NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vpenman" data-source="post: 457330" data-attributes="member: 6794">Boy, do I disagree some more.  I hope I am not being too argumentative here. I recognize some very goods points are being raised.  I just happen to disagree with some of them.Speaking very broadly, from a product point of view, what should have been delivered was a product that generated a profit for the company. That profit should have been generated both through sales of the actual product and through an increase in the popularity of 3rd Edition D&D. This popularity would have been generated by allowing people who simply enjoy role-playing without the need to get into the guts of the system to quickly and easily generate, operate, and maintain characters.Instead, what was delivered was a very expensive, late, product with limited use to people who are not very computer savvy.I appreciate there will be some disagreement on that last point, but I invite you to read through the posts on this thread, note how many people identify themselves as programmers, and the very technical nature of much of this discussion.I don't agree that learning is always a good thing.  If learning is required to use a commercial product, then that lack of learning is, or should be, a barrier to sales of that product. I can see a benefit from more people acquiring facility with foreign languages.  However, if acquiring a facility with a foreign language is necessary to use a product, than that product will not sell as well as if that facility was not required (unless the product is supposed to teach foreign language).I believe that most people who play D&D would not agree that acquiring a facility with Access "doesn't take too much time or effort to learn". Instead of being a product that virtually any D&D player with a Windows system can use to make play easier and fun, we have instead a toy for the technophiles among us.  By technophiles I mean people who have much greater understanding of software applications than is generally the case and "toy" and "phile" pretty much go together. People, to be more specific, like many who post on this thread.Based on a number of years in software development where I have communicated with literally tens-of-thousands of users, including thousands who used the Core Rules CD products, I will state unequivocally that the number of users who should attempt to directly modify an Access database is very small.  I put that number at well under 10 percent.To be clear, I am not saying the percentage of E-Tool purchasers who can use Access is under 10 percent.  I am saying that for people who would have purchased a D&D utility designed for use by normal users that number would be less than 10 percent. I believe it would be less than one percent.I mean, look at it.  It doesn't even have an autoinstall.  When was the last time you went into a retail store and purchased Windows software that didn't have an autoinstall?  Look at the downloads people are expected to do just to get a printout.  Do you have any idea how uncommon it is for most computer users to download software upgrades? Within the past couple of weeks, there was a study out that reported less than ten percent of U.S. homes have high speed internet access.Do you know how long it takes to download upgrades over a modem? Do you know how few software users ever even visit a message board like this?I'll say one thing for using Access instead of creating a custom database, it's a lot easier on the programmer. However, why anyone would use XML instead of the normal Windows print drivers is a mystery to me.  As far as I can tell, it has the disadvantage of Access (harder on the users) without the advantage of making the programming easier.If you have software that requires knowledge of Access, downloading browser upgrades, or visiting message boards to get product support, then you have software that is not right for the majority of computer users.D&D is not a game designed just for programmers and power users.  There was an opportunity with this software to not only make a direct profit, but to also expand the popularity of the gaming system.Victor</blockquote>

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