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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 4391860" data-attributes="member: 18">ki11erDM - Your comments seem to be founded on a basis that we should automatically think well of, or respect corporations and businesses, even when their actions don't benefit us. This seems, to me, utterly without validity and bordering on the brain-washed. If this isn't your position, please explain, in detail, why you think we shouldn't complain about actual problems that a company has caused, or things it's failed to do, or inferior products it's produced?As to the original question, I'm generally impressed with 4E. I have WotC a 3, though I'd have prefered a 3.5 (out of 5), but there are some really serious blemishes on their record that make me, as a consumer, less keen on purchasing their products, and less impressed with them as a company. Specifically:1) DDI - This is still, long after it was supposed to be released, completely unfinished. All that we have is Dragon and Dungeon, and whilst it's nice that they're free and all, it's not at all impressive, given Paizo were able to do this without issues. The D&D Rules Compendium has become a poorly-edited non-rules, PC-creation/levelling-info-only compendium, which is weakly useful, at best. The other parts simply aren't there. The tabletop, the character generator, the dungeon builder? No sign of them, and they're what was important to me. I know my brother wanted the 4E PHB on the grounds that he'd be able to play online via. the DDI, and he was shocked to find out that it simply hadn't been implemented, and has absolutely no timeline/date for it's implementation. This brings me to my second issue.2) The GSL - Extremely unfriendly, basically a lawyer's wet dream, and seems designed to intentionally "put off" major companies (and has been successful in doing so) from producing officially 4E-compatible material. It also doesn't allow for any software products, which ties in with the first problem - WotC is failing to provide software solutions, whilst simultaneously blocking others from providing them. This is a highly unsatisfactory situation. Unsatisfactory to WotC too, I'm sure, but there are ways out of it, and they're unwilling to take them.3) Product quality - Outside of the "holy trinity", I've been unimpressed with product quality. KotS seems poorly written, is in a format that doesn't seem very helpful (the flimsy double-folder format), and the adventure itself is on the thinnest paper in gaming history, and smudges extremely easily. The character record sheets are simply a rip-off, and unworthy of WotC. Whilst it's very easy to say "Oh just print them out!", clearly someone who is buying the record sheets doesn't want to do that for whatever reason. That's not an excuse to rip them off! I'm concerned that we'll continue to see cheap, low-quality-seeming products like these. I'm also unimpressed that they seem to have released with quite SO many rather serious errata in the PHB and DMG. I like errata, especially in a "tightly-engineered" system like 4E, and I'd rather have them than not, but I'd also rather have waited a month or two more and gotten books with the corrections already in.</blockquote>

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