Poll Results

Ok, results are in, and we want to share with you some things we plan on doing going forward for the next few quarters.  First off, I want to thank everyone for letting us know what you think, and for all suggestions, and for the wonderful supportive comments!

There's a lot to go through here, so I'll give an executive summary for those who just want to know the decisions before I dive into the details.  Just remember, nothing here is set in stone, if future polls shift opinions, we will adjust, and we are happy to work with you to make sure you are happy.  We want to make sure when a substantial minority wants something, they have at least a way to get that, so in general, if a third of people want a thing, we will adjust the project to try and make sure that thing is possible.

Executive Summary:

• Dragonlock: for now, just bases.
• Tile Size: We will move to inch basis as the default
• Half Height: We will support half height for OpenForge 2, but try to avoid that taking many release slots
• Dungeon Stone, Continue?: We will continue expanding Dungeon Stone, but after the next few releases (which wraps up our vision of a full standard set), we'll slow the pace a little so we can get some other sets out too.
• Textured sides on bases: We'll default to smooth sided bases
• Old set updates: the old sets were pretty equal, so we'll try to update them in waves where in a wave we make sure each set has the updated versions of that tile.
• Next new set: Caverns
• Release mix: will stay pretty similar to what it is now
• Non tile releases: Scatter will be most common, but we'll still do some of each of the other types.
• Multipart vs single part tiles: We'll continue to support OpenLOCK Triplex as our single part prints, but we'll be sticking with multipart for everything else.
• Many of you would like zipped up sets.  We are looking into a way to make downloads available to patrons so you don't have to go through the process of downloading everything from hundreds of thingiverse entries.  We are also looking at providing resized tiles this way so you don't have to resize if you want to stick with 25mm, or want to get older tiles in 25mm/inch/wyloch (wyloch is only rescaled, which means compared to true tiles, the walls will be too thick).
• Some people want more patreon options.  We have added a $5 tier, and also a merchant $10 tier for people who want to be able to sell NC licensed files, or to use openforge files inside their own models that they can in turn sell.

Ok, so if you want more details, or to understand how we got to these decisons, here's the nitty gritty:

Dragonlock: 56% of you are not interested in Dragonlock.  Of the 43.1% who do want dragonlock as an option, 31.5% (13.6% of the total) want single piece dragonlock.  What we will do is release dragonlock bases some time in the near term so that patrons who want access to that locking format can use it.  Based on the license from FDG, I don't presently believe we can publish magnetic + dragonlock bases, nor can we publish tile shapes they don't support.  I'll follow up with Tom Tullis to make sure my read is correct.

Tile size: 67.8% of you want inch basis to be the standard, with 32.2% preferring we stick with 25mm.  Since the standard can only be one, we will switch to inch, but we are working on providing the 25mm conversions for patrons.  We can attach files to the patreon release, we also have dropbox, so we are exploring how we want to make those available.  We probably will make access to pre-resized tiles a patron perk.

Half Height: 46.1% of you want half height tiles, 25.8% don't want half height tiles to slow down the release of other things.  28.1% are fine either way.  We will be supporting half height in both OpenForge and OpenLOCK going forward.  Where we can schedule wise, we will try to release them in the same release.  For something like Dungeon Stone, it doesn't represent much additional work.  For something like caverns, it might, so there may be some sets where we do need to have half height be their own releases.

Keep going on Dungeon Stone: 52.9% want us to keep going.  36.8% would prefer we move on to something else.  There are also a variety of other ideas people put in, all of them have been heard and are being considered.  Once we are done with the baseline set (2-3 more releases), we will keep doing more Dungeon Stone.  We will also be starting a new set, so don't worry, we'll get onto some other things (and back to updating some older sets too).

Textured sides on bases: 56.2% prefer smooth, 32.6% are fine either way.  11.2% prefer textured bases.  Moving forward, we are going to mostly stick with smooth bases.  In some special circumstances (such as tudor) where the base may mar the appearance of the outside of a building on a second level, we'll still try to make sure theres a textured option.

Next of the old sets to update: This one was really close.  34.5% want Rough/Ruined Stone.  29.9% want Tudor.  25.3% want Cut Stone.  We think what this means is that we probably will slowly migrate all three of them to our current standards for a set, making sure we get them all up to current floors, then current walls, current corners, etc.  As noted above, this also means all of them will get half-height.  This will be the slowest path to any of those sets being completely updated, but it also means that no set will be left behind.

Next new set: 40.4% want caverns, 21.3% want water themed tiles, 18% want new sewers, 13,5% want Outdoors/Roads/Hills.  We will start with caverns, when that set is at a good  pausing point, we'll poll again.

Are you happy with the mix of releases: 55.1% Are happy with us just continuing to decide.  30.3% are happy with our current mix of about 50% focus on the current tile set and 50% other. 10.1% want to see more focus on completing sets.  We'll continue forward doing about the same mix we have been doing, but also letting whimsey decide a few as we get cool ideas.

What do you like beyond tiles: 50% on the nose said scatter. Of the remaining half, the biggest was large terrain features (such as the bridge) at 13.6%, Buildings such as the mausoleum (12.5%) and encounters (such as the shrines) at 11.4%.  We'll keep one of the 4 releases per month scatter as it's the most popular.  We'll cycle through the other 3, along with more scatter for ~ 1 release a month.

Stuff other than models: 48.9% want us to keep focus on models.  18.2% want to see some 3d design tutorials, 10.2% want more painting videos, 8% want more tutorials for the tiles.  Pretty clearly, our primary focus should be (and is releasing models).  We won’t make any of the other things a major focus, but are leaving the door open to doing one every once in a while (as we have been).

About you, the patrons:

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of you play fantasy RPGs, and in most cases, only use this stuff for fantasy RPGs.  There's a substantial contingent who want models usable for fantasy boardgames and fantasy wargames.  Beyond that, there's a smattering of other uses (Sci fi RPG being the biggest).  We will keep the focus of this project Fantasy RPG focused, with substantial cross use cases to Fantasy Boardgames and Fantasy Wargames.

Favorite Tile Set: Dungeon stone is the overwhelming favorite at 58.1%, followed by Cut-Stone (16.3%), Rough/Ruined Stone (14%) then Tudor (7%).  Dungeon stone is now pretty competitive with cut stone for the most complete set, and it's clearly the favorite.

Preferred tile size: 61.4% Inch, 28.4% 25mm, 8% wyloch.  As mentioned above, we are looking into ways we can have tiles automatically resized and available to patrons as a perk.

Tile Height: This one is one of the bigger surprises.  It's nearly half and half on full height (48.3%) vs half height (46%), and we didn't realize that.  One question we have is how people who use half height prefer to deal with doors/windows/etc.  Our path so far has been half height walls, but full height for any wall that had something special going on.  We would love to know from the half height folks if that works for them, as in our own games, we use full height tiles.

Locking Mechanism: Magnetic + Openlock 39.8% (What we use in our games), 17% Openlock Triplex, 14.8% Openlock, 11.4% Magnetic, 6.8% Dragonlock.

Multipart vs Single Part: Multipart is fine (59.6%), I prefer not to glue, but like magnets so can accept the tradeoff (19.1%), I hate gluing (15.7%).

The above two combined gave us a useful insight, some of which is going to be obvious.  People who like the magnets are fine with gluing (or can at least put up with it.)  The majority of people who hate gluing also like OpenLOCK Triplex - so we will continue to make OpenLOCK Triplex always have a non gluing option.  Otherwise, for the rest of tiles, the people who prefer the OpenForge format are good with gluing, so we'll keep that format how it is.

Some other things we have learned,  and some ideas that floated up that we're looking into how to do or considering for future releases. 

• A little discussion of vertical printing - we'll look into it.
• Make sure tiles always have grids
• A catalog
• Tile recipes, including famous dungeons
• Roofs
• Multi Level support (need to learn what openlock is not providing here that it could provide).
• Risers
• A circus
• Example dungeons or builds
• Contributing to Wallhalla
• One off requests
• Water features
• Fountains, both wall. and floor models
• Walls with grates
• Walls with holes or break through
• Secret doors (someone is going to be happy next week ;-) )
• Transition pieces from one texture to another
• Graveyards