Copy/pasted as is, and thank you (and all of ENWorld) for the well-written posts. Makes my life much easier when I can simply copy/paste entire posts as opposed to having to paraphrase so that the point is not lost in the vitriol.
-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
The Value of my DDI Subscription
- Thread starter the Jester
- Start date
Copy/pasted as is, and thank you (and all of ENWorld) for the well-written posts. Makes my life much easier when I can simply copy/paste entire posts as opposed to having to paraphrase so that the point is not lost in the vitriol.
Being a Mac user and a DDI member since day 1 I'm not terribly disappointed with the new CB. On the first day, yeah, it was a buggy sack of crap, but it seems like its gotten better as time goes on, for some reason. Since Day 2 I've only had one error message, and that was because two people were trying to work on it at once. I also like the interface better than the Old CB's cluttered "twitch and you buy it" design.
As for Dungeon and Dragon, I have to agree largely with those here. I don't need adventures or DM advice, so Dungeon is dead content for me, and as for Dragon... Well, actually, if we look this month, things aren't that bad. We get several new articles improving various classes, some of which were either very well written (Cultures of Nerath) or cool mechanically (Cavalier Mounts). My only problem is that very little of it will get used by myself, since I doubt I will use many of the Essentials classes and that's where the content is unfortunately focused. It is a vast improvement over last month though, where the only article of note was a rather o.k. one on fey themed wardens and a balls overpowered one involving Illumian themed boons. I have noted a great decline since around 380 though, but there are still diamonds on the rough.
As for Dark Sun in the compendium... that sucks? I doubt they arbitrarily plan to withold the content from us (if they did, why add in the class material?), as it just makes no sense. I know most people are still stuck in torch and pitch-fork mode over the new CB and many others can't comprehend WotC not being incompetent/evil, but come on now. Chances are they just got caught up in all thise other BS and forgot about it. For me the Compendium is still very much worth it, Dark Sun or not. It makes DMing a breeze and character building easy if, like me, you didn't have the character builder for three years now. Without it, adventuring building would be an epic pain in the ass. That in itself was enough for me to resubscribe when my sub lapsed due to credit card issues.
All in all I still think things are of value. Maybe not as much and maybe not as often, but I'm still paying my subscription to get what value there is.
As for Dungeon and Dragon, I have to agree largely with those here. I don't need adventures or DM advice, so Dungeon is dead content for me, and as for Dragon... Well, actually, if we look this month, things aren't that bad. We get several new articles improving various classes, some of which were either very well written (Cultures of Nerath) or cool mechanically (Cavalier Mounts). My only problem is that very little of it will get used by myself, since I doubt I will use many of the Essentials classes and that's where the content is unfortunately focused. It is a vast improvement over last month though, where the only article of note was a rather o.k. one on fey themed wardens and a balls overpowered one involving Illumian themed boons. I have noted a great decline since around 380 though, but there are still diamonds on the rough.
As for Dark Sun in the compendium... that sucks? I doubt they arbitrarily plan to withold the content from us (if they did, why add in the class material?), as it just makes no sense. I know most people are still stuck in torch and pitch-fork mode over the new CB and many others can't comprehend WotC not being incompetent/evil, but come on now. Chances are they just got caught up in all thise other BS and forgot about it. For me the Compendium is still very much worth it, Dark Sun or not. It makes DMing a breeze and character building easy if, like me, you didn't have the character builder for three years now. Without it, adventuring building would be an epic pain in the ass. That in itself was enough for me to resubscribe when my sub lapsed due to credit card issues.
All in all I still think things are of value. Maybe not as much and maybe not as often, but I'm still paying my subscription to get what value there is.
the Jester
Legend
Thank you for doing so much to help smooth the choppy waters between WotC and all of us. For a guy that doesn't work for them, you sure do a lot of work for them!
I can't rep mudbunny again so soon, can someone cover me please?
ArcaneSpringboard
First Post
I'll add my anecdote as well.
Last night, two out of the three players who have DDI accounts, _purely_ for the Character Builder are cancelling. One specifically because he can't export his character for use in iPlay4e.
I've been running a 3-month subscription since launch (yes, stupid, but there you go), and I have to admit, I'm considering letting it lapse as well. Not so much because of the Character Builder issues (I'm the DM), but because of the increasing lack of usefulness of Dragon and especially Dungeon.
So many of the articles I would expect from Dungeon (ie, advice articles and the like) are being done on blogs, and I've been unimpressed with the way the adventures have been going for quite awhile.
I don't want to cancel my DDI subscription, but my perceived value of it has been diminishing greatly.
Shouldn't this be pondered in January or February when it is closer to your renewal?
Being curious, did you request a refund from WotC when they missed updating the 'classic' CB a couple months back?
[Yes, I am a troll, unemployed (unless a group of adventurers cross my path) and xenophobic.]
the Jester
Legend
I will probably be pondering it the entire time, to be honest. My point is that until the last few weeks, I hadn't pondered it at all. If my sub turns out to be of dubious worth for about four months, I have to wonder if that will happen again- most of the DDI missteps keep recurring, after all.
I have not asked for a refund from WotC at all, nor shall I. If I feel like they aren't earning my money any more, I'll stop giving it to them; but my annual sub already provided me with months of, at minimum, Character Builder and Monster Builder use, preview material and Dragon and Dungeon content (even if none of them were quite up to the level that I had expected or desired). They earned this year's money and I shan't begrudge them it.
renau1g
First Post
For me dropping the # of adventures in Dungeon from 3 to 2 was a big blow to the value. I use them as a time-strapped DM to act as a framework for adventures (tweaking as required). Losing 1/3 of the content that I used was awful, plus they're pretty much all low-level adventures and/or Chaos Scar... yeah, so plus the CB issues, MB issues and lack of updates, Compendium problems, Dragon articles being far less useful/interesting, and not really getting any "Insider" benefit like we used to get (i.e. PHB3 preview classes) I'm in the same boat as you Jester, except mine expires in June. I had held off at first because I was upset over the VTT/Visualizer/etc failure at launch as I wasn't sure I could trust WotC to produce decent etools. After trying the CB a few months later I was amazed how useful it was, so I signed up then.
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
My sub ended the 18th. Gave me a few days to play with the new CB.
Wasn't impressed.
I'll keep an ear to the ground to hear how its coming around but I'd need to hear some amazing things in terms of timeliness of updates, unique content, etc... before even considering it.
Wasn't impressed.
I'll keep an ear to the ground to hear how its coming around but I'd need to hear some amazing things in terms of timeliness of updates, unique content, etc... before even considering it.
I do understand a lot of the negativity, but (and I say this with all respect) are all of your dollar bills worth more than mine are?
My monthly DDI subscription costs less than one movie ticket. I have a hard time accepting that the value I get out of DDI (even now) is less than what I got out of sitting through the recent Clash of the Titans remake (although the nap I took in the middle was refreshing). Now I realize that not everyone goes to see one movie a month (although many of you see more), but I think that's a pretty apt comparison. Is DDI worth a little less than one trip to the cinema (sans popcorn or any other refreshment)? To me it is, and the quality is going to have to drop a heck of a lot more before I start thinking differently.
DDI costs less than half of what I give to Netflix every month. And embarrassingly, I've been known to hang on to a disk for 5 weeks or so before getting around to watching it. DDI costs well under half of what most people pay for HBO for a month. How much HBO do you imagine most folks watch? DDI costs about half of what it costs to play WoW each month. Although some won't like that comparison, the number of hours of use per week are probably very similar. Even when I don't use DDI very much in a month, I assure you I pay well less than $1 an hour for what I do use (and this is true even for stretches when I only play and don't DM).
DDI only costs a little over double what contributing to ENWorld costs. Of course, when Morrus announced ENWorld subscriptions, people complained bitterly about lack of value too. Of course, most people who subscribe here do so primarily to help support a site they love, but I know that doesn't fly with most hardened US consumers.
But to put it in bluntest terms, a month of DDI costs about the same as what a lot of us spend for one lunch at a fast foot restaurant (granted, a big lunch with a Frosty on the side, but the fact remains). So if you think that you'd rather have a pair of Big Macs over a month of DDI, then I wholeheartedly agree that you should cancel your subscription. I would not.
I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to tell anyone how to spend their money or that they aren't entitled to feel like DDI doesn't provide enough bang for the buck. It's just that my DDI subscription costs about the same for a month as 2.5 gallons of gasoline. I *need* the gasoline more, but I get more enjoyment out of my admittedly imperfect DDI sub. And since I don't have to choose one or the other, I'm happy paying for both.
My monthly DDI subscription costs less than one movie ticket. I have a hard time accepting that the value I get out of DDI (even now) is less than what I got out of sitting through the recent Clash of the Titans remake (although the nap I took in the middle was refreshing). Now I realize that not everyone goes to see one movie a month (although many of you see more), but I think that's a pretty apt comparison. Is DDI worth a little less than one trip to the cinema (sans popcorn or any other refreshment)? To me it is, and the quality is going to have to drop a heck of a lot more before I start thinking differently.
DDI costs less than half of what I give to Netflix every month. And embarrassingly, I've been known to hang on to a disk for 5 weeks or so before getting around to watching it. DDI costs well under half of what most people pay for HBO for a month. How much HBO do you imagine most folks watch? DDI costs about half of what it costs to play WoW each month. Although some won't like that comparison, the number of hours of use per week are probably very similar. Even when I don't use DDI very much in a month, I assure you I pay well less than $1 an hour for what I do use (and this is true even for stretches when I only play and don't DM).
DDI only costs a little over double what contributing to ENWorld costs. Of course, when Morrus announced ENWorld subscriptions, people complained bitterly about lack of value too. Of course, most people who subscribe here do so primarily to help support a site they love, but I know that doesn't fly with most hardened US consumers.
But to put it in bluntest terms, a month of DDI costs about the same as what a lot of us spend for one lunch at a fast foot restaurant (granted, a big lunch with a Frosty on the side, but the fact remains). So if you think that you'd rather have a pair of Big Macs over a month of DDI, then I wholeheartedly agree that you should cancel your subscription. I would not.
I want to emphasize that I'm not trying to tell anyone how to spend their money or that they aren't entitled to feel like DDI doesn't provide enough bang for the buck. It's just that my DDI subscription costs about the same for a month as 2.5 gallons of gasoline. I *need* the gasoline more, but I get more enjoyment out of my admittedly imperfect DDI sub. And since I don't have to choose one or the other, I'm happy paying for both.
the Jester
Legend
All very good points.
The problem is that when you go to see a movie, assuming you don't walk into a stinker blind, you're getting 90 minutes (or whatever) of pure lay-back-and-enjoy-it entertainment. Right now I feel like I have to really dig to find any fun in my DDI sub.
