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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ninja-to" data-source="post: 5505156" data-attributes="member: 19551">Let me get the rant out of the way.I have to say that I think I'm not going to be buying any WotC products for a very long time, especially books. It is book after book after book that have endless errata and half the time it seems nobody is even proofreading the material anymore. What are we at now? 123+ pages of changes to the books.My other two cents: When we were promised before release that we would all be getting digital PDF versions of our books, I was thrilled. How cool would it be to ALWAYS have all of the errata in the books you bought? I remember the plan being something like you input a code from inside your book for your updates to your PDF. How awesome was that idea?How <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> it is that now that's just some vaporware like the character designer ads that are still there in my original 4th Ed PHB.Now I start my session last weekend and get excited when a dragon is about to stomp on the party and one of my players (who stays up on new errata like no-one else) tells me ALL of the dragons have been changed.So that renders my plan to pick up the Draconomicon books kinda uncertain. Then when I think about it, every book that gets released has me hesitating. It's insane. And the only reliable and working piece of software that included all of the updates perfectly... has been scrapped. They're trying to make us pay MMO prices without there being an MMO product.What the hell is Wizards thinking? Seriously? It's as though they're purposefully trying to break 4th Edition.Awesome game design. Really, really bad marketing.Here are a few very simple ideas. You want to create more income and steady flow of revenue? I'm sure we all understand that.STOP printing books. That is, until they're finished for god's sake. I remember a very old promise WotC made when they bought TSR. "We will not saturate the market. TSR made this error." So what the hell happened to that idea?Start using your brand to sell other products. Invest in a movie or tv series without it being a razzie contender. Share the profits with known writers and directors. Look at how Marvel has marketed their brand. Merchandising. Sell D&D merchandise. Lucas did it with Star Wars. Hasbro... come on guys. Someone there is out to lunch.And for god's sake re-introduce the old character builder and update it. It was the best software Wizards ever made. Keep going. Create a suite for DM's to use with a laptop at the table. Digitize EVERYTHING so that a DM needs only his laptop to play. Why is this so incredibly difficult?You can't stop piracy. Don't even start on it. Every single book ever printed for D&D is online somewhere. Why not get over it and start moving forward?How about this? Create an 'account' that people can log into. They buy a book, either digitally or hard copy (remember to always give people both choices) and they input their code. Now that account has that book locked into their profile. From there on, errata are updated digitally for that individual. Once that person has purchased that book they can use it as they could in Character Builder. The mistake (thought I'm not complaining) in the old CB was that ALL new books were available. In my opinion there should only be books available that you've actually bought.Why would going all digital work? As in, why would people not just download everything for free? First of all, they already can. Why not create an official version of books with a slick interface for viewing them all and running a game? Because when there are updates, most of us would rather not put up with the hassle of trying to get patches or cracks for multitudes of books. It would be simpler to buy the book and have everything 'official'. Oh yeah, and there are quite a few of us who actually *want* to support the guys that produce the game we've all been playing since we were kids.So, with everyone's 'Account', make an application, similar to CB, that allows you to view all the books you've purchased, and also use that opportunity to give 'bits' of material of new content available for the person to purchase. Use it for advertising. All of this is available as a download and is offline. It's all updated. And it's all paid for. It would cost you next to nothing to have books which are already on some hard drive somewhere available to download for the people who already bought said book.For the love of god, why are we still living in the past.It's weird. I WANT to buy more books and material, but I'm NOT going to do it because I know any book I buy is going to be altered and 'fixed' with pages of errata. Don't even get me started on the hideous 'new' online CB. /end rant</blockquote>

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