AICN Reviews the DDI Character Builder!

[Admiral Caine]

People that say they find the review accurate have they been exposed to the matter in question?

It seems, if the review is accurate, that DDI will be a nifty application for who plays and likes 4e.

Yes.. I am using/playing around with it. It is pretty cool. As Mustrum_Ridcully said, it is a work in progress.. but it holds definite promise.

 

[Obryn]

For me, yes. It's on my desktop right now. It was honestly kind of a pain in the ass to install, but I'm very glad I did. It's that good... and the fact that new options are being added to it transparently as they're published, and that I don't need my books open when I create a character, make it invaluable to me.

Yeah, installing it was a pain. I have no idea why it couldn't figure out I already had .net 3.5, and therefore it had no need to re-download the whole 250mb shebang.

Anyway, once it did install, I played with it and it's completely amazing. I'm gushing about it, too.

About the only serious bug I noticed is that all the skills don't fit on the character sheet. It's better when switched to Landscape format, but a few get dropped.

OTOH, the power cards are insanely good. Full descriptions, and it pre-calculates everything for you.

-O

 

[Charwoman Gene]

OTOH, the power cards are insanely good. Full descriptions, and it pre-calculates everything for you.O

There is too much Kool-Aid. The power cards only partially pre-calculate al ot of the secondary effects do not. That is good, not insanely good.

 

[tomBitonti]

Umm, a review?

Maybe true, all of what was said ...

... but is there nothing to ding in the product?

Also, there is a bit too much over the top over what are required features. Does my car get me from place to place. Check. Is that stupendous? Not since about 1910.

 

[Fifth Element]

There is too much Kool-Aid. The power cards only partially pre-calculate al ot of the secondary effects do not. That is good, not insanely good.

The power cards could definitely be better. For instance, the Second Wind card notes that it is a minor action for dwarves. It notes this regardless of what race your character is. It should just change the action type if the character is a dwarf. If I'm playing an eladrin I don't need to know this.

 

[Hawke]

I want them to add levels 4-30 I'm impatient dern it!

I did not like the install process. I suggested they should take out the automatic install .NET and simply have a check with a link to the latest version. That seems to be where the big issue was and because it was all together I think wotc got the blame for MS's poor installation.

They did mention that they were planning on making alternate charsheets (and I assume power cards) available for printing. So while I agree the style of the power cards is kind of "first draft," I'm not to worried as I'm hopeful they'll clean it up. Moreso, I wish powers wouldn't go outside the bounds of the cards which reduces the utility of them (no pun intended!) in some of the longer powers.