CB's biggest failing by far: No custom content possible

[KidSnide]

To my mind the problem isn't one of software implementation, but one of prioritization. It used to me that a normal game involved a decent variety of custom magic items, and many games included some custom races or spells. Despite this, WotC decided that supporting its constantly flowing stream of new published rules was more important that supporting these custom rules elements. It's a reasonable business decision, but - IMO - it has had a strong negative effect on the hobby.

The problem is that the CB is a very useful tool for smoothing a character creation process that is quite challenging for many players. Because it doesn't support these basic level of GM creativity, it discourages new GMs from running non-standard settings, or even creating the occasional item, power or feat that helps tie the mechanics to the individual quirks of the setting. Of course, any GM can still run whatever they want and forgo use of the CB, but that forces their players to go through the more complicated process of creating characters by hand. Quite reasonably, many GMs choose to give up their customizations instead of forcing their players to go through a more arduous character creation procedure.

Quite simply, providing an incentive for GMs to give up the customizations that helped make their games unique has changed the hobby. And, IMO, the change is not for the better.

-KS

 

[Riastlin]

The problem though is that when WotC does finally implement support for "custom content" it has to be more than just custom religions and languages. Quite frankly, given the history that has been shown by the forum goers, etc., were WotC to implement this new "feature" that allows you to put in your own language and religion, there would be a huge outcry about how clueless WotC is.

People would complain that this is a slap in the face for all of us homebrewers out there. That this "fix" or "support" is anything but. After all, the easiest piece of the CB to put your own "stuff" in for is likely the languages and religions. I mean seriously, how hard is it to draw a line through "Bahamut" and write in "Captain Awesome"? That would be the arguments and rants. Frankly, as somebody who is running a campaign that his some of its own homebrewed deities, I would not really consider this as being something "new" or even helpful for the CB.

WotC won't be given credit for having accounted for "custom" content until we can put in our own feats, with their own Pre-Reqs and our own powers, items, etc. Further, people really want these custom entries to then also "do the math" on the power cards. After all, the power cards are, in my opinion, far and away the best feature of the CB, particularly since they "do the math" for us -- albeit occasionally incorrectly.

Should the online CB have initially been designed with an option in language/religion for "Other --" that then had you write in on the sheet what that "other" was? Yeah, it probably should have. That would be the easiest fix and is seemingly something that would have been obvious from the get go. Even with that though, while I agree it would be nice for "Captain Awesome" to print out nice and neat in the same font as everything else on the religion line, I don't consider that an issue. Now, not having particularly decent means for implementing my own custom items into the CB is a much bigger issue for me and my players. It would make it a lot easier and a lot more useable if they could put in the artifact that they have received, etc.

Like it or not, WotC is learning from history here. They know that if they bring us a "half-arsed" implementation, even if they explain that they are still working on the other half, that there will be a great hue and cry on the assorted boards.

/shrug

 

[jimmifett]

I apologize to anyone I may appear to be talking down to, but I honestly affirm that is not what I am doing here. I don't know the technical level of anyone here, so I'm just going for the lowest common denominator!

It's certainly true that comparing integers to other integers is quicker than comparing one set of letters to another set of letters. It's also true that storing an integer in a database takes up a lot less space that storing all those letters.

(Incidentally, I'm using the word 'integer' and not 'number' specifically - using any 'number', such as 13.5674201, would be just as problematic. Using a neat integer with no decimal places is a lot easier to compare.)

But the problem described above is not insurmountable, and here's why...

In a database you would have a table listing all the languages in the core rules and against each one there would be a unique number. No two languages would have the same number. This means that each character "User A" creates stores those numbers (for speed and storage reasons) - but when you look at the character, the software goes "hey, Albion the Dwarf knows languages 1 and 3; which according to this list is Common and Dwarven" (albeit a lot quicker than you or I can read).

So how do you allow "User A" to have other languages that aren't in the core list? Simple. You have another table, which adds in any language that doesn't already exist - but is only visible to "User A" and all the characters he cares to create. How is this stored? Using numbers - no different to the way the core list is stored.

It's so simple any reasonably experienced developer would know how to design it. I've done it several times on several projects - each with many users. But let's number crunch a little...

How many DDi subscribers are there? Any idea? I don't. Let's pick a completely arbitrary and ridiculous 1 million! How many languages are there in 4e? I know this one! Well, I don't - but I'd be surprised if it was more than 20.

Out of those 1 million subscribers how many do you think use languages not in the core list? Let's be equally arbitrary and say *all* of them. And not just one additional language, let's have another 20 languages for *each* subscriber!

How big would this table be? 20,000,000 lines. Yes, but in terms of storage? Sorry to go all technical but let's assume 4 bytes for the number (well, I say *assume*, it *is* 4 bytes for an integer) and 100 bytes for a 50 letter language (err, wow! That's probably a language in itself) - this means each new language takes up 104 bytes. Multiply that by 20,000,000 we get just under 2Gb. 2Gb!? That's less than a memory stick nowadays.

In the examples above I've show a simple way of implementing it, then blown it apart with over the top numbers. It's peanuts, it really is.

Languages are quite simple, they have no mechanical purpose, however, you still have UI concerns.

Do you have a drop down or some sort of select list? You have to manage that list somehow, that requires as I mentioned above, some way to filter and decide which languages belong in a given campaign. That will take one or more columns in the languages table, a whole new table in the DB to store inclusive source material from which to filter the language table, the UI to add and remove sources associated with a given character, and a way to search sources for the name of the language to simplify source material management.

Do you have a generic text field? You allow the player to type in whatever they wish. Lets say on the backend for comparison purposes, you force it to all upper or all lower case. Now you have to query the table to see if it already exists and enter it into the table if not present or get the primary key of the existing entry to store for the character. But now you don't have a list of languages unless you have a seperate area that has a default list.

You could also do a mixture of the two with a combo box (enterable text plus select list in one element) to show the default list of languages (perhaps also having source material management) as well as allowing the user to enter a custom value (backend defaulting to auto adding user info as a source material identifier and adding that source to character campaign sources).

You are still looking at a non-insignificant amount of work. And that is only for languages that have no mechanical hooks into anything else. You start working with religions, or really any other game mechanic, it gets dicey, fast, and a simple text entry or combo box is no longer sufficient.

If languages at some point in the future do become some underpinning of some other game feature (if it isn't already), you now have added complexity that may not work well with this solution and you are looking at even more work to redesign.

Lets also examine IP concerns. Lets say in the future the CB now supports 3pp material. You are going to need to have in place a means to prevent the user from entering in clones of 3pp material depending on licensing issues. You may have to go back and purge huge swathes of hastily written kludges to allow limited custom content in order to accomodate these 3pp publishers.

Lets not make the mistake of thinking the expediancy of a client side supposed 'quick and easy fix' to accomodate custom content is quite that simple when you are dealing with a commercial product.

 

[BabbageUK]

...stuff...

So... your argument is that WotC should do nothing because they'll get bad press? I hope that's not why they don't do the little things.

The point about web technologies though is that their biggest benefit is that they can be incrementally upgraded. It doesn't have to be a collection of big changes. I've lost count of the times I've logged into other web sites and found various functions added or changes.

With reference to the OP, which is where all this began anyway, all he was asking for was a simple way to put in 'fluff' rather than 'crunch' - or failing that nothing at all so he could put it in later when printed out. It isn't a big ask, and easy to implement.

Trust me, as a developer, it's the little things making life that little bit easier that get you noticed.

 

[Ryujin]

The problem though is that when WotC does finally implement support for "custom content" it has to be more than just custom religions and languages. Quite frankly, given the history that has been shown by the forum goers, etc., were WotC to implement this new "feature" that allows you to put in your own language and religion, there would be a huge outcry about how clueless WotC is.

People would complain that this is a slap in the face for all of us homebrewers out there. That this "fix" or "support" is anything but. After all, the easiest piece of the CB to put your own "stuff" in for is likely the languages and religions. I mean seriously, how hard is it to draw a line through "Bahamut" and write in "Captain Awesome"? That would be the arguments and rants. Frankly, as somebody who is running a campaign that his some of its own homebrewed deities, I would not really consider this as being something "new" or even helpful for the CB.

WotC won't be given credit for having accounted for "custom" content until we can put in our own feats, with their own Pre-Reqs and our own powers, items, etc. Further, people really want these custom entries to then also "do the math" on the power cards. After all, the power cards are, in my opinion, far and away the best feature of the CB, particularly since they "do the math" for us -- albeit occasionally incorrectly.

Should the online CB have initially been designed with an option in language/religion for "Other --" that then had you write in on the sheet what that "other" was? Yeah, it probably should have. That would be the easiest fix and is seemingly something that would have been obvious from the get go. Even with that though, while I agree it would be nice for "Captain Awesome" to print out nice and neat in the same font as everything else on the religion line, I don't consider that an issue. Now, not having particularly decent means for implementing my own custom items into the CB is a much bigger issue for me and my players. It would make it a lot easier and a lot more useable if they could put in the artifact that they have received, etc.

Like it or not, WotC is learning from history here. They know that if they bring us a "half-arsed" implementation, even if they explain that they are still working on the other half, that there will be a great hue and cry on the assorted boards.

/shrug

I would have given them full credit for the houserules options that we already had, in the offline CB, as they're all that I really need. Still waiting.

 

[BabbageUK]

...some detailed stuff regarding implementing a whole raft of custom content...

The OP didn't ask for campaign management, nor did he ask for an expanded method of maintaining house rules. All he asked for was something that already existed - even to the point of allowing you to choose "nothing" and leaving it blank to be filled in when printed out.

No-one, especially me, is saying that adding in house rules that cope with user-designed feats, powers and abilities would be simple - but what the OP asked for *is* simple.

 

[jimmifett]

So... your argument is that WotC should do nothing because they'll get bad press? I hope that's not why they don't do the little things.

The point about web technologies though is that their biggest benefit is that they can be incrementally upgraded. It doesn't have to be a collection of big changes. I've lost count of the times I've logged into other web sites and found various functions added or changes.

With reference to the OP, which is where all this began anyway, all he was asking for was a simple way to put in 'fluff' rather than 'crunch' - or failing that nothing at all so he could put it in later when printed out. It isn't a big ask, and easy to implement.

Trust me, as a developer, it's the little things making life that little bit easier that get you noticed.

Web technologies are a great thing, I write them all day long, and yes, they are relatively quicker to design and implement for, however, finding developers that know how to actually use them the right way is very difficult, needing to know to avoid the ruby-tard evangelists to the silverlight devs contemplating what to do now that MS is dumping silverlight and wpf (thanks for choosing a craptastic platform wotc). With such a customer facing product such as CB, 'minor' changes have big impact, both when they work correctly, and when they fall flat on thier faces (monster builder, looking at you). Since this is a big product, with lots of hooks into other products, you're going to have milestones, feature cutoff points, and other dates that will then have periods of testing following them before the code ever makes it to the user. When you're already a company known for failing to meet expectations of deliverables of digital products, do you keep piecemealing together small changes, or do you bundle a bunch of tested changes together and roll them at once. It's not just the devs being able to do something, it's the marketing and other 'suits' being able to say "we listened, and worked hard, and now have x, y, and z ready", or to time feature updates with specifc events.

 

[jimmifett]

The OP didn't ask for campaign management, nor did he ask for an expanded method of maintaining house rules. All he asked for was something that already existed - even to the point of allowing you to choose "nothing" and leaving it blank to be filled in when printed out.

No-one, especially me, is saying that adding in house rules that cope with user-designed feats, powers and abilities would be simple - but what the OP asked for *is* simple.

I disagree, depending on the current data model for characters, it may not be simple to do at all. Language may be a required element. After all, I believe the rules do say all PCs get Common. Just because the old CB used the fact that an untyped xmlText node can hold any kind of data without any kind of referential integrity doesn't mean it was a good idea. Once you save something, wotc is now delivering that as content. They would likely have to implement filtering just to CYA legally. I can just picture the rabid lawyers of the scientologists eager to sue wotc bc someone entered 'Scientology' or some other piece of that... what ever it is... into CB and it is now being delivered from wotc. There are legal considerations of what content they serve to users.

 

[BabbageUK]

... I can just picture the rabid lawyers of the scientologists eager to sue wotc bc someone entered 'Scientology' or some other piece of that... what ever it is... into CB and it is now being delivered from wotc. There are legal considerations of what content they serve to users.

Woah there. No-one said anything about people adding stuff that others could see.

Besides, it's common practice nowadays for content to be the user's responsibility, with them signing Terms & Conditions. If any legally sensitive material is published (which it wouldn't in my model) then the material is removed once the site is made aware. Which is precisely what YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and others do. WotC would be no different.

 

[jimmifett]

Woah there. No-one said anything about people adding stuff that others could see.

Besides, it's common practice nowadays for content to be the user's responsibility, with them signing Terms & Conditions. If any legally sensitive material is published (which it wouldn't in my model) then the material is removed once the site is made aware. Which is precisely what YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia and others do. WotC would be no different.

It doesn't matter if others can see, it's if anyone can see and the fact it's being delivered from wotc. Just becuase it's common practice doesn't mean it isn't a gordian's knot of legal considerations. Even youtube can be served with takedown notices for content they serve but did not create. Thats why wotc has dungeons filled with Illithid lawyers just to discuss these things. Any product has to go through sales and marketing dire weasels, then the illithid lawyers, and who knows how many other groups. Developers are among the last in line to have any say on something customer facing, if they get any say at all other than how something is implemented.

Lets say wotc opens up CB to 3pp for datasets, those 3pp companies are going to have licensing deals, and as such, i'd want working to prevent users from just ripping off my content. perhaps it's a subscription type thing. Pay $1, get all content in the CB from x company. Now I have a monetary incentive, and where there is money, there is lawyers.