V.2 Comming ?

[Ndreare]

Hello what will be the plan for version 2 will we have to repurchase the newer version or will it be an upgrade?

If we do have to purchase it will it be at a lower cost or will we still have to pay ful cost?

[Simon]

We're planning on having an upgrade available (for a fee) as well as a full-version for those that don't have v1 yet.

The upgrade will be priced lower than the full-version, but it's still far too early to know what the prices will be.

[Ndreare]

Thank you for answering my Q so quickly.

[Halo]

I would like to know why for those of us that have already purchased version 1 will now have to purchase version 2. It really doesn't make sense

[Immortaldreamer]

For the same reason that buying Windows 95 doesn't get you a free copy of Windows 98, or 98 gets you a free copy of Millenium, or any video game gets you a free copy of the sequel to that game. You paid for a product, you GOT that product. Now, time has passed, and an improved, upgraded, all new version of the product with all new features is coming out. You can choose to buy that, same as you can choose to buy Windows XP if you already have a perfectly good Windows 98. Or you might decide the extra features aren't with it, and stick with the 1.0. The factor that'll make the decision for most is whether or not the enhancements to 2.0 make it worth laying out the money, especially when 1.0 works fine already. It'll be a question of how much the upgrade is, vs. what the new features are.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Originally posted by Halo
I would like to know why for those of us that have already purchased version 1 will now have to purchase version 2. It really doesn't make sense.WARNING: This is essentially a rant, as that pushes one of my pet peeve buttons. Feel free to ignore. ;)

As Immortaldreamer notes, software upgrades aren't free. Nor is there any reason they should be. Purchasers of v1 will get a reduced price for v2; that's plenty reasonable. Why should anyone expect Dan to put in hundreds of hours on developing v2 and then hand it out for free? That's what doesn't make any sense.

Patches and minor enhancements are free, and Dan has provided 44 of them in six months. I defy anyone to find a big name software company whose dedication to the customer and product even approaches that.

44 free updates, and some people are whining about paying a reduced price for a major upgrade. I'm sorry, but I just can't see it.

What world are you living in? I don't mean to pick on Halo specifically, because I see this attitude a lot from gamers in general. Are so many of us really that cheap? Or are we just detatched from reality, or what? ;)

Well, let's see... I bought a copy of Champions 1st edition. Does that mean that DOJ should give me a free copy of HERO System 5th Edition now? :rolleyes:

Okay, rant over. :)

[Enforcer84]

Originally posted by Halo
I would like to know why for those of us that have already purchased version 1 will now have to purchase version 2. It really doesn't make sense

Not to beat a dead horse and apologies to Halo

But; if you buy a computer that has XP home edition on it and you want to get XP Professional from Microsoft, you gotta pay for it. Actually, I don't know of any software company that gives you the next version for free; unless you count freeware..and its apples to oranges then.


oh wow. I should read before I post. I basically said the same thing Immortaldreamer said.
my bad.
Carry on, nothing to read here

[xanatos]

But; if you buy a computer that has XP home edition on it and you want to get XP Professional from Microsoft, you gotta pay for it. Actually, I don't know of any software company that gives you the next version for free; unless you count freeware..and its apples to oranges then.
Ehm... Shareware? Getright? My father registered one of the first versions and he is still registered! Winzip? The same!

Bye
Max

[Simon]

Originally posted by xanatos
Ehm... Shareware? Getright? My father registered one of the first versions and he is still registered! Winzip? The same!

Bye
Max
So you're saying that I should be following a shareware model for my upgrades, even though HD was never released or purported to be shareware?

You purchased HD. At what point did you come up with the assumption that it was shareware?

Shareware programs have an entirely different model for making money. The only time you can make money off of them is when you have a wide distribution (like WinZip). Most often, they are initial releases by a developer....resume building stuff.

HD is a following a rather extremely common model: you purchase each major version. Updates and bug fixes between versions are released free of charge. Upgrades from one version to the next are released at a discounted price over the full version.

There is nothing odd or unusual in this model.

Why am I not giving away v2 for free? Because I want to make a little money for the time that I put into this.

Yes, I want to get your money. Hard to believe, isn't it? My master plan to get at your hard earned cash is to make a utility that you want so badly that you're willing to give up your money to get it. Truly a radical idea, I know. Very insidious.

As I've said before, I will continue to support v1 in terms of bug fixes. The only thing that I'm not doing any longer is making enhancements to v1, since coding has begun on v2. All enhancements will be going into v2 from here on out, and not v1.

Now, just to REALLY piss you off, guess what's going to happen once v2 has been out for a while......I'm going to start working on v3! That's right, I'm going to release yet another version and attempt to take EVEN MORE of your money.

I am an evil bastard.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by dsimon
Why am I not giving away v2 for free? Because I want to make a little money for the time that I put into this.

Yes, I want to get your money. Hard to believe, isn't it? My master plan to get at your hard earned cash is to make a utility that you want so badly that you're willing to give up your money to get it. Truly a radical idea, I know. Very insidious.
I hear what you are saying Dan, and I agree with you completely. But before you start ranting too much there are other factors which need to be taken into account. Role-playing gamers are generally not a rich class of hobbiest. You do not have to search around the message boards very hard to find literally hundreds of posts by people who want to buy a certain Hero book but do not have the funds for it.

With Hero Games producing one $25.00 book per month just keeping up with book production severely cuts into many people's budgets. Then when you throw a $40.00 program into the mix it all becomes even more difficult for many buyers. Then on top of that when you tell people they will need to spend even more money to buy an update for the product they just purchased some of them are going to squawk.

HERO System fans are expected to pop out some $350.00 this year for books and software, and by all accounts some $600.00 next year. The fans who cannot afford to do that will of course be expressing some frustration. So while I appreciate and support your need to make money, just keep in mind that much of the frustration you are seeing is not always because the fans do not want to pay for the upgrade, but because for many of them it comes down to a simple fact of buy update or pay a bill.

[Simon]

Originally posted by Monolith
I hear what you are saying Dan, and I agree with you completely. But before you start ranting too much there are other factors which need to be taken into account. Role-playing gamers are generally not a rich class of hobbiest. You do not have to search around the message boards very hard to find literally hundreds of posts by people who want to buy a certain Hero book but do not have the funds for it.

With Hero Games producing one $25.00 book per month just keeping up with book production severely cuts into many people's budgets. Then when you throw a $40.00 program into the mix it all becomes even more difficult for many buyers. Then on top of that when you tell people they will need to spend even more money to buy an update for the product they just purchased some of them are going to squawk.

HERO System fans are expected to pop out some $350.00 this year for books and software, and by all accounts some $600.00 next year. The fans who cannot afford to do that will of course be expressing some frustration. So while I appreciate and support your need to make money, just keep in mind that much of the frustration you are seeing is not always because the fans do not want to pay for the upgrade, but because for many of them it comes down to a simple fact of buy update or pay a bill.
Welcome to the real world.

While I understand that you're just making other people's point and you don't fault me for _selling_ HD, I'm going to respond to those folks who are griping.

If you don't have a lot of money, you need to decide what you want to buy and what you want to hold off on. There will be some things that you WANT, but can't afford.

No one is holding a gun to people's heads telling them that they have to buy it.

Would folks honestly rather that HG not put out so many products? I think that's ludicrous. HG has been doing a fantastic job of restoring the system and putting out the material that we've wanted for so long

If you're not in a financial position to buy everything that HG releases, get over it. If you really want it, then save your pennies and buy it at some point in the future when you can afford it.

But don't sit there whining and asking for it for free because you can't afford it.

[xanatos]

So you're saying that I should be following a shareware model for my upgrades, even though HD was never released or purported to be shareware?
I haven't told this! I have simply replied to someone else that was saying that commercial products live on selling upgrades. I replied that it is false! Some products live on selling more copies of the program. It's a different model of sale (clearly not sustainable... Before or later you'll have sold your program to everyone that is interested in it!)
Clearly programs that are targetted to a small group of people can't live with this sale model... And perhaps simply they can't live!
You want to know my thought? (rant mode on)I think that a program like this is necessary to Hero in the same way the FAQ and the Errata are. So it should be free, and its cost should be payed by the revenues of main rule book (not that the main book should cost more!). And I even think that with each book there should be the correspondent. Gone is the time when the 2nd Ed. Ad&d Players Handbook didn't have the character sheet and you had to buy it! (and it was of a strange green that was very difficult to photocopy) (yes, there was a book full of character sheets! And the idea was that you had to cut the pages and use them!) (yes... I know that there is a similar book for 3rd ed. but it's different. There is only a sheet for each type, and you can photocopy it, and on the WoTC site there is the pdf of the charsheet. And I even know that WoTC has sold a very "defective" program (where "Defective" is probably too much good), but now they have decided to support a free program (the PCGEN) (or at least they told so three months ago) and to sell only "add-on packs" for the various books).
Nowadays computers are not rare. Probably at least 80/90% of the role players have access to a computer and a printer, so the reason "not everyone would use it, but everyone would pay for it" is not anymore true.
(note that I'm even quite happy with the RPG model created by WOTC with their D20 license. It has created very much crap, but there are many very good books that without this license wouldn't have been produced)
(rant mode off)

[TheTemplar]

Folks, folks, folks....
PLEASE understand that I hear where you all are coming from. When I first heard that V.2 was going to cost money, I too thought, why? Then, I actually thought about it for a minute. It's not intended as a fix for V.1, it's a new entity altogether...like an expansion for a PC game. If Dan can create it, and make some money on it, then more power to him. That's capitalism. That's America.

I'm REALLY not meaning to sound cold and calloused here, but getting mad at Dan or Steve or DoJ for charging money for their products is ludicrous. We're purchasing their intellectual property, just as you would go to the store and buy a banana. Plus, they have expenses as well. They have to build those expenses into the prices we pay for things so that they can continue to make money to provide us with newer/more improved products that we want them to make.

I realize I'm sounding very condescending right now, and I honestly apologize for it. I'm not trying to teach 8th grade Economics here. It just seems to me that anyone who is getting irate about having to pay for an upgrade for HD just isn't thinking about every angle involved in this process here. We don't even know how much the v.2 software will cost. What's the point in getting so worked up over it if you don't even know how much it is going to be? Maybe it will be an easily affordable upgrade for those who purchased v.1...maybe it won't.

Again, please don't take this as preaching or down-talking....I'm just trying to be the voice of reason in a situation that seems to be escalating beyond the point of reason at an alarming rate.

-T

[Immortaldreamer]

Actually, in an only-somewhat-related tangent...

Dan, you started a thread asking for what we'd like to see in v 2.0. Since that's been running for a while, and since people are talking about v 2.0 coming down the pipe, can you give us a little blurb about what we get to look forward to in 2.0? Nothing terribly detailed or anything like that, just the highlights that'll make us drool and go "ooh!"? :)

[Simon]

Originally posted by Immortaldreamer
Actually, in an only-somewhat-related tangent...

Dan, you started a thread asking for what we'd like to see in v 2.0. Since that's been running for a while, and since people are talking about v 2.0 coming down the pipe, can you give us a little blurb about what we get to look forward to in 2.0? Nothing terribly detailed or anything like that, just the highlights that'll make us drool and go "ooh!"? :)
I actually went over a fair bit of it at the beginning of that thread. I also have tried to respond to suggestions as they are made with an indication of whether I'll be working to get them into v2 or not.

The thread is long, but it should give you a good idea of what's coming.....

Some good stuff, IMO.

[Trebuchet]

Dan, not to put too fine a point on it but as happy as I am with v1, v2 will probably have to do the laundry to make me want it enough to buy it. HD is hands down the best gaming software I've seen in over 20 years of gaming and computers. I'll most likely buy it just to support HERO just like I bought Star Hero even though I'll never actually run a space/science fiction game.

You evil capitalist, you! ;)