The Problem of DDI...Solved! (Well, not really)

[Herschel]

1. They already had such a differential set up, so it is obviously feasible - they just decided they didn't want it (for some reason).

2. So, you are happy to pay for a tool that could leave you with no option but a pencil and a sheet of paper next week (or tomorrow)? I can get a pencil and a sheet of paper now, and it's a lot cheaper. Better still, I can get a spreadsheet that I can modify for myself using the books and my laptop.

3. With later upgrades, maybe it will become in some ways more feature-rich, flexible and useful than the old CB, agreed. Right now, though, it has no houserule capability, no "future proofing" and no usability when without internet access. That is simply "worse", any way you cut it.

1. It's obviously NOT feasible or they would have done it. Each method is not equal to another which is a big part of your false assumption.

2. The character builder is a service, not a physical product. It's no different than Netflix, Amazon Prime, cable TV or any electronic entertainment tool, service or interface of its kind. As for if/when a new edition comes out, so be it. It's not worth worrying about.

3. And how many people actually need house rule capabilities? And what is their motivation for adding it and how much? While it will be nice when completed I know it wouldn't be my top priority of things to put in if it didn't have all the features/kinks worked out in the stuff I could control.

It's not going to be a custom tool that can do anything someone wants. That's not realistic because everyone has different wants from it. It will have basic house rule functionality according to announced plans but it's also likely a low priority. It's more important they work on the stuff as they have the game "written" as it serves a larger audience.

 

[Balesir]

I don't know if you're still asserting this, because I honestly can't be bothered to read two pages of single-sentence quoting, but there is pretty much nothing right about this comment. Every new user has an accountable, measurable cost in terms of the bandwidth, storage, and customer support required to service them, as well as potentially deferred costs which will be incurred for changes and updates across the life-time of the product.

Bandwidth is generally a fixed cost - you have the capacity available to support a net presence. How you use it may shape how you allocate the cost internally, but that doesn't make it a marginal cost, since it doesn't actually increase or decrease based on how much of it you use. The wires are there anyway - the only real variable cost is the electricity, and that's pretty darned small.

Storage - how is this variable with an offline CB? It is with the online CB, because now you keep the character records on the WotC server, but if customers download the CB and use it locally, you need no storage per customer at all.

Customer support is the one possibly valid item, here, but it's generally set at the level you can afford, not the level you "need" (since that could be debated all day long). Thus, in general, it is a fixed cost (for people and 'phones, basically).

Changes and updates are fixed costs - i.e. they are the same regardless how many users you have. As such, they are not "marginal costs".

1. It's obviously NOT feasible or they would have done it. Each method is not equal to another which is a big part of your false assumption.

The fact that they have not done it does not demonstrate that it is not feasible - merely that they decided not to do it. They may have had good reasons for that, they may have just not wanted to be bothered, or it may simply not have occurred to them.

2. The character builder is a service, not a physical product. It's no different than Netflix, Amazon Prime, cable TV or any electronic entertainment tool, service or interface of its kind. As for if/when a new edition comes out, so be it. It's not worth worrying about.

For you, maybe. For me, I want a tool I can use to support my campaign, which will likely last a few years. If I watch a film I might be happy never to see it again - but if I do want to see it in future I can always get the DVD. Same with TV. With the new CB, there is just no alternative available if I want a persistent tool - I'm just not allowed to buy one. It's not a huge deal, but it's as broken as a film not being released on DVD would be.

3. And how many people actually need house rule capabilities? And what is their motivation for adding it and how much? While it will be nice when completed I know it wouldn't be my top priority of things to put in if it didn't have all the features/kinks worked out in the stuff I could control.

I don't know how many people want houserules, but they are a long-established part of roleplaying in all systems, and to dismiss those who want them just because you don't care for them seems selfish and cavalier, to me.

It's not going to be a custom tool that can do anything someone wants. That's not realistic because everyone has different wants from it. It will have basic house rule functionality according to announced plans but it's also likely a low priority. It's more important they work on the stuff as they have the game "written" as it serves a larger audience.

It's entirely "realistic" - it's been done with previous editions' character builders, it's been done with the offline character builder, and it's been done with character builders for other systems. It may well be that WotC don't want to enable anything more than basic houserule support, but to say that it's not "realistic" is drivel. All you need is a database editor (with limited permissions).

 

[wedgeski]

Storage - how is this variable with an offline CB? It is with the online CB, because now you keep the character records on the WotC server, but if customers download the CB and use it locally, you need no storage per customer at all.

I'm talking about the online CB. If you're somehow talking about the old one then I'll retract those comments because they're less than irrelevant.

 

[Balesir]

I'm talking about the online CB. If you're somehow talking about the old one then I'll retract those comments because they're less than irrelevant.

Yes, I was talking about the offline CB. To clarify, the claim has been made that WotC "had to" move to an online, rentware model because some folk only paid sporadically for the offline CB. My point on that is "since each extra person using the offline CB wasn't costing WotC any extra money, why wasn't it good that they got any money at all from those users?"

The followup to that is that they "weren't getting enough money" (to cover their development and other fixed expenses) from that level of demand. To that, I respond that I don't see the level of demand for a more restrictive, less useful product at a higher price being any higher, either in numbers nor in cash terms. But maybe I'm wrong on that - who knows?

 

[Scribble]

The followup to that is that they "weren't getting enough money" (to cover their development and other fixed expenses) from that level of demand. To that, I respond that I don't see the level of demand for a more restrictive, less useful product at a higher price being any higher, either in numbers nor in cash terms. But maybe I'm wrong on that - who knows?

That's the main point- none of us have their numbers, so we don't really know.

Most of your comments are essentially true, but when those numbers are figured, IE when they decide how much bandwidth to use, how many CSRs they need/can afford, etc.. they're done so figuring an average number of users at each level of the system.

If, there was a bleed, then that can royally frak the numbers creating a problem all throughout the company.


As for houserules-

It's slightly different from other digital tools of the past though because of the integration of the tools I think, combined with what I believe their ultimate goal is (ability to hop online and get into a game at any time.)

In such a system, not only do you need to be able to create house rules, but you also need to be able to give certain people control over how they're used, or which ones can be used, and on top of all of that you as the developer need to make sure the integration and the system is working with numbers you know before the ones you don't start showing up.

I can almost guarantee they'll turn on some form of support in the relatively near future.

 

[Dumnbunny]

Here is the thing I don't quite understand...is it really so hard to use a blank sheet and a pencil?

Yes.

I love making up characters. I consider it kind of a sub-hobby. However, in nearly 3 decades of playing I haven't come across a game where making characters without electronic aid is quite as painful as 4e. Sure, if you know pretty much what powers, feats, etc you're going to take it's not so bad. However, if you don't ... Well, I recently made up a character using just a pencil and paper, and I wound up flipping through nine or ten different books, plus a binder with the extensive errata printed out and various Dragon magazine articles.

 

[Artoomis]

My opinion:

1. Off-line is much more convenient, though WotC picked the wrong way to code it. A cross-platform language like Java woudl have been much better - and likely faster, too, as it really could not be slower.

2. Much of the off-line functionality is still missing, and WotC continues to make odd decisions about what they think their users want.

3. The security model was clearly flawed, but it did not have to be that way. That was bad planning, pure and simple.

4. On-line is here to stay, all the whining and complaining, no matter how justified, will not change that, I think.

5. I would suggest, at a minimum, an off-line viewer based upon the previous off-line viewer, be built and distributed. One could export a character and then view it with all the great "right-click" functionality that is now missing. This is a great compromise, I think, between on-line and off-line functionality.

6. I would also suggest that more options for how to do a task be in the off-line viewer. Such things as several different ways to view feats to be selected, for example. When building a one-size-fits-all tool like this, it is generally best not to assume that one design will work for all but, instead, allow users choice in how they operate the tool. A good example of this is MS Word - most tasks have three or four ways to do them, the users decide which way works best for them.

 

[eamon]

What Artoomis says rings true. As an aside, I love the tagline: "Yes, there can be more than one right answer to a rules question! It can be an exercise in futility to attempt to apply a great deal of precision to an imprecise set of rules." Too true!