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

[noretoc]

I really don't understand this attitude of "Yea, it has problems but.."
I paid money for this thing.
When I go buy a tv, I don't have the guy say "Hey it is a hundred bucks. It has problems, but it will give you sound." When I buy a cd I dont here, "Well, yuio can hear it, but it is not as good as the stuff out now, $19.50 please. I don't go to a book store and get a book with fifteen pages missing, and say "Well it has it's problems, but it is still a good read"
E-ttols is a peice of crap, that I have removed from my drive because it was talking up space. I can not tell you how many time I went to use it, and found that it could not do what I needed. It is a huge dissapointment. especially from WoTC.

 

[Fast Learner]

It's software. Currently the creation of software is an immature science, aka the effort currently required to release a perfect, 100% bug-free application is far, far too high to be able to charge a reasonable price. While that most certainly does not excuse poor quality control, it does explain (a) why imperfect software is released, and (b) why users tend to expect it.

eTools is not a book, it is not music, it is not an electronic device. It's software, so people treat it like software.

Once upon a time people bought cars that wouldn't start half the time and required some kind of repair or maintainence nearly every day. Today that kind of performance would be completely inexcusable in a car, and rightly so: making cars is a mature industry.

Do users of software moan when their applications don't work? Absolutely, and they should because the industry needs incentive to do better. But software is still treated in a special way because it's still a baby.

Again, to finish up, this is no excuse for bad application design, bad programming, or bad quality assurance. It's merely an explanation of why people accept a certain level of problems with software.

 

[noretoc]

I know you are not making excuses. I agree. I put up with bug in almost all the software I buy. This is the only bit of software that I paid for that i did not like. Ill go back to my TV analogy, only because I ahve a TV, that was supposed to come with an auto channel guide and that never worked. I didn't see it as a big problem, but just as a comparison, here is what I imagone e-tools would be if it were a tv.
See an add, for a 20 inch colorTV with 3d, hdef picture, flat screen, $1000, with a fully programmable remote.. You are looking forward to it. Then you hear that the TV dosen't have 3d. They couldn't fit it in. and the dropped the price to $700. Well, still not bad. Then you finnaly see it released, and it says, 20 inch TV, Hdef pic, flat screen, with customizable remote. Hmm, ok. Now you think you cant wait. You get it home, and it is Black and white ans has no sound. on top of that the picture goes out once in a while, and only channel 6 come in clearly. Well you talk to some people at the company and they tell you, they couldn't add 3d, because of cost. IT would have made the project too big.(map maker) They never had any real intention or putting sound, even thought it is very important to the way watching tv was. It was just too hard to implement (prestige classes). The programable remote allows you to control the tv, and turn it on and off, and turn your vcr on and off, but if you really want to have it do other things, you have to be able to take it apart and put in new chips that you make (the ability to modify the exel database.) As for the channels going, It is being worked on, and should be fixked soon. (bugs)
Now months later, they say , hey we got an update to that tv. You say great, and grab it. Find that theyfixed the remote, so now you can change channels with it. Added a small radio, so you can try to get some sound, if you can tune in the right station and that is it. (added something not very important, and fixed one of the many things wrong.)
Now wait It gets better. Now you start telling people what a crock this is, and they start telling you that it is High def, flat screen, and if you don't like it, don't watch it. Then you tell them You can only get channel six and they say "So, That is all I watch anyway" (EI, core rules, no prestige classes).

Sorry this was long and ranty, but in a way I find it funny. I do feel bad for all the other people who spent money on the thing, that don't have much money to spend. I only wish I could have warned them to go out and buy a book instead.

(ALL the spelling mistakes in this post is brought to you by our friends at sesame street, and the letter C as in crap)

 

[jdavis]

I really don't understand this attitude of "Yea, it has problems but.."
I paid money for this thing.
When I go buy a tv, I don't have the guy say "Hey it is a hundred bucks. It has problems, but it will give you sound." When I buy a cd I dont here, "Well, yuio can hear it, but it is not as good as the stuff out now, $19.50 please. I don't go to a book store and get a book with fifteen pages missing, and say "Well it has it's problems, but it is still a good read"
E-ttols is a peice of crap, that I have removed from my drive because it was talking up space. I can not tell you how many time I went to use it, and found that it could not do what I needed. It is a huge dissapointment. especially from WoTC.

If you bought a TV and it turned out it had a problem, would you just throw it away? If you bought a book that turned out to be missing 15 pages would you just say to heck with it and never read it? If the progam doesn't do what you need it to do then that is completely different than the program being buggy. The program does everything I need it to do, the program fullfills 100% of what I need. It is ugly, it is lacking in add on features but those two facts don't make it useless. I have absolutely no problem with what it does or how it does it, I have a problem when it doesn't do things right. IF WOTC doesn't fix the bugs well then I'll be right there with you but as long as they are trying I'll hang in there, I paid for it, it isn't going anywhere, I loose nothing in hoping they will fix the bugs, I loose nothing in waiting. Getting a product that doesn't live up to 100% of it's expectations is just part of life, I have never bought a car yet that didn't have some unforseen problem when I bought it or shortly after, was I ripped off, should I just throw the car away? They got my money, I can call it a loss or I can make the best of it and hope that they will fix the bugs. I am not knocking your opinion, the program will never set the world on fire, but it does work, and when the do finally get the bugs worked out then I will be totally content with my purchase.

 

[jdavis]

But it wasn't a thousand dollar TV, it was a under $30 program. I went out to buy a program that actually as programs go had a low price. I got a cheep program, well what did I expect. And I know thirty dollars is alot of money to some people but it's not like people are going to have to cancel Christmas. Once again I'm not saying your point isn't valid but you have to see where there are people out there who can get some use out of this, and there are people out there who actually like it. Now if the bugs don't get fixed I'll be right there with you, but that is still to be seen in the future.

 

[tetsujin28]

So what exactly are its faults? I havn't seen anything other than the demo that came with the PH.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Besides the bugs, as mentioned, it also does not have templates. There are various other things that are missing, but templates are the big issue with me.

EDIT: Oh yeah - it's really not much at all like that demo you mention.

 

[tetsujin28]

That's too bad...I thought it had a lot of promise. I really haven't been able to find a DM assistant that I like, i.e., that doesn't require lots of cut-and-paste of text files to make it work).

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Its other gaping problem is NO DOCUMENTATION. None. PGen at least has a set of documents that works. E-Tools doesn't have anything, not even buttons that explain themselves when the mouse glides over them. In many ways it seems like an in-house editor, more beta than finished product. In fact I gather that the 'patch' includes more new features than it does fixes, possibly because they were in the pipe when the program went gold.

I have not bought it, merely helped a friend use his copy. In all I was disappointed with it, but I would hardly call it the worst program that I have ever tried. (Does any one remember 'Outpost'?)

As for why someone who likes PCGen would buy E-Tools, don't forget that Wizards had a LOT of stuff pulled from PCGen, like the splatbooks and die rolling. People who wanted those functions would pretty much have to go with E-Tools. It would have been nice if they had at least provided a program that did as much as PCGen 2.x., but instead they provided something rather less.

Part of the problem was the changes of directions while the program was being written, part of the problem was time wasted on bells and whistles that ended up being discarded. I was on the Mastertools mailing list and kept cringing when I saw things like sounds and 3-D monster pictures were being added.

Then for months, nothing. I actually wonder how long it sat, frozen, without any work being done on the thing at all. And then it was dusted off, and shipped half finished to make it to Gen Con.

I really hope that they can get the thing to work right, but meanwhile I will continue to use PCGen, which. though not perfect, has a much larger database and worthwhile documentation.

The Auld Grump

 

[Fast Learner]

Its other gaping problem is NO DOCUMENTATION. None. PGen at least has a set of documents that works. E-Tools doesn't have anything, not even buttons that explain themselves when the mouse glides over them. In many ways it seems like an in-house editor, more beta than finished product. In fact I gather that the 'patch' includes more new features than it does fixes, possibly because they were in the pipe when the program went gold.

The lack of separate documentation (electronic, certainly, but separate and easy to find) is a shame, particularly because "rendering" it out of the help system would have been extremely easy. The lack of tooltips is a real shame, inexcusable as far as I can tell.

Your note about the patch's features already being in the pipe is insightful, very likely true, and is a great explanation of why this patch exists at all.