New Character Builder from WotC!

[Stormtower]

Paizo doesn't offer a character builder in any form at all, and both game systems have third party character builders available to them.

Incorrect actually; Paizo has officially partnered with Lone Wolf and their datasets through APG are available for Hero Lab. It works great, and it works offline, and all files are stored on the local PC. It's a really nice alternative for those of us leaving DDI and returning to Pathfinder for good.

 

[Lord Ernie]

I don't think that's necessarily true. While it will definitely please 4e players who are Mac people, if the character builder is a make or break factor for a Mac user, they moved on to other games 2 years ago.

Of course. That doesn't stop any of them them from coming back, nor does it stop existing players signing up for D&Di because now they can use the CB (I have seen some anecdotal evidence for this case), or new players from actually signing up when they see Macs are supported.

That said, my statement on Mac users was mostly speculation. What I can say is that I've seen complaints about and requests for full Mac functionality since more or less day 1. (both personally and on the forums)

I suspect they will loose a lot of people around the edges: those DMs that were passing out the CB to their groups are still D&D players, and still might buy the occasional book of interest. If they decide to not pay the price, they're loosing entire groups (including the DM, who often is the main buyer of any content).

Not necessarily. Keep in mind that while the Terms of Use forbid it - note that they have done so since the start - nothing stops you from sharing your login information with your players, who can use the online CB to build characters. Yeah, you may get your account banned, but I don't expect very careful monitoring and policing of those terms to happen; in the end, if WotC is overly heavy with the banhammer, they only end up smashing their own foot, if you allow me to mangle two expressions at once .

As I see it, there are three main groups of customers that may decide they no longer want the CB:

1. Those who downloaded the CB every 4-6 months to get access to the information, that decide a constant description is simply not worth it.
2. Those who have - for whatever reason - no reliable access to the internet when they are creating characters.
3. The group I will collectively call "the rest". People who dislike web services, distrust corporate policies, hate or can't use the platform, or otherwise feel moving it to a web-based environment is unacceptable.

Now, group nr.1 is a loss, but as these took advantage (as well they should) from the old system, it's not a big one. Group number three is the hardest to gouge, and may well be more than the small niche group I'm expecting them to be right now.

Group number two are the unavoidable loss, and the users I mostly feel for. There are perfectly valid reasons for not having easy internet access, and I've read several accounts of people who need to do lots of traveling (including people in the military) that simply have no use for the new model and will lose access to the new content published from now on as a result.

It may please many mac users, but most of the comment I've seen were that now it'd be easier to work with rather than use the various ways to boot Windows on Macs. I haven't seen any people who didn't already subscribe saying this will push them to jump on board.

Odd. I have seen several people without Insider accounts post, saying that they will join up from now on. We must be looking at different threads.

All that said: the forum population is hardly a real representation of the actual one. The only evidence you'll get from them is anecdotal, and even then, the loudest voices will drown out the others.

The best we can do is decide what we want to do for ourselves - I am gonna see for myself what the new builder looks like before I decide - and watch what happens with DDi membership in the months to come.

 

[Maggan]

The best we can do is decide what we want to do for ourselves - I am gonna see for myself what the new builder looks like before I decide - and watch what happens with DDi membership in the months to come.

I'm already on a DDi break, since I'm running Masks of Nyarlathotep for Call of Cthulhu. So my D&D4 campaign is on hold for now. It might get back on track in summer or thereabouts, and then I will recheck the DDi offering.

/M

 

[Festivus]

Incorrect actually; Paizo has officially partnered with Lone Wolf and their datasets through APG are available for Hero Lab. It works great, and it works offline, and all files are stored on the local PC. It's a really nice alternative for those of us leaving DDI and returning to Pathfinder for good.

I'll disagree with you, my statement is totally correct. It wasn't an in house developed software package... it was written by a third party. Sure Paizo provides the data, but the tool itself was not built by Paizo. Paizo sells it on their site, and gives the data away, and Paizo probably uses the tool to input the data that they give away, but the code beneath and all the profits from the sale are no different than if I went to a software store (do they still have those?) and purchased it off the shelf. None of the above is that important, other than to state that I disagree with you

Paizo did what I wish WoTC would have done from the get go, license it out to a third party who could do a bang up job of it.

I can't help but wonder how much of the problems we are seeing (particuarly with the VTT not coming out) has to do with the lawsuit against Atari.

 

[Herschel]

To be fair, Wizards would have no idea when embarking on this project that Silverlight might soon be dead. Meanwhile, the other major alternative - Flash - has been extremely heavily panned by Apple. Why go with it?

HTML5 is not yet an option. It certainly wasn't 6 months ago.

Cheers!

But, but, I must prove my computer knowledge on the intarwebs!

 

[Angellis_ater]

Not to be a WotC apologist or whatever you call it, but most of those were supposed to be developed by an external developer WotC was paying to do the work - and they botched it completely.

This does also explain why communication about all this has been so sporadic and poorly handled: before, they promised things before they were available, and messed up horribly. It disappointed a lot of people, and as your post and others show, is still a sore point for many people (myself included). So now they only communicate on things they are absolutely sure about, and don't make advanced promises on release dates or extra features.

Is this the best way to handle things? I doubt it. But I prefer short-time announcements and actual products over being promised the world and getting squat.

Like I said, this is one of the "last straws" mainly because, as you put it forth, they've missed big time before.

Now, the MOST important thing to me, is that my non-book gaming is at the mercy of someone else. If they decide I log in from too many IPs (I use the CB from 4-5 different computers in a normal week, 2 laptops at home, 1 desktop at work and at home and at a friends) or for whatever reason, I am cut off.

I gladly paid 60+ bucks a year for the updates and Dungeon Magazine because I knew I could keep using that stuff. Now, I'll either have to go back to buying books - and the constant feeling of paying for erratad books - or find some other solution.

We tried playign with just the books, but knowing the amount of errata that had been processed and released has made the PHB a joke - not only for what HAS been erratad, but because enough has been changed that you NEVER know what's right anymore.

Now, that was a problem we could overlook, since we had the CB to handle it all. Now we won't. So, from today the newly instituted rule will be that we use only the old CB, effectively making all future updates (for me) useless.

Now, if it had been better implemented, then perhaps I as a majority-Linux user could've seen some use (the removed need to Virtualbox a Windows installation for example) out of it. Now, with Silverlight (4 of all version as well...) that's kinda screwed too.

So, it's essentially about the future usability of a system. I'm paying for a game, like ALL other roleplaying games, I tend to come back and replay older games. All the books I have, that we play from time to time, are still useful. The D&D books won't FEEL as useful. So it's an emotional, and personal, reason for disliking this.

That and the series of broken promises. Ditching the OGL still lingers...

 

[falcarrion]

I'll disagree with you, my statement is totally correct. It wasn't an in house developed software package... it was written by a third party. Sure Paizo provides the data, but the tool itself was not built by Paizo. Paizo sells it on their site, and gives the data away, and Paizo probably uses the tool to input the data that they give away, but the code beneath and all the profits from the sale are no different than if I went to a software store (do they still have those?) and purchased it off the shelf. None of the above is that important, other than to state that I disagree with you

Paizo did what I wish WoTC would have done from the get go, license it out to a third party who could do a bang up job of it.

I can't help but wonder how much of the problems we are seeing (particuarly with the VTT not coming out) has to do with the lawsuit against Atari.

Lone wolf software does have 4ed and 3.5 ed as well as the Pathefinder data.

 

[darjr]

The 4e part of Lone Wolfs software, I think, requires a DDI account and access to the compendium.

 

[Festivus]

Lone wolf software does have 4ed and 3.5 ed as well as the Pathefinder data.

Yeah, I know this (I even posted a link above to it). My entire point is that Paizo didn't develop the software, Lone Wolf did (or whomever). WoTC developed a tool in house, and the data it proprietary requiring a DDI login to access. The 4E 3rd party software probably allows you to enter it yourself manually, but I have no idea on that front, nor do I care.

I don't mind the CB being online, and as I stated in another thread, it sounds like the VTT might be back on the table and this was one of the reasons for making it online... I am totally fine with that too.

For those not interested in DDI... there are options as I posted.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Where are the Adventurers Tools we were supposed to get? The downloadable PDFs? The VTT (a running joke if ever) or any or ALL of the other things we were promised were coming with 4E... at launch.

How many times does WotC have to say "the VTT is not something we are working on at that this time" before people like you stop trying to use it as an excuse to justify your opinions?

The VTT has NOTHING to do with the current situation. If you choose or not choose to subscribe to DDI... it should be because of what you CURRENTLY CAN GET FOR THE MONEY YOU SPEND ON IT. That's all.

If you currently subscribe to DDI EVEN THOUGH at one point they said two years ago that a VTT was in the works (and then subsequently cancelled)... it says that you did so because you wanted it for the PRODUCTS YOU WERE GETTING AT THE TIME YOU SIGNED UP. So man up and stop using the VTT as a piece of ammo in your barrage aimed at WotC.

You want to be pissed off because you signed up for DDI to get an updated offline Character Builder, and that is not something you will be getting anymore? That's cool. Fine with me. Well within your right and nothing I can fault you for. But getting pissed off because they still aren't producing stuff they told you there weren't producing? Ridiculous. And many of us will call you on that.