I have numerous problems with DDI, some of which are geographical (as I'll explain, I'm in New Zealand) and others are just because I am not enthused with the content. Firstly, the money thing.
I'd like to point out that I buy
every book that is released with only very few exceptions. I can tell you what I don't have they've published in terms of books: Players Handbook Humans, Players Handbook Dragonborn, Players Handbook Tieflings, Dragon Annual and Dungeon Annual. That's literally all I don't have:
I own everything else. So I hardly hate Wizards and while I'm ambivalent about essentials, I'll forgive them for the Monster Vault and Rules Compendium (both excellent excellent purchases). The thing is a subscription for me costs extra because I'm from NZ, so after exchange rates are factored in I think a full year sub is $139ish NZ. Now that's not bad at all to be frank, but at the same time that's a decent amount of money. The question is, do I feel like I get value out of that $139 NZ?
Now I've been playing DnD for 15 years, which is hardly trying to make myself look impressive because I know there are people here who have been playing for
thirty or more. So I'm hardly a grizzled old veteran or anything, but I am very mechanically minded and one thing I like is the
compendium. Now the compendium is a very handy tool and I've come to rely on it more than anything else, especially as I run two VTT games. For quickly checking or cross referencing mechanics from different books its invaluable (especially as I make many, many, MANY monsters). Sometimes my players make macros that confuse me or omit an important detail (which often doesn't seem important at the time of making it). This can be quickly resolved with a simple trip to the compendium.
Unless I want to look up literally anything from Dark Sun. Thanks Wizards, for making the best setting you've published in 4E (IMO, you're welcome to disagree and be entirely wrong all you want
) more difficult for me to use as none of it is in the compendium. This means I need to go and find my various books, pop them next to me and use them anyway. At this point if I'm relying on my books, why bother with the compendium? I have all the books, it may not be as easy to find something as in the compendium but I am hardly incompetent about looking up things like an
index. Additionally, they've introduced a common/uncommon/rare item designation and then not updated the items in the compendium. So I have no idea what is what, again without picking up various books. The core point here is that if I need to get my books to know key information and the compendium is not being kept up to date, then I am not going to pay for what I can do for free anyway.
The other thing is also that the tools have lost all value to me, so much so I'm going to be hugely negative and claim they are worthless. The
Character Builder moving online has been a total disaster. For one thing, as of 30/11/2010 as I write this I have still been unable to make a single character. I suspect this to be a combination of it being very buggy and the CB being online only with my terrible internet. Now, my internet is pretty awful. When I get capped my speeds are so badly throttled that I cannot do anything online except load basic webpages. With a 10 gig cap and the amount of bandwidth the CB uses, which it uses
a lot of I will point out, whenever I am capped the CB is functionless. It won't work
even if it wasn't currently problematic and buggy.
Wizards have effectively made a tool I pay for that I cannot access for long periods of each month. Am I supposed to just tolerate this and continue paying for
extremely reduced functionality? Not very likely to be brutally frank. This is just compounding the tool I really liked and actually used
almost constantly. The
Monster Builder was arguably the best thing about my subscription. I've literally used it more than every other thing in DDI and it's been my most praised tool since release. Now though it is hugely problematic on numerous fronts:
1) It does not import the correct maths for any monster. I have to manually use the errata to actually figure out the correct expected damage statistics for most monsters. Of course I have this mostly memorized, but it's still a total pain.
2) The amount of bloody bugs the last update introduced. It drives me crazy having to edit monsters
nine or more times just to get everything correct and hope nothing new broke. For example in the "Community Monster Project" thread on this forum, I had to make 12 edits of the purple worm and 14 edits of the Dracolich. Not because of feedback, but I certainly did incorporate that too, but because every time I published a "finished" stat block I discovered the MB had changed something or made an error. This was immensely frustrating as it made some of my stat blocks unreadable and made me look very stupid at times. The fact is, when I put all of X information in and save it, I expect at the minimum that all of X information is still there.
Now I am aware that both of these points are now completely irrelevant as monsters are more than likely going to an online online monster builder. Even before I start my rant on the quality of dungeon as that's the other thing I use as a DM, the move to online tools is the nail in the coffin right now and what prompted my account cancellation. An online MB is going to suffer the exact problems of the CB, plus it's not even going to be available when I make monsters:
Anywhere. Literally! I'll have an idea for a creature, pull out my laptop, make it in the MB and then put it away again. If I don't have a laptop I use a pen and paper.
The problem is, why do I need a slow, clunky, unresponsive and presumably ridiculously limited (maybe 20 monsters?) online MB when I have a 250 page blank book? When I can make a monsters stat block by hand, from memory of the rules for making monsters in less time than it would take me to make it using an online character builder - bearing in mind the contest is unfair to an online MB to begin with as my internet is terrible and capped = online tools are unusable - why should I pay for this anymore? Again, I own all the books here and I can look them up if I have to. I know all the monster building rules off by heart - wizards have made this pretty simple anyway by standardizing all monster attacks to +5 vs. AC and +3 vs. NADs as an example (except artillery, but whatever) - so I can get a pen and paper and do it faster.
Isn't that a sad thing when a tool that should make life easier, straightforward and better is beaten by just using my brain and pen and paper? I make
hundreds of monsters. Hundreds. In my last campaign I estimate I made over 40 solos and at least 130 normal standard monsters. Easy. I also change monsters routinely. Very little gets run without me poking it violently or adding a new creature specifically to help it out. This is what I love about 4E: How coherent, consistent and fun building your own monsters is. I pay for DDI because of the Monster Builder and its regular updates. When you take away the updates and you make the Monster Builder unusable to me for long stretches each month the core value of DDI goes down the drain for me.
That is not acceptable. I will not pay for that.
Dungeon is another issue entirely. I am an odd DM, I rarely use other peoples adventures and if you follow my thread about my games I ran "Cross City Race" recently (Dungeon 176). That is in fact the
only dungeon adventure I've ever ran. Now just because I don't run an adventure doesn't mean I don't appreciate well written adventures in Dungeon. This stance may seem strange or even purely contradictory, but here are what I take from Dungeon adventures commonly:
1)
Maps: I draw like a braindead 5 year old - quite literally. My drawing is
so bad I am openly ashamed of it. The one and only thing I cannot do as a DM is any kind of logical, pretty cartography and it really bothers me. I love a good map to bash monsters or PCs in, so this is what I go looking for. Maps like the untagged maps in this months dungeon, which are of a destroyed bridge, a town square, buildings with bones and other things in them are wonderful. This is exactly what I want and what I need.
But then we get to what I hate; two things actually. Untagged maps and "Delves". Oh I
hate delves. I hate delves with such a passion I cannot tell you just how much I do. Three-four encounters on basically cobbled together piles of dungeon tiles. If I wanted that for my games I would get my digital camera, a sheet and take pictures (I run IRL games as well, so I have a good collection of tiles). These maps are just ugly and I never look at them and think "Wow I'm inspired to use that in my game". To make my point, I am using 5 of the maps from Lord of the White Field. I will never use a delve map.
The worst thing about delves is that they seem to take up an "adventure", so we get one adventure with some new maps and then we get a throwaway 4 encounter delve or something. That's not really very good. I wouldn't mind delves if they were not occupying space in the word count for a lovely new adventure with interesting cartography. Untagged maps, a good expansion in photoshop and a printer means I can use those gorgeously made maps IRL. Of course, those maps are also perfect for the main way I play DnD: On virtual tabletop in maptools. But sadly, they have become minimized in favor of ugly delves. The delves themselves tend to be either pretty bad linear encounter fests or simply not very good.
2)
Level: What on earth has happened to Wizards remembering there is a paragon and epic tier? We already have a thread for bitching about epic, but let's not forget that paragon tier is having similar problems being noticed. The most common adventures in dungeon are terrible low level delves and Chaos Scar adventures. Now Chaos Scar adventures I won't actually say much bad about - because they can sometimes be decent and often have novel cartography - but there is. So. Much. Heroic. Tier. Adventures.
Heroic tier adventures I think have dominated Dungeon for
months now. There is basically nothing in paragon and epic, except the odd one. The first epic adventures also suffer heavily for being well before MM3: So their damage and encounter design simply isn't up to snuff in any manner. This shows very much in the Scales of War adventures at epic, which make a noble is now utterly futile effort. There is unlikely to be an update to damage or similar for these adventures either, much like the original E1-E3 series. The utter prevalence of Heroic Tier adventures, especially similar level Chaos Scar ones is somewhat baffling. We have enough, please some diversity here.
3)
Creatures: I read every adventure for monsters. I usually look over the stat blocks of anything published, especially solos. Interesting solos and elites have cropped up often in Dungeon. Many of whom I feel are pretty solid and I've used in my games. High level adventures have produced some of the better ones: The scales of War adventure with the two headed white dragon exarch of Tiamat is a special highlight (for when it was published, it had solid damage, good action economy and was a solid A++ solo: Rare at the time!).
Now some articles address this: The scarecrow article was
amazing and Rodney Thompson has been consistently pumping out
great monsters for three months now for Dark Sun. But this is not enough by itself when the maps and adventures themselves are just going backwards all the time. By itself these articles are great and useful: I acknowledge that. But I am not without my own well of monster creativity and stuff that I can use in my games. They make up the few and the proud of articles: But not enough to warrant my money.
I won't really comment much on Dragon, it's something that is more or less there but as I don't actively play DnD I am entirely ambivalent about it. I like reading the fluff and other things they publish when they do. But it's not an important part of my purchasing decision unless I actually play DnD at some point (I DM 2.5 games right now. .5 because one is IRL but I am moving away soon, so the game is winding down).
Summary
1) The compendium is no longer as useful as it was. With every failed update from the new books it decreases in usefulness considerably.
2) Internet tools are unacceptable because I cannot use them when I am capped. I often take a week off every month from my maptools games due to my internet being capped. This accounts for about 9-10 days every month that I can't really use the internet. You can imagine the frustration of not only being unable to play, but not having the tools available to me on prime days (with no game) to write the adventures and prepare macros and such for the next week (or make more monsters, whatever comes to mind).
3) Dungeon doesn't publish enough adventures of varied enough levels. While they do publish some creatures, they need to keep up various columns like demonomicon and similar to keep my interest. Swamping me with heroic tier adventures, many of which are feeling
really familiar in the monsters the authors are using (coughgoblinscough).
Overall, this is no longer worth paying for. When they eventually announce the MB is online only they will have permanently lost me as a montly customer. I will probably resubscribe once every 4-5 months to just download the back issues of dragon/dungeon now and again. But regularly getting my monthly monies? No way.
