The biggest issue with the new Character Builder:

[Obryn]

Those fans who were complaining, they will NEVER be happy, look at the complaints about the VTT program, it's not even out and people are complaining about it, complaining it should have been something else, that it should do this, that it won't do that, people like that will never be satisfied.

I'll just cut to the end here. I don't think you've been paying much attention over the past few months. Me, Piratecat, MerricB, Scribble, etc. have been pretty serious 4e/WotC boosters.

I'm not complaining because I hate WotC, and I've been extremely happy with 4e, DDI, and all the rest since KotS was released.

I'm complaining because, after a long delay when a tool I'm paying for would have been useful, it's been replaced by an objectively worse application, with severe bugs and a slow & clumsy UI. As a customer, that's my right. As it stands, I ended up reupping my subscription because I'm finding that even a broken CB is better than no CB for my Dark Sun game, but while WotC has my money, they've lost a good portion of my goodwill along with it.

I'm a customer, not a passive consumer of content.

-O

 

[Tarek]

I don't know about you, but I've had dozens, possibly even hundreds of pieces of software I've used over the years, most of it released commercially. Very little of that software crashed or was completely unusable on Release Day, and those that were were quickly discarded in favor of software that did the same thing and didn't crash regularly.

I don't expect it to be bug free. I do expect it to be stable enough to use and the bugs to be minor or rare enough that they can easily be worked around until a fix comes out.

The DDI Online Character Builder is neither stable nor major bug free. Not at launch, not currently, probably not for some time in the future. If it's a hardware/networking problem, then that should have been anticipated. If it's software programming/development, then it should have been held back.

And I completely fault Wizards of the Coast for this. Organizationally, the company seems to treat their programming team like an appendix, an afterthought, instead of a serious, professional software development effort. Wizards is way out of their field of competence when it comes to software.

 

[AllisterH]

I should point out that WOTC seems to have no trouble with either Magic online OR Duels of the planeswalkers so I don't think WOTC is incompetent with software...

 

[The Little Raven]

I'll just cut to the end here. I don't think you've been paying much attention over the past few months. Me, Piratecat, MerricB, Scribble, etc. have been pretty serious 4e/WotC boosters.

I'm not complaining because I hate WotC, and I've been extremely happy with 4e, DDI, and all the rest since KotS was released.

Me, too. I've got a reputation as an edition warrior. I often give WotC more slack in software matters due to personal experience as a software developer.

However, slack goes only so far, and the state of the CB at release goes well beyond the slack I can give. If it were my company putting out that program, I would be ashamed that customers were paying for it.

I wanted to like it. I wanted it to be awesome. Optimism is better for the heart and mind than pessimism. Unfortunately, the furthest towards optimism I can go is realism, and the reality is that this was a completely awful launch.

I should point out that WOTC seems to have no trouble with either Magic online OR Duels of the planeswalkers so I don't think WOTC is incompetent with software...

I should point out that Magic Online has had a rather troubled history and was originally developed by another company, then taken over by Wizards in 2.0. Duels of the Planewalkers was not developed by Wizards, but a third-party company. The CB is an in-house project. I understand Wizards aren't primarily a software company, but as the number of in-house software increases, they're going to be judged on the same standards as such.

 

[avin]

Back home I finally tried it on my PC, cause almight portable online CB refuses to work properly on my netbook...

I seriously give it a try... but it's bad... man, it's really annoying... I wish they could at least make a similar product but I can stand it.

Sent an e-mail to my players saying we won't use essentials and Dark Sun stuff.

And I'm having nightmares about MB online...

 

[Herschel]

And I was back in it for a while tonight, updated a couple of characters, imported another, printed all three of them with no problems whatsoever.

 

[nerfherder]

And I was back in it for a while tonight, updated a couple of characters, imported another, printed all three of them with no problems whatsoever.

I'm sure that the majority of Toyota drivers have never experienced any problems with the brakes or accelerator pedals either.

 

[Holy Bovine]

The people who've paid for years, for the most part, seem to be continuing to stick with it.

No, they aren't.

See? I have just as much evidence as you too!

 

[Herschel]

I'm sure that the majority of Toyota drivers have never experienced any problems with the brakes or accelerator pedals either.

Funny you should use that analogy:
Toyota's acceleration problem could be customer-based

http://sg.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AW224_DRIVER_NS_20100713184815.gif

Report: Many of Toyota’s Acceleration Problems Due to Driver Error | 80beats | Discover Magazine

It appears the majority of the problems were driver error, not mechanical, and in other cases where the problem was shifting floor mats (which happened in my Saturn too). Sure there are some problems, but those problems include users. (Toyota pedals are very close together, for example, which is great for efficiency and performance, but not for people with sloppy foot placement/control)

The Audi "acceleration issues" from a number of years back were also found to be mostly driver error.

I was able to make the Character Builder crash once this morning by continually pressing update buttons after making a change but before it actually accepted them. Is this the program's fault or me being (in this case intentionally) impatient?

 

[nerfherder]

The point being that just because you didn't experience any problems tonight doesn't mean that they don't exist, and that other people aren't experiencing them.

There have been far too many crashes reported by people that generally post positive things about WotC and want DDi to be successful for them all to be written off as user error.