DDI September/October Update info

[UngainlyTitan]

For the record, moving MB or CB to be internet-based would seem to me, at first grok, to be narmed.{/QUOTE]
First off "at first grok" seems to me to be a contradiction in terms but you may be making a very subtle distinction. What does "narmed" mean?

They don't seem to be broken as-is, so I would wonder what WotC would have to gain from that. "Piracy" has always been a non-starter on a reason because, no matter what, there will always be people copying and pasting your data outside of your wall. Always. Taking reasonable precautions is sensible, but investing time and effort in hare-brained, consumer-hurting schemes designed to wall off piracy simply makes you look foolish and gives your customers reason to resent you (when they should be your biggest fans!).

They may not be broken as is but may represent a design dead end that is not sufficiently flexible to continue to support the game going forward and in that case if one is re-writing them then one would be wise to rewrite in a cross platform friendly manner.

Unless the CB/MB level of piracy is severely catastrophic, I can't see them gaining anything big from the move. Of course, I could be wrong.

But given that the CB and the MB work fine as they are, my first guess is that this is some new suite, some part of Adventure Tools or DDI that makes the most sense (and is the most useful) on the web, away from the actual game table of most players. What that might be, I haven't the foggiest, but I trust 'em.

I really doubt this has anything to do with priacy and I also suspect that the web tools are new stuff and not the exisiting stuff.

That said, I just really want Essentials and Dark Sun stuff in the CB. That's the big thing I've been waiting for since those products were announced. I'm not going to pull my sub or anything over it (yet), but it's really important to me that I can use the new material in a timely fashion.

Don't we all essentials especially I want to take a good look at the essentials mage.

 

[Zaran]

puts on dancing shoes

I'm not really sure how to answer that question, if only because any attempt to do so might expose a peek more of my NDA content. The only thing I can safely tell you is that, yes, I've been aware that web-based tools were coming.

I really can't see Mudbunny gushing on DRM software so maybe something cool is coming out of this mess. Of course, it would be nice if they just told us what they were working on...

 

[P1NBACK]

I find myself in Jester's camp. Our DM is planning to start our Dark Sun campaign next week, with or without any CHaracter builder or Compendium updates. We've all taken the books and written out characters on Paper (or PDF sheets in my case) and we're ready to go -- it doesn't take that long, and hell, it's the way we USED to do it. We did wait about three weeks to start hoping on an update, but when the Sept 21st deadline came and went, we said, "Screw it, we're getting together." Hell, our personal schedules not aligning had more to do with the wait than any Digital updates did.

But then, I'm of the mind when my iphone app that gives me the weather report isn't working, I just turn on a TV, or if that fails, check a newspaper or stick my head outside. I might not get any radar maps or all the up-to-minute stats, but I can at least plan my day sufficiently. Same thing with my gaming -- I'm not letting a computer app stop me.

Yeah. We're going on Session 4 of our Dark Sun campaign. I decided to go ahead and start a month before Dark Sun actually released and just update the PCs with DS stuff once it arrived. It finally came after our 2nd session, but only in book form of course.

So, we've just been hand-writing out the Dark Sun stuff onto the Character Builder sheets that have everything else. Works fine so far.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

We've all taken the books and written out characters on Paper (or PDF sheets in my case) and we're ready to go -- it doesn't take that long, and hell, it's the way we USED to do it.

Silly Henry, that would be common sense and reduce the whining too much! You know the internet doesn't work that way!

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I've been expecting this announcement since Mudbunny made his post a short while ago saying that he was dancing around his NDA but that he "thought there would still be an October Character Builder update".

It was the word STILL in that sentence along with some various hinting by the developers on the WOTC boards regarding "working on projects that were a big deal but couldn't be talked about until they were finished, as per the new WOTC policy but that they wouldn't have to be quiet much longer" that made me believe that they were working on replacing the Character Builder entirely.

I'm fairly certain that these web based tools will have all the same features as the Character Builder, but entirely online and probably with a whole bunch of new features that make it even better than the Character Builder. Who knows if the stand alone Character Builder will continue to be updated or not. I guess we'll see.

EDIT: In fact, it just occurred to me that there may actually be an entirely new stand alone Character Builder to go along with the web-based tools that uses the same format so they can update both of them simultaneously. That's why there is still one more update for the Character Builder, because the update either later this month or next month is the introduction of the new tools.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It was the word STILL in that sentence along with some various hinting by the developers on the WOTC boards regarding "working on projects that were a big deal but couldn't be talked about until they were finished, as per the new WOTC policy but that they wouldn't have to be quiet much longer" that made me believe that they were working on replacing the Character Builder entirely.

I don't see it.

That sentence makes me think that the CB will be updated in October (as was said upthread).

It gives me no hints as to what the "web tools"/"big deal projects" would be. They could be anything. They could be a Character Builder. They could be a mini-builder. They could be a VTT. They could be an animated GIF of a flumph making out with a beholder with a little pulsing heart behind them and the words TRU LUV 4 EVA in glitter-sparkles.

I don't know why people are automatically jumping to "they're going to change the CB!"

I mean, I guess the WotC quotes do reference both the CB and web tools....so clearly they must be linked?

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

I don't see it.

That sentence makes me think that the CB will be updated in October (as was said upthread).

Well, I interpreted the sentence to mean "Yes, the CB would still get at least one more update in October". I mean, it's the way I would have worded the sentence if I knew the character builder was going to replaced by a new and improved character builder in October and someone asked me "Is there going to be an update to the CB in October?" - "I'm kind of dancing around my NDA here, but I believe that there will still be an update for the Character Builder in October".

I don't think he'd have said anything about an NDA in the same sentence as the character builder updating in October OR included the word "still" if the new project wasn't directly related to the character builder and whether it got updates. To me, it implies that there was some doubt as to whether there was going to be a last update to the CB at all.

Not only that, but Essentials characters are actually different enough from normal 4e characters that it requires a large reworking of the underlying code for the CB. If you had a large list of requested features lying around and had to rewrite large portions of the core of the application already for Essentials, wouldn't that be a great time to also combine it with a bunch of other features?

And last, none of the Essentials stuff is going to be added to the CB this month, but it all got added to the Compendium. Perhaps because the new version of the CB supports Essentials while the old one doesn't.

 

[Njall]

Actually, IIRC, the word "still" in MB's post was there because, after the October calendar was released, people assumed that the calendar lacking an update date meant that WotC's plans had changed and that they no longer had an update scheduled for october.
That's what MB addressed, unless I'm misremembering; it was something to the effect of:
"So, does this means that WotC decided not to update the CB in october, after all?"
"AFAIK, there's still an update planned"

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Maybe. I admit, I could be wrong. I just love to guess. In this case, the question was "I don't see it on the calender, is there an update this month at all?"

I would have expected the answer to be "Yes, there will be one" or "Maybe, I'm not sure yet" or "I think it's likely that there's going to be one."

I didn't expect a "I'm sort of dancing around my NDA here, but I think there is still an update for the CB in October."

I doubt the NDA covers whether there is an update each month. I'm guessing the reason for the caveat about an NDA is that the actual answer is something like "We are announcing CB 2.0 this month or next month, so I'm not sure if they are planning an update to CB 1.0 this month or not, but I'm fairly certain there will be at least one more update."

Of course, he can't break his NDA to mention the reason why he isn't sure if there will be an update this month or not, so he mentions that his answer is dancing around his NDA.

Trust me, I'm good at dancing around NDAs.

 

[Truename]

I don't know why people are automatically jumping to "they're going to change the CB!"

I mean, I guess the WotC quotes do reference both the CB and web tools....so clearly they must be linked?

Here's the evidence:

- If WotC was developing a new tool that had nothing to do with the CB, it wouldn't affect CB development times.

- On the other hand, if a rewrite or major overhaul of CB was planned, it absolutely would affect CB development, quite possibly to the point where CB was literally incapable of supporting new content. This happens all the time in software development: a rewrite is planned, data formats are changed to support the new tool, personnel are reassigned, and then deadlines are missed and the old tool can't read the new format and has no development resources anyway.

- CB has had just one programmer assigned to it for the last several releases, which supports the previous two points. It doesn't make sense for WotC to give CB so few resources given that they knew Essentials was coming down the pike.

- New content is coming to the Compendium but not the CB, which also supports the second point. Adding new content to the Compendium seems like fairly simple data entry. There's typos in some of the entries' HTML code which wouldn't be there if individual Compendium listings were machine-generated.

- "Total rewrite!" is the kind of dumb mistake that software developers make all the time. (And before anybody blames WotC management, it's typically programmers who push for this.) The CB is old enough now, and the rules changes over time large enough, that the original design probably hasn't held up. That would lead to complaints about the code needing a rewrite.

- The existing CB isn't very newbie friendly. It puts all of the classes in your face and asks you to choose between thousands of options. That's the exact opposite of the Essentials philosophy of providing a few clear choices with significant results.

- The current DDI subscription is a huge giveaway. $10 for ALL crunch ever created--ever? When you have to pay >$20 each for a dozen books otherwise? That's beyond generous. And the data sits on your hard drive, meaning that the tool is easily cracked and pirated even if you program it to check the subscription before starting.

- Marketing departments like to make big splashes. They probably had some sort of big announcement planned to coincide with the release of Essentials. Combined with the previous two points, this makes a new CB more probable. (Marketing's very hard deadlines and Programming's inability to meet deadlines is a traditionally a huge source of friction between the two groups.)

(For fun, Google 'software rewrite': Things You Should Never Do, Part I - Joel on Software - James Shore: How to Survive a Software Rewrite)