Improving Audio, Storage, and Performance

Arthur B said: I tried to do some estimations. Assuming that there are about 3 million users by now, and 95% are free users, then Roll20 has a theoretical storage volume of nearly 500 TB. Nearly 60% of that volume is for free users, paid by the subscribers. Now with the storage volume increased for the subscribers, the storage volume would go up to nearly 900 TB (again, theoretically, as I'm just focusing on the maximum storage needed).  Considering that most Pro and Plus users will never use that additional storage, it's pretty safe to assume that in reality, Roll20 doesn't need to stock up much in terms of additional storage space. If Roll20 would now also triple the storage for the free users, the overall storage volume would jump up to 1400 TB. And opposite to the increase for Pro and Plus users, a lot of free users would definitely use their storage, forcing Roll20 to invest in additional storage - for users that don't chip in a dime. Regardless of whether storage is being used or not, having to allocate that space on the server itself will incur the same cost. For example, if you bought a physical storage unit and filled it halfway up, you would still pay the entire price for the physical space despite the capacity not being full. Given the fact they were able to increase Pro/Plus on such a quick whim does point to the notion that there is wiggle room in the budget. While we may not know if the total remaining storage could work for all free users, what *could* be done is potentially only granting space to non-bot, non-banned, or non-duplicate free accounts. Once again, the fact that of the many free users I've spoken to have done something similar points to there already being a space issue, which is now exacerbated with the loss of Fanburst (not Roll20's fault). One alternative I did see would be using something ala Google Drive or Dropbox for third party hosting to ease the server load for images and audio files. I understand the want to host everything on the site, but major platforms like those listed above have perfectly fine existing API and no chance of going under anytime soon, some for more obvious reasons. Alternatively, a lesser package above free that would only include storage space and few if none of the higher features such as scripting, fog of war or sfx. The former would help lower server costs, the latter may assist in drawing in new Game Masters with a lower tier (or players in many ongoing games).

ok so idk if this is the place to put this but when i logged in for a game today this small file box opened for a minute. I couldnt catch what it said before it disappeared but Ive been kinda worried about it all day.Is anyone able to tell me what that was? idk what the executable did but id like to know if anyone does

So I'm confused, is it just fanburt that is shutting down or is it the whole jukebox including tabletop audio, battlebards, and most importantly for me imcompetech?

Joel Senpei said: So I'm confused, is it just fanburt that is shutting down or is it the whole jukebox including tabletop audio, battlebards, and most importantly for me imcompetech? Just Fanburst. Incompetech, Battle Bards, and Tabletop Audio all still remain. The jukebox has been upgraded to also allow you to now upload your own audio files.

Pro and Plus users in this site can be just about the most entitled and hostile people on earth, it's baffling. You're telling me that your 5$ and your 10$ can pay off 3g and 6g respectively without needing to raise price... but bumping up free users from 100 to 200 or 300 is going to make the system collapse? I don't get it, I really don't, this "higher than thou" behavior. You want to talk about money? Let's talk about money. Who do you think join your campaigns? Who do you think buy the subscriptions? That's right, free users. Some, like me, even make campaigns. So you're telling me that we are a "burden" on this site when our presence is the single one reason as to why this site is working as it should? That isn't even considering ads. Here is the fact of the matter: Roll20 can do this because there is no competition. There are alternatives, like Rpol... but other sites that do what Roll20 does do not exist. Yet. This is a Skype situation, with a Discord waiting around the corner to listen to the complains of the users and snatch them away. I am not accusing of "Roll20 attacking their free users", no, they just made a bad business mistake, I feel. Backed up by Pro and Plus users actually attacking free users. Twitter seems to work fine without needing their users to pay for services. Facebook, for the most part, is also free. Tumbrl, even though it is basically dead now, also works without needing cash. Newgrounds, Armorgames, Kongregate... those sites even have games and cartoons, you can give donations but otherwise their services are free. But no, a site where most of its "service" revolves around writing surely cannot handle 10%/20% of their non paying userbase (aka, the DMs) utilizing 300mb, this being the argument that many Pro and Plus users bring. The free user base is the flesh of the site, because there is just so many of us joining games, creating campaigns, talking about the site and attracting more and more users to the place. If you alienate us then it's just a matter of waiting on someone else to do what Roll20 does, but better. So, if you truly have interest in Roll20 business you should not be trying to destroy their reputation by acting like hostile children that oh no cannot bear to see the unwashed plebeians get a bump in their storage space. We are not freeloaders and let me tell you that if this site only allowed to Pro and Plus accounts to play it wouldn't last a week. As for any staff member of Roll20, please please please find a compromise for us. We only want 200mb more, hell put down restrictions on how to get them, a time limit like "Every year you've been a user you'll get 100mb more" or something. Hell, as I asked before put a single payment option to bump our space to 500mb, call it the "DM option" or whatever else but give us something to work with. We are not unwilling to support the site even further but we lack the means to do so. Throw us a bone.

For those free users questioning their value, let me share this wise quote:

Phnord Prephect said: For those free users questioning their value, let me share this wise quote: That's pretty much the point free users made.

Can we just give the free users 200mb extra and cut down on the pro users 6 GB and lower it to maybe 4? I use 133 MB of my now 6 GB. With audio it will MAYBE rise up to 1 GB. I don't need that much space, ever! And to be fair 100 MB is awfully inconvenient, even if you follow the 80 MB for music statement. The problem for me is this: I mostly DM for my group but from time to time other people in my group do DM too. So I set up the game fro them so they can benefit from the pro status as much as possible. That said, there really is now the problem of audio space which I cannot share with them. Giving 200 extra MB to the free users would cushion the blow a bit and allow them to not micromanage space. Edit: 1) The general problem is, that giving maybe 1% of all users 3 times the space is probably far less than giving 98% 3 times. 2) Storage space is pretty cheap, we are talking less than a US cent per GB at times. Hell, even as private user I pay 10$ per month for 1 TB of space with dropbox.

Devily said: You're telling me that your 5$ and your 10$ can pay off 3g and 6g respectively without needing to raise price... but bumping up free users from 100 to 200 or 300 is going to make the system collapse? There are two points here:  if 95% of users are free and 5% are paid, then increasing storage space for free users is nearly 20x more expensive byte for byte than increasing storage space for premium users. Now obviously the majority of free users are probably players who will never use their storage, but it's a fairly risky approach to offer a service and then only provision a small percentage of it on the assumption that most people won't use it. Unless you're a bank, of course, then it's fine because the government will just bail you out if anything goes wrong ;-) The suggestion that the "system would collapse" is obviously hyperbolic - I know some people have implied that but I certainly wouldn't claim that - but successful businesses don't do things that cost more than they return, whether directly or indirectly . Expanding storage for free users would be at least as expensive as the bump given to premium users if provisioned at 100%, so there would  have to be a financial reason why such an increase made sense. Increasing storage for premium users is clearly intended to protect against lost revenue from cancelled subscriptions with the loss of Fanburst. The key question that people  disagree on is whether there's any financial benefit to be gained from doing the same for free users. Roll20 might lose a bunch of free GMs over this - but it's by no means obvious to me that this would actually hurt their bottom line more than the upgrade would cost them. Unfortunately without seeing analytics from Roll20's database on which users refer paying customers, and what types of users ultimately convert from free to paying, this will always just be speculation. My experience with very similar businesses was that most of the financial value is driven by a small set of committed users - either directly through subscriptions/purchases or through their role in attracting other paying users - but Roll20 might be different. What I am much more sure of is that ad revenue will be minimal at Roll20. Freemium businesses cannot be compared to massive social networks like Twitter or Facebook. The economics and scale are fundamentally different. Roll20 can sell a relatively small userbase of a niche market - tabletop gamers who play online - with minimal other demographic data available and no adverts for most of the time that the user is actually engaged with the site. Worse still, the highest value users - the ones with the money and willingness to spend it on gaming - are precisely the ones who aren't going to be seeing the ads anyway. Roll20 are obviously not going to share their ad sales numbers but you can be sure that it's not enough to make a big impact on their plans. There are some creative suggestions being bandied around for ways to make the economics of this work - sharing player's allowances, or maybe external storage integration, or perhaps even some sort of archival system that would ease the burden of lapsed free accounts with a bigger storage quota - but they all involve spending time and money on design and development - particularly given how much of a legal minefield this area is. I'm just struggling to see how the numbers are going to add up... But it would be great if I was wrong about this and everyone could have what they want.

You're making claims you have no idea about.  None of us have any idea of the total costs of this, but I keep reading that if you can do it for paid users,  you should do something for free users.   I've written this multiple times and it seems to be conveniently ignored by people: 1) Majority of users are free users 2) It's not just disk space.  3) It's servers, bandwidth, backup & recover, maintenance costs.  You really think that's cheap for hundreds of thousands of free users?  Get a clue.  If Roll20 chooses to support free users in the manner that free users wish, the cost to Roll20 goes up exponentially. So the "oh they can afford it" argument is just naive.  I've been a Director of Technology in a past life.  I've been there managing infrastructure and development.  Not cheap and certainly not as easy as some are claiming.  Free users are going to have to wait while Roll20 figures things out and has time to determine costs.       

1) No, it's not that expensive. It really isn't. If they can bump free gigas to the paying costumers giving free costumers a hundred or two extra megabytes is really nothing. Just doubling the amount for pro and plus users means that the site is saving 4 gigas, gigas that were going nowhere unless you wanted to stream actual movies and upload 5000x5000 pictures in ten different campaigns, which I am pretty sure is impossible since I believe there is a size limit to files you can upload but let's play pretend for the sake of the argument. 4g is 4000 megabytes. Divided by 200, you could feed 20 free users. 1g is 5 users. 3g is 15 users. And this is without spending additional money, mind you, because you already get that much space for free: nobody is giving Roll20 anything for that space. This of course doesn't take in consideration how much of the 5% you mentioned is pro/plus users, meaning that the numbers could be touched up a bit. Still, it should help to put in perspective that no, Roll20 won't bleed money the second they give us free users a bit more space: they just need to allocate the space within their userbase better. 2) My proposition is, and remains, to give us a one time payment for 500mb of space, a permanent upgrade to our accounts. Plus, saying that "Roll20 is a business and needs to make money" is not an argument: treating your costumers well should be imperative to all businesses that want to make money, you can't find an issue and decide to fix it only for a certain group of people, while ignoring the rest (which you seem to imply are 95% of the entire community). Free users are still users, we see the ads, sometimes we make purchases, we play games, we spread the word around and hook more people in... we are not disposable. I don't want to find loopholes within the system to cheat them. I want the system to account for the fact that its users are in need.

Devily said: 1) No, it's not that expensive. It really isn't. If they can bump free gigas to the paying costumers giving free costumers a hundred or two extra megabytes is really nothing. Prove it.  Show me the total costs in involved.  Since you obviously know their infrastructure (which could be in house, 3rd party hosting or cloud), you know exactly what is needed, though this hasn't been done in the past, bring up some numbers.  How much bandwidth is needed?  What's the cost of that bandwidth?  How much storage is needed?  What is the cost of that storage?  How many servers, including servers to host the music and load balancing servers, are needed to handle hundreds of thousands (who knows how many) of free users uploading and playing music?  While your at it, throw in maintenance and support costs for those servers.  

Victor B. said: You're making claims you have no idea about.  None of us have any idea of the total costs of this, but I keep reading that if you can do it for paid users,  you should do something for free users.   I've written this multiple times and it seems to be conveniently ignored by people: 1) Majority of users are free users 2) It's not just disk space.  3) It's servers, bandwidth, backup & recover, maintenance costs.  You really think that's cheap for hundreds of thousands of free users?  Get a clue.  If Roll20 chooses to support free users in the manner that free users wish, the cost to Roll20 goes up exponentially. So the "oh they can afford it" argument is just naive.  I've been a Director of Technology in a past life.  I've been there managing infrastructure and development.  Not cheap and certainly not as easy as some are claiming.  Free users are going to have to wait while Roll20 figures things out and has time to determine costs.        This. Except that we are talking about nearly 3 million free users, if my assumptions are even remotely correct.

Arthur B said: This. Except that we are talking about nearly 3 million free users, if my assumptions are even remotely correct. They're not. A vast majority of that 3million is from one-time visitors, deleted accounts, and those who have multiple accounts. I seriously doubt that R20 has anything near 3million actual active users.

As a point of data, the Tech Crunch article regarding the data breach identifies Roll20 as having 4 million accounts. As Phnord points out we don’t know how many of those are active or duplicate accounts, but it is the most recent number we have of accounts that exist on Roll20.

Oh and lets thrown in costs of fail over servers.  Since I'm guessing Roll20 wants to be up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the only way to accomplish that is to have EXTRA servers in event of server failure.   @Devily, throw the cost of fail over servers into the total costs, since you know how much this will cost Roll20.  You should also include additional networking requirements, since the extra bandwidth requirements require extra networking to accommodate.  

I subbed to Syrinscape immediately after this announcement. No matter how many gigs worth of data you have as a pro user, it'll still be far too much hassle to collate a big enough personal library to have as varied a soundtrack as we'd got accustomed to with fanburst.  Unfortunately the only way I could justify the extra expense to myself was by dropping my Pro membership to Plus (I only really use dynamic lighting, I've basically been a Pro Member for the last couple of years to help support the platform more than anything) to help offset the Syrinscape subscription cost. So free users, I wouldn't complain too much. The extra space doesn't mean any less hassle - I think a lot of pro / plus members will still be looking for alternate audio sources, the same as you are. 

How does Syrinscape work? I see lots recommending it to fill the gap.

Keep in mind that any third party partnership is only so good as the third party remains viable. Fanburst is just an echo of the exact same thing that happened with SoundCloud. If Syrinscape were to fail, or even change its licensing/API (as happened with Google Hangouts, and again with Google Image Search), users would face the same problems, and again, it would be beyond the control of roll20.

I don't mean to be uncivil here. But how are we labeled as 'entitled' because we pay for what we want to receive? Paying for good and services we want is being 'entitled' now? I thought demanding goods and services to be rendered while not paid for, was that. To me its akin to McDonalds giving out free Meals once a month and they introduce a new side item, and complaining "What you mean it's just a normal burger, small fry, no drink, and it doesn't come with your new side salad? I need more food than that. So us free customers gets screwed while paying customers can get a large fry, salad and free refills?" Or expecting more because you "add to the number of users" is akin to asking for free artwork commission because of "Why won't you do it for free? Think of the exposure it might give you, people seeing it. And I really love your artwork, but you just lost a fan!".

mAc said: How does Syrinscape work? I see lots recommending it to fill the gap. You download the beta web player which has a master / slave feature, basically your players open a browser window and you control what they hear on it. From your end you get a soundboard with pre set configurations that you can play with the alter the volume of layers / add sound effects and such. Pretty easy to set up and I'm quite liking it (used it first time last night) but you do need a sub to use the beta player, but the sub comes with different packages that give you different soundboards you can switch between basically, with different music / effects available on each. keithcurtis said: Keep in mind that any third party partnership is only so good as the third party remains viable. Fanburst is just an echo of the exact same thing that happened with SoundCloud. If Syrinscape were to fail, or even change its licensing/API (as happened with Google Hangouts, and again with Google Image Search), users would face the same problems, and again, it would be beyond the control of roll20. Yeah, I get that, would be nice if it had roll20 supported syrinscape natively but can see why they haven't done so given the issues they've had with partners in the past. But at the minute it's the best option available to me personally, without any suitable in built sound features left on roll20 at this point. A bit annoying as it's anouther $10 subscription a month, but after dropping my roll20 from pro to plus it's only $5 difference.

It's unfortunate that Fanburst is shutting down! As a musician, I create my own themes for all the PCs and many of the characters/locations in my campaign, so using Fanburst really helped to get that moving. I don't think as a free user I can utilize this new feature as with only pictures I just had to purge a bunch of my storage to upload portraits and maps. So I appreciate all the alternative suggestions in this thread! I think I  could  cut down some fat on my storage but with music files individually being on average 2.6% of my storage (and looking at my files and the other tracks I use, they tend to run about 2-4 times that). I'm guessing that average includes tracks like 'Wood Thunk Loud' and other SFX that are not things like character, town, and battle themes. It looks like I will have to use an external solution. The main concern I have is making sure the audio is synced across all the players (this is problem with just streaming on, say, twitch). I think players offering their space to GMs is a great idea. This is an exciting idea which seemed to always be brought up in music threads but now it is actually being implemented! Also, I would like to say that we have seen this type of thing before on Roll20 with soundcloud losing its API, but the discussion back then was much more constructive and civil. I don't know if I am remembering incorrectly, but I also checked the forum threads from back then (which admittedly could have had posts since removed). People are insulting each other from both sides and checking each others hours then demonizing them for spending so much time and not paying for the site (most of which is probably set-up time). I find this really surprising! In the past, I've also seen comparisons between subscribing and the price of video games, but the whole point of D&D in my mind is to use your imagination and was what we did when we didn't have video games haha. We all share a hobby, so I don't see why we should be hateful to each other. Some of us use the site less than others. It's great to support Roll20 by being a pro or plus member, but it is also okay to be a free user. If it wasn't there wouldn't be a free user option! I for one am not comfortable asking my players to chip in, as it seems kind of mercenary and it changes their perspective on the game. Nor can I justify the $60-120 a year on 2-4 hour sessions about 3 times every 2 months (amounting to ~54 hrs a year of actual with players time). 

Victor B. said: Devily said: 1) No, it's not that expensive. It really isn't. If they can bump free gigas to the paying costumers giving free costumers a hundred or two extra megabytes is really nothing. Prove it.  Show me the total costs in involved.  Since you obviously know their infrastructure (which could be in house, 3rd party hosting or cloud), you know exactly what is needed, though this hasn't been done in the past, bring up some numbers.  How much bandwidth is needed?  What's the cost of that bandwidth?  How much storage is needed?  What is the cost of that storage?  How many servers, including servers to host the music and load balancing servers, are needed to handle hundreds of thousands (who knows how many) of free users uploading and playing music?  While your at it, throw in maintenance and support costs for those servers.  Again, I bring up sites such as Newgrounds, that in spite of allowing everyone to make use of their valuable space and pretty much rely only on merchandise and donations to stay afloat somehow still manage to keep going. But how about you do the same? Your side of the fight keep saying that the ad revenue that free users bring is minimal, that we are basically freeloaders and that bumping our storage space would put Roll20 at a loss. Your math is...? Maybe my proof isn't much... but it is an example where doing what we are asking Roll20 to do works just fine and let me tell you sites like Newgrounds have been around for ever and they are STILL there. Ad revenue is what keeps things going, it's why programs want high ratings, it's why people turn into sponsors. Regardless.. humble me brought the proof of other businesses taking a "free" stand and that survived for decades. Now please, enlighten me with proof that will show that bumping the space of free users will turn profits into losses for the site.

I just looked at Newgrounds, which is a site targeting a totally different market, providing a totally different service, which allows use of a totally different advertising strategy due to audience.  I'm not sure how much of an argument that site is.  Especially since they also have a subscription which gives you benefits that include more storage.

I know others have mentioned similar, but my input on uploaded audio: it will be far more efficient for Roll20 if user-uploaded content can be made available to the rest of the userbase - perhaps using a privacy toggle to opt-in? People would be much happier finding already uploaded tracks to use than downloading and reuploading files into their personal folders. This will also dramatically cut down on the amount of server storage space Roll20 ultimately needs to use, as a single popular asset (e.g. generic dramatic fantasy background song) can be utilized by thousands of users instead of being redundantly stored on the servers countless times.

Hi everyone, We're posting this again for visibility. Please remain civil when attempting to get your opinions or your point across. As Baldur's Great stated, step away from the computer for a moment if needed. Please refer to the  Community Code of Conduct  if you need to brush up on the rules: General Guidelines Discussions on Roll20 should always maintain a tone of respect and civility. To promote a welcoming environment for everyone, we ask that you refrain from: Personal  attacks or name calling Passing  judgment (be it on issues ranging from gameplay to lifestyles) Inflammatory or abusive language (e.g. communication with the intent of provoking others) Posting sexually explicit or extremely violent content Distribution of someone's personal information Engaging in or encouraging illegal activities (examples including, but not limited to: piracy, phishing, fraud, etc.) Trolling, overt or passive aggression, spam Abuse of the Report function Violating area specific guidelines     Infringement of this section is subject to moderation action as outlined by the Moderation Policy.

@the admins bug issue: when I created a tracklist for audio files that I uploaded, I tried to set it to shuffle and then clicked "play" on the playlist.  it plays ALL my tracks in the playlist at once, instead of one at a time. also, I only uploaded about 100mb of audio files and am experiencing a huge lag in loading maps, anyone else experiencing this issue?

Dylan L. said: Okay so free users are screwed then? Just use tabletopaudio.com in a second screen. The SoundPad is great and easy to use.

@theadmins any chance of you guys removing the 20mb limit for uploading audio files? some of my soundtracks are an hour or two long and are larger than 20mb so I can't use them at the moment.

Leigh N. said: @theadmins any chance of you guys removing the 20mb limit for uploading audio files? some of my soundtracks are an hour or two long and are larger than 20mb so I can't use them at the moment. I'm using Audacity to cut my ambient sfx tracks down to about 15 mins. It's not perfect, but it's a work around. If you use discord for communication, and the songs are on Youtube/Soundcloud you can use a discord music bot.

Devily said: Now please, enlighten me with proof that will show that bumping the space of free users will turn profits into losses for the site. I honestly have no idea how much it would cost.  But I'm not claiming they can afford it.  

How would my players hear it? Katherine said: Dylan L. said: Okay so free users are screwed then? Just use tabletopaudio.com in a second screen. The SoundPad is great and easy to use.

Chris S. said: How would my players hear it? Katherine said: Dylan L. said: Okay so free users are screwed then? Just use tabletopaudio.com in a second screen. The SoundPad is great and easy to use. Katherine said: Dylan L. said: Okay so free users are screwed then? Just use tabletopaudio.com in a second screen. The SoundPad is great and easy to use.

Many Tabletop Audio tracks are available in the Jukebox already.

Ya know folks, seriously, this is just going way too far. I'm the LAST person to want censorship (ask R20's mod team how much I've fought against it!) but this thread is seriously making me reconsider my stance! There are issues here, and good arguments on both sides, but let's just chill for a bit and let things shake out, please! Then again, a conversation like this would have long since been shut down, just a year ago, so maybe it's worth it.

Phnord Prephect said: There are issues here, and good arguments on both sides, but let's just chill for a bit and let things shake out, please! +1 Roll20 may well decide that they want to bump free user storage in a month or two once the dust settles and then this will all have been moot. Either way, I don't think we're going to make any progress with this discussion in the absence of hard data about Roll20's financials - which we're not going to get - so we may as well spend the time doing something more constructive. Props to the new mod team for the light-touch approach; for all that things can get a little forceful I think collectively we are usually capable of reigning it in before it gets totally out of hand!

Lucian said: Props to the new mod team for the light-touch approach +1 right back atcha!

Phnord Prephect said: Ya know folks, seriously, this is just going way too far. Oh, the irony! :D

Ravenknight said: Phnord Prephect said: Ya know folks, seriously, this is just going way too far. Oh, the irony! :D Yes, I know. As I said, I'm well aware how this sounds coming from me of all people! My issue here isn't so much the discussion, or the topic, but that we're turning against one another. Everyone has valid arguments, and they should be heard. But the more we fight one another, the less likely we are to be taken seriously. At the risk of getting myself banned  suspended  again , can we all agree to focus on the REAL issue here, namely the lack of leadership and foresight that has lead to this very real problem? This all stems from the fact that R20 has, once again, failed to take care of a real and obvious problem, and it has blown up in their faces. If we keep focusing on the differences between our points of view, all we're going to do is show that they were right in immediately shutting down all criticism. Roll20 had an issue with their music system. They tried a stopgap measure, and it failed. They tried another, and it failed. Now they have (almost) no choice but to take action, and it's still not satisfactory. We, the users, paying and free alike, have made many suggestions for exactly the sort of thing they've finally ended up doing, and they waited until it was almost too late to take action. And in so doing, have once again let the dumpster catch fire. How many other issues are looming on the horizon, that we've warned them about, and which they continue to ignore? So, I'm saying, let's show them that we're better than they think we are. Let's stop fighting ourselves, and each other, and... (I hate myself for saying this) Make Roll20 Great Again. -Phnord, aka Barth the Bartender, aka Roll20's most vocal critic, and possibly Roll20's greatest advocate.

@PhnordPrefect Hilariously, now that you're calling for unity, I don't entirely agree with you :-) Roll20 have limited development resources and everything they have to build from scratch themselves takes away from something else that their users are clamouring for. Legally and technically, sound uploads are a PITA, and it was a very sensible decision to try and outsource in the early years of the service. This very debate is testament to how Not Fun dealing with this stuff is. I for one am very glad that Roll20 haven't spent lots of time building things that they could get through partnership; obviously it would have been better if they hadn't picked the wrong horse several times, but that's life. Personally I would have rather have seen Roll20 not bother with all the WotC content and the concomitant upgrades required to satisfy the licensing/technical requirements for them. But there were a lot of people asking for that stuff and it makes $$$, so it's hardly surprising that was higher up the list of priorities. As a result they now have a bigger dev team and can start addressing some of the platform issues. It's easy to snipe from the sidelines on this stuff, but although I'd be the last to say that Roll20 haven't made mistakes (oh lawd, there have been some howlers!), you shouldn't underestimate how hard it is to balance the competing demands of a business like this. Roll20 are still here and profitable, which is more than a lot of similar projects can say!

Discord is Free to Use and easy to set up with wonderful guides. It also has bot's. I use the Groovy bot and can play whole youtube playlists through that bot to my players, I can even set it up on a loop. I will even help others do this if they need help! And you don't even need to use the groovy bot, there are alternatives.

Lucian said: @PhnordPrefect I don't entirely agree with you :-) This speaks highly of your judgement! q;} Lucian said: ... but that's life. "Life... don't talk to me about life!" Lucas Avis said: ...there are alternatives. Yes, yes there are. This doesn't mean (and I'm not suggesting that you're saying) that we can't improve this one. Let's just do so, openly, freely, and as constructively as they'll let us. Now that they actually do let us.

I would like to add to the voices calling for a full integration with Syrinscape, and I hope there are many, as that would be simply awesome. Please consider it devs!  Thanks

Thanks roll20 team! amazing update, much appreciated :D EDIT: one question though... how will roll20 protect themselves from copyright infringements in uploaded files?

Reading over the 'Best Practices for Files...', it says there's a 10MB image limit but I can't even upload a 7.82MB image file.  I saw on Reddit there's a 5MB image file cap for non subscribers, is this covered somewhere in Roll20 content?  Will the image limit be changed to 10MB soon, is that part of this update or is it just the audio part that got an update on that page?

Mike D. said: Reading over the 'Best Practices for Files...', it says there's a 10MB image limit but I can't even upload a 7.82MB image file.  I saw on Reddit there's a 5MB image file cap for non subscribers, is this covered somewhere in Roll20 content?  Will the image limit be changed to 10MB soon, is that part of this update or is it just the audio part that got an update on that page? Hi Mike, You are right abut the 5MB limit. Here is the page that lists what is possible at all Subscription levels