StoryLine 360 vs StoryLine 2

Nov 09, 2016

I use StoryLine 2 and have become accustomed to all of its quirks, and mods, and little hacks that I need to do with it to give the best presentation possible to my users.

Now I see this "StoryLine 360" as part of the Articulate 360 Studio, and I'd like to get some answers to some questions.

1) Can I expect the same types of quirks that I have with SL2, which I am totally fine with btw now that I have adapted to them?  Or is SL360 more or less a completely different product and should not be treated the same as SL2.

2)  What exactly are the differences?   It would be nice to have or see some sort of a checklist of things that SL360 has that SL2 does not.   I get that the articulate 360 package has the full gamut of Articulate products (the very vast majority of which I won't use, personally), but simply comparing one storyline to the other, I need to know if I need to take the time to make a change or not.  

Any information or advice is greatly appreciated.  I'm concerned by what i'm seeing, mostly because I simply don't understand it.

thank you.

99 Replies
Akshay Reddy

Hi Eric,

As you have requested the features that are in Storyline 360 and absent in Storyline 2.

You can see a list of features which are present in Storyline 360 but not in Storyline 2 at:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10329702

The article named - 'What are the features that Storyline 360 has but Storyline 2 doesn't?' contains the features which are used to make a slideshow having rules and schedule of Golf tournament sponsored by Stratbeans Consulting India.

Regards

Articulate 360 User

Alyssa Gomez

Hi there Tammi! Glad to hear you're considering Articulate 360! You'll definitely be able to boost student engagement with these tools in your belt. :)

If you try Articulate 360 for a year and then decide to cancel your subscription, your apps will stop working. You can re-enable them by renewing your subscription.

Your existing Articulate 360 content will remain intact and accessible, and you'll still have ownership of all of the files you created. You just won't be able to edit or export your Rise courses or access the Articulate Review home page where your content items are listed.

If you decide to create courses in Rise (trust me, high school students will love it!) your students will still be able to view those courses as long as they have the URL. And anyone who has direct links to your Articulate Review content items will still be able to view them and add comments.

I hope this helps clear things up a bit, and if you have any more questions, be sure to visit our Articulate 360 FAQs page or give a shout to our Success Team right here!

John Morley

Another angry vote against Storyline 360 and deceptive sales practice: After our company had a license for Storyline 1, I downloaded the trial of Storyline 2. We prefer owning software over renting, so I clicked the button to Purchase, assuming I was purchasing Storyline 2 (because that was open on my screen when I clicked the purchase button).

Although the purchase screen indicated I was buying Storyline 360, I have not been keeping up with the confusing version switch-aroos (sorry, busy with deadlines), and just assumed that is a new name for Storyline 2.

Nowhere on that screen was it clearly indicated there was an option to purchase Storyline 2, which was clearly my intention because that was the environment in which I clicked the Purchase button. An honest and conscience company would make that clear and include a caution that what is being purchased is not only different from the trial product being used, but anything created with it would not be backward compatible with what we actually prefer (to own rather than rent).

In short, Articulate’s deceptive sales practice worked: We are now stuck with a course that can’t be maintained with Storyline 2, even if we wanted the agony of backtracking to now purchase that version. Although Storyline seems to work for us, we resent how it was forced on us. 

Lucy Suros

Hi John,

I believe our team reached out to you to talk about exchanging Articulate 360 for Storyline 3, but I wanted to apologize for your experience.

Please know that we had no intention of deceiving you or anyone else!

We missed some URL redirects, so you were mistakenly taken to the Articulate 360 pricing page when you hit the Storyline 2 buy button. We've fixed that redirect (yikes) -- and so it won't happen again to you or anyone else.

And if you see anything else that doesn't look right or is confusing on our site, please let us know!

Ashley greenslade

Having spent some time now going through a trial of AS3, all I see here is that it is AS2 with a series of tweaks to the UI. 

Yes there are some new features, but I question the price-tag for these features, even for an upgrade. 

There are still a number of errors that were present in AS2 that have been carried over into AS3 which actually answers part of the question for the OP, this is NOT a new product, It is an update (Don't be fooled by marketing). 

An example, try changing a motion path direction to right, select the end object, hold the shift key to keep it in a straight line and move the ending object and you'll see what I mean. This exact same issue is present in AS2 and hasn't been fixed. If this were a new product, I would suggest that it would have been resolved. 

I find that AS3 is unstable and consumes memory if it doesn't like what you are doing. 

The application is 32-bit. Short-sighted in a world where most modern computers are now running 64-bit as standard.

  • Frequent crashes when publishing. 
  • Frequent 'run out of memory' errors when previewing or saving.

I don't think we will be considering purchasing upgrade licences for some time. 

George Cooper

IIRC in Lectora there is an ExportAs XML function which allows old versions to open newer versions. Obviously you will lose any newer functions.

Perhaps something similar could be incorporated in SL ?

George Cooper eLearning Programmer
[cid:image001.png@01CDEF0E.0938F240] [cid:image002.png@01CDEF0E.0938F240] [cid:image003.png@01CDEF0E.0938F240] [cid:image004.png@01CDEF0E.0938F240] <skype:george.cooper

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Tom,

We don't have a feature yet to create a version of a Storyline 360 file that you could open in an earlier version such as Storyline 2. 

As Crystal mentioned, we track these requests in ELH (and those sent to our Product team here) to help understand and determine the viability of new features. Are you also working with clients who have an earlier version than you do? If you're creating content in Storyline 3/360 - how would you want to share it with those using Storyline 2?

mark hilliard

Kim, OK I definitely agree it's a big problem if SL360 will import only to "upgrade" SL2 but then NOT be able to export back.  That mean's a 1 way upgrade with no fall back.

In the real world as you just described with your team that's a non-starter...I'm sure the sales and marketing team love the one-way upgrade, but customers like us will just get burned.

This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.