video was a black screen. This wasn't a problem when we used video calling before. I attempted to use the test services provided to see what was the error and I had the same black screen. My webcam still works in other programs such as skype.&nbsp; <a href="https://test.webrtc.org/report/AMIfv94Lsf_cOUXKqSg" rel="nofollow">https://test.webrtc.org/report/AMIfv94Lsf_cOUXKqSg</a>...

We used to just power through difficulties, but last game (3 weeks ago) things were awful and I just got a stream of complaints from normally calm players, and two new players were awfully upset. Tonight I tried going online one-on-one with another member, and we absolutely couldn't see or hear each other at all, no matter what we did. It got so frustrating that he just abruptly said he needed a break, and walked away from his computer. Now, I was a customer service manager for years. This shouldn't be allowed. Everything should be transparent to the user. Log in, join the game, everything works. If there's a problem, user (the GM) hits a button to report -- all data necessary goes to IT guys. Hit another button, one person (the GM), once, resets everything and it just works. If you haven't fixed the problem in a couple days, then ALL company resources need to go to the problem and fix it. How long has this issue dragged on? I'm trying to recruit new players and all I hear is how bad Roll20's audio and video is. This really is unbelievable. Fix it, guys. Transparent to the user, it just has to work. Thanks.

It's worse now for me and my group then it has been for the last month. Multiple reconnects and still we have players ending up with a black screen unable to hear or talk.

I grabbed a console log from my Monday game. Because of the problems we've had using Roll20, we've gone to Discord for voice, but we like to be able to see each other so we use Roll20's video. For some reason, this game seems to have more of a problem then my other games, I don't think we've had a single session where the video has worked for everyone. I'm using Chrome and have gone through all of the trouble shooting steps many times over. :) Link to console log

Tons of the following in your log Kirsty app.js?1494260277:45 muteMe true app.js?1494260277:45 Window app.js?1494260277:45 Array(1) app.js?1494260277:45 Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'find' of undefined at k (app.js?1494260277:45) at E (app.js?1494260277:45) at app.js?1494260277:45 at o (app.js?1494260277:5) at s (app.js?1494260277:5) at HTMLDocument.l (app.js?1494260277:5) that doesnt sound right.

I have to confess, I don't understand a word of it. I'm posting in hopes that it helps the devs. All of my games have switched to Discord for voice because we've had so many problems with the Roll20 video/voice. I'm looking forward to the day when we'll be able to switch back! If it's something on my end, I'll do whatever it takes to get it working, though I'm never the only one in a game to experience these problems.&nbsp;

If it not something on your end :) It is an umhandled error state in the code. The code is looking for a property called "find" on an object that does not exist. A developer should look at that, not you. Sorry for confusion.

Yesterday, I ran a game and 2 of my players had to refresh a lot of time to be heard and hear each other. The others heard them well.

Frankly, the audio/video problems are making ROLL20 useless. My group is on the verge of abandoning it completely. &nbsp;Without audio it's useless. We spent almost the entire time trying to reconnect/debug. Stop any other work. &nbsp;Get this fixed. Do proper QA using about 10 players and don't stop working it until it's fixed. This is a mission critical task for this site. You risk total failure.

Can you just roll back to the last update before it all went to s**t? It's been unplayable for months now. If I ran my business this way I would be unemployed.

Wanted to express that we'll continue to improve our voice and video, remind folks know that we cannot consider it our core functionality. A great many people use outside services (services that have development teams entirely focused on their core voice and video product) alongside Roll20. While we don't consider that optimal &nbsp;we know that its more important for us to ensure that dice-rolling, character sheets, and other tabletop functions continue, particularly as-- based on past survey data-- a majority of users take advantage of outside voice and video tools in conjunction with our product. As I said, though, that isn't what we think the best version of play looks like, so... Until we get to the specific solutions necessary to eliminate edge-case WebRTC problems, we continue to play a variation of "whack-a-mole" in solution-hunting. While I can say with confidence that the "moles" are getting fewer, there are two terrible realities to this: 1) our running between the further spread out moles takes longer and 2) if a mole is in your game, it damages your experience / forces you to rely on other tools and that sucks. Two small updates on current things we're investigating: We've seen some cases where WebRTC seems to be getting interfered with by AdBlock. This is unusual to us because WebRTC's sort&nbsp;of JavaScript is not what AdBlock is supposed to be hunting. As such, we continue to look into why this is happening for some users. Separately, we are continuing to search for solutions that won't force you to manually reconnect / refresh vs. Roll20 detecting the WebRTC call has failed silently (a problem related mostly to user bandwidth).&nbsp;

While I've tried to be patient as Roll20 worked out the video/voice chat problem, this reply is extremely frustrating. Nolan T. J. said: Wanted to express that we'll continue to improve our voice and video, remind folks know that we cannot consider it our core functionality. "Remind"? Since when has voice and video not been a core feature? The&nbsp; Kickstarter told a very different story. It's the second listed feature:&nbsp; "The core of playing tabletop games is the experience you share with the other players at the table. Don’t settle for just hearing their voice! The built-in video chat feature lets you feel like you’re all playing in the same room, even if you’re hundreds of miles apart. And again, there’s no difficult setup or configuration required." A great many people use outside services (services that have development teams entirely focused on their core voice and video product) alongside Roll20. While we don't consider that optimal &nbsp;we know that its more important for us to ensure that dice-rolling, character sheets, and other tabletop functions continue, particularly as-- based on past survey data-- a majority of users take advantage of outside voice and video tools in conjunction with our product. I responded to the survey. Literally the only reason I started a Discord account was that Roll20's native voice chat is unusable. I'd be willing to bet "a&nbsp; majority &nbsp;of users take&nbsp;advantage of outside voice and video tools" because the native chat flat-out does not work . I want to stick to Roll20, I really do. I've invested a great deal of time and effort into building up my campaigns and art library, and I've met some great friends here. This problem has gone unfixed for months, though, and if the devs are now taking the stance that video/voice chat are just a nice little bonus rather than an integral feature, I may need to research other options. (Not least because I have zero interest in Dungeons and Dragons, and it's slowly becoming clear to me that Roll20 cares more about 5e tie-ins than about basic functionality.)

I'm running into a problem with WebRTC where it won't utilize my default web cam. I have two video "devices" on my computer - one is a TV tuner and the other is my web cam. The web cam is set as the default device in Chrome and it does, indeed, default to it when I use - for example - Google Hangouts. But Roll20 always defaults to the feed from the TV tuner and, worse yet, the dialog that gives me the ability to choose between the two (accessed through the camera silhouette in the address bar) doesn't allow me to switch. This is weird behavior - and I have at least one other player who seems to be having a similar problem (in his case, he has a virtual feed from webcasting software, which he isn't using at the time). Any ideas what is happening here?

I can only agree with O'Neill here... people can play without maps (even in D&D systems which are notorious for being bad about this) for a long time, people can definitely play without integrated modules (which are fancy and awesome, just saying they aren't exactly essential) and worst case scenario they can play with character sheets in a shared google doc. What is essential and very much 'core' in 90% of the systems is dice rolling and (in 100% of cases) communication. If at least voice was working reliably for everyone, great, but its not. A survey asking users whether they use the integrated voicechat or other tools at a time where the roll20 com systems were notorious (seriously, whenever I recruited, people immediately asked if we ever planned on using it... because it didn't or doesn't work for them) for being broken, you will get results that are of course skewed towards not using the integrated system. Its like asking teenagers whether or not they 'hate' their parents and then judging those parents unfit without considering the hormonal phases (temporarily somewhat broken core ^^) teenagers go through. You can't seriously and honestly be using that survey data as a reason to not put all your effort behind fixing this issue? I get there is no real, viable alternative to roll20 (as far as I'm aware), but please reconsider...

Like other posters above I am quite frustrated at Nolans comment above. The built in audio-video support IS a core feature of this online gaming platform and it has been from the start. We (you paying customer base) have every right to expect that you spare no effort in making it work.&nbsp; Like others have stated your reference to customer surveys is completely absurd. Yes, no-one uses the system: It is broken! Fix it and your player base may return to it. I for one would gladly pay a higher subscription to get OpenTok reintroduced, even if only for pro accounts. That system actually works, unlike the current WebRTC implementation.

Ok, actual suggestions now that I thought about it a bit more. For a survey, you could use: All things being equal , (meaning: it works) would you rather use roll20's integrated voice & video system or would you prefer to use an external application for communication purposes? Other than that, I would suggest providing alternatives. Maybe keep voicechat on the free level, but video on a subscription basis, allowing you to partner with a site or tool that can be integrated (similarly to how Hangouts was, but ideally actually integrated this time) into roll20. As you yourself wrote, they have whole teams behind just this very thing, they are focused on it, so why not use it? Especially if you literally might not be able to fix it. (which is fine to admit) Money might be an issue, which is why I suggested the whole subscription thing.

Hello, trying to get video/voice chat working on Chrome on a Mac. In the settings I have flash, camera and microphone set to 'always for this site'. I don't recall ever having being prompted about allowing them so I did it manually. At the moment it's just me in a test level but the camera is not coming on despite being enabled. I've run the rtc test app and it seems to work there.

@Andy O. : Video and Voice only activates once there are at least 2 people.

Well, there you go :-) Thank you, Mouse.

GM Matt said: I'm running into a problem with WebRTC where it won't utilize my default web cam. I have two video "devices" on my computer - one is a TV tuner and the other is my web cam. The web cam is set as the default device in Chrome and it does, indeed, default to it when I use - for example - Google Hangouts. But Roll20 always defaults to the feed from the TV tuner and, worse yet, the dialog that gives me the ability to choose between the two (accessed through the camera silhouette in the address bar) doesn't allow me to switch. This is weird behavior - and I have at least one other player who seems to be having a similar problem (in his case, he has a virtual feed from webcasting software, which he isn't using at the time). Any ideas what is happening here? I know that streaming software can often hijack and overwrite browser defaults. Is there a set of software running that you could try temporarily turning off to see if this stops the interaction? Does this happen in Firefox as well as Chrome?

Have not tried in Firefox & I do run streaming software, but even when its not running (and - as far as I can see - doesn't have any services running) I get this problem. I "fixed" it last night by disabling my TV tuner. With only one option, Roll20 loads my web cam. But eventually I'm going to want access to that tuner again, so I don't really consider this a long-term solution.

Mouse said: Ok, actual suggestions now that I thought about it a bit more. For a survey, you could use: All things being equal , (meaning: it works) would you rather use roll20's integrated voice & video system or would you prefer to use an external application for communication purposes? Other than that, I would suggest providing alternatives. Maybe keep voicechat on the free level, but video on a subscription basis, allowing you to partner with a site or tool that can be integrated (similarly to how Hangouts was, but ideally actually integrated this time) into roll20. As you yourself wrote, they have whole teams behind just this very thing, they are focused on it, so why not use it? Especially if you literally might not be able to fix it. (which is fine to admit) Money might be an issue, which is why I suggested the whole subscription thing. When I refer to past survey data as to people using outside voice and video, this isn't a cherry-picked "when things were bad" moment. It's consistently, across all-time.&nbsp; BUT that's not what we&nbsp;want. This solution, of moving it behind the paywall... also not what we want. We want people to be able to play their games here on Roll20 with everything they need (which, to be most transparent, is something that survey data has also said about a GREAT many things like campaign management, mapping tools, better group-finding systems, and so on). I'm not sure there's a way we can adequately express how much we'd like this fixed (for every user as opposed to 90% of them) while balancing our need to continue a holistic approach to the platform. We currently in the process of quite literally doubling the size of our programming staff and are looking at a number of solutions to attempt to squash WebRTC bugs. The most accurate thing I can say-- for which I understand your mileage may vary-- is that no development meetings are happening at Roll20 without a discussion of this issue, but we will continue to work other elements in the meantime.

I for one would like to know where the numbers for it being only 10% of users having issues. &nbsp;I interact with a lot of different groups, and they all complain weekly about the problems. &nbsp;Is the metric based of complaints? &nbsp;And again with you admitting that a large portion of the community doesn't even use your video/voice solution how are you even gathering this information. &nbsp;Is it 90% of the total users of Roll20 don't have a problem? &nbsp;Or is it 90% of the people that consistently use the Roll20 video/voice solution that doesn't have the problem? &nbsp;That number means nothing with out the context of it. &nbsp;I for one have not even attempted to use the system since last fall when OpenTok was taken away, cause it just wouldn't work. &nbsp;And with the listed bandwidth restrictions, it never will work for me with more than 1 or 2 other players. I wish you luck in fixing this, but please understand, your whole team has mismanaged this change from start to finish (oh wait it isn't finished). &nbsp;There are no updates on this topic on any regular basis. &nbsp;It is weeks and weeks between comments by the dev team on this post. &nbsp;It makes the user base feel like you are just ignoring their issues.

I'll say that I'm one of those folks who uses other options because the native solution doesn't work reliably. I suppose my question is this: am I right that the bandwidth issue that happens with roll20 but not, say, Google Hangouts is because the roll20 implementation is essentially peer to peer? If so, am I-- a person in an area where slow upload speeds are a fact of life for the foreseeable future-- out of luck? Is the peer to peer what &nbsp;you guys are stuck with? I'm not ranting. It is what it is. I can appreciate that you aren't Google and that their solution is out of reach for you and that partnering might be too expensive. Just want to know the facts.&nbsp; thanks, Adrian

I would use integrated video/audio in a heartbeat if it were reliable. I currently use Skype, but the less complicated, the better.

Hi! Not sure if it's the right spot. Since 2 weeks (approx) everytime I log into my game and there's someone else, my router crash and I have to restart it. If i'm connected directly to the modem everything works fine, except that my wife can't play :( I've done the WebRTC test and the reflexive connectivity isn't working. The router guy (Superviser at D-Link) was with me on the phone for 2 hours and it should have something to do with the router settings that Roll20/WebRTC demands. Any Idea? Thx!

Steve K. said: GM Matt said: I'm running into a problem with WebRTC where it won't utilize my default web cam. I have two video "devices" on my computer - one is a TV tuner and the other is my web cam. The web cam is set as the default device in Chrome and it does, indeed, default to it when I use - for example - Google Hangouts. But Roll20 always defaults to the feed from the TV tuner and, worse yet, the dialog that gives me the ability to choose between the two (accessed through the camera silhouette in the address bar) doesn't allow me to switch. This is weird behavior - and I have at least one other player who seems to be having a similar problem (in his case, he has a virtual feed from webcasting software, which he isn't using at the time). Any ideas what is happening here? I know that streaming software can often hijack and overwrite browser defaults. Is there a set of software running that you could try temporarily turning off to see if this stops the interaction? Does this happen in Firefox as well as Chrome? I'm having the exact same issue with xsplit&nbsp;broadcaster taking priority over my webcam in Chrome. It doesn't happen in firefox but using two browsers isn't exactly my ideal set up. I don't have Xsplit on and it still takes priority. The only other option would be to uninstall xsplit but I typically use Xsplit to record my sessions. Any ideas?

Nolan T. J. said: When I refer to past survey data as to people using outside voice and video, this isn't a cherry-picked "when things were bad" moment. It's consistently, across all-time. Having never been invited to take one of your surveys I may be going out on a limb here, but am guessing it's not a Net Promoter Score survey. I appreciate the directness with which you've stated that a) voice/video isn't considered a core feature by the Roll20 team and b) you want to maintain a balance of development activity. With equal candor I'd like to let you know that as a customer I considered voice/video the main selling point of Roll20 and so have unsubscribed from the Pro subscription.

You offer a service where the main functionality, to be able to speak to each other while playing rpgs, have been intentionally broken by your own actions. Your response from the development team is that since your voice & video solution was not used by a majority of your users it is ok that it does not work. Seriously, this is a textbook example off how you should not deal with your customers. All the choices you have made so far are either arrogant towards your customer or downright hostile. You broke a core functionality half a year ago and have not cared about getting it fixed since then. The only time you comment on the issue, you let us know that you do not care about it. I understand that you don't want to put a paywall on a core functionality but your current choice is worse. You are intentionally forcing your customers to use an external service for core functionality. This makes the use of your service to become a much smaller part of the value chain here and a much easier thing to replace. You are already forcing your customers to use another service provider for voice and video so putting a paywall on a working, integrated voice & video solution is not an issue. When you have a working solution you can spend whatever resources/time on getting the free webrtc solution to work. Please try to stop abusing the trust and hope of your customers!

Nolan T. J. said: Wanted to express that we'll continue to improve our voice and video, remind folks know that we cannot consider it our core functionality.&nbsp; Wow. Worst answer ever? Votes?&nbsp; If you did nothing but fix your voice/video problems you would be awesome. Everything else at this point should be considered an enhancement. In project management parlance, Video/Voice is a "Must have". Enhancements are "Like to have". &nbsp;Sorry, but I would consider these issues "mission critical". I won't go into our "personal" reasons, but without voice, at least, the site becomes virtually worthless to us.

To be fair, the Team did say in the rollout of WebRTC that it was to be second priority to a good tabletop experience. However,&nbsp;IIRC, the whole stated point in switching to a Roll20 implementation of WebRTC was to not be reliant on third party technologies. I know the Roll20 team must be as frustrated with this as the end users are, and I continue to hope for an eventual solution. Please don't stop trying.

Leon said: Nolan T. J. said: Wanted to express that we'll continue to improve our voice and video, remind folks know that we cannot consider it our core functionality.&nbsp; Wow. Worst answer ever? Votes?&nbsp; If you did nothing but fix your voice/video problems you would be awesome. Everything else at this point should be considered an enhancement. In project management parlance, Video/Voice is a "Must have". Enhancements are "Like to have". &nbsp;Sorry, but I would consider these issues "mission critical". I won't go into our "personal" reasons, but without voice, at least, the site becomes virtually worthless to us. I was thinking the same exact thing, both of&nbsp; Nolan T. J. posts were alienating&nbsp;and condescending. I've been checking on this thread every few weeks hoping for a more stable fix, but it looks like I'm going to go ahead and just take my games elsewhere. I already canceled my subscription, but I can't stomach dealing with these problems any longer especially when 'support' tells us to stuff it because no one uses the AVI anyway.

Dan said: Leon said: Nolan T. J. said: Wanted to express that we'll continue to improve our voice and video, remind folks know that we cannot consider it our core functionality.&nbsp; Wow. Worst answer ever? Votes?&nbsp; If you did nothing but fix your voice/video problems you would be awesome. Everything else at this point should be considered an enhancement. In project management parlance, Video/Voice is a "Must have". Enhancements are "Like to have". &nbsp;Sorry, but I would consider these issues "mission critical". I won't go into our "personal" reasons, but without voice, at least, the site becomes virtually worthless to us. I was thinking the same exact thing, both of&nbsp; Nolan T. J. posts were alienating&nbsp;and condescending. I've been checking on this thread every few weeks hoping for a more stable fix, but it looks like I'm going to go ahead and just take my games elsewhere. I already canceled my subscription, but I can't stomach dealing with these problems any longer especially when 'support' tells us to stuff it because no one uses the AVI anyway. ***ROFL**** ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!?! &nbsp;So voice communication is not a "CORE" feature? &nbsp;I would consider anything on the main page, under the tour section a Core Feature. &nbsp;I see nothing about all the add ons, and extra features. &nbsp;I saw nothing about the books for purchase or the images and maps for sale. &nbsp;I would list THOSE as secondary features. &nbsp;This is what I consider as your core features 1.) Ease of use....since November, it has been nothing but a royal pain in the ass. &nbsp;My group must have at least 20-30 hours of trouble shooting due to the failed voice/video features. &nbsp;We have decided to completely give up on trying to fix it. I was told that my ISP speed was the issue, so I upgraded my service from 50Mbps to 1Gbps (up and down). &nbsp;I hope that this fixes my issue with 3 people on the same LAN. &nbsp;2.) Character sheets. &nbsp;I have not had too many issues with these. &nbsp;Most of them have been user error. &nbsp;3.) Maps... Once again. &nbsp;Not too many issues here. &nbsp;I wish the searching the internet was better, but guess what? &nbsp;I can refine my search in a Search Engine, grab what I need, and load it up. &nbsp;4.) Notes/Journal...Works well for me, Once again some minor features could be changed or added, but noting that breaks the game. 5.) Dynamic Lighting...This is a paid feature, but you can fake it with the the Fog of war. &nbsp;I can fake the voice chat with a 3rd party solution, but I consider that different the using a built in feature as a work around. &nbsp;Chat would be the next best thing. I will continue to check on updates....but this is ridiculous!!! &nbsp;Here is an idea for an accurate survey. &nbsp;Have an option available for each user for each game be able to select one of the 3 options &nbsp; 1). &nbsp;Voice worked, with no issues &nbsp;2.) Voice Failed during this session 3.) We don't even bother at this time. &nbsp;I (and I'm sure a lot of your other players would to) LOVE to see the results of this survey....

It's funny cause my 3 groups all have issues with voice and video, and each of them have been having issues with their respective groups, and so on. I've met tabletop players at my local game shops who've spoken of their problems with Roll20. There are several unique visitors to this very thread looking for a solution or talking about their problems. But here we all are being told more or less "tough biscuits" I think it's unanimous what people want, honesty, transparency, working VOICE & VIDEO. All Hands on Deck...

Hi rollers, An issue we’ve seen flare up are users having their WebRTC connections sabotaged by Adblock. Recently different Adblocking softwares have started targeting WebRTC connections . If you and your players haven’t white listed app.roll20.net/ for your Adblocker please give that a try and let us know if it helped. We hear your frustration with the WebRTC chat situation. I use it several times a week for my own personal games. I understand that when chat issues pop up it derails the flow of the game. Everyone has features that are more important to them than others, and if you’re in this thread integrated video chat is probably right at the top of your list. To reiterate Nolan’s point, we at Roll20 believe that video chat is important. It’s a service we agree is very valuable to the tabletop experience. It will always be an important goal for the development team to provide flawless integrated video chat. However, it can’t be the only focus for Roll20. There are video chat companies with hundreds of employees whose only focus is on a video chat platform. These platforms are often owned by large corporations, like Skype is owned by Microsoft, with major infrastructures behind them. Roll20 can't provide a browser based experience that can compete in that space. It’s also the reason no other virtual table top offers integrated video and voice chat. This is why our primary focus will always be on our virtual tabletop, the thing we believe we do best in our space. Including integrated video chat, rather than the well trod 3rd party options, is important to us but can't be the only focus of our development. Roll20 investigated many options before choosing WebRTC. We looked at other services, pricing models, APIs, and what we discovered is that if we wished to keep offering free video chat to our two million users at the rate in which they used data, our only option was to provide it ourself via WebRTC. We knew going into this that WebRTC would work for the majority of our users, but that it would also fall short for a significant number, who would be forced to resort to using an outside app, with hardware acceleration and that didn't depend on peer-to-peer connections, for video chat. We know that we can shrink this gap. Despite the limitations of browsers, of WebRTC, and peer-to-peer connections, there are still big improvements we can make to our chat. We are working on it. It is important to us. And please, have your players check to make sure they’ve whitelisted us on Adblock, it is affecting a large number of our users.

Thanks, Steve. It would help public perception a lot if there were any posts from people who do not have problems using the integrated voice/chat. Since this is a bug forum, we naturally only hear about the problems. I don't think I've seen a single positive experience post anywhere on the boards. Is there any data or anecdotal evidence from users who are having a smooth experience? It would go a long way toward improving the tarnished image the WebRTC implementation has developed.

@keith: I have almost 1500h logged on roll20. I have interacted with easily more than 100 players here. My personal experience and the experiences relayed by all those people ate exactly the same: WebRTC does not work. As such I don't think such statements will be easy to come by. Edit: Checked my profile. Apparently I have played with more than 250 ppl even. @steve: You should really review whatever metric you are using to come to the conclusion that "WebRTC works for the majority of our users". It is simply not correct. The vast majority of your users have long since shut WebRTC of because it did not work. The development team should not base their decisions on faulty data.

Or how about the statement above, that the development team knew that their in house solution wasn't going to work for a portion of the user base. &nbsp;I have been following forums on this topic since last fall when it was announced there was going to be a change. &nbsp;Not once was there a warning that the new system would be unusable by any of the people that use roll20. &nbsp;Maybe just admit that the roll20 screwed this whole thing up. &nbsp;Not sure if it is gonna help, but its a start.

keithcurtis said: Thanks, Steve. It would help public perception a lot if there were any posts from people who do not have problems using the integrated voice/chat. Since this is a bug forum, we naturally only hear about the problems. I don't think I've seen a single positive experience post anywhere on the boards. Is there any data or anecdotal evidence from users who are having a smooth experience? It would go a long way toward improving the tarnished image the WebRTC implementation has developed. That's a Catch-22. Why would people having no issues self report their lack of issues? Instead we have to consider people who it used to work for and now have problems, or people who had problems and decided to self report that the problems cleared up: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4516830/webrtc-v" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4516830/webrtc-v</a>... <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4516830/webrtc-v" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4516830/webrtc-v</a>... <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4365015/webrtc-v" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4365015/webrtc-v</a>... <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4516830/webrtc-v" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4516830/webrtc-v</a>... There are streams regularly on Twitch where the performers use the integrated video chat. Mark B. said: Or how about the statement above, that the development team knew that their in house solution wasn't going to work for a portion of the user base. I have been following forums on this topic since last fall when it was announced there was going to be a change. Not once was there a warning that the new system would be unusable by any of the people that use roll20. Maybe just admit that the roll20 screwed this whole thing up. Not sure if it is gonna help, but its a start. That's simply not true. Here's a post we made four years ago when we first introduced WebRTC as an option along side the Flash based chat we were using at the time. We were very upfront about the challenges of WebRTC, but it was and still is better than other options. I could take the time to dig through the WebRTC posts, reddit threads, and even our roundtable chat we did with the community where I detailed the limitations of WebRTC and the challenges we're facing but instead I'll just link to our official documentation . TL;DR Due to the nature of WebRTC large games will have issues because of peer-to-peer connections requiring much more bandwidth, a lack of hardware acceleration, only certain browsers support it, the fragility of running code in a browser that has to compete with browser plug-ins, add-ons, Adblock, anti-virus, and more. However it's the service we can provide and for free. Karl V. said: @steve: You should really review whatever metric you are using to come to the conclusion that "WebRTC works for the majority of our users". It is simply not correct. The vast majority of your users have long since shut WebRTC of because it did not work. The development team should not base their decisions on faulty data. I'm very confident in our metrics. We can see the number of connections, day over day, since we run the servers. We know how many of our active users are using video and voice chat. Those percentages have been going up. More players are using integrated chat than ever. Tens of thousands every night. I know that's hard to believe, because you're still having trouble. So, every game you're in has trouble. It only takes one player having a bad experience with the video chat to disrupt an entire game. We understand and we do care. Roll20 has a small development team, but we're more than doubling in size this year. This will allow us to concentrate more resources into improving the integrated chat, but a flawless chat experience isn't going to come quickly. We're facing technical challenges that development teams with hundreds of employees are daunted by. We're working hard on video chat, we will continue to work hard, the service is improving measurably, and I realize it doesn't feel that way,&nbsp; at all, because nothing we've done up till now has helped resolve your issues.

Just a reminder, if you and your affected players haven't run through our troubleshooting steps please have them do so. When posting here, just letting us know you are having an issue doesn't help us solve your issue. We also need you to provide the information we're asking for. From both you and the other players having the issue we need a browser console log, the WebRTC Connectivity Diagnostic Test, your bandwidth up & down, browser & version, OS, number of players in your game, and a description of your connection issues (never connects/spotty connection/connection frequently fails/only affecting one player/all players). The more information you provide us the more likely we'll see trends and be able to fix underlying problems. It's how we discovered Adblock was a serious culprit at the moment.