Ddi & r&d

[Ahrimon]

I know I read somwhere that the DDI articles are going to be going through R&D. Can anyone point me to where they announced that? And has anyone heard of when?

My group didn't like using Dragon material because it wasn't "balanced". But if it's going through R&D then there shouldn't be any reason to not use it anymore.

 

[BobTheNob]

I havent heard this, but I really hope its true.

We have ousted Dragon material for the exact same reason, and I cant help but feel that quality assurance is at the heart of the problem.

This sounds promising if true.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I believe it was in the latest Ampersand. There is a thread about it on this forum.

 

[Mirtek]

One of the latest blog post tries to sell us "articles now going through the same R&D than any other products since 3rd of January" as a reason behind delays with the magazine content.

Which makes me wonder

a) how a process they started on January 2011 is an explanation for all their past delays. So at best they now have a reason for even more delays

b) why they are starting in January 2011 with what they already promised us in the pre-4e-marketing phase as an advantage of pulling the mags from Paizo and turning them online. So their "new way" of doing things is the way the told us they would be doing things for us since the start of 4e

 

[gribble]

why they are starting in January 2011 with what they already promised us in the pre-4e-marketing phase as an advantage of pulling the mags from Paizo and turning them online. So their "new way" of doing things is the way the told us they would be doing things for us since the start of 4e

I'm glad I'm not the only one who did a double-take with this announcement.

With all the fanfare this "change" has received, I was beginning to think I had hallucinated that this is something they had promised us from the start, and something that up until this announcement I had assumed was already occurring.

 

[BobTheNob]

If all this is true, I really hope they get around around to campaign editing for the CB, because frankly, this will manifest as a vast difference in quality of pre and post dragon material, and I seriously want to deny the bulk of older material

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

But if it's going through R&D then there shouldn't be any reason to not use it anymore.

Even if the new material is balanced, it's probably not balanced with all the vast amount of crunch out there. There's no way to playtest a new power, feat or whatever with everything else in only a few months. Broken combos will be found.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Even if the new material is balanced, it's probably not balanced with all the vast amount of crunch out there. There's no way to playtest a new power, feat or whatever with everything else in only a few months. Broken combos will be found.

Sure, and they have been found with every splatbook as well, and the core books too. Actually if you look carefully at the stuff in Dragon it has a pretty good track record. Some few things have been broken, many many more things are slightly underpowered but interesting and cool. The majority of the Dragon stuff has been fine though. I have players using it all the time and there's no issue. Just as with printed content, keep up with the errata and all is mostly well.

I think it will be cool if the devs are in there working on DDI stuff though. Frankly I think this is actually the most interesting piece of info that has come out lately. It tells me that the development focus is now DDI. That what we get in Dragon is the front line content. That in fact it will BE the game going forward. Buy Essentials and/or whatever the latest core printed book set is, and then the rest of what you might want is on DDI.

Now, what would be really interesting (and feasible but it takes a bit of working on) would be if you could buy on-demand printed assemblies of content. Suppose you could go onto DDI and click on this, that, and the other articles and it would say "that comes out to 192 pages, want me to print that and bind it in your choice of hard or softcover? That will be $15.95 billed to your account." Best of both worlds. Obviously requires some effort to implement properly, but it is all doable with existing tech.

 

[TirionAnthion]

Content and R&D

With the roll out of 4e, the in house nature of Dragon and Dungeon was touted as an advantage. In the early phase of the release, about the first year, most of the content was generated in house or at least looked at by the designers. I think this is evident in the strength of the early content. Somewhere around the summer of 2009, WotC talked about moving to freelancer and fan submissions for Dragon and Dungeon. This was mentioned a couple of times on the site, though I can not cite sources directly. This indicated to me that R&D was no longer handling the magazine content. I feel that the content has suffered for it.

I am excited to see that the content is going back through R&D. I think the shift seems to indicate that WotC is moving more strongly into the digital arena. The traditional focus of R&D was on print products and that is now shifting to digital products.

I could be wrong, but this is the way I see it. I am of two minds on this. On one hand I enjoy physical books and I work at a game store that sells physical books so I have a desire to see them continue. On the other hand, I do all my work on the computer and love PDFs as a resource to reference on the fly. I also use a variety of digital tools when preparing for a game so I enjoy the focus on the digital. As I almost always DM, I have little use for books filled with powers and feats that clog up my bookshelf and are never touched.

At any rate, it is a complicated issue.

 

[Aegeri]

My group didn't like using Dragon material because it wasn't "balanced". But if it's going through R&D then there shouldn't be any reason to not use it anymore.

The irony in this statement is that the most broken builds in 4E are all from the original PHB. Nearly all of them rely on elements from the PHB as well, for example frostcheese for permanent CA and increased damage (due to vulnerable cold). Appropriately, the PHB has suffered the most errata. Does anyone else remember how ridiculous bloodmages were? Did you ever see a Wizard with Archmage literally throw out legion's hold (Close burst 20, stun on a hit, daze on a miss) twice a day? When before 4E was even officially released (but quickly errata'ed) a ranger with Rain of Steel could one shot Orcus almost 90% of the time?

I mean if you're worried about Dragon you seriously have to ban the original PHB first. Dragon is actually surprisingly tame power wise, especially compared with original editions. The one and only exception might be Punisher of the Gods. That ED is pretty silly. Then again it has some stiff competition.