DDI Monster Builder

[Jan van Leyden]

Taking Mr. Kidd's post on the WotC forums into account, the new OMB is nothing but a misnomer. It isn't a monster builder, it's a database interface for the VT, just a piece of infrastructure for the upcoming tools.

There could be some cool things growing from this, but I don't have high hopes.

Seems to be the right time to have a look at other games. Right now I'm really not inclined to shell out more money for DDI when my subscription runs out.

 

[nnms]

I consider it "better" because you can tweak and edit things (as well as homebrew from scratch), which are all features I desire greatly that WotC's tools have largely failed to provide in any useful measure.

The old monster builder doesn't count, as it deletes info from your creations seemingly at random.

Thank you so much for the link to power2ool. It's amazing. I'd give you XP but I'm told I need to spread it around more.

As for what I want from the DDI monster builder-- I want to go through the steps of making a monster on a step-by-step basis just like the character builder. I want to choose roles, enter text, apply monster themes, choose level, choose from existing monster powers all in a step by step process. Then I want to export it to a format I can put in a document.

 

[the-golem]

Taking Mr. Kidd's post on the WotC forums into account, the new OMB is nothing but a misnomer. It isn't a monster builder, it's a database interface for the VT, just a piece of infrastructure for the upcoming tools.

There could be some cool things growing from this, but I don't have high hopes.

Seems to be the right time to have a look at other games. Right now I'm really not inclined to shell out more money for DDI when my subscription runs out.

Geez. While I understand where they're coming from, the "we needed to get it up there so people that use VT have something to import into. Whoopy. VT is still beta, so only those with invites have access to it. Make the Monster Importer available to those who already have VT. Plain and simple. From what I hear, the beta peeps already had it (please correct me if I'm wrong on this). Knowing that, what's the real reason?

That said, I think the Compendium is swell, and I'm pretty fond of the current state of the online CB, although it still needs features to be on par as the old one as far as options go. I'd gladly pay $6/mo for the just compendium. Better than $30 every time a new book comes out.

What it's worth, I don't wish any ill will on WotC or anything like that. I feel like my voice has been heard by them, as someone was quick enough to release some kind of PR piece apologizing for the lack of features within. Really, that's all I want, for my voice to be heard.

...In case we're unclear, my voice says: Give us something that works, dangit ;D

 

[Psikus]

The silly thing is, they did add an awesome (though incomplete) new feature in this release of Monster 'Builder'... and didn't bother to tell anyone! I only found out about this through some forum comments , but the program can now display pictures of a selected monster, which is all kinds of cool. So far, very few images have been included, so chances are that if you made some casual browsing, you only saw the placeholder gnome image (RAWWR!). You need to look at Monster Vault, or the first Monster Manual, to see a decent amount of monsters with pics. However, it does look great, and once it is complete, this could make the MB a far better tool for browsing monsters than the Compendium currently is.

Anyway, I just wanted to find an upside to this mess. The lack of monster editing has been a huge letdown, otherwise.

 

[the-golem]

The silly thing is, they did add an awesome (though incomplete) new feature in this release of Monster 'Builder'... and didn't bother to tell anyone! I only found out about this through some forum comments , but the program can now display pictures of a selected monster, which is all kinds of cool. So far, very few images have been included, so chances are that if you made some casual browsing, you only saw the placeholder gnome image (RAWWR!). You need to look at Monster Vault, or the first Monster Manual, to see a decent amount of monsters with pics. However, it does look great, and once it is complete, this could make the MB a far better tool for browsing monsters than the Compendium currently is.

Anyway, I just wanted to find an upside to this mess. The lack of monster editing has been a huge letdown, otherwise.

You're quite right. They did a fantabulous job on the portion of that you completed. It'd be awesome (imho) if the statblock had the option to print one as well.

 

[Ryujin]

Pretty much looks like the old offline builder, to me, just with some screen scaling issues.

 

[Holy Bovine]

What a thread full of crankiness! The original MB is still available for now, and this tool is obviously now in open beta (notice the "beta" tag on the opening splash page).

That you have to keep paying for. That is something I ain't ever gonna do.

The negativity of the gaming community never ceases to amaze me.

Neither does the blind fanboyism.

 

[webrunner]

I'd be fine with this if they said what it was instead of misrepresenting it as the "launch of the new Monster builder!"

Dear D&D Insider™ Subscriber,

Today , Wizards of the Coast launched the brand new D&D Monster Builder as part of the new web-based Adventure Tools suite for D&D Insider.

If they managed the expectations "Wizards of the Coast launched a preliminary alpha of the D&D Monster Builder intended to allow importing monsters into the Virtual Table") this wouldn't be so bad.

There's a major disconnect at wotc, but it's not necessarily with any of the developers.. it's between the higher ups and the community team. Someone there wants everything spun to ridiculous lies, when being honest would do so much more to gather support and hype.

 

[MrMyth]

It's pretty sad.

WotC released new software?

They killed your dog!

For myself, I can accept WotC releasing unfinished software. I just wish they would be open about it. More communication is what is needed.

As it is, they advertised a new monster builder that would let players create new monsters - something that it is currently incapable of doing. People signed up for DDI, this month, in anticipation of something they did not receive.

And WotC could easily have told the truth. Have established reasonable expectations for what was being released. But they didn't. I don't think they did so to trick anyone or out of malice. I think their PR team just likes to hype things way too much, and their legal team doesn't want their designers making statements about how much their products are lacking, because that looks pretty bad on paper.

Of course, I think that giving more honest statements about what to expect would help them in the long run - but even then, sure, people would complain anyway. It's true they can't win - but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try and do what they can for their customers anyway.

 

[renau1g]

If they managed the expectations "Wizards of the Coast launched a preliminary alpha of the D&D Monster Builder intended to allow importing monsters into the Virtual Table") this wouldn't be so bad.

There's a major disconnect at wotc, but it's not necessarily with any of the developers.. it's between the higher ups and the community team. Someone there wants everything spun to ridiculous lies, when being honest would do so much more to gather support and hype.

They included the beta/alpha of this before for those testing the VTT. I tried it and was thoroughly unimpressed as the problems everyone's mentioned were evident back then. I sent in my comments about it's complete lack of functionality then promptly stopped using it. It's sad that nothing's changed, well they added pictures, but woop-de-doo, 5 seconds of Google and I can have any monster picture I want and I can copy & paste with the old MB into a word doc to build encounters for my adventures.

Besides, printing full-colour monster pictures would kill my ink.