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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erithtotl" data-source="post: 361919" data-attributes="member: 1971">This discussion puzzles meI see a lot of people commenting how the e-tools don't measure up.  I see some people talking about how what they want shouldn't be so hard to develop.  I see other people defending the developers.Defending the product by saying the design and team changed 3 times during the production process isn't a valid argument.  Yes, this is a good defense for the development team, and if I was on that team I would probably say that.  But it is not a valid excuse for a PRODUCT, or the company that releases that product.  If you buy a product, any product, software or otherwise, and it doesn't provide the value you believe it should, you don't give a damn whether the company was having internal problems.  Those are their problems, not the consumers.The argument that these guys are game programmers and thus probably used the wrong tool for the job is again, only partially valid.  First, if you're going to build a product, you better know HOW to build it.  If Fluid got themselves into a bad situation by offering to develop a product that they weren't competant to develop, then thats their fault.  Additionally, I'm sure they had some people on staff who now how to develop utility applications, or at least design them, and they could have brought in new employees (believe me, there are TONS of people looking for work or who would be willing to take this job in the market right now).  Finally, it just ain't that hard to switch from C++ to C# .NET (I switched my entire development team from VB and SQL Server to C# and VB.Net and Oracle and rewrote our entire product in six months), but thats not even necissary as Microsoft Office apps and most other Windows applications are written in Visual C++, so the argument that it was the wrong tool for the job doesn't hold up.  Additionally, there are some other products, like Delphi, which are well suited for building this sort of thing.I have seen a lot of comments of 'Well, if you think its so easy why don't you build it yourself!'.  That is ridiculous.  Someone PAID the programmers of this software to develop a commercial product.  You guys want to pool up half a million dollars between you and I'll happily write a superior program.  When you're paid to produce a product, and it is your job, you are undoubtedly held to a higher standard.I haven't used E-tools yet.  I have used PCGen.  And I've read reviews of E-tools.  From what they've described, a small (say, 5 person) team of quality programmers could develop a superior application in a few months.  Taken on its own, it seems the tool is just the wrong thing for the market.  Basically, the market for E-Tools is the same market as the people who bought the DM's guide.  Any amount of market research probably would have shown that the average DM probably invests hundreds of dollars and even more hours on D&D.  Given that, they should have realized that what DMs want is a more comprehensive product, even if that product costs $75 or more, rather than an extremely limited product that only costs $30.  If we're willing to pay $40 for Forgotten Realms or the Epic Level Handbook, don't you think we're willing to pay a lot more than that to computerize the dozens of hours of tedious pen and paper preperation we have to go through?  It seems they underestimated their market in addition to botching the product.</blockquote>

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