November 16th release for Web-based Character Builder

[ourchair]

This is unfair. WotC made a mistake in the original character builder in allowing the entire 4E rule set available for a pittance. While it was a great deal for value seekers (like myself), it was an unsustainable model. I think, if we are honest, we understood that the original CB model was not going to last.

The other route that CB could have gone is micro-transactions. To get book X for the CB, you'd have to spend a certain amount. Once purchased, you'd have it forever. Under this model, CB could have remained a desktop application.

Either way, the changes being made to CB are done to protect WotC's intellectual property. There is a value to the rule set and they can't continue to give it away for next to nothing.

I agree entirely.

I have always disliked web-based applications like this new one, mostly because it operates on the principle that you have online access everywhere you game, but I understand that they needed to make a choice between convenient for all users and losing a certain amount of money on piracy, and convenient for MOST users and not losing any at all.

I live in a country where piracy is rampant, so to be honest, I have take some sadistic pleasure knowing that players will have to either pony up or build their characters by hand. People who study the rules through the Character Builder first and the book second (if at all) will have to start learning the intricacies of the game's math.

That said, I still consider the DDI subscription worthwhile at this point, since they are doing the updates they have always promised they would. Sure, there're delays but even without hands-on experience I can already tell that this new app is simply much cleaner than the old one and doesn't run like molasses dripping off of paper on a cold January day and to that end, this new version of the CharBuilder is probably a 'technical' improvement that allows them to clean house on the code, even if it isn't an improvement in the direction i'd like.

 

[ourchair]

Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll finish the monster builder before they decide to switch platforms again. That would be cool.

I must say that a big announcement that the CB is at best moving sideways isn't all that exciting. I'm not a big fan of the idea of renting applications. Running an application inside a web-browser isn't any more appealing to me than running an application inside a virtual machine. I really dislike the idea that fairly important elements of my hobby will be reliant on the whims of a large corporation, whereas with the old CB I could easily keep the program going for as long as I keep the program installed on a machine.

Me too.

To me, it's not even about "the corporation being evil". I just dislike the idea that I'm being given tools to make Character Building easier, but at any moment, whether the company collapses, gets bought by another company or the company decides to reshuffle its assets or withdraw support from the Web team, these tools will disappear.

I've always disliked the supposition that 4E is an MMO, but if I'm going to need payment to have access to my character's digital form, and lose it should the company terminate support of the product and the tools and be unable to play on the same field with others without them, then it's kind of MMO-y.

 

[mudbunny]

I have finished going through the first 1010 posts of the thread and have extracted the posts by PaoloM into their own thread.

I will continue updating tomorrow as I get time.

I will attempt to collect any questions from this thread, but as I have a job, wife and kids, I may miss them. To be certain that your question gets passed up (and all questions submitted to me will get passed on), try emailing me directly:

?arcel.beaudoin@g?ail.co? (just replace the ? with m)

 

[I'm A Banana]

That's the post that inspired my question. If that's true does it mean that I can't mix and match from different campaigns? If so that sucks. That is very bad.

Actually though, at this point I'm starting not to care.

It looks to me like that's the case (though they promise to fix it someday, if you wish hard enough on unicorn gumdrop fairies, maybe. ).

For me, that's the first big hit to my personal utility of the program, and it's probably going to affect every user of the CB. I'd expect it to be Complaint #1 once the CB is out in the wild (though not until it is, because a lot of people probably assume this isn't the case...).

 

[Keldryn]

Silverlight

Hmm...

• Silverlight? iPad? Mobile?: Being web-based gains a bit of cross-platform compatibility, but tethering it to Silverlight does no favors to the platforms that can't make use of it, and it's not very forward-thinking.

I would argue that their decision to use Silverlight is a forward-thinking approach.

I think that people are getting too focused on the character builder as an application unto itself. Given that the first Web-based tool is a rewrite of a tool that we already have, I think it is safe to say that this is the first component of an integrated suite of tools. A more traditional HTML + Javascript + ASP.NET/PHP architecture could probably have done the job for the character builder alone, although as a developer with signficant experience in those technologies as well as Silverlight I think it would be faster to build it in Silverlight. But as more tools are added to the suite, the value of the Silverlight platform will become more apparent.

The character builder is the logical place to start when launching a new suite of online tools, and if the suite grows to include a virtual tabletop, character visualizer/designer, mapping tools, and the like, Silverlight's graphical capabilities will be essential. With characters being saved "to the cloud" by default, it makes it easy to pull those characters into an adventure design tool, or into a VTT session. If the character visualizer is released, then it can be plugged into the character builder very easily.

One thing that is important here is that Silverlight is essentially a platform, and the difference is much like developing games for the PC vs games for the consoles. Cross-browser compatibility issues are the bane of web developers everywhere, and trying to include progressive new features while not having the application break on IE6, 7, or 8 can be a nightmare (and IE 9 will only work on Vista or Windows 7 installs, not XP).

Using Silverlight for the PC and Mac does not mean that iPads will be left out in the cold. Were I in charge of making these decisions, I would probably choose to build a Silverlight client for PC and Mac to support the full suite of D&D online tools and then build a separate iOS client for the iPad that is customized for that device -- assuming that there is a large enough market to justify the expense.

I haven't seen it mentioned here, but I've seen it on the WoTC boards, so I will mention that you don't need IE in order to use Silverlight. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari all run Silverlight apps perfectly fine.

 

[darjr]

http://images.community.wizards.com/community.wizards.com/user/dungeonsanddragons/large/87062d4844e6c251fb5ff604bc10637b.png

thats the new character sheet. The 'main' one. The other one is supposed to be the Essentials sheet.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

I've checked that the current CB does indeed track things during game play. I think this statement is just incorrect.

I have a player who used the CB to track his character stats, hp, powers used etc during play. I'm not stringing CAT-5 cable or setting up yet another wireless hub just so we can access the CB during play.

On the upside, since we can still use the CB current to October (or whenever the last update was), there is really no point in buying any more hardcovers*, so I guess I've got that going for me.

*Our general rule of thumb is "If you're going to use something from a book, buy the book so I can see how it works".

 

[garyh]

thats the new character sheet. The 'main' one. The other one is supposed to be the Essentials sheet.

What leaps out at me there is that none of the math is shown, at all. Which makes the "Print to PDF" even less useful to DM's than the current ability to e-mail CB files.

All we can do is hope that the character sheet is customizable.

Which reminds me, are we going to be able to save character sheet templates with the new CB? That was a nice feature in the current CB.

 

[Keldryn]

http://images.community.wizards.com...ns/large/87062d4844e6c251fb5ff604bc10637b.png

thats the new character sheet. The 'main' one. The other one is supposed to be the Essentials sheet.

I really like that new character sheet. One of my biggest issues with the current character builder is that I can't stand the character sheets (and power cards) that it produces. That "standard" 4e character sheet looks like a tax form, and any time I've given it to new players, they've found it confusing. The power cards also have a terrible layout, so I hope those are dramatically improved as well.

 

[Ourph]

It's a fairly standard service/payment system. So why would I possibly think that something like DDI would be at all different from that?

Perhaps because, for the last ~2 years, it has been different from that???