Why did you stop subscribing to DDI?

[drothgery]

Just about everything in the online character builder causes a server round trip.

 

[Aegeri]

Just about everything in the online character builder causes a server round trip.

Yeah it's just terribly poor. I don't want to think about how slow the online monster builder is going to be.

 

[Bagpuss]

The online character builder seems very sensitive to connection speed to me. It was very sluggish over a hotel's wireless network in April when I was out of town for a couple of weeks, but on my home connection it's fine. Based on reports from non-US users, there may be some issues with latency if you're too far from Wizards' servers as well, but if you've got a fast enough connection and are in North America, ti should be fine.

Same experience here, works fine on a hard wired connection, on my wireless it isn't too bad although it sometimes won't load because it comes up with an error saying* I need to login again because it has timed out. On a friends wireless the other Sunday it would never load, it downloaded the Silverlight thing fine, but always crashed on the hourglass. The offline builder might have been slow to load, but at least it was reliable.


*by saying I mean that's my best interpretation of the unclear error message I get.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I've subscribed two different times, both for a month. I let the subscription lapse out of apathy, though I am grudgingly considering renewing longer term--strictly for the convenience of the players at my table who don't enjoy managing characters.


Things that would make this not so grudging:

• Make the "auto renew" flag more accessible. This is a dirty, cheap marketing trick to hide it so deep, and I despise it. Reminds me of trying to talk to the phone company.
• A character sheet that was much more abbreviated. Some flexibility would also be appreciated, but let's get abbreviated first. Especially make one that is easier on printers.
• More convenient filtering options. Unlike a lot of people, I'm quite happy to stick to the PHB 1 and 2, and related materials (Marital Power, et. al.)
• Don't make me pick a stinking portrait.

And see, the other thing is that I write .Net apps for a living. I'm fully aware that it wasn't until the latest round of technology (MVC) that Microsoft gave up on the "web app that works like a windows app" thing. We've got some legacy apps that can be a bit sluggish for that very reason. But they don't have to be that sluggish, even given those handicaps.

Those are a sample of the kind of complaints I have. Those are basic things that a halfway decent quality control and management process would have addressed before Beta testers ever saw the thing. So in summary, get your freaking act together.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

One way to address some off-line concerns but preserve the inherent subscription protections against pirates, moochers, and the like:

1. More formally separate the character presentation from the editors--that is, make a read-only, "preview" version, XML data, html presentation, that can feed into the character sheet and be saved.
2. Allow multiple versions of the same character, within the same file, including different levels.
3. Make an off-line "viewer" that lets you look at this preview version and print it, but not change it.

Pretty basic and easy, though not all that and a bag of candy. This separates the actual making/updating of characters from referencing them and printing them. Among other things, it means that you could easily export a character to, say, a player or your DM.

But having done this easy step, customization now becomes more reasonable, at least as far as pure text. (That is, not supporting any mechanics in the CB for customization, just the preview and printed sheet.) All you have to do here is put in some custom options in a separate section of the XML, that can be edited and labeled how you want. Then let people export that custom section and import it to other files. It won't be pretty, and it won't do everything that everyone wants. But it is incredibly easy to do, and would allay a lot of frustrations.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And the old 80/20 rule very much applies. They can solve 80% of the issues with 20% of the work. Do the 20%. Then worry about the tougher stuff.

 

[Arlough]

Yeah it's just terribly poor. I don't want to think about how slow the online monster builder is going to be.

I'm sorry if this sounds dumb, but I haven't been following any D&D developments this year.*

Are you saying that they still don't have a functioning Monster Builder available?!?!

* D&D kinda reached it's peak for me last year right before 4.5 was released, and now any changes/advancements are through houserules or tools we create in the group.

 

[malraux]

I'm sorry if this sounds dumb, but I haven't been following any D&D developments this year.*

Are you saying that they still don't have a functioning Monster Builder available?!?!

* D&D kinda reached it's peak for me last year right before 4.5 was released, and now any changes/advancements are through houserules or tools we create in the group.

The offline monster builder is incredibly buggy, and the online monster tool lets you relevel monsters and rename powers.

 

[Iron Sky]

My roommate let his subscription lapse after the new CB came out and was worse than the old one in practically every way.

No intention of becoming a ddi subscriber again.

 

[Anaphyis]

One way to address some off-line concerns but preserve the inherent subscription protections against pirates, moochers, and the like

But there isn't anything to preserve. The pirates actually have a fully updated, stable and offline CB. We, i.e. WotC's actual customers, have a slow, sluggish and unstable mess that only works online. That's the asinine thing about this: they don't fight piracy. They make the pirated product the superior one while actively driving the people away who were actually willing to put down money every month to support D&D. It's like some lunatics in the upper echelons have a sick wager about how fast they can ram the company into the ground.

It really saddens me because unlike some of my buddies I was really enthusiastic about 4e when it came out and the things WotC did with their online model. Had they kept their focus on their actual customers like they did at the beginning instead of trying to fight against windmills and poisoning the very food they're trying to sell, who knows how it would've turned out.

Anyway, I dropped my subscription when they changed the CB. Not because I desperately needed it. But pulling the plug on the offline CB while your substitute cannot even be called beta yet with a straight face reveals a mindset I don't want to support with money. And thanks to the decline of Dungeon/Dragon as well as the lack of PDFs and promised tools, DDi was hardly worth the money anymore anyway.

 

[RLBURNSIDE]

the

offline CB is indeed way better in every, but a lot of groups (including mine), have grudgingly switched over to the new one so the players have no choice to use it. Sucky, but there it is.


The rationale of our DM was that he didn't want to hack around with potentially un-errata'ed stuff taken from a pirated feat/power database, or be out of date with new classes and so on, as misguided as that is...I know the patches for new books come out like one or two days later for the pirate version. The offline CB can be patched up at-will by modifying the data yourself. I mean, if that's not superior in every way, I don't know what is.

Buying, equipping items is TERRIBLE in the new builder, but apparently they are revamping that section (thank Crom for that).

I just hope they don't errata my character before we retire this campaign, as I have no intention of playing another 4e game after this. It'll be either 5e, or Pathfinder all the time (I play PF as well, and it's more fun, frankly). I do like 4e optimization better though, because it's like a math puzzle. PF just works, is both simpler and more powerful, with creative use of spells in and out of combat. At level 6 we saved an entire Drow civilization from a Lucodemon invasion, travelled to another world, flew around, managed armies, ...you can't even do 1/2 the things we did until epic in 4e, if that.

Point is, they can keep improving the builder more and more, but the game itself is inherently on rails, and the system affects roleplaying negatively as well. The builder is just a steaming pile of crap, ala South Park's latest episode...They start hinting a good things, then all I read is poo, poo poo flung at my eyes from the page of downloaded material.

E.g. they came out with hybrid cavaliers with no option for a mount. WTF? This is garbage. Stop forcing us to play one-trick pony characters, it drives us more to PF (well, not the melee classes, which are probably more one-trick than 4e guys are...except the overall feel of the game is more dangerous, epic, and memorable as a result)