New Character Builder from WotC!

[Votan]

On the upside, the sluggish performance issues I have the with character builder on my PC will go away.

On the downside, I do hope that they can keep the server up. I do not know about the rest of you, but i get a non-trivial number of "the site is closed for maintence" issues with the main WotC site and I am rather hoping to never see this with an online tool.

 

[MarkB]

I'm cautiously optimistic about this change - ever since the character builder and compendium got properly up and running, I've considered them worth the price of admission alone.

However, that opinion is contingent upon those tools being updated regularly - which, hopefully, will be easier with web-based tools. If they can maintain updates at the rate they've achieved for most of this year, I'm all for the new DDI, but if the sort of month-plus service drop-outs we experienced in October become the norm, I'll readily let my subscription lapse.

 

[renau1g]

So you used to have to pay only if you wanted to get current updates for your character builder. Now you have to pay every month to use it at all and have your character held hostage by WotC servers as well. That's about the worst deal I can think of. No thanks. I'm out.

So...I'm agreeing with Shazman here? The sky really is falling

Seriously though, when the inevitable 5e comes out I'm sure they'll drop 4e like nothing and move on to the new "revenue stream" and if you want to keep playing the old system, tough beans.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Cloud computing will be the death of us all.

That said, I think it's hilarious to hear people griping about "paying for material I'll never use" when they're only paying 10 bucks or less a month for it. You were all abusing the system and you know it. You are the pirates WOTC is trying to stop. And now your whining that you can't steal from them anymore? HA!

Really guys? I buy one manual, it's 40 bucks(lets just go with MSRP, not ebay), two, now it's 80, get a nice set of all the core books, I'm staring down well over 200. I want power books? tack on another 30 a piece,
pretty soon I'm looking down the barrel of easily $500 in books, magazines and supplements.

or, I could pay 10 bucks a month for ALL of that information, and it would take me over 4 years to total up to that amount. Which we all know more books, more supplements, more magazines would be released. Hell, a new edition may come out and you'll have to repeat the whole process all over again.

As much as I don't like the flaws in this system, based on the cost alone, it is still WELL worth it. And I personally will enjoy not having to deal with buggy updates and just know that when I log in to the website, it will be fully updates and ready to go.

Careful with the 'pirates' name calling there, skippy. Some of us have no problem paying for what we use.

I was in a 4e campaign for around a year. Played an eladrin rogue. So for my $10/month, I got use out of the PHB (which I'd bought in hardcover) and a small fraction of Martial Power (which I also bought in hardcover). I didn't fire up the Compendium hardly at all, didn't use the monster builder, didn't use any source material in CB (eg, Forgotten Realms stuff) that wasn't directly applicable to my character, etc.

When the campaign ended, I let my subscription drop (well, actually, finally got around to canceling some months later). If by some miracle that campaign resurrected itself, I could still fire up the character builder and continue to play, level, etc. If I wanted access to Martial Power X or whatever, I'd happily pay to update to that (and buy that book, too).

Why should I be expected (in the future) to have to pay on a monthly basis to use updates I have no need for *and that I'm clearly not using*?

Now, if they changed the subscription model to allow a single account to access select material, eg. pay $2 to unlock Martial Power X for your login, and then access it for free, that would be fine. But they have no interest or incentive to do that.

 

[renau1g]

Were you working directly from your character builder on your laptop during sessions, or did you work from a printout?

If you have a printout, your character is not held hostage. You have a copy of the data.

The problem is that they do have it long-term. Say in March next year ddi isn't bringing in revenue like it was a year before (when content was stronger in Dungeon/Dragon) and the Hasbro execs squeeze WotC to get more $'s from the initiative. They jack up the price to $20/month. If you decide it's not worth it, you do lose all your characters. You can print them all out, but I personally have over 100 PC's. Also, from my understanding there's currently no export feature (even to a PDF) and free options aren't searchable so your SOL there. Don't worry though, export features coming... soon

Oh, and same thing with sharing features, coming soon. They've actually reduced functionality from the current CB, which astounds me.

 

[falcarrion]

How many feet does Wotc have to shoot?

 

[MarkB]

A few subsidiary questions occur:

• Is there anything to stop multiple people from "sharing" the same account? IP-address restrictions, or simply prevention of multiple simultaneous logins?
• Can I export a character and send it to someone else, to be view on their Character Builder? One of the boons of the Character Builder has been sending characters via e-mail or memory stick, so that the DM can review them in advance, or simply so that the players without printers can have someone else print out their character.
• Will there be storage restrictions per account? I don't imagine this being an issue, but I'd rather not find WotC telling me "hey, you - get off o' my cloud" simply because I'd made one too many PCs.

 

[Sunseeker]

Careful with the 'pirates' name calling there, skippy. Some of us have no problem paying for what we use.

Watch who you're calling 'skippy', son. It was directed at the several posts on the first part of this page of people clearly admitting to abusing the system in order to get several months of updates in one, then cancel their sub. If you didn't do it, then it wasn't directed at you.

I was in a 4e campaign for around a year. Played an eladrin rogue. So for my $10/month, I got use out of the PHB (which I'd bought in hardcover) and a small fraction of Martial Power (which I also bought in hardcover). I didn't fire up the Compendium hardly at all, didn't use the monster builder, didn't use any source material in CB (eg, Forgotten Realms stuff) that wasn't directly applicable to my character, etc.

You chose to buy the books, nobody forced you. Why you did so could be for a variety of reasons. I for one, love the art in the books, which I don't get online(as least not as much of). Paying for DDI is like paying for a TV subscription, just because you don't watch channel 100, doesn't mean you should pay less for the service.

And generally speaking, getting to cherry pick your service vs packages, generally becomes more expensive.

When the campaign ended, I let my subscription drop (well, actually, finally got around to canceling some months later). If by some miracle that campaign resurrected itself, I could still fire up the character builder and continue to play, level, etc. If I wanted access to Martial Power X or whatever, I'd happily pay to update to that (and buy that book, too).

You could likewise, just open your book and make it with pen and paper as I did for years before I signed up to DDI. 10 bucks a month for pre-filling my sheets and writing all that detail on there? that's a fair trade in my book.

Why should I be expected (in the future) to have to pay on a monthly basis to use updates I have no need for *and that I'm clearly not using*?

Ya don't need it? Ya don't want it? Don't buy it. Sure, you'll have to make your characters the old fashioned way, but hey, you don't want to pay for the service, that's your choice.

Now, if they changed the subscription model to allow a single account to access select material, eg. pay $2 to unlock Martial Power X for your login, and then access it for free, that would be fine. But they have no interest or incentive to do that.

Of course not, and even if they did, they would likely charge you such a sum as to make the $10 monthly fee look like the better deal.

 

[Umbran]

If you decide it's not worth it, you do lose all your characters. You can print them all out, but I personally have over 100 PC's.

100 PCs? Maybe I'm wrong, but I'd guess you're rather in excess of what they expect from the typical gamer.

No business model works for all customers. So, clearly, this one has a flaw if you have over 100 PCs that you don't print out to hard copy as you update them. Compare that to the ease of not having to support an installed client, and gaining... all the Mac users, and I expect it is still a win for them.

 

[Canor Morum]

I wouldn't worry too much about not being able to export characters. There will surely be an option to print a sheet. You can use a program like CutePDF to then convert it to a PDF. The same way you can with the current Character Builder.

Of bigger concern is needing to level a character up or create a new one if you do not have access to internet. Of course this can be done with pencil and paper but that defeats the whole purpose of paying for the character builder in the first place.

I expect there will eventually be a way to access characters and share the information whether you are logged in or not (paying or not), similar to WoW's Armory.

If they applied this same model to monster creation, encounter/adventure/world creation it would be great for DMs.

Personally I think the online model would be better suited for play with a virtual tabletop.



Edit:

"How does this effect login, where you could have 5 downloads per login?"

"You have to be logged in to your account to access your characters in the new Character Builder."






Well, so much for that idea. Can't say I like that at all.




Source: http://community.wizards.com/go/thr..._for_Web-based_Character_Builder_-_Discussion