quality of recent WotC products

[Piratecat]

Glassjaw, Diaglo, quit sniping at one another, please. In addition, circumventing the language filter is clearly against the rules (as is insulting other members.) Please don't do either.

 

[Henry]

Not an excuse IMO. The material I have to proofread is usually in the thousand page range and of a highly technical nature - much more difficult to proofread. Quality is a mentality. It's something a company has to subscribe to and make a priority. When someone posts 2 reviews of the newest products and almost every statblock has an error, something is grossly wrong.

I'm curious as to a method of comparison: How many pages per year do you proofread, and what's the going rate for such work? (or, I should say, the company who funds the proofreading, how much do they spend per page? I'm not asking for your salary or anything like that, mind you; I'm just looking for a comparison to what kinds of fees WotC would put into such a thing.)

As for almost every stat block having an error, a closer look at John Cooper's MM3 review would reveal that it was more like 1 out of 3 or so, and some things mentioned were not errors of text, but things such as objections to artwork or flavor text or feat picks, which I wouldn't call errors rather than difference of opinion. So, the figure's still quite high, but not that high.

 

[wedgeski]

Wow. 40-50 hours? I wish John would chime in on how long it takes him to go over the stat blocks, which I would say would be the most time-consuming to proofread. If it takes him 40-50 hours, or even half that time, I doubt he would spend the time doing it.

I think he said it took him a weekend to do MMIII, but I could be mistaken. I don't really know what that translates to in actual hours spent. (Whatever it is, it's still far quicker than I would give credit to my own hypothetical in-house talent - the man's a machine!). But my own measure would be proportion of time: if a project takes, say, 16 man weeks to write, then even a week is only 6%-ish of total time. Any less than 5% of time spent - including proofing all the prose for spelling, grammar, readability, and all of the monster abilities for appropriateness within the rules, as well as all the stat blocks - would strike me as inadequate.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Does that make it ok? To be completely honest, I find the "who cares?" attitude to be abhorrent. WotC has gained the reputation of releasing poorly edited products. Just the thought places them under much more scrutiny. It even goes beyond the simple spelling errors and typos. What about incorrect mechanics and 3.0 references? It seems that I'm in the minority on this. :\

I don't know that it's as much a 'who cares' issue as it is a case of priorities. Unlike many other areas (yours and mine included), there isn't any real competition in the D20 RPG marktet, in that there is one 800 lb. gorilla and a bunch of monkeys (no offense to other d20 publishers or simians intended ).

When I'm evaluating software, if there are two products that equally meet my needs, the quality of the written documentation will be a factor (and I kid you not, to me it is an important factor). The quality of the written docs is a reflection of the company's commitment to putting out good software and providing good technical support.

But given the nature of the d20 market, having a choice between a WotC product and a third-party product of the same scope and support is unusual. Having Frost and Fur and Frostburn released nearly simultaneously is exceptional; more often an impending WotC release would scare potential competitors away for a while. And there is no competition for IP products like FR sourcebooks, etc. If you've made a commitment to Forgotten Realms, you've got one source of material.

I think most ENWorlder's are more discriminating than your average D20 player. But I think most of us, when evaluating a product, would look at ease of integration, utility of crunch, quality of fluff, art, etc. in making a purchasing decision. If two products were roughly equivalent, then grammatical mistakes and such could be a deciding factor. But it is rare to see two products released more or less at the same time covering the same material, and even harder for the consumer to evaluate multiple products in a category.

It annoys the living crap out of me, too, when I see sloppy proofing or rules errors that compromise the utility of a product. But if I want that latest FR book, I have to decide whether that annoyance is more or less important than the other qualities of the book.

 

[GlassJaw]

I don't know that it's as much a 'who cares' issue as it is a case of priorities. Unlike many other areas (yours and mine included), there isn't any real competition in the D20 RPG marktet, in that there is one 800 lb. gorilla and a bunch of monkeys

Excellent post Rodrigo. I suspect this is the main issue as well.

My language on this topic is definitely stronger than most but that's just because it's my job so I take to heart more than others.

What bothers me moreso than the errors themselves is their repetition. It's obvious that problem areas (like the stat blocks) have been identified recently and in the past. Wouldn't it behoove WotC to maybe alter their in-house processes a bit in order to catch some of these issues earlier or try to eliminate some altogether?

Is 8 hours enough time? No, probably not. But it seems that if you just gave someone 8 hours to go over the book, you could catch a lot of the problems. Any amount of time would seem good based on the current quality. You are never going to get to 100% correctness. But 30% (assuming 1 out of every 3 stat blocks has an error) seems very high to me.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

It's obvious that problem areas (like the stat blocks) have been identified recently and in the past. Wouldn't it behoove WotC to maybe alter their in-house processes a bit in order to catch some of these issues earlier or try to eliminate some altogether?

The single best thing they could have done (and could still do) is work with CMP or whoever and come up with a reliable computer program for generating stat blocks and such. CMP and the PCGen folks have done a pretty good job given the situation, but if WotC worked with them so that workable datasets for a new product were developed at the same time as the book, you'd have a nice little computerized fact checker.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

The single best thing they could have done (and could still do) is work with CMP or whoever and come up with a reliable computer program for generating stat blocks and such. CMP and the PCGen folks have done a pretty good job given the situation, but if WotC worked with them so that workable datasets for a new product were developed at the same time as the book, you'd have a nice little computerized fact checker.

Maybe they do and that is why there is so many errors . No offense to anyone at CMP (I say this as someone who recently purchased e-Tools plus all the datasets and uses them for all my stat-blocks) but I've found that e-Tools is pretty buggy by itself. I took a quick look at the statblocks that I created for my session this weekend and every one of them has at least one error in it*. So this wouldn't (IMHO) fix the stat errors.

I believe Sean Reynolds said in the thread about MMIII that there is an in-house spreadsheet that WotC uses to make up their stat-blocks and it's supposed to be very accurate.

*That said, e-Tools has been, by far, the single most useful thing I've purchased for D&D aside from the core books. It cuts my prep time by at least 75% and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who spends most of their prep time writing up stats.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Maybe they do and that is why there is so many errors . No offense to anyone at CMP (I say this as someone who recently purchased e-Tools plus all the datasets and uses them for all my stat-blocks) but I've found that e-Tools is pretty buggy by itself. I took a quick look at the statblocks that I created for my session this weekend and every one of them has at least one error in it*. So this wouldn't (IMHO) fix the stat errors.

With the current situation, it's almost impossible for a third party to make a piece of software that will be both accurate and complete. There isn't enough money to be made for it to be a high-level effort involving lots of people, and it's hard to succeed as open source since the datasets that are the heart of the program can't be distributed for free. Either you sacrifice accuracy and include a wide variety of data sources, or you forgo being able to use 'Complete X' and stick to a mostly-accurate SRD-only set.

CMP or whoever is always going to be in catch-up mode on new releases, and that combined with the inflexibility of eTools is quite a burden. WotC (and other third party publishers) could relax their restrictions on electronic data distribution, and re-invigorate the open source community, but that ain't gonna happen. They could also work more closely with third-party SW developers so that new crunch in the book was communicated during the publishing process and the programs could be ready when the book was in editing.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

With the current situation, it's almost impossible for a third party to make a piece of software that will be both accurate and complete. There isn't enough money to be made for it to be a high-level effort involving lots of people, and it's hard to succeed as open source since the datasets that are the heart of the program can't be distributed for free. Either you sacrifice accuracy and include a wide variety of data sources, or you forgo being able to use 'Complete X' and stick to a mostly-accurate SRD-only set.

CMP or whoever is always going to be in catch-up mode on new releases, and that combined with the inflexibility of eTools is quite a burden. WotC (and other third party publishers) could relax their restrictions on electronic data distribution, and re-invigorate the open source community, but that ain't gonna happen. They could also work more closely with third-party SW developers so that new crunch in the book was communicated during the publishing process and the programs could be ready when the book was in editing.

That's certainly fair enough. I just wouldn't want to see WotC relying on it for their stat-blocks. (Well I would, but my understanding of it is that it would require a total rewrite in order to make it reliable enough to catch all the small errors creeping into the statblocks).

 

[Turjan]

Well, the language skills on this board reflect that a good part of its users are not native speakers, like myself. Of course, what I write is riddled with errors. That's life, and there is no real way around this.

As far as publishers are concerned, I expect more. The occasional error does not bother me much, because I know how painful proofreading can be. It takes hours and hours and hours. I think the estimate of a week's time that has to be spent on a hardback of 300 pages is a conservative one. This boils down to the fact that proofreading is expensive.

Anyway, I don't think sloppy editing is a new phenomenon as far as WotC products go. Has anyone of you read "Stronghold Builder's Guide Book?" *shudder*. This kind of niche book is supposed to yield not much revenue to begin with. Costs have to been cut, and the proofreader provides an easy target for the red pencil.