wedgeski
Adventurer
I'm only railing against the word used in the thread title. It is far from "crappy". In many ways it exceeds the offline CB. It does, however, still have a ways to go in several important areas.
The CB is still crappy
- Thread starter Dannyalcatraz
- Start date
Ryujin
Legend
You see, I'm of a completely different mind. From a purely functional standpoint, leaving the newer content aside, I see the current online CB as falling well short of the offline CB and exceeding it in no way. To me, that defines "crappy", in this context
In my book, a program that doesn't work pretty much the same way every time you fire it up on the same machine in the same way you did it before is crappy.
I mean seriously, I went from a relatively pleasant experience with the first time to spending 2 hours getting the thing to load properly to getting kicked out of the program for no discernable reason. Same machine, no computer settings changed, no security settings changed, no browser settings changed.
AND it put incorrect info on a power card for the first PC!
How is that NOT crappy?
As someone who let his DDI subscription lapse, but will probably re-up at some point, I'd like to hear more about this. Other than being up-to-date, how is the online CB better than the offline CB?
Stumblewyk
Adventurer
I think the difference of opinions regarding the Online CB is a result of the fact that many people simply don't experience any of the problems many other people are complaining about. To those of us (myself included) who aren't experiencing difficulties with the Online CB, it's a perfectly serviceable application.
Now, since I've done work in web application development, I am of the opinion that if it's not working well enough for the majority to use it easily, then the application is still flawed.
So, yeah, for you, the CB is crappy. For me, it's not. But in general terms - it's still not right.
IanB
First Post
In part because there's no particular evidence that the CB specifically is actually to blame for the problems you're having, given the essentially flawless performance other people are reporting.
The combination of browsers (and patch levels of those browsers), OSes, drivers, hardware, etc., that can affect how a program like this is actually fairly staggering, and even the biggest developers can't test and ensure that their stuff works with every weird combination people have.
Ryujin
Legend
Also can't rule out the possibility that it's a server(s) loading issue, since so many people comment on *inconsistent* behaviour
It's MUCH better organized, making things easier to find, and loads much quicker for me than the offline one did. I also don't have to tweak my firewall for the umpteen times the old one used to connect for information upon start up. If there is a "crash" your information is not lost and you can reload from where you left off.
There are two wonky things where the old one was nicer: Point Buy is slower as it updates for each numeric change and you delete an item under the "Sell" tab in the marketplace. I usually start with 'assign an array' and then go to Point Buy to adjust. Otherwise I much prefer the new one.
IanB
First Post
The biggest things missing for me at this point are the ability to specify custom deities and the ability to add bonus feats or ignore feat prerequisites (particularly so that you can give appropriate Channel Divinity and/or Domain feats to characters who worship the non-enterable custom deities...). With those two things added (and maybe some less terrible feat sorting) I'd be quite content.
