D&D 4E I really hope both my 4e groups choose to convert to 5e…

[Mistwell]

Basically they made a bunch of promises ...

I remember that, but my recollection is that none of it was phrased as promises.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

…because it turns out my subscription to online 4e tools auto-renews in a week. Dang it.

Maybe they'll decide quickly!

Psh! You must be a rookie DM. You TELL the players what game you're running.

 

[Thank Dog]

Basically they made a bunch of promises about updating the original, superior, offline character builder with Dark Sun stuff, and then they said PSYCHE and put the Dark Sun rules in the new and worse online-only character builder instead.

I was under the impression that most people thought that the new character builder was a significant improvement.

 

[Incenjucar]

I was under the impression that most people thought that the new character builder was a significant improvement.

It had dramatically reduced functionality. The closest I've seen to praise of it is defending its vastly reduced functionality, which mostly came down to "Well you should have unlimited fast internet 24/7 these days no matter where you go" and "You don't need character slots, you can just make characters and save them to your computer and add things in again later!"

It wasn't 100% worse in every possible way, but it was a significant downgrade where it was different.

--

The promises may have been implications, but implications are all a PR team uses unless they're going to outright BS you. I can use weasel language to never be wrong too, but everyone hates me when I do.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I was under the impression that most people thought that the new character builder was a significant improvement.

I think some probably did and some didn't. For some of us... having it online so that we could access it from any computer was a godsend. For others, having it in "the cloud" meant it could go away some time if WotC went in that direction and thus it was horrible. Some parts of the functionality of the online builder were better-- first and foremost of course being that it had every product in it-- but many parts of the offline builder were better. Being able to select only certain products to show up, a bit better search capability, and other stuff.

Like in everything... it really came down to how any individual person used the system and the individual parts of the material. If you used something in the offline builder that didn't appear in the online builder, it was worse. And in the opposite, it was better.

 

[Joe Liker]

I was under the impression that most people thought that the new character builder was a significant improvement.

I hated it. I couldn't go into specifics at this point, but I do remember that the new version was the thing that convinced me to stop subscribing to dndinsider.

 

[Thank Dog]

I hated it. I couldn't go into specifics at this point, but I do remember that the new version was the thing that convinced me to stop subscribing to dndinsider.

For me it was the thing that convinced me to start subscribing. Then again, running Parallels on my Mac just to use the .NET version was a huge PITA, so even Silverlight, as crappy as it was, was a step up for me.