Improving Audio, Storage, and Performance

Thanks Roll20 for the Hard Work..

Aniond said: Again you are wrong. Roll20 did nothing you. It was fanburst.  You are getting exactly what you agreed to which is the basic account. You were promised nothing more. People who pay are expected to use what they paid for therefore offering more storage is an acceptable compromise. By your argument they didn't have to expand your storage either, since you got what you paid for. You were promised nothing more than what you had before the upgrade. It's dishonest to say "but it is free", we are still part of the community and people like me payed in the past for subscription but can't always afford to do so. The fact here is that they knew that sharing pictures and music was going to clog up storage space fast, hence why they tripled it for the subscription accounts... yet knowing this they didn't even double it for free accounts. If I am being told "if you don't like it leave it" then fine but it is not good business practice to give no options to others, as I said before an option for a permanent account instead of a subscription one with minor but noticeable advantages could help people that like me cannot afford great expenses. Turning this into a "class" war with the pro/plus accounts telling the unwashed masses to get bent because we are too poor is both incredibly insulting and naive, don't be that kind of people, let's try to solve the issues that a large portion of the community is having instead of dismissing it as people being entitled.

I get that some folks may not have the disposable income to justify a subscription.  But why do you assume Roll20 has the disposable income to pick up your slack?  Storage space is a hard, recurring cost.  Roll20 isn't backed by billions in venture capital.  It has to stay cash-flow positive or die.  Like Fanburst.

Entropomancer said: I dont wish to banter semantics about Tanis' post beyond saying simply it is entirely subjective and prefaced by the words "I think" The onus of the issue you are laying at roll20's feet without considering the facts are that A) Fanburst shutting down was not roll20's fault. B) You are not a paying subscriber but do take advantage of the free services they provide and expect upgrades as if you did pay. C) As a free subscriber you are benefitting from the generosity of the very people you vilify, the paid subscribers Things that are true: 1)  Fanburst shutting down is not roll20's fault. 2)  As a direct response to the inconvenience caused to its customers by Fanburst shutting down, roll20 bumped up services for paid users. 3)  Roll20 made an announcement to this effect. 4)  A roll20 customer may pay for and cancel paid subscriptions at any time, any number of times for any amount of time. 5)  A customer who is not currently enrolled in a subscription appears as a free user. 6)  Free accounts are exposed to advertisements throughout the site which provide a nominal revenue stream to roll20. 7)  People are not required to purchase a service/product in order to critique it or the choices of the company providing it; nor is consumption of a service/product required to make observations about it or the company providing it. These repetitive ad hominem attacks against a large and situationally-diverse groups of people (those unable or unwilling to pay for an account at this time) are based on illogical assumptions ("US$5.00 a month isn't that much for you because it isn't that much for me!") and a lack of understanding of economics and basic freedoms ("Your opinion is invalid because you aren't paying for the privilege of having an opinion").  If you disagree with the "throw the free users a bone" camp, then argue specifics and offer reasoning; maybe even put forward suggestions on how all accounts might be improved at a base level.  Basically, if you don't have anything civil and constructive to offer, don't just weigh in to point out the obvious and certainly don't post just to belittle others. Feedback and critique is often best received when tactfully provided.  Doubly so when what is desired is "more" on top of "free" value.  The best case for improving free accounts is to offer thoughtful and specific suggestions as some have done.  Maybe consider lowest cost and highest impact - in this case, I can understand 100 MB additional space to be nominal by comparison to 1-2 GB.  However, I don't have access to volume comparisons for free vs. tiered paid accounts - the number could be so high as to make it uneconomical, especially since provisioning the space may have a cost whether or not the user uploads anything. @Roll20 - I think a fair compromise would be to allow something like what was suggested earlier.  Either a dollar-a-month tier that enables better space allotment (to allow more music uploads), or a tier consisting of a one-time fee or a yearly low fee ($5-10) that enables better features and/or more space, but continues to display ads to the user.

Here's how I see this change. Does anyone actually think it's cool that Roll20 is losing Fanburst? No. Even paid subscribers are losing a convenient tool to access tracks that they enjoyed. Was Roll20's decision to counteract that loss by launching a new service that promotes subscription for similar convenience a perfect decision for everyone on the platform? Of course not. They're making a business decision and, honestly, have probably already figured out the number of free accounts who will stop using the service vs. those who will inevitably make the choice to subscribe because of this change. I'm just sad I'm going to lose my ability to find funny SFX at a moments notice, since my games tend to be pretty spontaneous in nature.

Euphamia said: Free users should really be bumped up to 500 mb or a gig honestly Paid for by people who are already paying for the service.

What's worse than the argument itself is the overwhelming amount of white knighting going on. A lot of people are rushing to defend the company's honor - why? No one save for those employed by Roll20 should have that much of a stake in it. Just seems a lot easier and cleaner to make your points without whipping out the entitlement guns.

Kenji said: What's worse than the argument itself is the overwhelming amount of white knighting going on. A lot of people are rushing to defend the company's honor - why? No one save for those employed by Roll20 should have that much of a stake in it. Just seems a lot easier and cleaner to make your points without whipping out the entitlement guns. It's not white knighting so much as blame being placed upon the company for making a tactful business decision to enrich its profits. Because if we are being honest, that is the sole purpose of any business venture. It's not to provide jobs, or meals for the poor, or pay for crippled orphan children's surgeries or cater to the desires of it's free user. It's to generate profit. Period.  The issue as I see it is that many dont seem to understand this and when it is pointed out in a civil manner by some, they get called "elitist, snobs, etc." For simply stating these truths. If that constitutes "White Knighting" then call me Lancelot

Man, imagine feeling so entitled to a free service, that you expect that free service to get even more free when a different free service they were partnered with goes out of business.

It's not white knighting so much as blame being placed upon the company for making a tactful business decision to enrich its profits. Because if we are being honest, that is the sole purpose of any business venture. It's not to provide jobs, or meals for the poor, or pay for crippled orphan children's surgeries or cater to the desires of it's free user. It's to generate profit. Period.  The issue as I see it is that many dont seem to understand this and when it is pointed out in a civil manner by some, they get called "elitist, snobs, etc." For simply stating these truths. If that constitutes "White Knighting" then call me Lancelot That's at least a more reasonable way of putting it than what I was pointing out - I just meant that there's plenty of room to argue on both sides without it falling into "ya get what ya didn't pay for, you're not entitled to anything Roll20 puts out, you should be thankful that you even get to use this site, let alone have more storage". It's the difference between telling a guy that his coupon is expired and saying that he ought to be happy he can even get the product at the low price it's already at. Anyway, you're right - it was just for profit. If Roll20 goes under, it's whatever. If they soar and lock the site up to subs only, it's whatever. I suppose it's just healthier, in my view, for folks to accept that for what it is upfront and deal with it however they will. Free or otherwise.

@Roll20 - Another suggestion to distribute some fairness into the free account arena would be to identify users who have paid for subscriptions totaling to a certain threshold (6 months, a year) and provide those accounts with some sort of enhancement to alleviate the inconvenience of the Fanburst loss. Those who subbed in the past, regardless of their current subscription status, did so in good faith and effectively subsidized the ability of the company to now gift permanent extra storage on current and future subscribers.  A "legacy thank you" wouldn't hurt, and in a marketing sense may be an optimal incentive to reactivate their subscriptions.  At the worst it creates a positive sentiment that the company recognizes those who have "made it all possible" to include everyone who has ever paid (within the threshold). edit:   For the record, I have never subscribed and therefore would not stand to benefit from this option - I just happen to know a little about corporate marketing and think it's a neat idea. :)

I do hope roll20 finds another solution similar to fanburst, it was so convenient. In the end it is not roll20's fault, it has happened before and it was slightly painful but I found the tabletop audio quite a suitable replacement; for my needs anyway. I don't know why some people are suggesting a spotify integration, while it is an interesting idea; spotify itself is only free with ads so I would guess you would get random adverts shouting out at you in the middle of your game unless you pay for a subscription o.o A dropbox integration makes sense but not really sure if they would allow streaming. While the solution is fine it is of course quite difficult to legitimately obtain some decent audio for games. For those who are upset with the changes, people have suggested alternatives which are decent enough to get on with,discord being my personal favourite&nbsp; <a href="https://www.wikihow.tech/Play-Music-in-Discord-on-PC-or-Mac" rel="nofollow">https://www.wikihow.tech/Play-Music-in-Discord-on-PC-or-Mac</a> This has happened before and it was not long before they found a solution (see&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4029005/in-regards-to-soundcloud" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/4029005/in-regards-to-soundcloud</a>) In all honesty I didn't think roll20 would want to provide uploads for sound/music/video as it can be so expensive to stream data, not just storing it. There is also the risk of simply getting shutdown if users add pirated content, it seems like an almost unmanageable task to keep on top of it all . I am fairly sure if at all possible they will find a new solution quickly. At the moment its an ok middleground for me, but I will start to use discord again I think as getting audio myself can be a bit of a pain.&nbsp; Happy gaming!

Like a "preferred member" type status, you're saying. I think that would do well. I'm sure plenty of folks would be incentivized to just go ahead and sub since they'd only need to do it once; they'd get the month full of extra goodies, and then be set for some other things after the fact. It would probably be relatively baseline for everyone to have subbed at least once if that happened.

Jesse B. said: If five bucks a month is too much to stomach, I'm surprised half of the free users could afford the core rulebooks + supplements in hardback, the dice, the printing &amp; the pencils they were using before they moved online to run their games - that's before you consider those who were driving to get to their games, or the people that actually shelled out for miniatures. I would assume that we've all sunk some money into this hobby at some point in our live, but even if your entire gaming group has never experienced an in-person session, even if you've pirated everything any of you have ever used &amp; have never paid a single penny to keep any of the companies responsible for your game's ruleset from going out of business, and you power your computer through sheer willpower in lieu of any actual electricity, you should at least appreciate the features that are available for a free user, compared to the previous cost sink that tabletop gaming represented when there wasn't anything like Roll20. It sucks that another free-to-use company just collapsed under the weight of its own userbase, and that's kinda left Roll20 with their pants around their ankles, but come on, people. It's a free gaming room with all the art and music you can possibly get your hands on, just without the capacity to keep 100% of it in storage all at once. Can't we just be happy that Roll20 is a viable business model with as much free crap as it already has? Easy. I didn't afford those. I never tabletopped except as a player to roommates who bought their books over five years ago when they had better jobs before their bodies got screwed up. I also borrow dice from them and we print our World of Darkness sheets off the Internet from a free resource! All my money goes to bills and rent and food. It's to keep me alive. I'm disabled--I HAVE no disposable income. As people have pointed out, the problem is this amount of storage is paltry and people are already straining on image space. Like, a little more couldn't hurt. 100MB isn't a lot. Like, legit, it's really not in today when you can buy server space by the TB and most computers come with 1+ TB standard.

There's a lot of good discussion going on here and I thank you all for it! Allow me to clear up as much as I can. Our first priority with the release of My Audio was to get a working audio solution in place before Fanburst closes on February 25. We have been testing this feature on the Dev Server since December, and we uncapped the data limits for all the testers to collect info on the size of files they wanted to upload. Even with music files, we found that the average file size was 2.6MB. With this information, we calculated that a user with 100MB of data could upload 30+ songs and still have 20MB left over for other uploads. (It may be important to some folks to understand that Marketplace purchases are stored by Roll20, so any tokens and maps you've gotten there are not counting into your storage cap.) We estimated that's enough to run three or four fully-featured games as a free user. Next, we looked at how users currently use their space on Roll20. We found that less than one percent of free users were currently at (or near) their data cap. That may change with the launch of My Audio, but most free users have plenty of space to play around with adding audio files. We will continue to monitor data usage to see if My Audio substantially changes our users' data needs now that it's live. We want everyone to be able to enjoy multiple games! Many folks have suggested various streaming services as an alternative. In addition to Incompetech, Tabletop Audio, and Battlebards - which will remain available - we will continue to investigate other services. Nothing has been ruled out, but these possible alternatives would not be available before Fanburst shuts down on February 25. Meanwhile, we have reached out to Fanburst directly to determine what if anything can be done to make this process easier for those who used to rely on their service.

Ana said: Jesse B. said: If five bucks a month is too much to stomach, I'm surprised half of the free users could afford the core rulebooks + supplements in hardback, the dice, the printing &amp; the pencils they were using before they moved online to run their games - that's before you consider those who were driving to get to their games, or the people that actually shelled out for miniatures. I would assume that we've all sunk some money into this hobby at some point in our live, but even if your entire gaming group has never experienced an in-person session, even if you've pirated everything any of you have ever used &amp; have never paid a single penny to keep any of the companies responsible for your game's ruleset from going out of business, and you power your computer through sheer willpower in lieu of any actual electricity, you should at least appreciate the features that are available for a free user, compared to the previous cost sink that tabletop gaming represented when there wasn't anything like Roll20. It sucks that another free-to-use company just collapsed under the weight of its own userbase, and that's kinda left Roll20 with their pants around their ankles, but come on, people. It's a free gaming room with all the art and music you can possibly get your hands on, just without the capacity to keep 100% of it in storage all at once. Can't we just be happy that Roll20 is a viable business model with as much free crap as it already has? Easy. I didn't afford those. I never tabletopped except as a player to roommates who bought their books over five years ago when they had better jobs before their bodies got screwed up. I also borrow dice from them and we print our World of Darkness sheets off the Internet from a free resource! All my money goes to bills and rent and food. It's to keep me alive. I'm disabled--I HAVE no disposable income. As people have pointed out, the problem is this amount of storage is paltry and people are already straining on image space. Like, a little more couldn't hurt. 100MB isn't a lot. Like, legit, it's really not in today when you can buy server space by the TB and most computers come with 1+ TB standard. Storage cost money.&nbsp; Did you know that the number one reason that web hosting services go out of business is because they give too much storage?&nbsp; 500 MBS * the amount of free users =&nbsp; a ton of money.&nbsp; &nbsp; Its not cheap to maintain.

So, before I had to juggle with every hangout and encounter map, manually decreasing their quality and deleting many of them as soon as the players have moved past certain point. That was awful, yet manageable. Now I'll have to either run my games in silence, or choose 1-2 tracks per session to upload and then instantly delete them. Great, just great. And you know what bothers me the most? The fact that upload limits of paid users became trice as big, while free users didn't get even a damn extra 50 megs. I get that server maintenance isn't free, but that gap between free and non-free userbase becomes pretty big. Way too big.

Sucks Fanburst is going down, but thank you guys for these changes! They definitely soften the blow.

"Next, we looked at how users currently use their space on Roll20. We found that less than one percent of free users were currently at (or near) their data cap. That may change with the launch of My Audio, but most free users have plenty of space to play around with adding audio files. We will continue to monitor data usage to see if My Audio substantially changes our users' data needs now that it's live. We want everyone to be able to enjoy multiple games!" Well, shit,I guess this sure is a loud "less then one percent", if basically every free user I know or see here are outright saying they don't have space anymore. Infact, here's a wonderful question - if such a *massive* ammount of people never maxed out their storage space, then why not bump it up a little? Not like they'd actually use it and strain your servers ,right? I know this is PR speak, but just stop. Everyone outright knows that this move directly hurt free users. I've been stuck repeatedly deleting art assets for over two years - and while admittedly annoying, I was fine with it, because I really was a free user, but this really is just too much. Every genius calling "entitled" here needs to understand that (I hope) no one is saying that free users should get ridiculous ammount of storage space - not in the sligthest. I'm even fine with uploading tracks and then deleting them repeatedly, if we literally had an extra 50 MB, it could work. But as it stands, it's quite literally just a middle finger to free users to pressure them into buying subscriptions. Oh, yes -&nbsp; Roll20 positively needs to pay it's&nbsp; bills. It doesn't mean what they did right now - and what they decided on, isn't particularly nice or well done.

I am honestly fine with roll20 getting ad rev from me but thats all and not even because i would have to pay. Their sub system has always left a bad taste in my mouth even after using it before. Now it seems to have gotten worse, with triple storage for all but a little 100 or so mbs bit for those poor free users? Naa what are they made out of space? Not to mention locking what some consider basic features, even the API is locked at only highest tier and thats a bare bones script system. I wont ever be giving money again and will be pulling out of the pro pool me and my buddies had. I just can't. This is going to EA grade.&nbsp;

Keep in mind when talking about storage space usage, free players use substantially less space than free GMs do.&nbsp; If you don't GM a game, there's virtually no incentive to buy a subscription unless you just really hate looking at ads or want to help support the site and drive new features.&nbsp; It doesn't surprise me that their analysis shows most free users have plenty of space left.&nbsp; It's a bit flawed, though.&nbsp; They really should have only looked at free users who've created games to determine how much space GMs use if they wanted to examine the impact of audio.

Jesse R. said: Keep in mind when talking about storage space usage, free players use substantially less space than free GMs do.&nbsp; If you don't GM a game, there's virtually no incentive to buy a subscription unless you just really hate looking at ads or want to help support the site and drive new features.&nbsp; It doesn't surprise me that their analysis shows most free users have plenty of space left.&nbsp; It's a bit flawed, though.&nbsp; They really should have only looked at free users who've created games to determine how much space GMs use if they wanted to examine the impact of audio. Therein lies the issue. If you interpret it like that, then I can actually see the mythical "less then 1%" figure, but there's no reason you'd interpret it like&nbsp; that. Players don't upload art and music- GM's do. Henceforth, free players shouldn't remotely be a factor in this calculation. This is like saying "We have found that less then 1% of people living in a landlocked desert are competent swimmers". or some nonsense like that. Ben of Syrinscape said: [POST REDACTED] You absolute lad you, that's bloody clever of you to advertise that in this situation - thank you very much. I'll check it out. oh nevermind he just got deleted instantly

I'm a bit confused and in the dark on the piracy note, but I guess that means it probably doesn't affect me? idk.

Free players are losing their minds that they didn't get anything in this update. MAYBE, just MAYBE, a future update will include something for you. You get a pretty good service at the Free level. If you can't pay a few bucks a month, that's a real shame, I get it, but rewarding the people that do pay sooner than those that don't just makes sense. If they made no incentive to chip in, then I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't and the site wouldn't be up for a lot longer. Then what would you do? Where would you go? People have offered alternatives that sound pretty good to me. It's not hard to add a bot in Discord to play music from a playlist you put together. Requiring no expenditure of money.

Thank you so much for a response from the Roll20 Team Cavni, I do have several questions as per your response to help understand the decision making process: Cavni said: ...We have been testing this feature on the Dev Server since December, and we uncapped the data limits for all the testers to collect info on the size of files they wanted to upload. Even with music files, we found that the average file size was 2.6MB.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; While I understand using the Dev Server for testing has the possibility been considered that many or some of those users were only uploading files for &nbsp;the sole purpose of testing uploads rather than fully ran games? Admittedly between several friends and gms I know of (Pro subscribers included) all games were ran on the normal Roll20 servers, none ever touched the Dev Servers. Also based upon using the Dev Servers specifically you are looking at the small niche of paying members who have access to there, not taking into account Plus or Free member's requirements or space allocations. Has there been any talks of monitoring average space usage on the main servers? It's very possible the average was skewed by the lack of activity from the typical Roll20 member. Cavni &nbsp;said: Next, we looked at how users currently use their space on Roll20. We found that less than one percent of free users were currently at (or near) their data cap. That may change with the launch of My Audio, but most free users have plenty of space to play around with adding audio files. We will continue to monitor data usage to see if My Audio substantially changes our users' data needs now that it's live. We want everyone to be able to enjoy multiple games! That's also subject to the same caveat as above, some members only create an account to join games, not play as a game master. Which does account for many users but disregards the many many free users who which to try their hand at being a game master in the future. In fact, this actively encourages having paid GMs going forward simply so they can afford having the space required. (Not a fun look if you are a free member). The other bit this may be skewed by is that many, many, free users do make other accounts simply for the purpose of extra storage space (only heard of as suggestions for getting space in the past). Was there any process to disregard banned accounts, defunct accounts, or joke accounts in these surveys? Some way to examine how much activity an account had to factor in typical space usage? I am not trying to disregard your helpful insights, it's more that I wish to understand the process of these decisions for the different account levels. Once again I understand the difference between a paid account and free account, but the reality is reducing access to space will lead to free accounts having a harder time looking for a GM with the facilities to run a game, much less a GM willing to do it without being paid a buy in. Thank you very much for expediting the My Audio interface, I only fear that there wasn't enough time to factor in all users of the site properly.

Spencer R. said: Free players are losing their minds that they didn't get anything in this update. MAYBE, just MAYBE, a future update will include something for you. You get a pretty good service at the Free level. If you can't pay a few bucks a month, that's a real shame, I get it, but rewarding the people that do pay sooner than those that don't just makes sense. If they made no incentive to chip in, then I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't and the site wouldn't be up for a lot longer. Then what would you do? Where would you go? People have offered alternatives that sound pretty good to me. It's not hard to add a bot in Discord to play music from a playlist you put together. Requiring no expenditure of money. Stop. No. Free players are not "Losing their minds". Actually, from what I've seen here, people are raising their concerns rather evenly, so pulling out a strawman right there is just bad form. Good service? Debatable. The layering system is still a mess, rooms lag severely, and free users lack several features. Which as I have said before, I'm fine with. It's free. I wouldn't call it "Good", though - functional. There are much better ways to make people chip in. Not doing anything for free users - not even a token effort, was not something done out of necessity. It was opportunistic. You are aware of this. And there are absolutely alternatives. They, however, add a layer of inconvenience and lack of control that the previous music player provided. You re also aware of this. And this is something we had up until now, and was essentially quickly removed. And frankly, people tend to stay in r20 because it's really, really awkward to pause a campaign there and resume it in another service.

Is there any way to take the fan burst&nbsp;audio files and somehow drop them over to my audio so we don't lose them? I am starting a game that is very thematic and the collection of music for various parts was kind of a large part of the immersion. Would like to keep those songs if possible

Cavni said: There's a lot of good discussion going on here and I thank you all for it! Allow me to clear up as much as I can. Our first priority with the release of My Audio was to get a working audio solution in place before Fanburst closes on February 25. We have been testing this feature on the Dev Server since December, and we uncapped the data limits for all the testers to collect info on the size of files they wanted to upload. Even with music files, we found that the average file size was 2.6MB. With this information, we calculated that a user with 100MB of data could upload 30+ songs and still have 20MB left over for other uploads. (It may be important to some folks to understand that Marketplace purchases are stored by Roll20, so any tokens and maps you've gotten there are not counting into your storage cap.) We estimated that's enough to run three or four fully-featured games as a free user. Next, we looked at how users currently use their space on Roll20. We found that less than one percent of free users were currently at (or near) their data cap. That may change with the launch of My Audio, but most free users have plenty of space to play around with adding audio files. We will continue to monitor data usage to see if My Audio substantially changes our users' data needs now that it's live. We want everyone to be able to enjoy multiple games! Many folks have suggested various streaming services as an alternative. In addition to Incompetech, Tabletop Audio, and Battlebards - which will remain available - we will continue to investigate other services. Nothing has been ruled out, but these possible alternatives would not be available before Fanburst shuts down on February 25. Meanwhile, we have reached out to Fanburst directly to determine what if anything can be done to make this process easier for those who used to rely on their service. What about doing, as I have suggested, a one time payment to give a boost to people that like me cannot afford a monthly subscription? People are willing to give this site support, not just in "theory" but with our very real and tangible cash. However, some of us cannot afford the current rates. A one time payment for minimal yet substantial improvements could turn all of the free users into paying clients. We cannot give much but that doesn't mean we cannot at least show our support for the site. Furthermore, I agree with the points made by Swad above: we are not "losing our minds", we simply want to be accounted for. It is unfair to claim that just because we are free users we cannot criticize or voice our opinion, especially when we are trying to be reasonable with what we need as DMs and players.

I agree that free users should be bumped up. 300 mb at minimum, I'd say. Even just going to 200 would be better than sitting at 100 still. As a Pro user, I for one would much prefer free users even get 500 mb. I know you are probably at least partially (though admittedly secondarily probably :P) concerned that pay users might get upset that free users get a bump, but given you're already giving a bump to us, I wouldn't be remotely upset about it and I doubt hardly any other pay users would be either. Even from a business perspective, I honestly feel that upping the storage limit will help attract more customers. Consider this scenario, which is going to become very common I think: User tries roll20. Sees cool music features. Gets moody about having to constantly manage their files now that music is a pain in the butt for them because upload instead of Soundcloud. PRESENT free users also get even more annoyed at this, knowing how things used to be. People end up moody, and less likely to subscribe. vs my proposal: Raising the cap and you get more consumers subbing because good will and wanting even more space, even if you lose people who are impulsive and/or desperate for more and more willing to pay. Honestly if you are too far in EITHER direction, you lose money, when it comes to this. 500 might be a bit too high. Really, there's a balance between the two imo, and you're not striking the right balance to make the most money even, much less provide a truly good service to free members. I'd also argue that the financial gains of raising the cap will become more evident in the long than the short time, because it is going to foster good will with the VERY customers you WANT to court - free users! I upgraded to Pro FROM Free because not only did I think it was worth it, but I found you guys very reasonable about things with the free stuff and I was able to try out the service effectively and have quite a lot of fun with it! Music was and IS integral to me as a GM though, and to every GM I know that runs online tabletop. And if I had to go through the hassle of juggling music files and maps and everything else as much as I'd have needed to in order to have 9-10 songs up per session, I might have become disenfranchised enough with your business to not invest in the monthly, and looked elsewhere. Anyway I hope your bean counters have fully considered stuff like this. I highly whoever makes this kind of high level decision to reconsider, as I'm not sure they have the right approach here for the business, much less their consumers. Still adore roll20, by the way. I'm not furious or anything, or leaving the platform. But I am a bit disappointed and concerned. Thankful about my cap increase as a Pro user though, so thank you!

Tom said: This is a good solution. I'm sure Roll20 was/is expensive to develop and maintain. Storage space isn't cheap. I just don't get the entitlement of people claiming they deserve 3 GBs (or whatever) of space as a FREE user. Thank you for calling bullshit, Tom. I've been a Pro player for at least 5 years now. I literally played for free for one game as a player and signed on. But somehow, the freebies out there have this entitled sense of victimization because someone told them they don't get the same service as people who literally pay to provide this service to the free players. Why should we evangelize free players right to the same service as paid players? Never in my life have I ever heard someone say "Instead of telling us to pay if we want more, why not tell the business owner how important, deserving and special we are to your service?"&nbsp; Absolutely unbelievable.&nbsp; Honestly, I would not miss half the free players on this service. Let the whiners quit, and the paying players can divvy up their bandwidth and storage.&nbsp; I should start charging whiny free players to play in my games.&nbsp; Ridiculous.&nbsp; Thanks Roll20, for the memory bump. I don't stick up for you guys very often, but on this one I've got your back.

John K. said: Tom said: This is a good solution. I'm sure Roll20 was/is expensive to develop and maintain. Storage space isn't cheap. I just don't get the entitlement of people claiming they deserve 3 GBs (or whatever) of space as a FREE user. Thank you for calling bullshit, Tom. I've been a Pro player for at least 5 years now. I literally played for free for one game as a player and signed on. But somehow, the freebies out there have this entitled sense of victimization because someone told them they don't get the same service as people who literally pay to provide this service to the free players. Why should we evangelize free players right to the same service as paid players? Never in my life have I ever heard someone say "Instead of telling us to pay if we want more, why not tell the business owner how important, deserving and special we are to your service?"&nbsp; Absolutely unbelievable.&nbsp; Honestly, I would not miss half the free players on this service. Let the whiners quit, and the paying players can divvy up their bandwidth and storage.&nbsp; I should start charging whiny free players to play in my games.&nbsp; Ridiculous.&nbsp; Thanks Roll20, for the memory bump. I don't stick up for you guys very often, but on this one I've got your back. It's catering to this kind of toxic attitude that results in companies like roll20 making less money than they could. I know you said gigs, and people who want THAT much, granted, it's too much. But to go on the attack like that makes a company worry that even giving 200-400 would trigger folks. And it really, REALLY shouldn't. And if anyone here IS triggered by just 200 mb more (not saying the guy I'm replying to is, he very well might not be!), you REALLY need to reconsider and think it through more. They'll make more money if they have a better rep, and make better impressions to free users (while still making them want to sub). Trying to reduce frustrations for people WHO ALREADY PAY while not trying to reduce any frustration at ALL for free users? People they WANT to turn into PAY users? If the limit is so low for Plus and Pro members that they're worried about them STAYING around even after their often-heavy investment in this product, why the heck are they showing no concern through their actions about pleasing and bringing NEW (free) customers into the fold? Not gigs, but another 100-200 mb is&nbsp; absolutely needed here. This is a very unwise business decision and I hope they quickly add some space to the free accounts, or they are going to make a LOT less money than they could, and maybe even start hurting financially. I don't want that - as I love this service.

Obviously the infrastructure isnt there to make this viable, but what if free PLAYERS can allocate 25mb chunks of storage to their free GMs (or the game specifically, not tied to the GM)&nbsp; Like four players can allocate 25mb each to their gm for a +100.&nbsp; Or one player does two chunks for 50mb total etc

Jake M. said: Obviously the infrastructure isnt there to make this viable, but what if free PLAYERS can allocate 25mb chunks of storage to their FREE gms.&nbsp; Like four players can allocate 25mb each to their gm for a +100.&nbsp; Or one player does two chunks for 50mb total etc That's a brilliant idea. But to play devil's advocate, it's still going to result in more storage capacity used at the end of the day. Though it won't be as readily used probably, and limited by the number of players in a game. Hm. That SAID, I love the idea, it might limit the extra use enough to make 100-200 free mb more viable for them, which would in turn encourage free users. It's important that free users have a sense of some degree of fairness from roll20, or there's going to be a dip in new subscribers. And we don't want that. I think your solution has definite merit and roll20 should consider it as an option.

Devily said: What about doing, as I have suggested, a one time payment to give a boost to people that like me cannot afford a monthly subscription? People are willing to give this site support, not just in "theory" but with our very real and tangible cash. However, some of us cannot afford the current rates. A one time payment for minimal yet substantial improvements could turn all of the free users into paying clients. We cannot give much but that doesn't mean we cannot at least show our support for the site. Furthermore, I agree with the points made by Swad above: we are not "losing our minds", we simply want to be accounted for. It is unfair to claim that just because we are free users we cannot criticize or voice our opinion, especially when we are trying to be reasonable with what we need as DMs and players. I mean if you guys really want you could always gift your GM a subscription since they are the only ones who I believe (could be wrong though) could really benefit from becoming a plus or pro member. I get that sometimes money is tight but maybe if the responsibility was shared between you and your friends it would be managable? Instead of 60 dollars a year for plus it could be split up by 4 or 5 people so everyone is only investing 12 to 15 dollars yearly. Everyone just agrees to skip getting fast food meals 3 times a year or something else which the minimal ammount&nbsp;of money can come from and then everyone wins. Granted though, that is if you have players willing to assist you on the matter. But if they aren't I'd argue you need to find a new group of players imo

Nolan T. J. said: Closing piracy loopholes which, in addition to breaking our Terms of Service, enable recurring malicious practices that break individual users' games and strain the Roll20 system. What are some specific loopholes you're closing? What are the malicious practices you are referring to? I'd love some more details about this so I can do a better job of complying with the new regulations.

John K. said: Swad said: Spencer R. said: Free players are losing their minds that they didn't get anything in this update. MAYBE, just MAYBE, a future update will include something for you. You get a pretty good service at the Free level. If you can't pay a few bucks a month, that's a real shame, I get it, but rewarding the people that do pay sooner than those that don't just makes sense. If they made no incentive to chip in, then I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't and the site wouldn't be up for a lot longer. Then what would you do? Where would you go? People have offered alternatives that sound pretty good to me. It's not hard to add a bot in Discord to play music from a playlist you put together. Requiring no expenditure of money. Stop. No. Free players are not "Losing their minds". Actually, from what I've seen here, people are raising their concerns rather evenly, so pulling out a strawman right there is just bad form. Good service? Debatable. The layering system is still a mess, rooms lag severely, and free users lack several features. Which as I have said before, I'm fine with. It's free. I wouldn't call it "Good", though - functional. There are much better ways to make people chip in. Not doing anything for free users - not even a token effort, was not something done out of necessity. It was opportunistic. You are aware of this. And there are absolutely alternatives. They, however, add a layer of inconvenience and lack of control that the previous music player provided. You re also aware of this. And this is something we had up until now, and was essentially quickly removed. And frankly, people tend to stay in r20 because it's really, really awkward to pause a campaign there and resume it in another service. And please stop excusing your cheapness for a logical arguement. This isn't up for debate. Pay for the service and you can have whatever you want. Don't and you are shit out of luck. Welcome to.life in the real world. Try walking into Dairy Queen on free Ice Cream day and complaining about the tiny cone you get. Tell what happens when you tey to start a revolution because your FREE ice cream cone wasn't the same size as the kid that paid 5 bucks for it. Ask your Debate 101 teacher how complaining that a free service is screwing you because you didn't get the same benefits as the paying player did makes any logical sense. Strawman... my ass... You are "losing your minds" aka behaving like self entitled children. Give it a rest and enjoy the free service you are graciously provided, for free.&nbsp; Debate TEACHER? I've got personal, professional training and experience in debate, so I'd say I outrank a "teacher" even on that one. ;) And you're building a strawman and refusing to acknowledge it because you're getting overly emotional about this subject. Calm down. The vast majority of people here are not asking for gigs, and by trying to insist on that you're building a case against a large group of people that simply don't exist. The content of an argument matters too, not just the generic idea of what people are asking for. You're constructing your argument in a highly emotional, specious manner that vilifies your opposition. Let's keep the villains in our campaigns! :)

John K. said: Tom said: This is a good solution. I'm sure Roll20 was/is expensive to develop and maintain. Storage space isn't cheap. I just don't get the entitlement of people claiming they deserve 3 GBs (or whatever) of space as a FREE user. Thank you for calling bullshit, Tom. I've been a Pro player for at least 5 years now. I literally played for free for one game as a player and signed on. But somehow, the freebies out there have this entitled sense of victimization because someone told them they don't get the same service as people who literally pay to provide this service to the free players. Why should we evangelize free players right to the same service as paid players? Never in my life have I ever heard someone say "Instead of telling us to pay if we want more, why not tell the business owner how important, deserving and special we are to your service?"&nbsp; Absolutely unbelievable.&nbsp; Honestly, I would not miss half the free players on this service. Let the whiners quit, and the paying players can divvy up their bandwidth and storage.&nbsp; I should start charging whiny free players to play in my games.&nbsp; Ridiculous.&nbsp; Thanks Roll20, for the memory bump. I don't stick up for you guys very often, but on this one I've got your back. You are being dishonest to absurd levels. Free players are NOT asking for 3 gigas of free space, to even imply we are is preposterous. What we are asking is to at least triple or even double our current space because some of us occasionally pay for extra services, even though we can't ALWAYS afford them. This kind of attitude is absolutely unbelievable, you are defending Roll20 even though nobody is attacking them. We are voicing our concerns, we are proposing alternative ways to support the site, we are asking to give us more room to continue our hobby and passion. I have 40mb of content I have drawn myself from scratch , specifically because I cannot afford to buy token packs for characters or maps, everything I do is drawn by me, which may not mean much since I am not that great of an artist but it means something, it should at least show that I am not a lazy freeloader but someone that is trying their hardest to keep afloat in spite of being unable to fork out cash for his every need. I cannot afford a subscription, if I could I would but I do not have the money for it, hence why I have staying on this site for so long: I knew that even with my money shortage if I put effort and used my creativity I could have fun, join groups and make friends. The current business that Roll20 has directly impact my ability to do so. Am I demanding that the owners of Roll20 give in to what I want? Of course not. What I am doing and what every other free user is doing here is asking, pleading and begging to throw us a bone and help us continue enjoying our hobby in spite of lacking the means to pay the current payment methods put in place. I am 100% sure that if a single payment was offered to the free users, as opposed to a monthly subscription, so we could support the site with minimal bonuses (say 500mb or so) I guarantee that at the very least half the current free users would jump aboard and take that deal. We are not demanding for special treatment, we are begging to be helped.

Icefox said: John K. said: Tom said: This is a good solution. I'm sure Roll20 was/is expensive to develop and maintain. Storage space isn't cheap. I just don't get the entitlement of people claiming they deserve 3 GBs (or whatever) of space as a FREE user. Thank you for calling bullshit, Tom. I've been a Pro player for at least 5 years now. I literally played for free for one game as a player and signed on. But somehow, the freebies out there have this entitled sense of victimization because someone told them they don't get the same service as people who literally pay to provide this service to the free players. Why should we evangelize free players right to the same service as paid players? Never in my life have I ever heard someone say "Instead of telling us to pay if we want more, why not tell the business owner how important, deserving and special we are to your service?"&nbsp; Absolutely unbelievable.&nbsp; Honestly, I would not miss half the free players on this service. Let the whiners quit, and the paying players can divvy up their bandwidth and storage.&nbsp; I should start charging whiny free players to play in my games.&nbsp; Ridiculous.&nbsp; Thanks Roll20, for the memory bump. I don't stick up for you guys very often, but on this one I've got your back. It's catering to this kind of toxic attitude that results in companies like roll20 making less money than they could. I know you said gigs, and people who want THAT much, granted, it's too much. But to go on the attack like that makes a company worry that even giving 200-400 would trigger folks. And it really, REALLY shouldn't. And if anyone here IS triggered by just 200 mb more (not saying the guy I'm replying to is, he very well might not be!), you REALLY need to reconsider and think it through more. They'll make more money if they have a better rep, and make better impressions to free users (while still making them want to sub). Trying to reduce frustrations for people WHO ALREADY PAY while not trying to reduce any frustration at ALL for free users? A very unwise business decision. I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that the majority of accounts on Roll20 are free.&nbsp; I'm really confused how having to purchase 3-4 times their current amount of server storage space (with the bandwidth for streaming music and animated images) for those accounts is a a wise business practice.&nbsp;

Kraynic said: Icefox said: John K. said: Tom said: This is a good solution. I'm sure Roll20 was/is expensive to develop and maintain. Storage space isn't cheap. I just don't get the entitlement of people claiming they deserve 3 GBs (or whatever) of space as a FREE user. Thank you for calling bullshit, Tom. I've been a Pro player for at least 5 years now. I literally played for free for one game as a player and signed on. But somehow, the freebies out there have this entitled sense of victimization because someone told them they don't get the same service as people who literally pay to provide this service to the free players. Why should we evangelize free players right to the same service as paid players? Never in my life have I ever heard someone say "Instead of telling us to pay if we want more, why not tell the business owner how important, deserving and special we are to your service?"&nbsp; Absolutely unbelievable.&nbsp; Honestly, I would not miss half the free players on this service. Let the whiners quit, and the paying players can divvy up their bandwidth and storage.&nbsp; I should start charging whiny free players to play in my games.&nbsp; Ridiculous.&nbsp; Thanks Roll20, for the memory bump. I don't stick up for you guys very often, but on this one I've got your back. It's catering to this kind of toxic attitude that results in companies like roll20 making less money than they could. I know you said gigs, and people who want THAT much, granted, it's too much. But to go on the attack like that makes a company worry that even giving 200-400 would trigger folks. And it really, REALLY shouldn't. And if anyone here IS triggered by just 200 mb more (not saying the guy I'm replying to is, he very well might not be!), you REALLY need to reconsider and think it through more. They'll make more money if they have a better rep, and make better impressions to free users (while still making them want to sub). Trying to reduce frustrations for people WHO ALREADY PAY while not trying to reduce any frustration at ALL for free users? A very unwise business decision. I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly) that the majority of accounts on Roll20 are free.&nbsp; I'm really confused how having to purchase 3-4 times their current amount of server storage space (with the bandwidth for streaming music and animated images) for those accounts is a a wise business practice.&nbsp; Because most of those accounts aren't even using those gigs because they're players. That alone is going to reduce it a lot more than you may think on the surface. We're not talking accounts here, we're talking active campaigns over a period of time. If they manage things carefully there, I'd think they could be fine. Also I think you underestimate just how much more business "good faith" practices can create. But that's a possible difference of base opinion between us that could be difficult or impossible to resolve, sadly. Totally acknowledge that I don't see the numbers though, only the roll20 higher ups do, so without access to that I can't be sure. But I think this is likely a mistake here. At least in terms of long-term growth, anyway.

John K. said: And please stop excusing your cheapness for a logical arguement. This isn't up for debate. Pay for the service and you can have whatever you want. Don't and you are shit out of luck. Welcome to.life in the real world. Try walking into Dairy Queen on free Ice Cream day and complaining about the tiny cone you get. Tell what happens when you tey to start a revolution because your FREE ice cream cone wasn't the same size as the kid that paid 5 bucks for it. Ask your Debate 101 teacher how complaining that a free service is screwing you because you didn't get the same benefits as the paying player did makes any logical sense. Strawman... my ass... You are "losing your minds" aka behaving like self entitled children. Give it a rest and enjoy the free service you are graciously provided, for free.&nbsp; Everyone is attempting to enjoy it, the issue is that Pro and Plus are getting more and more for absolutely no more cost to them monthly/yearly. Despite the fact that giving 1-2GB extra is a vast impact on the server load vs. a 200-100mb increase for free users. Nobody is asking for very much for free users other than the capability to use the features free users have been given. Without more space the ability to upload animated images and music is dangled in front of free users like a carrot they can scarcely take a nibble out of. Nobody is attacking Roll20 directly, only that free users have an adequate amount of space to try/use the new features pushed out to them, that is not much to ask.

It's not, it's a net loss, thus the reason they didnt do it. Many dont seem to understand the expenditure associated with it. Some have suggested a one time purchase to expand their storage and it is viable as many MMO's use a similar bargain. Buy some official content, say 5 dollars worth or more and it unlocks extra character slots, bonus items, etc. In roll20's case it could simply be a data storage rider. Buy a product from the marketplace for 5.99 or more and receive 50mb storage as a bonus.

Meta K. said: John K. said: And please stop excusing your cheapness for a logical arguement. This isn't up for debate. Pay for the service and you can have whatever you want. Don't and you are shit out of luck. Welcome to.life in the real world. Try walking into Dairy Queen on free Ice Cream day and complaining about the tiny cone you get. Tell what happens when you tey to start a revolution because your FREE ice cream cone wasn't the same size as the kid that paid 5 bucks for it. Ask your Debate 101 teacher how complaining that a free service is screwing you because you didn't get the same benefits as the paying player did makes any logical sense. Strawman... my ass... You are "losing your minds" aka behaving like self entitled children. Give it a rest and enjoy the free service you are graciously provided, for free.&nbsp; Everyone is attempting to enjoy it, the issue is that Pro and Plus are getting more and more for absolutely no more cost to them monthly/yearly. Despite the fact that giving 1-2GB extra is a vast impact on the server load vs. a 200-100mb increase for free users. Nobody is asking for very much for free users other than the capability to use the features free users have been given. Without more space the ability to upload animated images and music is dangled in front of free users like a carrot they can scarcely take a nibble out of. Nobody is attacking Roll20 directly, only that free users have an adequate amount of space to try/use the new features pushed out to them, that is not much to ask. What this guy said. And by OFFERING MORE of a nibble on that carrot (and a limited one! Only 100 mb or 200 mb - debatable!), they're going to encourage more sales. It makes no sense to me to integrate a feature that is going to have such an impact on impressions of the service that Pro and Plus users get HUGE boosts, and then not even offer a small one to free users - who are, honestly, your most IMPORTANT demographic, at the end of the day, in terms of LONG-term growth.

Screw this s**t. This site just goes from bad to worse. Cancelling my account and moving over to FG.

Free users should not be complaining, its free. Everyone should get a subscription of some type to help Roll20 become even better.

Entropomancer said: It's not, it's a net loss, thus the reason they didnt do it. Many dont seem to understand the expenditure associated with it. Some have suggested a one time purchase to expand their storage and it is viable as many MMO's use a similar bargain. Buy some official content, say 5 dollars worth or more and it unlocks extra character slots, bonus items, etc. In roll20's case it could simply be a data storage rider. Buy a product from the marketplace for 5.99 or more and receive 50mb storage as a bonus. If you are correct and estimates of how many more customers they could get in the future with a bit of extra space are accurate, then this could be an alternative. And I'm willing to concede that MAY be accurate. Though not in my personal experience, because I know a lot of people who have been turned off by this and who might stop using the service entirely - two of whom were actually planning to sub once their financial positions got better, but are doubtful now and beginning to look into other services. My experiences there bias me, and maybe make my appraisal unrealistic? Unsure! Anyway that idea has merit. I'd say that is at MINIMUM what they should do, if there is a serious feeling by the big wigs that what we're advocating for isn't financially superior. Rey said: Free users should not be complaining, its free. Everyone should get a subscription of some type to help Roll20 become even better. Unfortunately life isn't that simple. Some people just can't afford it, but could later. And some people are just cheap - but can be convinced to be far less cheap if they feel well-treated. I believe these aren't being considered enough in this decision.

Not here to complain about audio I dunno what you guys have done to optimize performance but journal entries with the same name have become radically borked; they're not changing in with respect to the journal's unique ID anymore and things are getting mixed together stupendously.