well i said screw it, and i'm now a DDI subscriber, and i love it. i guess my opinion of DDI isn't tainted because i never had it before or knew how it "used to be". here's what i gather from it:
1. character builder - loads fast, works great, prints out awesome character sheets. ive been using macro'd out excel spread sheets for characters for a while, but i always had to find other ways to get all the power cards and crap on there in a nice format. character builder does that for me. having all the powers limited down to only the ones that are necessary is fantastic and makes creating a character so much easier. ive brought in two new players with quick essentials builds in about 10 minutes. honestly, im not sure what the big deal is about having it offline. maybe 5 years ago that wouldve been bad, but now there are few places i go that dont have wifi.
2. compendium - speaks for itself. less time looking through books, more time playing. love it.
3. dragon/dungeon mags - so the mags arent all compiled so that you can download every single one. bah, who cares. i love having all of the issues at my fingertips, and seeing as that i've never read these mags before, its awesome having a magazine subscription online that i can browse, save the articles i want, and sort them by category if im looking for something.
so maybe i'm naive, ignorant, or whatever...but maybe not. DDI really is a cool service and well worth the $71 some odd a year. add the virtual table and it will be even sweeter. seriously though, you guys need to chill out with all the complaining. just thought i'd put in my 2 cents for people still on the fence with DDI. go for it and get a sub, its worth it.
1. Character Builder - The problem for me at least isn't so much it being on line, just the fact it has lost so much functionality. If you never had it or used that functionality before then sure it will look much better than an excel spread sheet. To give you an idea of what's missing, inherent bonuses which you could toggle on and off have gone, this means I can't use it for my Dark Sun game or my home games. The ability to house rule anything, so I can't give expertise feats as a bonus any more, or reskin the description of a amulet or other magic item, which I often did, gone.
One of the main selling points of RPGs is that you can tailor them to suit your vision as a DM. If you can't do that you might as well be playing a computer RPG where everything is set in stone by the programmers. The old character builder at least had some flexibilty you could house rule stuff to give bonus feats, or feats that weren't legal, or bonus skills, etc. Use the online builder and you are forced into playing D&D the way WotC want you to. Hell you can't even use the optional rules they create that you could in the old builder. You cannot make the game your own, the way you use to.
This do it the way the programmer wants, and only that way is even clearer in the Marketplace, where you can't even buy a weapon if you don't have the feat to use it. Same with the character sheet, the old character sheet you could move every box around and produce your own prefered layout, you could edit the boxes after the fact to add in bonuses the DM might have given you or add discriptions and the like. New online builder you have two options and no flexibilty you can't even copy and paste from it! You also can't add your own character pics like you use to. (Oh and it doesn't print to A4 paper something WotC don't even seem to want to admit)
Going online wasn't the problem (at least for me) the problem is it has much less functionality it had before and none of the flexibility.
2. Compendium - Yeah have to agree this is the single most useful tool almost worth the subscription itself.
3. Dragon/Dungeon - Are now about half the size they use to be. They have cut the content in half, removed all publishing deadline and errata deadlines, removed the complied issue (because it was too much like hard work, work which we were paying them for) and yet are charging more for the subscription than they use to.
4. Adventure Tools - I noticed you didn't mention this tool, perhaps because which the price was raised to reflect the release of the Monster Builder and promise of more Adventure Tools to come, with the move online they have effectively abandoned the offline tool. When it was update and working properly this was the single most useful tool to me as a DM. The online adventure tools that are in beta are a joke, you can change the level of a creature or rename it's powers that's it. It doesn't even change the damage for the creature correctly when you change it's level, but you can't correct it because you can't edit that. Admittedly it is still in beta, but the offline one had far more functionality that that when it came out and it was in beta.
If you were a subscriber a year ago, you were sold on the fact they released the MB and more Adventure Tools were promised. Only there didn't work on more Adventure Tools, they worked on moving stuff online in an attempt to protect their IP.
Yeah if you didn't know how much better it use to be then I suppose it doesn't look that bad now. As it is the current condition of the character builder makes it no use to me a DM or to my players, there just isn't the functionality or flexibility to run the games I want to run. The Monster Builder has been abandoned and the replacement is months away from being anywhere near the standard of the old one. The magazines have been cut in half and are no longer in the format I prefer. About the only good thing is the compendium.
Perhaps the D&DI is still awesome, but it use to be so, so much better, yet they want me to keep paying the same money? Why?
The Monster Builder has been abandoned and the replacement is months away from being anywhere near the standard of the old one.
I hope you are not basing this statement on what you can see in the builder currently. You do realize they are purposely limiting what it can do for the VT beta? I wouldn't be surprised if most of the functionality (or even all of it) is already done, but not pushed out in the current version.
thegrumpyyoungman, welcome aboard! I have been a DDi subscriber from the very beginning and I love DDi too! DMaple is being a little disingenuous about the classic Monster Builder being abandoned. It is still out there and they did an update as recently as December. If you haven't downloaded it, you should. It is also a great value add to the subscription. I still use it and export files to be imported into the online Monster Builder beta. Works like a charm. I personally think the new DDi Programming team has put together the back end framework well, and new offerings will be ready more quickly because of that. I honestly think we'll see new tools in beta every few months or so.
The Monster Builder has been abandoned and the replacement is months away from being anywhere near the standard of the old one.
I hope you are not basing this statement on what you can see in the builder currently. You do realize they are purposely limiting what it can do for the VT beta? I wouldn't be surprised if most of the functionality (or even all of it) is already done, but not pushed out in the current version.
Great so when they move the VT beta to D&DI only next month you'll be sure to let us know that the new builder has all the functionality of the old one then.
thegrumpyyoungman, welcome aboard! I have been a DDi subscriber from the very beginning and I love DDi too! DMaple is being a little disingenuous about the classic Monster Builder being abandoned. It is still out there and they did an update as recently as December.
You don't mention that, the December update didn't fix most of the major bugs it has, and mainly just removed all the RPGA monsters.
If you haven't downloaded it, you should. It is also a great value add to the subscription. I still use it and export files to be imported into the online Monster Builder beta. Works like a charm.
No arguement there. Even in it's buggy state it is still pretty useful.
I personally think the new DDi Programming team has put together the back end framework well, and new offerings will be ready more quickly because of that. I honestly think we'll see new tools in beta every few months or so.
But in the meantime the actual service, and the tools we have NOW, are worst than they were say sixth months ago.
The Monster Builder has been abandoned and the replacement is months away from being anywhere near the standard of the old one.
I hope you are not basing this statement on what you can see in the builder currently. You do realize they are purposely limiting what it can do for the VT beta? I wouldn't be surprised if most of the functionality (or even all of it) is already done, but not pushed out in the current version.
Great so when they move the VT beta to D&DI only next month you'll be sure to let us know that the new builder has all the functionality of the old one then.
Are you invloved with the beta? I am. They have explicitly said they will be "turning on" Monster Bulder features as the VT beta progresses. They want to be able to have a limited scope of failure with the imports, and then once everything is working, they will "turn on" more features so if something breaks they know right where to look for the bugs. This says to me that the features already exist and are just waiting for "the switch" to be flipped.
And I will certainly let you know anything you might want to know should you be able to ask in a polite and non-snarky way.
So, um...go OP?
As far as I am concerned, the amount of content we have now is sufficient to run many many games and campaigns, so they could forgo new content and make everything work great.
I had the opportunity to play on the vt the other day and although I can see lots of improvements and leaps forward, I thought it was great. The game ran smoothly and all of the mechanics, manual as they were, were very cool. I don't want everything to be automated, so I like it as is. It gives a bit more interactivity, I think.
the compendium has come in handy several times. 3 times last session and it saved a good 20 minutes or so of searching all combined...well worth it. the dungeon mag has been very useful to me as i pulled an encounter idea and monsters from it and then modified for my own encounter.
all in all....AWESOME. has really made my life as a dm easier. thus far i have zero cons, but then again, ive only been playing dnd for about 2 years. ignorance is bliss!
