wlmartin
Explorer
Actually, I think the character builder should be free. It's designed to get players into the game, right? Make it free. However, it only makes you a character sheet. No power cards. No explanations of each feat. It just does the math for your feats, class features, and what you have equipped and that is it. Why?
That gets people to buy books to find out what their stuff does.
The Character Builder is killing the retail book sales, to a point. It DID kill the power cards line (which I actually liked, and wish was still around. Rules Compendium + Power card of favored class = New player for $30). Most people I know like to bring characters with all sorts of stuff they have no idea what it does or where it is from because they made them on the Character Builder. Get that junk off the sheets and get those people to buy books and fraking read something!
Another reason for this, how much of the "Pathfinder is outselling D&D' is because the metrics don't take into account the DDI sales in place of the fraking books? Sorry, Pathfinder is the best (non d20 Modern IMHO) iteration of the v3.5 rule set, but there is no way it is outselling D&D in total. Game Books maybe, but all related merchandise, novels, and digital offerings? Not a chance.
And that is because Wizards is killing their book sales with a Character Builder that makes the books pointless. Make the character builder just MAKE A SHEET, make it free, and watch the book sales go back up as people buy the books to play the game, like in the old days.
Firstly... (and you won't see me telling you how to do it since downloading it without a DDI subscription is unlicensed) , you can download the Character Builder in an offline version yourself. It enables you to do everything the Character Builder does except it is no longer updated
Secondly... There is an excel spreadsheet program that you can use to generate a Character Sheet. It is quite efficient and works well with Macros and Functions to lay your Character Sheet (with Feat and Power choices) quite well but it does lack the ability to show or print Power Cards. Unlike the Offline CB, this is something free to use and just google it online to find it.
Thirdly... I strongly disagree that offering the CB for free would encourage people to buy more books. Most people that use DDI do it for the CB (not the only reason but a big one) and chances are they pulled the offline CB (not updated since Nov last year!!) because people were no longer using DDI for it.
WotC is a business and I would imagine they make a LOT of money from charging people to use DDI. A lot of people like it for the RC, a lot for the articles, features and magazines but I would imagine the most time people spend on it is using the CB...
DDI and the money it makes WotC is the only reason I am not concerned that book sales are down. As long as they reap in the cash there it will support their efforts to develop the game... I believe that if DDI was gone and they were relying on simple book sales in the current economy, D&D wouldn't die out but the content released would be subpar and the dates between releases would get longer and longer.