New Character Builder from WotC!

[Jack99]

I didn't swing by this discussion to point fingers or brand people. I am sorry if I did.

But I do think that these discussions come down to the faith that you have in WotC. Because every time, we have the same people (more or less) taking the same position in a given debate. Which makes these debates not about facts, but about what you feel and think. Which again explains why most end up accomplishing ... well nothing.

So, with that in mind, I want to say this.

I think the new CB looks good, but the limitations are at best. 20 character limit and no export is horrible and almost laughable. No customization support pisses me off.

The fact that they use Silverlight that makes it impossible to run on my iPad annoys me to no end, since that would have been seven shades of awesome, if possible.

The fact that it is online only is not a problem for me, as I always have Internet, wherever I go. I do see how some countries, or part thereof, might be less fortunate. But as evolution goes, isn't online the way to go?

As mentioned, there are quite a few things that annoy me about the new CB. But I still have faith that within a reasonable timeframe, WotC will make this tool worth every penny. I also have faith that they are doing what they can to get things up and running and please as many people as humanly possible, within the limitations set forth by the high-ups and the technology.

Is that a lot of faith? Perhaps. Is it blind? Well, I think not, but I am sure there are those that disagree. Luckily for me, the price of DDI is low - low enough to not really care. I mean, I pay $6 per month for ENworld, and get what? I couldn't tell you, but I know I pay the money because I like the site and want to chip in so that it continues to be around.

Cheers

 

[Oldtimer]

To me, the interesting part is the amount of data downloaded when the online CB opens. Oldtimer is saying that it should be about 100 bytes per character, to show the user which characters are available. To me, this seems to suggest that WotC won't be storing our personalized character portraits online.
I know that I have assigned non-standard portraits to more than one character, but the portrait files are stored on my local hard drive. I guess I'll have to trust that the online CB will point to the same files, so when I open the online version, it will show me the character portraits that I have selected without having to download another 13KB of image data for each PC.
That's not a heavy bandwidth usage, there.

If I was creating this tool, I would cache your character portraits in your local cache (the same way those 2.8 MB of graphics and javascript from the D&D homepage gets cached). Using local caching wisely is a great way to reduce bandwidth requirements.

So, again, I don't think bandwidth is the reason for the 20 character restriction.

 

[abyssaldeath]

The fact that they use Silverlight that makes it impossible to run on my iPad annoys me to no end, since that would have been seven shades of awesome, if possible.

This is one issue that people bring up that annoys me. There is no one programing solution that will run on every internet device for this type of program. HTML5 is an unfinished product so it is ridiculous to use that language to make a program as complicated as the CB at the moment. For this type of program your options are pretty much Flash, Java and Silverlight, none of which are supported by the iPhone/iPad. So don't be annoyed by WotC for the decision to use Silverlight, be annoyed at Apple for being so strict and the developers of HTML5 for being way behind schedule.

 

[Alan Shutko]

A character sheet isn't that complicated nor does it need excessive richness on the client. There are plenty of existing web apps which are equally complex yet run on any current browser. Gmail, or google docs.

I don't blame either apple or wizards. Apple chose what to put on their devices, and Wizards chose to ignore the entire mobile installed base to pick a technology. (which includes apple, but also android, blackberry, nokia and even Windows Phone). I think that is a big missed opportunity.

I think this decision was based less on what the character builder needs and more on what future tools will need.

 

[mudbunny]

I think that it is a mistake for people to assume that just because the CB is built in SilverLight, that everything else will be built in silverlight as well.

The new Compendium is built in html and java (IIRC), and the CB is built in SilverLight. Future tools will be built in whatever tis best for the tool.

As for the number of character restrictions. I too think that it is unnecessarily low. However, I find it far more acceptable to start low and then increase rather than to start high and decrease.

Also, Google?? People actually are comparing WotC to Google and expecting WotC to be able to provide the same sort of web-presence that Google does?

 

[garyh]

Also, Google?? People actually are comparing WotC to Google and expecting WotC to be able to provide the same sort of web-presence that Google does?

I'm not saying WotC needs to provide the same 7.5 GB of space for my PC's that GMail does for my e-mail. But surely they could do better than the 2 MB of space they're allocating per account at launch.

 

[catsclaw227]

Why should I have to spend any of my time rebuilding a character every time I want to tinker with it when it takes about 100kb storage unzipped? As ProfCirno said earlier, memory is so cheap that GMail offers gigs of it with a free e-mail account to a lot more people that have ever heard of DDI.

OK.... so I am not happy with the 20 PC limit.....

But did you (or ProfessorCirno, not sure which) actual try to compare Google's GMail server farm, storage, bandwidth resources and network operations center to what WOTC might have to support DDI? We're talking magnitudes of difference.

 

[garyh]

OK.... so I am not happy with the 20 PC limit.....

But did you (or ProfessorCirno, not sure which) actual try to compare Google's GMail server farm, storage, bandwidth resources and network operations center to what WOTC might have to support DDI? We're talking magnitudes of difference.

True, which is why I followed up with this...

I'm not saying WotC needs to provide the same 7.5 GB of space for my PC's that GMail does for my e-mail. But surely they could do better than the 2 MB of space they're allocating per account at launch.

Seriously, WotC doesn't HAVE to be Google to do better than what they're offering. We're talking 2 MB of storage while they're collecting actual monthly fees.

 

[Alan Shutko]

On the other hand, there are smaller startups with fewer employees that also provide larger amounts of space. For free.

This is a commercial service that people pay for. If Wizards has the resources to run their forums, they've got the resources to provide space for additional characters. There are other ways to prevent denial of service attacks. This isn't about Wizards being too poor or too technically backward to put together a service, because it's laughable to think that. This is about keeping the limits low so that it's harder for people to share accounts.

FWIW, you can get redundant cloud storage really cheap these days from Amazon, Rackspace, or soon Google. Amazon's price right now is $0.14 per GB.

 

[JoeGKushner]

OK.... so I am not happy with the 20 PC limit.....

But did you (or ProfessorCirno, not sure which) actual try to compare Google's GMail server farm, storage, bandwidth resources and network operations center to what WOTC might have to support DDI? We're talking magnitudes of difference.

Yeah. Like the price. Google charges how much for those GMail accounts again?