Also, things get missed in chatrooms. Another issue, is that here on the forums, the moderators can better control what happens here. As a general rule, we never have conflict, spamming is less than minimum (unless we are spamming new maps!) There is a better control over what is posted, so the atmosphere stays pleasant. While we may have some young ones, most of us here are over 30 (most of us here are over 40!). We know how to control ourselves.
Anyone can join a chatroom. And chatrooms all too easily get distracted from the purpose they were created to serve. Here on the forums we are focused on mapmaking, and working with the profantasy products, and most or all of the conversations stay on that purpose. We also know that, even though it may take a few hours, or a few days, if we need assistance on something, eventually somone will answer our questions, it's just a matter of time. There's just no guarantee of that in a chatroom. Help requests tend to get ignored in the 'grand' scheme of conversations.
Discord offers a lot of advantages over a forum -- text chats are saved, voice chats are possible, images don't need to be hosted, available on any device, excellent moderation tools. However it does change communication from discrete threads to broader topic groups. For this site it would compliment, not replace. All Discord groups I am a member of require permissions to be set to allow posting; just like this forum.
I'd recommend looking at some Discord sites to see what it has to offer. Each group uses it differently. Some are very structured with numerous topics, others focus on hands-on guidance, others use it to build community. It depends on what the users and the moderators want. And it's free.
JimP, I'm trying to do some helpful saves on good information, but the discord chat doesn't move very fast. Most of it is answered right away.
Ladie, good points. Anyone can join but people can removed just as easily. I would disagree on the distracted part though. If it's a discord dedicated to CC3, it would stay on topic or things get deleted. I agree things get solved here but like you said can be days. This may be for smaller things. Thanks for input.
AEIOU, I made and run a few discord groups. The link above is the one I started for a cc3 help channel. So far 5 people are in it and I personally have learned a ton within an hour of it going up.
Thanks all for input, I think it just depends on what you are use to. Feel free to jump in and see if it is helpful to you.
Hm... these kids and their newfangled interweb thingamabobs...! LOL! I use some chats for purely social reasons. Not a huge fan of them for a number of reasons. For my ProFantasy/CC3/FT/etc. issues I'm quite content here. But if others find such a thing useful and it doesn't in any way negatively impact ProFantasy, then have at it!
I do prefer the forum, but as a chat service, discord is quite reasonable, and since you can read backlogs from before you joined, you can get information that was discussed when you weren't present. But then again, that is true for this place too. Sometimes it can be helpful to engage in a live chat between participants rather than wait on an answer in the forum though, although in many cases it is just as useful to have that waiting time to give everybody time to read/comment, since most people won't be online simultaneously anyway, forum or chat. And things tend to stand out more here over time, with the possibility to have a dedicated thread for each map you post for example. Not dissing discord though, I don't use it much, but there are definitely situations out there where it is more elegant than a forum. Personally, I probably won't use it, but just as the facebook group, it is an alternative means of communication for those who like it.
Posted By: AEIOUDiscord offers a lot of advantages over a forum -- text chats are saved, voice chats are possible, images don't need to be hosted, available on any device, excellent moderation tools.
Uh, I am unsure what of those, except voice chat, this forum doesn't offer? Everything you post is saved, forum supports attachments for images (discord allows a bit larger files than we do here, they cap it at 8MB, but the setting here isn't a forum software limitation, it is limited intentionally to allow upload of recently sized images without causing too much of a bandwidth usage for visitors with bandwidth limits or slow connections), any browser can access it (which is basically any device), and we have moderation tools (obviously not the same as for a chat system, since needs are different).
This forum works quite well. It has a solid community. And questions can usually be answered by a search rather than a new post.
My brief list of features for Discord should have been a separate sentence responding to some of the things LadieStorm pointed out as necessary. What I meant by it was that it has many of the same features that we (yes, even lurkers like me) already find useful. While it also adds functionality, it also has other things it doesn't do well like separate threads for each topic.
ScottA curmudgeonly mumbled:Hm... these kids and their newfangled interweb thingamabobs...
Nerd Alert: Technically chat, specifically IRC (Internet Relay Chat) predates the Web (and thus Web forums) by years. Of course, before IRC there was Usenet, and BBSes (which are pretty much direct ancestors to Web forums...).
I barely have time for the forum so I doubt I'll personally use the Discord chat, but it sounds like a nice supplement to the forum. I do think it's too bad, though, that the knowledge captured on these new supplementary outlets remains separate from the accumulated knowledge base here. Oh, well.
Yup. IRC. but I preferred the email listservs. I could join a bitnet email list back in the 1980s.
I prefer Web forums over all the old stuff. I've lost emails when computers crashed. At least here I can print to pdf. And back that up to one of my spare drives.
which is probably why I seem to have a concern with chatrooms! lol. But seriously, I wanted to point out something that wouldn't change with being in the chatrooms as opposed to here in the forum: time differences. More specifically, time zone differences.
See, we here all live in different time zones. That's one of the reasons why it takes a long time to get answers, sometimes. For example, Monsen, LoopySue, and Ralf, they all live in Europe ie. England (or there abouts). Now I live in the US, East Coast. At this very moment, for me, it is 1:47 pm, in the afternoon. But those people living in England are either 4 hours ahead of me, or 6 hours ahead of me. So it is either 5:47 or 7:47 pm for them. Some others live here in the US, but are out on the West Coast, like California, Washington State. It's 10:47 am for those people.
I am a home maker, so I am home almost all day. But I babysit, sometimes, in my home. I can't work on maps, or be online for a prolonged period of time, if I have toddlers running around here. When my sons get home, I have a little help, and can maybe steal some moments away. But then I have dinner to prepare, etc... so most of my mapping is done in the evening, or late at night. So let's say it's 7:30 - 8:00 pm where I am here. It's either 12:30am or 1:00 am there! Most people are in bed asleep at that time! The people on the West Coast are just getting home from work, and are preparing dinner. And I'm the midpoint (roughly) between the two time zones. What if it's someone out on the West Coast that has the questions, and someone in England has the answers? That's 7 -9 hours difference! 6pm in California is 1am- 3am.
Now, granted, if someone popped in to the chat room to ask specific questions, they would likely find someone there... but would there be enough people in the chat room at anyone time to get the answers you need, when you need them? That's a lot harder to predict.
My estimate for the time, I am very possibly wrong, is New Zealand, US ( which has 6 time zones), England, Norway, and Germany.
When the Europe folks are asleep, some of the rest of us might be awake. But they will be awake when I'm asleep. And I don't know everything about this software.
I make average maps... and some in here make Fantastic Maps !
I still find searching in here to be good. Of course, I am top subject starter because I don't always find what I"m looking for. Then someone posts 'Jim did you look here ? ' And they post a link on something I missed.
JimP guesstimated:My estimate for the time, I am very possibly wrong, is New Zealand, US ( which has 6 time zones), England, Norway, and Germany.
A) I think Germany and Norway are both in the same time zone (CET). In my experience Monsen doesn't sleep, or he only sleeps for about 1.5 hrs or something.
For some reason I thought some one here was in NZ. When my ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean we didn't move our clocks each time zone. They did it 2 or 3 times zones at a time. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.
I agree with the others here. This forum performs all the functions that we need. Having used discord heavily for another game, I am unaware of anything it can offer that we don't already have. More importantly though, it has the huge drawback of splitting the focus. If questions/answers/comments are in two different places, then it requires twice as much work to search for what you are looking for.
Couldn't disagree more. This is a horrible forum. The lack of a ui means a whole heap of people never post pictures / links properly. It's very bare bones. The fact that you need to host the pictures prior to being able to link to them from here means there are people who never figure out how to do that. Just getting the formatting on this post right took the use of code. I'm not a fan of Discord either though. It's great for voice chats during computer games but it's not what I would use for something like CC3+.
I'm a Facebook guy and although I fully respect that there are people that will never trust the platform it's hard to argue the value that it brings.
We are getting so many people join The Campaign Cartographer 3+ Facebook User Group. 259 at last count and we are seeing a very diverse range of people joining. There are people there just looking to see if the tool is right for them, brand new users and then the more experienced users. It has been a very positive experience IMO largely due to the nature of the features available. There are always more people watching FB than there are people monitoring the forums. The conversation can be quite active. The big feature that helps though is the ability to paste a picture straight from your clip-board into a response. New guys who are struggling with something can simply take a screen-shop and paste into a response letting everyone else see what the issue is. The people offering support to the new users can paste screenshots with their instructions to better support the new users. The nature of CC3+ means this is happening quite a bit and the speed of response and in some cases resolution is greatly increased over the forums.
Of course there are people here that are not in the Facebook group so we are still directing people here to use the forum search feature and to engage with some of the very experienced users. Aka you guys
In this day and age I feel it's a mistake for a company to not have a Facebook presence especially in an industry like the table-top rpg industry. I would challenge that a huge % of CC3+ new customers are coming from Facebook.
Well, whether we like it or not, this is the official forum, so it clearly won't go away or be replaced. Facebook, discord, etc, each has its own pros and cons, and it's good to look at them. I see no harm in people creating a place for CC3 in diverse communities/social media sites; however the more there are, the less people will be in all of them, and the more confusing it may become for new users. Additionally, we know this forum won't go away until/unless ProFantasy "goes down"; however other "pages" may disappear if the person that created it decides he's no longer interested, or gets angry at something/one, etc. My suggestion: let's welcome new sites/communities, but let's try to keep information shared across, in the event one or more of them disappears.
i have found that on the facebook page....a multitude of questions that are being asked are EASILY found here by just doing a simple search - so to say that it is "better" on facebook isn't necessarily true - well, actually, all it does is filter the answer from another site. MOST of the answers i have given new users, and quite frankly, Josh, yourself I have linked directly to pages already existing within this forum - questions that have already been asked and answered thoroughly. If people don't want to actually put a modicum of effort in and type a simple keyword in the search bar here by instead just asking a question on facebook then it's their prerogative, but to say this forum is horrible is frankly, unfair and a bit putting off - it's just "different". It's pretty easy to post a picture here....simply click the attachments below. What is so horrible about that?
Posted By: daplunkThe fact that you need to host the pictures prior to being able to link to them from here means there are people who never figure out how to do that.
I've seen this posted in several places. This is not true! There is a browse button at the bottom of the forum that lets you upload your maps, including your FCWs if you want to share the actual map file. What do you mean you need to host them? I've never hosted my maps anywhere but here.
I also saw a post on the Discord chat that said it takes weeks to get a response here. Weeks???? LOL
If you don't like forums, fine, use something else, but don't lie about what these forums are like. Lying to get people to join other sites makes you look pretty sad.
Posting pictures is easy here, there is a sticky that provides the instructions on how to do it. The 'Format comments as' has to be in html, not text, for it to work for links. Pictures have an upper limit in pixels.
We used to be on Yahoo Groups. And I liked that over forums, then something about the Yahoo groups changed and forum software improved. For now, forums are the way to go.
Well there you go. I stand corrected. Still it goes to show that a 30+ year old who grew up on forums can spend alot of time here and miss what you call easy features.
And I agree completely that forums have their benefit. The search feature is great. But it's not where the bulk of the user's are spending their time. Forums are no longer where the majority of people and spending the majority of their online presence.
Cc3+ is known as one of the hardest mapping tools to use. It has a ridiculously bad reputation in regards to the learning curve. How do you change that?
Most folks who buy this software do exactly what I did. Tried to use drawing software methods, but this is based on a CAD program called FastCAD.
After I did the tutorials, I have turned out 2,300 maps since I bought CC2. I revamped my Crestar site, and started doing maps in CC3 and now CC3Plus. Thats about 1,200 more maps. I used FT3 to make slightly over 1,200 planet maps for my Traveller site. Along with several smaller sites for Tunnels and Trolls, Wizards' Relm, Mazes and Minotaurs, etc. Not that I'll ever get finished mapping all of that.
So maps can be made with this software. The tutorials and the Tome are very useful.
Software has changed since the late 1980s, where Ctrl-P might mean print on one program, and ctrl-P meant save a file in another program. Standardization has helped greatly.
When I grew up, home comnputers didn't exist. My last job before retirement, I had to take two CompTIA written tests to prove i could fix computers. This after 20 plus years of doing exactly that. Then just before we took the tests, MS-DOS was dropped and Wireless added. I had to learn a big chunk of new stuff. But I did it. And passed with good grades.
I did try, before I found this software, other mapping programs. Most of them allowed zoom in and out, but the scale seemed to change everytime. So I went with CC2. Other folks enjoy the other mapping software they use.
The one thing about the search function is that some of us, me included, don't word the subject line well. I've been thinking about adding more tutorials to my site, but I have no idea when I'll find the time to do any more.
I do host files for others who don't have web sites.
Enough rambling as I can't seem to stay on subject. So I'm going to map.
Posted By: daplunk But it's not where the bulk of the user's are spending their time. Forums are no longer where the majority of people and spending the majority of their online presence.
Cc3+ is known as one of the hardest mapping tools to use. It has a ridiculously bad reputation in regards to the learning curve. How do you change that?
That may be true, for the 'younger crowd' (and I'm sorry to say, but if you are 30 years old, or younger, you are part of the younger crowd, to me, at least!). I personally have 3 facebook accounts. One personal, one for my books, and one for games. I have become so dissillusioned and so sick and tired of the political BS, that with the sole exception of visiting long enough to see the posts my sons are making from time to time, I NEVER log into Facebook. In fact, I can count on 1 hand how many times I've logged into facebook in the past two years.
When I'm not doing research, I spend most of my time online either here, or in the Cartographer's Guild.
As for changing the 'bad reputation' of CC3+ and it's learning curve? I thought we were already doing that. There are the guides with each individual product. There's the Tome of Ultimate Mapping, which breaks down and walks you through many of the basic, and more advanced functions. There are Youtube video tutorials, and pdf tutorials for specific techniques and effects. And there are the forums, here, where you can ask just about any question and get it answered, or at least be directed to where the answer is located.
The only true issue I can see, is the 'instant gratification syndrome' as I like to call it. With every site nowdays having online chat, and automated response, everyone seems to expect to get what they want, when they want it. They don't want to wait for it, and more importantly, they don't want to work for it. I will admit, I've been bad at that sometimes myself. But I'm forced to remember something my Great Granddaddy use to tell me. "If something's worth doing, it's worth taking the time to do it right."
Totally agree LadieStorm. Only thing that needs improvement here, IMHO, is a search capability thet searches for topics better, despite the often poorly named headings (put on by users!)
I'm just trying to provide a quicker real time chat function for people who need help. I've learned a shit ton from a few of the people who have joined in so far. It's a supplement not a replacement anyways.
Comments
With forums, I can look up old posts and the current ones don't vanish.
Anyone can join a chatroom. And chatrooms all too easily get distracted from the purpose they were created to serve. Here on the forums we are focused on mapmaking, and working with the profantasy products, and most or all of the conversations stay on that purpose. We also know that, even though it may take a few hours, or a few days, if we need assistance on something, eventually somone will answer our questions, it's just a matter of time. There's just no guarantee of that in a chatroom. Help requests tend to get ignored in the 'grand' scheme of conversations.
I'd recommend looking at some Discord sites to see what it has to offer. Each group uses it differently. Some are very structured with numerous topics, others focus on hands-on guidance, others use it to build community. It depends on what the users and the moderators want. And it's free.
Ladie, good points. Anyone can join but people can removed just as easily. I would disagree on the distracted part though. If it's a discord dedicated to CC3, it would stay on topic or things get deleted. I agree things get solved here but like you said can be days. This may be for smaller things. Thanks for input.
AEIOU, I made and run a few discord groups. The link above is the one I started for a cc3 help channel. So far 5 people are in it and I personally have learned a ton within an hour of it going up.
Thanks all for input, I think it just depends on what you are use to. Feel free to jump in and see if it is helpful to you.
Not dissing discord though, I don't use it much, but there are definitely situations out there where it is more elegant than a forum. Personally, I probably won't use it, but just as the facebook group, it is an alternative means of communication for those who like it.
Uh, I am unsure what of those, except voice chat, this forum doesn't offer? Everything you post is saved, forum supports attachments for images (discord allows a bit larger files than we do here, they cap it at 8MB, but the setting here isn't a forum software limitation, it is limited intentionally to allow upload of recently sized images without causing too much of a bandwidth usage for visitors with bandwidth limits or slow connections), any browser can access it (which is basically any device), and we have moderation tools (obviously not the same as for a chat system, since needs are different).
My brief list of features for Discord should have been a separate sentence responding to some of the things LadieStorm pointed out as necessary. What I meant by it was that it has many of the same features that we (yes, even lurkers like me) already find useful. While it also adds functionality, it also has other things it doesn't do well like separate threads for each topic.
I barely have time for the forum so I doubt I'll personally use the Discord chat, but it sounds like a nice supplement to the forum.
I do think it's too bad, though, that the knowledge captured on these new supplementary outlets remains separate from the accumulated knowledge base here. Oh, well.
I prefer Web forums over all the old stuff. I've lost emails when computers crashed. At least here I can print to pdf. And back that up to one of my spare drives.
which is probably why I seem to have a concern with chatrooms! lol. But seriously, I wanted to point out something that wouldn't change with being in the chatrooms as opposed to here in the forum: time differences. More specifically, time zone differences.
See, we here all live in different time zones. That's one of the reasons why it takes a long time to get answers, sometimes. For example, Monsen, LoopySue, and Ralf, they all live in Europe ie. England (or there abouts). Now I live in the US, East Coast. At this very moment, for me, it is 1:47 pm, in the afternoon. But those people living in England are either 4 hours ahead of me, or 6 hours ahead of me. So it is either 5:47 or 7:47 pm for them. Some others live here in the US, but are out on the West Coast, like California, Washington State. It's 10:47 am for those people.
I am a home maker, so I am home almost all day. But I babysit, sometimes, in my home. I can't work on maps, or be online for a prolonged period of time, if I have toddlers running around here. When my sons get home, I have a little help, and can maybe steal some moments away. But then I have dinner to prepare, etc... so most of my mapping is done in the evening, or late at night. So let's say it's 7:30 - 8:00 pm where I am here. It's either 12:30am or 1:00 am there! Most people are in bed asleep at that time! The people on the West Coast are just getting home from work, and are preparing dinner. And I'm the midpoint (roughly) between the two time zones. What if it's someone out on the West Coast that has the questions, and someone in England has the answers? That's 7 -9 hours difference! 6pm in California is 1am- 3am.
Now, granted, if someone popped in to the chat room to ask specific questions, they would likely find someone there... but would there be enough people in the chat room at anyone time to get the answers you need, when you need them? That's a lot harder to predict.
When the Europe folks are asleep, some of the rest of us might be awake. But they will be awake when I'm asleep. And I don't know everything about this software.
I make average maps... and some in here make Fantastic Maps !
I still find searching in here to be good. Of course, I am top subject starter because I don't always find what I"m looking for. Then someone posts 'Jim did you look here ? ' And they post a link on something I missed.
I'm a Facebook guy and although I fully respect that there are people that will never trust the platform it's hard to argue the value that it brings.
We are getting so many people join The Campaign Cartographer 3+ Facebook User Group. 259 at last count and we are seeing a very diverse range of people joining. There are people there just looking to see if the tool is right for them, brand new users and then the more experienced users. It has been a very positive experience IMO largely due to the nature of the features available. There are always more people watching FB than there are people monitoring the forums. The conversation can be quite active. The big feature that helps though is the ability to paste a picture straight from your clip-board into a response. New guys who are struggling with something can simply take a screen-shop and paste into a response letting everyone else see what the issue is. The people offering support to the new users can paste screenshots with their instructions to better support the new users. The nature of CC3+ means this is happening quite a bit and the speed of response and in some cases resolution is greatly increased over the forums.
Of course there are people here that are not in the Facebook group so we are still directing people here to use the forum search feature and to engage with some of the very experienced users. Aka you guys
In this day and age I feel it's a mistake for a company to not have a Facebook presence especially in an industry like the table-top rpg industry. I would challenge that a huge % of CC3+ new customers are coming from Facebook.
Facebook, discord, etc, each has its own pros and cons, and it's good to look at them. I see no harm in people creating a place for CC3 in diverse communities/social media sites; however the more there are, the less people will be in all of them, and the more confusing it may become for new users.
Additionally, we know this forum won't go away until/unless ProFantasy "goes down"; however other "pages" may disappear if the person that created it decides he's no longer interested, or gets angry at something/one, etc.
My suggestion: let's welcome new sites/communities, but let's try to keep information shared across, in the event one or more of them disappears.
I also saw a post on the Discord chat that said it takes weeks to get a response here. Weeks???? LOL
If you don't like forums, fine, use something else, but don't lie about what these forums are like. Lying to get people to join other sites makes you look pretty sad.
OK, I'm done and shutting up now.
We used to be on Yahoo Groups. And I liked that over forums, then something about the Yahoo groups changed and forum software improved. For now, forums are the way to go.
And I agree completely that forums have their benefit. The search feature is great. But it's not where the bulk of the user's are spending their time. Forums are no longer where the majority of people and spending the majority of their online presence.
Cc3+ is known as one of the hardest mapping tools to use. It has a ridiculously bad reputation in regards to the learning curve. How do you change that?
After I did the tutorials, I have turned out 2,300 maps since I bought CC2. I revamped my Crestar site, and started doing maps in CC3 and now CC3Plus. Thats about 1,200 more maps. I used FT3 to make slightly over 1,200 planet maps for my Traveller site. Along with several smaller sites for Tunnels and Trolls, Wizards' Relm, Mazes and Minotaurs, etc. Not that I'll ever get finished mapping all of that.
So maps can be made with this software. The tutorials and the Tome are very useful.
Software has changed since the late 1980s, where Ctrl-P might mean print on one program, and ctrl-P meant save a file in another program. Standardization has helped greatly.
When I grew up, home comnputers didn't exist. My last job before retirement, I had to take two CompTIA written tests to prove i could fix computers. This after 20 plus years of doing exactly that. Then just before we took the tests, MS-DOS was dropped and Wireless added. I had to learn a big chunk of new stuff. But I did it. And passed with good grades.
I did try, before I found this software, other mapping programs. Most of them allowed zoom in and out, but the scale seemed to change everytime. So I went with CC2. Other folks enjoy the other mapping software they use.
The one thing about the search function is that some of us, me included, don't word the subject line well. I've been thinking about adding more tutorials to my site, but I have no idea when I'll find the time to do any more.
I do host files for others who don't have web sites.
Enough rambling as I can't seem to stay on subject. So I'm going to map.
When I'm not doing research, I spend most of my time online either here, or in the Cartographer's Guild.
As for changing the 'bad reputation' of CC3+ and it's learning curve? I thought we were already doing that. There are the guides with each individual product. There's the Tome of Ultimate Mapping, which breaks down and walks you through many of the basic, and more advanced functions. There are Youtube video tutorials, and pdf tutorials for specific techniques and effects. And there are the forums, here, where you can ask just about any question and get it answered, or at least be directed to where the answer is located.
The only true issue I can see, is the 'instant gratification syndrome' as I like to call it. With every site nowdays having online chat, and automated response, everyone seems to expect to get what they want, when they want it. They don't want to wait for it, and more importantly, they don't want to work for it. I will admit, I've been bad at that sometimes myself. But I'm forced to remember something my Great Granddaddy use to tell me. "If something's worth doing, it's worth taking the time to do it right."