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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LrdApoc" data-source="post: 3264751" data-attributes="member: 1882">So does this mean that PCGen might have two distinct audiences? The DM or user with multiple sources and detailed expectations who wants a Half-Fiend War Ape Awakened Sorcerer and the core player who uses a few sources and wants to create and track their PC through a campaign?You have GMGen which I think in many ways serves the first group well.. why not make a PCGen lite (actually I seem to remember something like this early on) - using the same core engine but with a retooled GUI for simple users.. build them from the same tree but make the branches lower for the simpler folk. I'm not sure if this is the right suggestions as I am not involved in the coding at all but it might be the easiest to serve both groups well. You state that the goal of PCGen is to be the most versatile and complete generation tool for the d20 system - that rocks but I'm not sure your common users understand that in order to get a versatile tool they must seemingly sacrifice simplicity and ease of use for common users.I am an owner of etools - and while I don't much care for the program interface I found it easier to introduce to my players as a character generator than I did PCGen. I honestly have not found a tool out there that is as simple as the Char Gen demo that came with 3.0 - is there a way to move the GUI that way while maintaining the feature rich nature of tools like PCGen and GMGen? Once again maybe I'm asking for something not practical from a software development standpoint but I'm looking at this as a user not a developer and seeing what my players and I have encountered in trying to use PCGen as a campaign tool and character manager over the last few years.Also I have not played with LST files for some time but is there a wizard like mode for data entry for simple data  objects - feats that don't have major rule tied effects etc, or is it still a "edit the text file and read the F'in manual dude" sort of tool? That was a huge obstacle for me early in the products life because I just frankly didn't have the time to hand enter the info in the lst files and of course you can't share anything you enter to help anyone else because of copywrite  which meant the moment I used a non-standard source I abandoned the tool because I couldn't easily integrate the one or two features I was using outside the SRD. I am awaiting the latest stable release - I'm using the Alpha right now and like it, but loading sources still seems to take a long time - and probably I'm doing it wrong because I have not reread the manual - however the program could be more user friendly and offer to warn or assist when loading sources to help optimize and control the user's experience - managing user expectations can often be done with just a simple - "Warning - loading XX sources will take serious time!" sort of message - followed by a "We recommend you do thus and thus to quickly get to work" sort of wizard or guidance.Many people decry the Microsoft Wizard approach as the dumming down of users but lets face it - the average user does not care about what a program does they just want to do their work and get the results from it quickly and easily. Giving them a supertool when all they need is a simple screwdriver can prevent them from using your tool. Help the user, hide the gears and allow maybe an advanced or simple mode to segregate yet serve the two distinct groups PCGen is used by.Sorry if I'm belaboring a point here. I see a conflicting purpose and design goals of PCGen at work (Basic users want a simple tool, advanced users want a versatile tool, the developers want good features and good speed) and I know my statements are not the first time any of you have heard this - so let me ask the next question:  How do I help change this? What can I do to help you as a user? How often do you see threads here asking for a simple tool only to have readers refute the simplicity of the tool you developed and effectively build that impression that PCGen is arcane and hard to use? What can be done to prevent that from ever being an issue?</blockquote>

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