Is DDI Worthwhile in Your Opinion?

[Flipguarder]

Is it worth it?

I feel like it is worthwhile and worth the money but I'm not ecstatic with the product.

Imagine you could fly, but only if you were naked. It's cool, but its practical applications sometimes leave you wanting something more complete and reasonable.

Lots of the customization of character sheets and lack of intuitive procedures are just not that good.

It's definitely a step up from not having it, there's very little arguing with that.

 

[Chzbro]

Another vote for absolutely being worth it.

And I think it's worth it whether you're a DM or not.

Frankly, I'm a little surprised at what some people define as "value." The Character Builder alone is almost worth the price to me (and while I too can build characters by hand, I no longer want to). Consider that for $72 a year, you've got access to all the crunch from every D&D book published, to the Character Builder and Monster Builder (both updated monthly), to both online magazines, and to all the art and maps from those books and magazines (oh, and all the preview stuff, playtest stuff, and subscriber-only content).

That's the same price as I might pay for about 4 trips to the movies, 5 CDs, or 5 months playing an MMO (stoopid Champions Online--now that's money I regret spending).

And sure, sometimes I still buy the books, but that's because I like the books, not because I need them. Because I've already got the content. It was difficult, but I convinced myself not to buy Primal Power (for example), because it would all be waiting for me in the Character Builder the next time I built a character. And it is. And it works great for me that way.

This is not to say that everyone MUST like the DDI, but if you play D&D, it's hard to argue that it's not a lot of bang for your buck. Plus, subscribing means that I'm supporting the people who produce a game that I love--and maybe that support helps ensure they can continue to produce it.

It's pretty much the same reason I buy beer.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Colmarr has it right, I think. For a player, the best value for your money is buying a one month subscription 2-4 times a year. That'll give you Compendium access for a month to run through magic items, and gives you all the latest updates to the nifty character builder.

For a DM, on the other hand, a year's subscription is worth every penny I pay; I find it invaluable. It's slashed my DM prep time by more than half. I use the monster builder to customize my beasties and copy them to a Word doc for printing, and I use the Compendium to sort out alchemical gear and magic items. Knowing that it's just going to get better as more tools and information are added makes me even happier.

PC echoes my thoughts as well. I just re-subbed for another year and look forward to the next tool for the Adventure Tools app - that is I hope there are going to be one or more apps added to it this year asap. I get the most mileage out of the Monster Builder and Character Builder but have found numerous gems in Dungeon for my games over the last few months.

 

[yesnomu]

The Compendium is the most valuable part of the whole thing to me--when I was DMing, it made creating impromptu encounters unbelievably easy. Likewise, assigning treasure was a snap and a half. I would just look up all the items of a particular level and category ("so, this level, they get a 6, 7, 8, 9 and X gp; let's see what 7th level neck stuff is out there") and pick one that looked cool. Having all the errata work automatically is quite nice as well.

As a player, I'll agree that it's not as high a value, but I consider the year subscription still worth more than the price. And you're really just cheating yourself if you don't pick up at least a month to get the char builder.

 

[keterys]

I find it an extraordinary value as a DM. It's also drastically cut down on my book purchase budget since I no longer feel a need to buy nearly as many books. Completely recommend a year long subscription, or failing that an every 3-6 month subscription.

There are definitely still improvements to be made, but even as a player that never DMs I'd subscribe at least 2 months a year. If you don't play all that many classes or have other people to borrow books from, etc, then it's steadily less useful, but...

I think the primary value is in the character builder, compendium, and monster builder - the articles and adventures are nice, but completely secondary for me.

 

[Nytmare]

When did you stop subbing? The current level of customisation for the character sheets is pretty high. Can't get much more customisable than it currently is, really. There are some entries that it would be good if you could just plain delete, but other than that it's drag'n'drop and resizable and editable to your heart's content.

The character builder is a few shades shy of what my heart would be content with.

The current level of customization is "here are some boxes that you can move around." The picture painted by the DDI team at Gencon was that part of the interface would include the ability to be able to make your own character sheets, entirely from scratch, that included whatever bits of information you wanted, and that looked however it was that you wanted them to look, that just read the file generated by the character builder. They talked about how huge the modding and skinning communities were for other games, and how they wanted to tap into that resource for D&D.

We didn't get that. Now, to be fair, I don't think that we'll never have that, but I also don't think that we're going to have a fully functional character visualizer and online game table circa last year either. I understand that it is/was a big project, and that there are a lot of things that they wanted to do that had to be sacrificed due to time constraints and budget.

The character builder is great, and I think that overall it's worth the price. But I'm fine with just using the cobbled together piece of crap I built until the official character builder does the stuff I need it to do.

 

[eriktheguy]

It is more worthwhile for the DM than the players.
Note that a full year DDI subscription allows up to 5 updates a month. The intention is that each of the 5 people at your table can download the update each month.
However, if you are the DM of your table like me, you could get away with being the only one in the group with a DDI subscription. Everyone uses my computer to make characters, and I split the cost with 4 DMs at other tables, so I pay something like 12$ (Canadian) for a year.
Cheap and effective.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

It is more worthwhile for the DM than the players.
Note that a full year DDI subscription allows up to 5 updates a month. The intention is that each of the 5 people at your table can download the update each month.

Just a clarification. This absolutely is not the point of the 5 updates. In fact, it is against the terms of the service to allow anyone else to use the updates. It's meant for those people who might have 2 laptops and a desktop computer and want to update them all(with an extra update or 2 in case you need to reinstall or something).

 

[The Coffee Cat]

However, if you are the DM of your table like me, you could get away with being the only one in the group with a DDI subscription. Everyone uses my computer to make characters, and I split the cost with 4 DMs at other tables, so I pay something like 12$ (Canadian) for a year.
Cheap and effective.

If I decide to subscribe continuously, I'll definitely do it like that (and ask my players if they want to share the cost). Otherwise it's going to be 1 month every few months. I don't buy enough books to justify the cost otherwise - what can I say, I enjoy my homebrew.

(In case it wasn't obvious, I'm on the fence too.)

 

[Herschel]

I love it. Definitely worth it for me and I'd venture anyone who is not a booknard/organic, by-hand person (although I still love books myself).

I also like the continuous subscription rather than the hassle of a one-month every few. The cost is really pretty insignificant when you figure you save what, $20 a year by dealing with the hassle? My time is worth more than that.