D&D 5E What’s next for DDI

[AbdulAlhazred]

You will when some yahoo has gone through the book in the store and written down the code from the book you bought and it is now useless to you.

Of course they can seal the books - preventing people from browsing them and upping the production costs. This works for software as the packaging is hard to break into unnoticed in a store. It still happens though.

Yeah, and you MIGHT argue that YOU own the book and not that other guy the FIRST time you cash one of those in. The 2nd time you're account is history. This is a non-issue. A couple people will get busted and have their accounts deleted (there go all your characters you saved there etc). The system would work pretty well and no special precautions are needed. A few CS guys will have to deal with the hassle now and then but pretty soon people will learn not to try to cheat.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Eh, the easiest way to drive DDI subscription is to make all of the products or a significant number of them available for download via DDI a week or two before they hit shelves in FLGS. Then push the sub price up to 10 bucks monthly and package it with the character generator.

Yes this may hurt game store sales, but I find that the people likely to buy books are likely to buy books regardless of the availability of other methods (how long have pirated books been out there and WoTC is still alive?) Plus, the brick and mortar game store is, regardless of what we'd like to believe, a targeted and dying business. Amazon is killing book margins from the publisher and those margins are going to have to be made up somewhere, eventually. It won't be from WoTC and the distributors through competing are going to have the same problem. The customer will buy from wherever the price is lowest on average and the only guy that can't compete in the chain is the local store.

But coupons, I agree are a bad idea, simply from the cost of support in the textbook publishing world in dealing with resale of old textbooks and lost coupon codes. There are better ways to drive online membership.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I just want the monster builder to work:

- correct attack bonuses;
- updated damage expressions;
- triggered actions and auras that actually copy across to custom content; and
- when I print, I would like to see the proper icons rather than a random selection of symbols.

I've lowered my expectations. WotC has had ten years to deliver on a promised VTT but they keep screwing it up.

I would also like to see three adventures a month in Dungeon again but, again, I think I just need to lower my expectations.

One of the things that I find most disappointing is that the most senior person in WotC RPG, Bill Slavicsek, spends more time in his Ampersand columns trying to show that he is important rather than addressing the very real anger being expressed by his customer base.

Look at Matthew Sprange at Mongoose: Mongoose made some absolutely terrible products. But, rather than taking refuge in some "I'm the boss and so very important"-type column on his own website, he actually engaged the community on this and other boards, apologised, laid out the strategy for moving forward and kept coming back. It's a lesson for Bill.

 

[Bagpuss]

Ya know one thing I would like WOTC to do, it is not strictly DDI more a web site thing but a automated index of all available adventures by level with a brief description. I would also like to be able to filter by campaign and adventure path.

I take it you don't check the insider wiki site I've been maintaining then? That has a list of all the adventures published in Dungeon listed by level with a brief description. They are also grouped by adventure path and campaign setting.

In fact including the printed ones would be nice also and mkae it more likely to buy one now and again.

Hmm I suppose I could add hardcopy published adventures somewhere, although that would be a lot more work to track them all down.

 

[Bagpuss]

When I got there it is not quite what I really want, though in the absense of nothing it will do for now.

What is what you want? I'm always looking for feedback.

However, it brings up my main problem with the WoTC site.
Its is hard to find things, the search engine requires exact spelling. I know search is hard but they need to do better here or buy in a decent search engine. I do not spell well.

The search engine is terrible even if you can spell.

Thanks, now that I know I will definitly make more use of it.

The Home page is a bit more useful to link to than the adventure page, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to actually get the "view wiki" page to link to it.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

What is what you want? I'm always looking for feedback.



The search engine is terrible even if you can spell.



The Home page is a bit more useful to link to than the adventure page, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way to actually get the "view wiki" page to link to it.

First off thanks for providing the page, but in my opinion Wizards should be generating a page like this and linking to it directly from either the home page or the DM tab. The page should be filterable by level, setting/adventure path.

As a fan created page, though good work.

 

[Bagpuss]

First off thanks for providing the page, but in my opinion Wizards should be generating a page like this and linking to it directly from either the home page or the DM tab.

Agreed, their own indexing of Dragon and Dungeon content is terrible. Some columns are sometimes listed as Features and other times as the column name itself so they appear in different indexes.

The page should be filterable by level, setting/adventure path.

Some sort of database would be nice, but unfortunately that's not possible due to the constraints of a wiki, if wizards had done something themselves instead of depending on fans, then what you suggested could/should have been made.

As a fan created page, though good work.

Well hopefully it can help you find what you are looking for.

 

[eamon]

I'm hoping for a real, flexible charsheet export (e.g. html) that includes power text+details.

Only one person I know will use a online charsheet at the table, so a printable version is pretty critical.

I'd like it to be flexible so that actually usable charsheet templates might exist eventually. Much as the current CB is good for a quick start, it makes poor charsheets with lots of distracting, redundant info and visual effects, and poor layout in general. Also, and they can't really fix that, it makes many "mistakes" - some of which are plain bugs, but most by virtue of failing to take into account common circumstances (e.g. bonuses to action points by other party members not printed on action point card, effects of feats/weapons don't get included, etc.) These things really add up; by paragon tier I've got characters where I don't think a single power has the correct bonuses damage. An editable format would help here.

However, I don't expect this - I expect (at best) a pdf export.

Despite the fact that the CB is the "killer app" for the D&DI, I don't really ever expect to use it much - and haven't so far, either.

Realistic killer features:

• A decent, smartly filtered search in the compendium that includes feats+items people actually take or actually search for as opposed to the 99% junk that's out there. I have real hope for this to occur. This could include correlational analysis ala amazons "people that look at this implement also look at...."
• Expressive custom filters (e.g. heavy blade weapons that do fire damage, or classes that include the stealth skill on the class list and have Con as a secondary stat, etc.). I don't expect to ever see this.
• The ability to make shortlists in the compendium that include a bunch of arbitrary game elements - and possibly bookmark the list.
• Permit user settings in the compendium such as "never ever show me this rule element again" such that distracting elements that come up again and again can be permanently removed from the results.
• Better linking between pages and rule elements; much more links by default between pages - perhaps automatically inferred (better imperfect than nothing).

 

[ki11erDM]

You will when some yahoo has gone through the book in the store and written down the code from the book you bought and it is now useless to you.

Yea they have to be scratch off… like instant lotto tickets. That way you could check before you bought the book, if you find it has been scratched off you know it was stolen; the store calls WotC with the number and the account get banned. Ideally WotC would then replace the book or send an insert to go with the book.