BLASTED E-Tools! I wasted money on THIS!?

[Fires Under Water]

My god, I don't think I've ever wasted my money on anything more useless. Can someone direct me to the Wizards employee who was working quality control on this project? That person needs to be hurt. Badly.

So, I spend enough money to get me a FREAKING CORE RULEBOOK. I have to wait three weeks while it's delivered by mail. It arrives in a cardboard sleeve that probably cost Wizards $0.02 to create, on a CD which probably cost them $0.20 to burn and label. Add another $0.60 in packaging and storage costs, and I can see I'm already getting my money's worth.

However, I was ready to swallow my fears and ignore the poor reviews (which I read, unfortunately, AFTER I ordered the prog). I put the CD in. I eventually get to running the program itself.

Strangely, I'm reminded of the Character Generator demo which I got for free in my PHB. I literally felt tears coming to my eyes as I expored the CD. This program is useless. I actually tried writing a character up blindfolded. It was faster. I was able to create a legible character sheet faster than it took me to generate a character using this program. Levels were a mess. Stat generation was extraordinarily lame. Buying equipment, skills, and getting feats was an absolute chore, and in addition, it had blatant bugs.

PCGen is an infinitely superior product. It doesn't take me three hours to get a character, and the printout is legible. It doesn't cost $30. This hurts even more considering I'm a poor High School Student with virtually no income, and it was either this or Forgotten Realms. I want my $30 back. And a public apology from Wizards for this pile of dog doo.

 

[herald]

Really, I found that e-tools was by far the easiest of the programs to use. I'll give you five bucks for the cd on ebay if you want.

 

[Gonzo the Mofo]

Since it seems you already had PCGen and since it is so "superior" , why didn't you just stick with it?

 

[Fast Learner]

Hmm. I can whip our characters, fully equipped, in about 5 minutes, something I could never do with pen and paper. Perhaps you just need to use it more.

And I'll give you $8 on eBay.

Oh, and in the future I suggest going to the software forum before making your purchase. You'd have learned that you're the 50th person to start a thread like this, with the very same complaints.

 

[jdavis]

Yes it had Blatant Bugs, but thats about as far as I can go to agree with you. They are at least putting a face on trying to fix the blatent bugs so I'll bear with them on that. Every other problem I had has been fixed by digging around on the net, ETHelper saved this program from the trash can but now after using it for awhile I actually am starting to like it. So now about those bugs........well thats in a different thread.

 

[herald]

Man, Fast Learner, I can't believe that you would try and grab my sweet deal away from me like that.(LOL).

Oh well, such is life on the internet.

 

[Fast Learner]

I figured we'd start the auction here.

 

[herald]

give us your tired, your fustrated, your unused e-tools.

 

[Drew]

Yes, I was going to post something smark-alecy and to the effort of "Wow, thanks for pointing this out! How insightful of you." Cooler heads prevailed, though.

I understand your frustration, but I honestly must agree with the above posters. E-Tool is by no means perfect, and it need some fixes, but once you know how to use it its not that bad. What it does do, it does pretty darn well.

I have to say that I'm surprised that you find PCGen easier to use than E-tools. I had a hard enough time getting the thing to run, let alone create characters. Sorry, I just don't see how E-tools is that hard to use.

I've also yet to notice really GLARING errors. Care to give a few examples?

 

[Leopold]

Since it seems you already had PCGen and since it is so "superior" , why didn't you just stick with it?

he prolly wanted to try out somethign new...i use pcgen religously and have tried out: DM's Familiar, RPM, and Campaign Suite. Soem work better than the other for certain apps. Nothing wrong with trying another application to see if it suites your needs better than what you were using..