Just me or are things moving too slowly?

[Roknar]

I like the idea of talespire, but I can't help but feel updates are rolling out WAY too slow. and the updates we get are just a few new models or tiles, not things like modding or other features that the game really needs if it wants to stay competitive.

[Jector]

Freelook is an often asked and always denied request. Much like importing images, removing mini bases, standee tokens, etc and so on.

[Roknar]

Yes, they seem to have some very weird/antiquated ideas about certain things. They also don't want animations...which is fine and all but half the lights are animated and they did add animations from the start for emotes.

[CULT|icycalm]

I am just thankful they haven't nuked this thread yet. They generally shut down anything they dislike.

[CULT|icycalm]

POSITIVITY TIME: I will tell you the ONE aspect that TaleSpire dominates in, even over otherwise superior competition like Menyr.

Minecraft mechanics.

There's no other VTT where your wizard can blow off individual bricks off a wall, and you can show it in-game. No other VTT where you can build up whole castles brick-by-brick and log-by-log as you cut down a forest to clear space. In Menyr, you will be able to purchase a house on the marketplace, and plonk it down in your town, but you won't be able to modify it. Won't be able to burn ships plank by plank, etc.

That's why TaleSpire will be the only engine capable of powering "The World's Most Interactive Game": https://www.patreon.com/posts/64848977

Granted, no one cares about this except me, because I haven't seen anyone else mention it. So Menyr will dominate. And perhaps some day they'll start selling individual bricks and planks on the marketplace so you can build up everything from scratch.

But for now, and for the foreseeable future, the only VTT to offer full Minecraft mechanics is TaleSpire. Not that Bouncyrock realizes this.

They should hire me as consultant. Hell, they should hire me as director. It's SO easy to turn this trainwreck/sinking ship around. It doesn't even take a lot of work, just vision. And vision is what Bouncyrock lacks. Which makes sense since they're programmers (vision and programming are mutually exclusive qualities).

[Thorncrypt]

Originally posted by Jector:

Scroll up a bit in the dev showcase channel at the discord. https://discord.gg/mJntEJ2kzC

Also, it's up over 7k assets now, IIRC. Just put in some apocalyptic stuff.

looks like the one man dev team is far more effective. I don't mind the voxel look, it has its own charm. I'll buy The Rpg Engine soon when I get the chance.

[Thorncrypt]

Originally posted by CULT|icycalm:

POSITIVITY TIME: I will tell you the ONE aspect that TaleSpire dominates in, even over otherwise superior competition like Menyr.

Minecraft mechanics.

There's no other VTT where your wizard can blow off individual bricks off a wall, and you can show it in-game. No other VTT where you can build up whole castles brick-by-brick and log-by-log as you cut down a forest to clear space. In Menyr, you will be able to purchase a house on the marketplace, and plonk it down in your town, but you won't be able to modify it. Won't be able to burn ships plank by plank, etc.

That's why TaleSpire will be the only engine capable of powering "The World's Most Interactive Game": https://www.patreon.com/posts/64848977

Granted, no one cares about this except me, because I haven't seen anyone else mention it. So Menyr will dominate. And perhaps some day they'll start selling individual bricks and planks on the marketplace so you can build up everything from scratch.

But for now, and for the foreseeable future, the only VTT to offer full Minecraft mechanics is TaleSpire. Not that Bouncyrock realizes this.

They should hire me as consultant. Hell, they should hire me as director. It's SO easy to turn this trainwreck/sinking ship around. It doesn't even take a lot of work, just vision. And vision is what Bouncyrock lacks. Which makes sense since they're programmers (vision and programming are mutually exclusive qualities).

the minecraft-type build mechanics certainly sets talespire apart, and I personally enjoy it in west-march type games where players can upgrade villages, and strongholds.

by the way, when someone googles you, one of the first things they see is a hit piece which alleges that you are a criminal. you may want to contact a lawyer, and get this taken down to protect your reputation.

~with regards

link in question: https://icycalmisacriminal.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/icycalm-is-a-criminal/

[CULT|icycalm]

Ah I am not worried, it works well with girls, they tend to like criminals. The internet is full of all kinds of gossip and rumors.

[Pleby]

Originally posted by CULT|icycalm:

Ah I am not worried, it works well with girls, they tend to like criminals. The internet is full of all kinds of gossip and rumors.

If you wanted to help the development of TaleSpire you wouldn't be so incredibly rude to the devs and act the way you've acting. You're causing more problems than anything else. It's a small team of devs working hard. They've been working around the pandemic and their personal lives. Give them a break and let them figure this stuff out. We should be helping them by giving fair feedback, not berating them.

[CULT|icycalm]

My feedback is the fairest in the world as I have been the world’s foremost art theorist and critic for 17 years. Six months ago the entire TaleSpire community was laughing at me when I was telling them TaleSpire is in trouble and something like Menyr will come out and take Bouncyrock’s lunch, and now Menyr appeared and its KS reached twice what TaleSpire’s did. Top creators like demongund have already announced they are leaving TaleSpire, and others have simply stopped producing new works. Bouncyrock is already feeling the heat, and Menyr isn’t even out yet. Once it’s out, support for TaleSpire will collapse from one day to the next, as everyone becomes entranced by a functioning marketplace full of 10x the content TS puts out, functioning fog-of-war, full animation and first-person movement, easy terrain generation, and many more stunning features. They are even putting VR in while Bouncyrock refuses even a first-person mode. TaleSpire is finished unles Bouncyrock makes radical changes NOW. They probably won’t make them, but I will do my best to help them by explaining—in this forum, until they ban me—all the steps they need to make.

And btw, let me explain something about work/life balance. Bouncyrock has said that one of them ended up in the hospital at some point due to overwork. So they take it as a given that work/life balance is important. But the top people in many fields routinely report that they work obsessively and have NO work/life balance for years on end. It’s one of the most common refrains in the biographies of great men: they’re workaholics. Mankind is competitive, and if you expect to reach the top of any field—let alone remain there for any length of time—by taking it easy, you’re in for a rude surprise. I am not saying that Bouncyrock should kill themselves to stay competitive in the 3D VTT space. It’s too radical a decision to make for me to presume I should have any input in it. All I am doing is explaining to them that greatness requires SACRIFICE: it has always been this way, and it always will. Their treasured project is in crisis, and things are deteriorating fast by every metric. What are they willing to sacrifice to stay on top? Even hiring associates is a sacrifice, or looking for investors etc., sacrifices of income and creative control—yet more sacrifices they don’t appear to be willing to make.

I wouldn’t be going to all this trouble writing all this stuff—even in the face of the sheer rejection of my views by the community and Bouncyrock itself—if I didn’t love the project. I will be posting more threads shortly with all my suggestions. They are relatively easy to develop, with massive payoff in terms of the attractiveness of the project to creators and GMs, who will ultimately determine which projects succeed and which fail.

[Saul Goodman]

thank you very much

[Thorncrypt]

another competitor that has gone under the radar is "one more multiverse" which received 17.5 million private funding. it's a pixel art vtt which has customizable character sheets, market assets you can import with one click, automated combat, animated spells, a wiki, official support for humble wood and blades in the dark, it's free, no subscription, and asset packs are one time purchase by the DM and everyone at the table can benefit from them.
this is like the renaissance of online play, having so many options is nice.

it's sad to hear that demongund is going to leave talespire, builders like him, istalri astra, and brother hanan inspire people in the community. I hope baggers and ree find a way to stay in touch with the notable figures in the talespire community so they don't start leaving. ultimately, I want talespire to succeed and for that it's important to have the big names in the community stay.

[Starwight/ttv]

Originally posted by Jector:

This is the biggest reason I left. A majority of the dev updates are "we fixed this small bug" or "look at what we've been working on for the last 4 weeks but haven't finished". Some are saying this is a sign of fast and open development, but that is absolutely not what it looks like from what I've seen of other devs. Compared to where I ended up, TS development is a snail's pace and very closed off from the users. It's unfortunate as I really want them to do well, but they're going to get outstripped by other properties at this rate.

"from what I've seen from other devs."

You must not have seen many other devs then

[CULT|icycalm]

One More Multiverse is 2D, and ugly. Doesn't matter how many features it has: it is massively inferior to TaleSpire, and will remain so.

TaleSpire's competitors are Menyr and One D&D. All the other 3D VTTs are ugly crap.

[Roknar]

impressive feature list for the multiverse one, but the pixel art thing is not really for me either. And indeed, being able to build/destroy on the fly is definitely a big plus for talespire. But all these competitors really highlight the slow pace of development. Talespire has a really strong foundation. I mean just look at the maps they create with what little assets we have. They're gorgeous.

I really would like talespire to succeed but they are lagging behind something fierce. And I find, often, the reasons they give are pretty weak. I feel like they are really suffering from trying to make a"perfect" game, that meets THEIR vision. That has not succeeded...ever...anywhere. Well I guess it depends on how you define success...looking at you Star citien -_-

They "just" seem to have a problem with priorities and once people leave....you can pretty much assume they are gone for good :(

[CULT|icycalm]

If Istallri moves to Menyr, can you imagine anyone sticking with TaleSpire?

That's how easily TaleSpire can be destroyed. All it takes is a couple of top creators to jump ship.

Which means that the best move to make is 1) Satisfy the creators, and 2) Even better, try to lock them down to your platform. I would outright HIRE Istallri to pump out sets every month. And I would charge for the sets, so that Istallri would get a salary and be incentivized to stay.

LOTS more things that can be done in this direction, and I will sit down and detail them soon. But Bouncyrock will do none of them, or at best they will do too little too late.