SmiteWorks USA Reviews (%countItem)
SmiteWorks USA Rating
Address: 1911 Sykes Creek Dr., Merritt Island, Florida, United States, 32953
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I have had really great experiences over the past few years with SmiteWorks USA. A recent customer service issue came up in which a third party product that SmiteWorks supported wasn't living up to my expectations, and the folks at SmiteWorks did an OUTSTANDING job of helping me to reach a positive resolution. They were quick to respond, up-front about the issue, and offered me an excellent solution. I will be doing business with them in the future and you can feel confident in doing so too.
Thanks Danny. We appreciate the kind feedback.
I have been using Fantasy Grounds for a year now, first in the demo mode so that I could play in another DM's game, and then I purchased Ultimate in order to host my own games. This is an exemplary product, beautifully designed for its purposed.
This is the second time that I have reached out to support for Fantasy Grounds. Both times the response has been swift and useful.
Thanks for taking the time to leave feedback. Happy gaming!
As a disclaimer-ish: I haven't been using this software for too long. I've been playing with the free demo version for a couple of weeks, and I've played around with the ultimate edition for a couple of days. I've ran one 'test session' with some friends to see if the network needed any changes in its configuration (it did not). I've contacted their customer support once.
Software: Overall good at what it is supposed to do. There are some minor points of improvement (as with all software), but before I dwell on these I'd like to wait for the upcoming Unity edition. The most major-ish minor point of improvement is everything regarding having an up-to-date cross-platform app, which is exactly what will be 'solved' in the upcoming Unity edition.
When compared to the obvious competitor, Fantasy Grounds, to me, is a clear winner, even if it were just for the fact that this is an actual desktop application that doesn't need (to the best of my knowledge) their servers in order to run. (Not being dependent on the company you've bought software from always is a good thing, I think.) Whilst a lot can be achieved by creating your own mods, I have yet to figure out how to do it easily.
Pricing: Whilst the software is quite expensive by itself, it becomes very much doable and a fair price if you get your players (assuming you are the GM) the chip in. For Pathfinder specifically: it would have been nice to try out the paid version of the Core Rulebook for a month, so players can compare it with the already included version free version of PFSRD.
Support: Exquisite. 10/10 would email again. Fast, friendly, the problem was solved and I got some bonus tips as well. The problem I had was that I had revoked my own license. They were able to give me a new one, the same evening.
In short: the program works quite well. If you just want to play your tabletop with friends either at the same table but more electronically (e.g; using digital maps), or if you want to want to play with people over the internet; I recommend trying this out for a month. Do check out their Kickstarter for the Unity edition as well: that looks pretty promising. In order for Fantasy Grounds to get the full five out of five stars from me, either the price has to be a bit lower, or the Unity edition should be released as expected with the devs continuing to keep up their good work.
Thanks for your feedback.
I cannot recommend this company or its products due to the unprofessional behavior of their staff. When you ask for help to create something in the ruleset you are attacked, belittled, and treated less then dirt. They rally around certain community members to defend them. I will warn everyone to not spend money on this company.
Fast, friendly service. Support e-mails are answered within a day. Software is constantly being developed and supported.
Thanks for the feedback.
They are VERY quick with helping you when you send them an Email! I was having issues and it took them little time to reply! Much better support team than other Virtual Tabletop companies!
Thanks for your comment.
The idea and how they realized it is just brilliant! Add to that people that are 100% behind their product and offer fast, friendly and reliable costumer services.
I strongly recommend Fantasy Grounds for anyone who likes to play tabletop RPGs.
Thank you and keep up the good work !
Thanks for the positive feedback Gabriel. Happy gaming!
I recently purchased a Fantasy Grounds license from SmiteWorks (great product). Unfortunately my computer decided to pass on before I could totally immerse myself in the program. I reached out to the Customer Support staff and received a professional and concise response detailing how I could easily transfer my account to another computer.
No matter how good a product is the true value lies within the staff and support of the product. My experience was outstanding and I highly recommend those thinking about trying this product to do so.
Thanks for the report Donald. We are happy to have you as a customer.
Ive been using this software for about 6 years. The software is upgraded and enhanced multiple times a year. It was a good product then and is a vastly superior product now. The company is good to deal with and show a real appreciation of their customers. Ive used this product for many thousands of hours now.
Thanks for the kind words.
Amazing customer service, issued a refund request after 5 minutes during business hours. I bought the ultimate license from SmiteWorks for their product and would never go back.
Thanks Jordan. We were very happy to help you with refunding the subscription so you could go to the 1-time license purchase instead. We hear similar comments from many customers. Once they go to Fantasy Grounds, they never want to go back to playing without it. :)
I had an issue with purchased material not working properly, David from customer support was most helpful in solving my problem. A++ rating would be more appropriate as a rating.
Thanks for the feedback.
I had an issue with port forwarding with the Fantasy Grounds application and tried several ways to fix the issue. It became too much of a hassle so I requested a refund on the ultimate license. David M was the operator for customer service I corresponded with. He gave me a couple other ways to try to fix the problem I was having but in the end we moved forward with the refund. He was very professional, yet friendly and personable in our chat. He took care of my issues quickly and efficiently.
Thanks for your feedback. We always offer 30-day money back guarantees if you are unsatisfied for any reason. We are sorry that we were not able to retain you as a customer but we appreciate you giving us the opportunity.
I became a customer of SmiteWorks in the spring of 2012. The product this company offers is in my opinion the leader in their niche market which is a virtual table top application that allows people to play role playing games (Dungeons & Dragons, Castles & Crusades, Savage Worlds, Rolemaster, Call of Cuthulu, etc...) over the internet. Their product (Fantasy Grounds - FG) duplicates the approach and feel of friends sitting around the same physical table, except it does it over the internet allowing people from anywhere in the world to meet up.
There are other competitors in this niche market, and they claim to be "free", but over time and comparing dollar for dollar, FG is the less expensive choice for the majority of primary users in terms of time inputs and official product costs (i.e. D&D 5e licensed products).
SmiteWorks can be looked upon as a market leader in that they were first to market with officially licensed WotC content, and continue to lead their competition in this regard.
SmiteWorks maintains an active on-line presence, interacting daily with their users and customers with what I think is admirable and remarkable openness and willingness to accept and act upon feedback from their customers. In addition, SmiteWorks offers a 30-day money back guarantee on all of their products; Fantasy Grounds itself and all of the DLC in their on-line store.
I have recommend SmiteWorks to over 20 people I know over the past 5+ years, and will happily continue to do so without reservation. The company has earned my gaming/hobby dollar many times over.
Thanks for sharing.
Fantasy grounds is in my estimation the best virtual tabletop in today's market place that offers automation for gameplay it has several official rule sets. When compared to other systems in adding up all of the things that you can purchase to use with it for official rule sets, their overall price is the lowest on the market. The customer service is second to none and the community forums are very helpful and full of good information and very smart people. My experience in using this system and software to play role playing games is an absolute pleasure.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
No avenue to address the company except the forums where non-employees close threads complaining about the product.
The product upgrade path is flawed and has been destroying my ability to use a product which I've payed $1000's of for.
The company promised to announce updated and what they were for and failed to do so even after1 week
Product_Or_Service: Fantasy Grounds Software and contnent
Contact by the Business a) The company announce what is involved with an update and if it breaks backwards compatibility b) the company announces how large the the update is in downloadable data c) the company only updates what is need d) the company allows a user to roll back an update
There are numerous ways to contact us as a company. Within the front page (the launch page) of the Fantasy Grounds application is a link to Contact [email protected] for support. In addition, the consumer started six different threads on a public forum where company employees (d*** and Moon W) both responded with a solution to the consumer's problem and also how the consumer could contact us directly for further discussion. The consumer did not like that other public users on the forums disagreed with him.
The root of the problem was that we released an update of our software for version 3.3.2 of Fantasy Grounds. All paid add-ons for the product were verified to be compatible with this update; however, there were a few community and fan-made add-ons that needed to either be disabled or updated in order for compatibility to be maintained. This was explained to the consumer. Several long-time fans of our software sympathized with the frustration but explained that it was an easy solution to a problem that can happen when you are using add-on software not supplied by the company.
Updates for our software are not automatically deployed to customers. Each customer needs to click on the Update button. We merely show that an Update is Available. Notifications of updates to our core system are posted to our public forums and available for anyone to read in advance.
Fantasy Grounds allows for community developers to create add-ons for the software that are essentially mini programs written by other fans of the software. We have no direct interaction with these extensions to our software but they are popular among some of our customers and they can be downloaded from our forums. They can be turned on or off prior to using the software. Occasionally they feature bugs and the extension author provides updates that must be manually installed. While we test the 850+ products we have available for sale whenever we release an update to our core software, we do not attempt to test any fan-made products. We do place our updates into a development and test channel; however, so that extension authors can make adjustments to their extensions to maintain compatibility. It then becomes the responsibility of those who install the extension to manually update it with new versions as they become available. Interested users are able to subscribe to the forum threads where these extensions are made available so that they will be aware of new versions that are available.
For our forums and moderation, we use company appointed moderators and they choose to lock threads or move threads when needed. Most company forums that I follow use the same basic model. In the last 13 years that the forums have existed, there have only be a dozen or so threads that ever needed to be locked. This is for a forum that has 61,798 members at the time of this posting. We don't delete any threads, but our moderators are allowed to lock a thread if it becomes toxic.
In this particular case, the complaint was posted and several users and company employees posted sympathy that the consumer's game was interrupted and how they can fix the problem and avoid it in the future. The consumer remained irate and began demanding major changes to our software and policies in order to prevent this from ever happening again. When other customers disagreed with him, he began arguing publicly on the forums with them and challenging that his views were more valid because he had purchased more product from our company than they had. As the consumer opened up 6 different threads to demand and complain about the same issue, these threads were locked after they began to show the same trend. We do not believe it is good for our community to have customers arguing with each other and resorting to name calling. We have left the original forum threads up and available for anyone who would like to read them, even though they are mostly the same complaint listed multiple times or complaints about moderation. We believe our community moderators acted professionally and politely throughout the entire exchange.
Anyone who would like to read the exchange is welcome to follow this link: http://www.fantasygrounds.com/filelibrary/patchnotes.html
It has links to all 6 related threads. All participants are posting under an alias. Our company representatives are d*** and Moon W. Our community moderators are D-O*, d*** and Z.
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
e and realize that there customer will not tolerate any action just because they are the only ones. They are not, now, they have competition.
The company is failing to acknowledge some failed issues
a) It is not me that breaks the software that I've spent $1,100 on it is them
b) we came to an acceptable comprise where the company would send and email - 1 week after agreeing that the company failed to send such email
c) When contacting support about this issue I find non company people closing my complaint that the agreed on email was not sent
FG needs to get their head out of their a
So what I want is:
a) EMAILS ABOUT UPGRADED
b) NON COMPANY EMPLOYEES REMOVED FROM ADMIN ON FORUMS
Until then they have done nothing but refute my claims, delete my posts on the forums criticizing their unprofessional software practices.
I've been a professional software developer for 25 years and have never seen a company which such shoddy release and support procedures apart from free open source. WOTC and PAIZO who provided their licenses may be interested to see how they are treating paying customers who have their software broken by Smiteworks
We recommend the following solutions for the customer:
1) The customer subscribe to City Hall on our forums to be made aware of system updates as they are released
2) We will be linking to this from the launch screen of the application in the future -- but this will require another update and won't occur until before the next major system update - probably in 2018 or late 2017.
3) Don't run an Update just prior to a game
4) For product support, customer should use the support email linked directly in the program. Use of the forums works for the majority of our customers as well but will subject the customer to views and opinions of other customers and non-employees of the company. Some non-employees are marked as moderators on our forums and have been given authority to moderate these public forums. We approved of their handling in this situation.
Regarding the customers' demands:
1) We can't accommodate customer's complaint to estimate the size of the update because there are more than 850 different products and each customer may have different products which are updated at once.
2) We can't allow rollback by a customer to a previous version due to product dependencies with those 850 products. We have a system wide rollback we can use in the event of a major issue. In this case there was no major event or issue that required rollback. The customer needed to update or disable their custom modifications that they had installed for the software.
3) Customer is free to post criticism of our practices on our forums. Duplicate and trolling threads will be consolidated or locked. No threads were deleted, although company reserves the rights of moderators to delete these if the thread displays hostile or aggressive comments towards others.
In closing, the company has been in operation since 2004 and under new management since 2009. It has never received a Revdex.com complaint. We are continually working to attain the best balance of product feature updates and new product releases and has received high review scores on multiple sites. We have a devoted following and fan-base of more than 80K users, with 62K on our forums at the time of this post. With a few simple recommendations listed above, we believe the customer can continue to enjoy the software as they have in the past.
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
So basically
1) the company is refusing to send an email when they update their software even though they agreed to this in the forums and they expect their 62k users to poll the forum - but whatever
2) Also the refuse to stop people who are not employees of the company interacting on the company support forums
"1) We can't accommodate customer's complaint to estimate the size of the update because there are more than 850 different products and each customer may have different products which are updated at once."
This is a blatant lie - either owner of the company has no idea how the software works or they are quite simply lying - because in the fg_getmanifest Web call it quite clearly returns the binary size of the update - eg
FantasyGroundsUpdater.exe
182384
58d709daca3ab0428c75da11f9c7549226143ec0
FGUpdaterEngine.exe
2881648
d89acb382eae7c652309ba7857948f731ffeff9e
I am a professional programmer with 25 years of experience and I know when I am being lied to by a company that is pretending to be professional.
Aww I am sorry this is you first Revdex.com complaint - maybe now that you are charging a lot of money to people they are not so ready to be sycophantic in their support of Smiteworks.