House Rules in the Character Builder

[Nemesis Destiny]

As somewhat of a programmer, I think this is more about management decisions than it is programmer decisions. I bet the programmers are just as frustrated with the choices as we are.

Problem #1: Silverlight. I think it would have been faster and better to program from scratch than rely on this hog. This is the one reason why the print files are so huge.

Problem #2: decision to make it un-editable. With Silverlight you can present text as a 'TextBox', which allows direct editing, or 'TextBlock' which doesn't allow editing or copy/paste operations. This is good in that a monster file doesn't get printed different than how it is built in the builder. This is bad in that we can't really export the monster without printing to huge PDF files.

Problem #3: funding. WoTC is not a software company and the DDI interfaces are not where they get their money. They really should have outsourced instead of hiring their own. Odds are the programmers are also acting as system admins, trouble shooters, business analysts, and program managers. Its like at my work, we have 5 'programmers' on staff in the IT department but only one of them actually does programming.

Its a pretty good bet that these decisions, along with the whole 'don't sell PDF' come from higher up the food chain.

But back to the OP at hand...AWESOME! I get to give my player the free feat they earned through role-playing!!!

I agree with you as to where their problems lie, but on #2...

I'm willing to bet that we will never, ever see the ability to edit powers. If you can edit, then you can copy, and if you can copy, you can make the need to pay for it obsolete (nevermind that it already is - though I do pay anyway).

That is why power2ool is awesome. Though I see no reason that WotC shouldn't at some point (hint: soon, please?) add the ability to make custom powers and feats. Though I'd hate to be the sucker that has to program this.

 

[Scribble]

I don't think inability to edit has to do with copywrite. I think it has more to do with not wanting to add an aditional variable into the mix.

Judging from what I deal with at work.

I just did X stupid action without thinking about it and Y messed up thing happened. What's wrong with this thing?



When they seem like they're having a hard enough time getting just the basics out I'm pretty positive they don't want to have to deal with Joe Schmo bitching about why his I Getz all The Winz houserule power doesn't work right.

 

[the Jester]

Exactly! As a guy who's day job revolves around doing exactly the equivalent of what some guy at WotC is doing who decides what things to address on CB and MB etc I know this to be so utterly true.

There are basically 2 types of customers. The ones that are pleased with what they get, and the ones that are never ever pleased by anything.

Well, I was pleased with what I was getting until it was changed to something vastly inferior, and I guess I won't be pleased by anything less than what I had before, so I don't think I'm strictly one or the other.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, I was pleased with what I was getting until it was changed to something vastly inferior, and I guess I won't be pleased by anything less than what I had before, so I don't think I'm strictly one or the other.

Yeah, it is always dangerous to generalize about people in ANY context of course

I think my point is that you do find that your customers never reach 'satiation' when it comes to functionality.

I think the 'we had a program that did this' issue is more managerial and policy based than technical. Were I the DDI technical guys I'd have been saying to management that you needed to work on the new CB and still keep the old one around. Management's response was probably "well, corporate told us we can't do that!" and/or "Pay for support of 2 programs that do the same thing, are you crazy?" coupled with IT saying "well, it will take a year to rebuild this as a web-app unless you want to fund us to do it faster". There was simply no option that didn't involve a rollback in functionality for a period of time. Given them credit, the main areas of functionality were in there pretty quickly. Some things that were really desirable didn't happen right away, but again, unless you want to start paying more for DDI they just probably realistically couldn't accomplish it faster.

I don't think inability to edit has to do with copywrite. I think it has more to do with not wanting to add an aditional variable into the mix.

Judging from what I deal with at work.

I just did X stupid action without thinking about it and Y messed up thing happened. What's wrong with this thing?



When they seem like they're having a hard enough time getting just the basics out I'm pretty positive they don't want to have to deal with Joe Schmo bitching about why his I Getz all The Winz houserule power doesn't work right.

This is quite true. The corollary part of it is it is very easy to say "just add a custom power feature" but WHAT will it do? Powers are QUITE various. Chances are people don't want to add simple powers, they want to add weird wacky things that do complicated stuff. You could be pulled into a real scope tarpit trying to get it to the point that people are satisfied with.

Just in general too, making software that is going to roll out to 100k users is a big job. The most simple trivial updates can take a lot of work. For instance right now I'm trying to roll out an update to a system I wrote. I've just spent 2 weeks (and not finished yet) just trying to verify that when I roll out that update that the existing database and the slightly modified database will work out. ALL the data has to be dumped out, modified, and put back, all automatically and all perfectly, and it all has to happen in the 15 minute maintenance window, on a system that SHOULD be identical to the development system I'm using, but I will have to manually verify that every single step of the process will actually work on the production systems perfectly, and create a whole other process to make it all fall back to the old database if it doesn't work. This stuff is basically 5 minutes of work if I'm twinking around with my own program that I use and maybe other people might or might not use and doesn't matter if it breaks for a few hours. Line-of-business stuff like this just gets way labor intensive real fast.

So, yeah, making the RTF may not be all that hard (I don't know) and maybe it even took 2 hours to code it up (probably a few days, but not a lot). It may well OTOH take 500 hours of work to roll out the patch successfully.

 

[Kzach]

There are basically 2 types of customers.

Twenty-five years in the same industry and this is what you come back with?

I've run my own business and been in customer service roles almost my entire life and I know this is absolute garbage. No wonder your customers are never happy.

Mod Note: Rude and ironic all at once. Neat trick. Folks, don't make arguments personal. ~Umbran

 

[Crazy Jerome]

As somewhat of a programmer, I think this is more about management decisions than it is programmer decisions. I bet the programmers are just as frustrated with the choices as we are.

Must spread XP. As a web applications programmer, I agree entirely with the entire post.

 

[Scribble]

I'd say in all reality it's a little of both.

All different groups want various things to be worked on, and they only have some much time/money to split.

Some poor chump has to juggle the demands of what various people want and what can be done in a given amount of time, and with that given amount of money.

That guy probably gets yelled at a lot by everyone, and is probably loosing his hair (if he has any left.)

 

[Crazy Jerome]

That guy probably gets yelled at a lot by everyone, and is probably loosing his hair (if he has any left.)

I empathize with that guy. You could use my hair for a slow-motion resolution mechanic. If the next hair turns white before it falls out, you succeed. Other way around, you fail. It would be a fairly balanced mechanic.

 

[delericho]

Though I see no reason that WotC shouldn't at some point (hint: soon, please?) add the ability to make custom powers and feats. Though I'd hate to be the sucker that has to program this.

If I were them, I would do this through a separate "Power Builder" tool, which would have the ability to export the finished power to the Character Builder, rather than including the ability to build custom powers into the CB directly.

But then, as I mentioned on another thread, I think the next step for the DDI is to allow users to 'open' their creations (monsters, powers, adventures, etc) for other people to use. That way, they get a DDI that is constantly increasing in value for minimal development effort - all they would need is an editorial team to take the best of the community work, apply errata, and promote it to official status.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

If I were them, I would do this through a separate "Power Builder" tool, which would have the ability to export the finished power to the Character Builder, rather than including the ability to build custom powers into the CB directly.

Yeah, that's probably the way to go; keeps it cleaner that way, and then you don't have unscrupulous players editing powers in subtle but broken ways and then hoping that the DM doesn't check them against the builder, etc.

At the end of the day though, I don't care how they do it, so much, as long as they eventually (hint: sooner than later, please) actually do it.

But then, as I mentioned on another thread, I think the next step for the DDI is to allow users to 'open' their creations (monsters, powers, adventures, etc) for other people to use. That way, they get a DDI that is constantly increasing in value for minimal development effort - all they would need is an editorial team to take the best of the community work, apply errata, and promote it to official status.

I think this would be an interesting way to go about it. I like it. I remember you posting this in the other thread.