The biggest issue with the new Character Builder:

[Herschel]

Unrealistic expectations from armchair computer "experts".

Seriously. How many people complaining about the initial bugs at role out have actually done any QA testing? I know I have on different programs for different companies and I can say that none of them were without a lot of bugs upon role out.

Why? Because QA can't find everything and QA can only simulate, not actually run with all users. I'm not a regular QA person, I was brought in on projects because I'm an end user with some skills. My normal position is not to build, code and load test and I was brought in after roll out because of issues that weren't found.

I'll give an example, in a major database there were a number of bugs. I was assigned to help QA test prior to an update. I crashed it with a fatal error in my first half hour that was undiscovered because I was trying to do something they hadn't thought of.

Yay for me, right? Well, I hammered around in it myself, running it through edge cases I could think of, and QA handled it. But when the update went live? Boom! An error surfaced around what I had tested that I had approached from multiple angles and it still wasn't found.

Add in that people were pre-building disappointment before it was ever released and the general lack of patience in our society it's not surprising people are upset, but that doesn't make all the expectation reasonable. It appears updates are happening fast and furious as things develop.

But hey, pitchforks and torches are more fun, right?

Also, all the complaints about Silverlight I find rather funny. Just because someone read on the internet that brand new *platform B* is all the rage doesn't make it a good business decision to go that route. The number of people who feel the need or run the "latest & greatest" is relatively few. From what I see and ask around, Silverlight seems to have made a lot of sense.

Don't get me wrong, missing features and such are a pain, but what should have been expected in a brand new roll out vs. the expectations some had? Some times a little patience is all it takes. Jumping to conclusions within 24 hours of a rollout (or even before, as some have) is ridiculous.

Heck , I didn't experience any of the issues last night that people were complaining about even earlier in the day.

Sometimes a little information/background is worse than none.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I actually think the old Windows-based CB deserved more criticism than the web version does. The page layouts were poorly designed and the windows and sub-windows didn't scale or adjust properly when run on small screens such as those found on netbooks. (I could name a number of other egregious design issues but those were the biggest.) When you don't even try to meet standard best practices in your design -- well, that's when my own blood starts boiling.

 

[malraux]

If a large number of unknown bugs were going to be an issue, perhapse WotC shouldn't have also pulled the old CB. Having some form of a CB available isn't that unreasonable.

 

[Herschel]

The old one is still there though. They didn't delete it or change it, they just didn't put a lot of resources in to trying to shoe horn a lot of things in it wasn't made to handle.

I have numerous dislikes in the offline builder too that I hope will change online (and some layout things already have).

 

[the Jester]

Unrealistic expectations from armchair computer "experts".

I would say instead that the problem is that WotC replaced a popular and functional program with a version that is barely usable at best. It's not about armchair experts, it's about losing utility compared to the old version.

Simply dismissing peoples' concerns doesn't acknowledge that there is a damn good reason for the disappointment in the new CB, especially given how much "the new cool tool" was talked up in advance, and how misleading all the update talk was for the couple of months before it came out. They led people to believe that Essentials and DS were going in the CB... only to put them in the new, less-usable CB.

People are feeling disappointed that this is a giant step backwards. Personally, I'd have been happy if the new CB was almost as good as the old, but it's ridiculously unfinished and buggy. I'd also have been happy if they were maintaining support on the old CB until the new one's issues were worked out.

Instead, it's like someone took away my keg of Guinness and replaced with a keg of near-beer... that only dispenses that about half the time.

 

[Danzauker]

The biggest issue with the new CB?

- It costs the same as the old one. *

- It does less than the old.

Quite simple.



* Actually it costs more, on average. If I only was interested in PHB/DMG/MM I and didn't care for rule updates or other books, I could just subscribe for a month, download the old CB, and use to my heart content. There was nothing illegal with this, regardless of what some people inexplicabilly say.

Now, in order to use the new CB, I'm foced to keep a running subscription, getting updates for new products even if I can not care less about them...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Luckily, I am not an armchair computer expert. I actually develop software for a living.

The problem with the CB is that they are releasing a new app that is immediately replacing the old app, but the new app is worse on several aspects. The new CB as an open beta? THat would be fine by me. I wouldn't even worry all that much about the issues. But they are claiming that this is a full release. But it is a step back in several key areas. Stability and performance leave a lot to be desired. And the old Character Builder? Support ended. I don't get new material for it. So it wasn't taken away, but it's perceived utility is shrinking, too (but then, I don't have to pay for that anymore, if I don't want to.)

The UI design itself also doesn't convince me. There are too many dialogs popping up for trivial tasks like selecting feats or powers. The old CB's interface allowed a far more "exploratory" style of character creation, not constraining me at every step to do just one thing. Maybe you think this is a subjective thing, but I don't think so - the general guideline in UI design point in a different direction then what the CB does.

 

[Herschel]

But the old Character Builder wasn't a "functional" program, it was rather limited. I can't imagine trying to shoe horn Essentials and Dark Sun option in it. And the layout would have been an absolute mess if they had.

I find the new layout an improvement already, even with some things I'm not the happiest about. I also disliked the old character sheet layout for the most part except the power cards. I much prefer the new second page and even the front page I find a big improvement.

 

[Scribble]

I think it's a little of both...

The big issues seem to be:

New CB doesn't do everything it CAN do that old CB did...
New CB has some apparent server issues causing constant crashes for some.

These are compounded by the fact that a large portion of the audience was already unhappy about the switch to online only, plus a delay in getting ANY type of CB update with Essentials and DS in it...


Taken by themselves the issues are annoying, but dealable... It's the fact that the audience was already unhappy I think that just makes it seem as horrible as it seems to many users.


I think once they fix that server issue, and add back in at least some of the BIG missing features, a lot of the "This is horrible!" cries will die down.

 

[Piratecat]

Seriously. How many people complaining about the initial bugs at role out have actually done any QA testing?

I have. And I can very categorically say that the CB was not ready to ship two days ago. It is loaded with what I'd categorize with "A" bugs that would normally stop release.

I understand fully that there will be a constant stream of known issues and tweaks. When I can log on and find show-stoppers within the first five minutes, though, that's a sign of either insufficient QA or (much more likely) a set-in-stone release date that the development team couldn't realistically hit.

Either way, I have a new product that does less and performs less reliably than the product it replaced. That's not okay for me, and I'm pretty sure my standards aren't unrealistically high. So please don't blame customers for complaining.