First, I'll be going through the responses I got page by page -- I'll summarize the issues/questions I saw on page 1, reply, and then go on to page 2, etc. I'm doing it this way because if I tried to summarize/answer each and every page in one post, it would be unwieldy.
I'm not going to necessarily respond to every single point, but I will be fairly comprehensive.
Second, while I will commit to reading every post made in my original thread, this thread, and Mike Lescault's comment thread here -- http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1043644 , I will not be able to reply to any more threads this week. I hope that the information I get out there over the next two hours will be sufficient for now. I'm also happy to do this again soon...I'd like to promise next week, but that would be overly bold on my part considering the demands of my day job...let's say sometime in the next two weeks, either next Monday or the Monday thereafter, I'll make myself available to everyone for this kind of impromptu exchange.
My page 1 responses should be up within the hour...I expect the next several pages to be a shorter turn around time as I cover more and more issues.
Posting this now just to give people an idea of what to expect. You can feel free to respond to this thread, but I'd ask that you wait until I've gotten in at least one page of my responses...your responses in my original thread will still be read.
Ken
Some quick context here --
First, I'll be going through the responses I got page by page -- I'll summarize the issues/questions I saw on page 1, reply, and then go on to page 2, etc.
{snip)
Frustration building,fighting a fire requires a quick reply, however you it appears choose to not response quickly. Perhaps you can save the chimney now.
Good luck.
get back to work
I wasn't going to say anything, but I had to...
Honestly, I haven't laughed so hard at something written on a forum in my life. I had to leave my desk... oh man.
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1043721
And start taking some action to get the word out to the rest of the world about how WotC has at best been guilty of terribly poor communication and worst deliberately misled its customers.
People on forums often want the company whose forums they are on to LISTEN to them. Well here is your chance to make them pay attention.
So come on over and help Get The Word Out!
Cheers!
I wasn't going to say anything, but I had to...
Honestly, I haven't laughed so hard at something written on a forum in my life. I had to leave my desk... oh man.
You think that's funny? This guy just set a 2 week deadline.... TO MAKE ANOTHER FORUM POST!!!
At least it's progress!
You think that's funny? This guy just set a 2 week deadline.... TO MAKE ANOTHER FORUM POST!!!
At least it's progress!
OH MAN!! LMAO
That is funny. I don't care who you are.
Ken - is it true that the 2 week update might be delayed?
btw - STILL NOTHING ON THE FRONT PAGE!
General Issues --
1) Pricing Policy --
Let's start with what the pricing policy is as of today. I say "as of today" because the pricing model is subject to change. Why? Because we think we know what the value propositions in our applications are. We think we know what's going to excite the audience. We think we know what the last remaining technical obstacles are and how to overcome them. Why do we only think? Why don't we know? Because we've never had this type of model before. Wizards historically hasn't done subscriptions, and D&D has never had a digital package before meant to enhance the experience.
So right now, I'm pretty sure the model I'm describing is the model we will launch with, or at least very very close. But that's not a promise it won't change, because it might.
Tentative D&D Insider pricing model --
1 Month upfront -- $14.95 per month
3 Months upfront -- $12.95 per month
12 Months upfront -- $9.95 per month
What does the subscription cost include? The plan is for the subscription to include --
- All Dragon and Dungeon content we produce during your subscription.
- The Online Compendium. The database that fuels the Compendium would include data from all official books and e-magazines.
- The Character Visualizer that allows you to create 2d and 3d images of your character.
- The Character Builder that allows you to create a digital character sheet. This application will draw from the same database as the Compendium, which means that you eventually need just the one stop-shop to refer to material from all the official books and e-magazines.
- The Digital Game Table and Dungeon Builder which allows you to create dungeons and play in them with other people online. The Game Table will very likely include a starter's set of Virtual Minis and Dungeon Tiles to start you off.
What doesn't the subscription include?
- Additional virtual minis and dungeon tiles that we produce. These likely would be sold separately.
- E-adventures that we produce for the Game Table (these would likely come with their own set of v-minis and d-tiles necessary to play the adventure). Sold separately.
- E-book .pdfs. Sold separately.
- Back-issues of Dragon and Dungeon that were produced before your subscriptions. Sold separately.
1a) Why won't you guys sell the components of D&D Insider separately (a la carte)?
It's because we're trying to offer the most value to the player for D&D Insider, truly. If we were to price each application separately, we'd come up with a price much higher than $14.95 a month for everything, and more than double the $9.95 a month a year-long subscriber pays.
We want this decision to be an easy one for players -- we want D&D Insider to be a great value pickup for most players. We also want players to have generall the same gaming experience...every D&D Insider knows that every other D&D Insider has access to the Visualizer, and to the magazines, and to the Game Table, etc., so it builds more of a shared community and shared experience. For all these reasons we originally decided against the a la carte approach.
That said, we have and do occasionally revisit the issue. Obviously, we want to maximize players' happiness with D&D Insider (and while some of that is good feeling, a lot of it is just common sense -- we also want to maximize revenue). This is one of those areas where we'll see, depending on our sense of the market and what players are actually doing and saying.
1b) "Question -- "Do you guys plan on starting to charge with the launch of the first app, or when they are all out?"
This question fits in well with the pricing issue, so I'm including it here. The answer is, "It depends." If we feel that the time window between launching any two given applications is long enough, we may decide the right answer for us is to offer a different version of D&D Insider...one that costs less money, but also offers fewer features. But we're not going to have any definitive plan in that direction until we get further along in this year.
In some ways, the answer to this question overrides the answer to 1a. If we launched the applications all at the same time, it's very unlikely we'd be offering ala carte. However, given that we're not launching them all at the same time, it is certainly possible we may have different versions of subscriptions.
Only one topic down, and I've already written too many words for one post...more on Page 1 topics coming soon tonight.
Thanks,
Ken
A more urgent matter: why aren't you putting information about the status of the D&D Insider tools in a very visible, clear way at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/insider and other major informational venues operated by your company? Why aren't you making it a major part of your promotional strategy to be clear and truthful about the status of this project?
- The Digital Game Table and Dungeon Builder which allows you to create dungeons and play in them with other people online. The Game Table will very likely include a starter's set of Virtual Minis and Dungeon Tiles to start you off.
What doesn't the subscription include?
- Additional virtual minis and dungeon tiles that we produce. These likely would be sold separately.
Ok now I am concerned all over again. If we don't have v-minis then it is kind of hard to have a workable virtual table experience. I do not like language like "Will very likely include" and what is a starter's set of minis? is that something like a real world starter's set? if so then it will be woefully inadequate for running an actuall game. Will DMs and Players be able to "share" their V-minis during a session? If not then you have a pretty stupid sales pitch since people who don't want to DM will never buy minis and you are looking at what amounts to a DDI DM tax.
Again we get more questions than we get answers...~Sigh~
Cheers!
Still not addressing the lack of timelines and why they haven't put something on their main page as to the DDi delay and its status.
I am posting this here because if i post it on the origional thred it could be days before you read through all those posts. There are just so many, i truly pity you having to respond to all that.
This is a quote from ampersand:
"D&D Insider’s free beta period coincides with the launch of 4th Edition. You get to try out the first digital components without paying the subscription fees, and you can provide feedback to help us improve your experience. The initial rollout includes Dragon and Dungeon online magazines, and the D&D Rules Compendium."
In the announcement you made you said that the features of d&d insider would be released on a more strategically timed basis. I am a business man myself so i understand the necessity for such measures. However in light of the above quote, this is a sizable divergence from the publicly announced rollout. I should not have to spend over an hour looking for information about the delay on the gleemax forums. A change of this size should be posted on the d&d insider news page.
I don't mind the delay, keep the public posted, not just the forum users.
Thank you for your time
And just for the record, i personally already intend to sign up for as long a subscription as you provide.
General Issues
2) Beta Testing
I agree with the comments. We will be looking for ways to get the applications in the hands of players as soon as we possibly can. A large number of people at the D&D Game Day here in Seattle got a chance to play with both the Character Visualizer and Character Builder. We were very happy to let people see and get their hands on the applications.
I'll just repeat -- we are very eager to get these applications in the hands of players as soon as we possibly can. For all of our applications there will be continued data and content that we'll be building and sending out, as well as continued feature tweaks and upgrades. We're not tied to bits on a CD, so we're not afraid of launching too soon. That said, we also need the applications to be in a state where it's productive to have players using them and giving feedback.
3) No mention of "Applications coming soon" on the front page or the D&D Insider application list page.
I absolutely agree with this. It should have been done today but we were busy all day fighting fires with our back-end forums (signing on was down for most of the day). I can't guarantee it will be there tomorrow, but it should be there either tomorrow or Wed.
This dovetails with issue 3a --
3a) Players' anger over the lack of D&D Insider at launch.
Some players are very upset. They feel that, at best, Wizards was negligent or incompetent. At worst, they feel that Wizards deliberately lied.
I'm not sure there's anything I can say here that's going to appease people when they're this angry. But I'll try. At the very least, at some point later down the road when emotions are not so high, this information might be useful. Or not.
First, it wasn't intentional in any way, shape, or form. There's not much else I can say. Either you take that statement at face value, and we move on, or you don't take that statement at face value, in which case I'm surprised you want to read anything else I have to say.
As a general rule, 99.9% of conspiracy theories aren't true...we as humans evolved to see patterns and connections even when there are none...witness the poster above who insinuates that I chose the pricing question first to avoid talking about this issue -- actually, when I read through the first page of posts, the pricing issue came up first, so I addressed it first. I'm not defending myself here, I'm merely pointing out that if you want to see some type of malign intent in all this, you can, but it isn't true.
Second, I will admit that I have a very different perspective on this issue than many of you. Hearing all this emotion and vitriol makes me wish I had come to a different answer before...I hate that people are this upset and I understand why they're upset. What I'm about to say probably won't make those of you are angry any less angry, but they're honestly how I felt about the issue --
a) Our sole goal over these last few months has been to get D&D Insider out the door as soon as possible. When it became apparent that the majority of applications would not be ready at launch of 4th edition, we put up Bill Slavicsek's Ampersand article. But my mind was not feverishly worrying over the problem of how players would perceive this on launch day, it was obsessed with how to get out our applications as soon as possible.
b) Because D&D Insider has always been an extra subscription, it never occurred to me that some players might feel misled about not having tools available at launch. Instead I've always thought it was great that we were willing to give away Dragon/Dungeon content, and soon hopefully some of our Compendium content, away for free. I'm not saying I'm right and those who are so angry are wrong. I thought 4th edition D&D was a great enough product on its own http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/dungeons-dragon.html , and that most people were buying the books for the books, and only then may be willing to check out this D&D Insider, not the other way around.
Believe me, we want to get the full Insider into your hands, both so that you can enjoy it, and that you can start paying us for it, as soon as possible.
To be clear, we'll be putting "Coming Soon" more prominently on the product pages and the D&D Insider page. Whatever confusion there's been has been the result of us paying attention to different things. I wish I would have addressed this before launch. Mea culpa. We'll address it as soon as we can this week.
Ken
Ok now I am concerned all over again. If we don't have v-minis then it is kind of hard to have a workable virtual table experience. I do not like language like "Will very likely include" and what is a starter's set of minis? is that something like a real world starter's set? if so then it will be woefully inadequate for running an actuall game. Will DMs and Players be able to "share" their V-minis during a session? If not then you have a pretty stupid sales pitch since people who don't want to DM will never buy minis and you are looking at what amounts to a DDI DM tax.
Again we get more questions than we get answers...~Sigh~
Cheers!
Hey guys, Long time reading first time writer.
My concern is, as a DM, what V-minis will be allocated to the game. I dont want to use a Kobold to represent a Dragon or a Elf to represent a Giant. Will D&D Insider contain the same information/V-Minis as the Monster Manual, Players Handbook and DM's Guide?
I can't seem to find any files or information online, that even suggests that the program will be released (A lot of Hype though), I bought the D&D 4TH ED set for its online capabilites. If the online system doesnt eventuate then I would have stayed with 3.0 & 3.5.
If you guys can correct me in anything I have written please do so ASAP, I would like some re-assurance that I havent wasted my time and money on a dud.
If you guys can correct me in anything I have written please do so ASAP, I would like some re-assurance that I havent wasted my time and money on a dud.
You know as much about the v-minis as we do. Welcome to the land of the uninformed. Take a seat, it'll be a while.
To be clear, we'll be putting "Coming Soon" more prominently on the product pages and the D&D Insider page. Whatever confusion there's been has been the result of us paying attention to different things. I wish I would have addressed this before launch.
Thank you. New purchasers of the core books typing dndinsider.com into their browser expecting to download a demo of the tools are currently treated to a short slide show set to corny rock music followed by the mystifying message "I'm a monster. Rarrrr." With the site as it stands now, most of them are going to think the whole thing is some kind of elaborate rickroll...
But you sure as hell have wasted your time. For you and me and the literally tens of thousands of people who have invested in 4E MAINLY because of the online component we've all wasted our time.
As Ken said, those online tools they promised us, those online tools they kept saying would be ready for launch, yes those very online tools they touted to increase book sales will ultimately be many months away.
So if you're anything like me you'll be thumbing through (and smearing) your new 4E books for months on end while you wait for the promised tools to be released. Why? Because the majority of D&D-loving players NEED these tools to get back in the game because the demands of life are just so... demanding.
Blackflagon
Component Feedback
Dragon/Dungeon Feedback --
1) "Constructive criticism: The dungeon article for Ebberon mentions the Shifter and Warforged characters, but they are actually in the Dragon article. The should have a link to tie them together. Similarly the Dungeon table of contents page should link into each article."
I'll pass along to the team. Part of the point of doing the e-magazines is to do more hyperlinking....I agree with the comment.
Compendium Feedback (an early version of the Compendium was actually up for a brief while when we were doing some testing of the overall system...that version will be up again hopefully soon)
1) "I do have a question/reques about the compendium. Even though it will not have full rules, but "rules elements" why were page numbers taken out?"
We decided not to have page numbers because we occasionally print different editions of our books, and the page numbers between editions might not match up. For example, a Player's Handbook published this year might have different page numbers than that same Player's Handbook that's reprinted years later.
2) "On the front of the display of the elements itself, it may be needed to have some sort of advanced search where you can find all items matching both Elf and Wizard, or matching either Elf or Wizard for example so you can make a more defined search with multiple terms."
We absolutely agree. Eventually the Compendium will have many different "search filters" The first version will not. There will be an article going up about the Compendium and our plans for it along with the Compendium release.
3) "Also the number of results displayed per "page" should be a setting individual users can coose like the forums with all being a possibility."
Agreed, although not a current high priority for us.
4) "When sorting the sneak peak did not do a reverse alphanumeric sort, but only forward. I would think the reverse is already something in the works."
Agreed, although lesser priority than the filters and a couple of other major tweaks.
Specific Questions
1) Customizability --
To start, not very well. Our main focus right now is to make sure our applications support official Wizards content. That said, we absolutely want to include support for players' content in most of our applications...that's just taking a back seat right now.
2) Status of purchasing .pdfs of print books
I believe Scott Rouse addresses this in the middle of my original thread...the answer being we hope soon.
--
Page 2 (and hopefully the others) will be following tonight.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read through all of this. I appreciate the time and the comments.
Ken
With the site as it stands now, most of them are going to think the whole thing is some kind of elaborate rickroll...
It isn't?!?
3a) Players' anger over the lack of D&D Insider at launch.
Some players are very upset. They feel that, at best, Wizards was negligent or incompetent. At worst, they feel that Wizards deliberately lied.
I'm not sure there's anything I can say here that's going to appease people when they're this angry. But I'll try. At the very least, at some point later down the road when emotions are not so high, this information might be useful. Or not.
First, it wasn't intentional in any way, shape, or form. There's not much else I can say. Either you take that statement at face value, and we move on, or you don't take that statement at face value, in which case I'm surprised you want to read anything else I have to say.
As a general rule, 99.9% of conspiracy theories aren't true...we as humans evolved to see patterns and connections even when there are none...witness the poster above who insinuates that I chose the pricing question first to avoid talking about this issue -- actually, when I read through the first page of posts, the pricing issue came up first, so I addressed it first. I'm not defending myself here, I'm merely pointing out that if you want to see some type of malign intent in all this, you can, but it isn't true.
Second, I will admit that I have a very different perspective on this issue than many of you. Hearing all this emotion and vitriol makes me wish I had come to a different answer before...I hate that people are this upset and I understand why they're upset. What I'm about to say probably won't make those of you are angry any less angry, but they're honestly how I felt about the issue --
You know Ken I actually happen to believe that this was not some evil conspiracy. If you say that WotC did not deliberately mislead its customers about the DDI launch then I want to believe that as well. The question is whether or not WotC exercised due diligence in making the public aware of a change in the status of DDI since DDI was being marketed as a Selling point of 4th edition.
You might argue that 4th edition can stand alone and I happen to agree. There are several people on these boards who have specific complaints that they bought your product primarily because of the marketing of the DDI component of 4th edition. DDI is featured prominently in all of the published 4th edition materials as well.
Your first post on this matter further proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that WotC was aware of a significant change in the availability of the DDI products than was initially planned in earlier marketing campaings. If this was not the case then there would never have been any material "in the wild" that stated that customers would be able to go to the DDI website on Launch date and sign up fo a 10 day free trial.
The fact that you at one point anticipated having the DDI suite complete enough to offer a 10 day free trail indicates that you anticipated having it complete enough to charge for it on Gameday. At some point at least a month before Gameday that changed as evidenced by the Ampersand article. The fact that you did not see fit to make this change plans widely available does not only affect the impression of YOUR company but of those FLGSs that participated in your Gameday programs as well.
So the question is not whether WotC conspired to fleece their customers. I don't for a minute believe that. The question is whether or not WotC cares enough about their customer to get the information out there. Yes you were busy. Yes you were focused on getting the analog products out there. Of course you are the Executive Producer of DDI so i am not sure why your focus would not be on DDI and making sure it was ready for Gameday launch but I was not there and cannot comment on that.
I am passing all of these concerns along to the people I have already emailed regarding this failure on the Part of WotC. I hope that some of these outlets will pick up the story and that the attention will help keep other customers from being blindsided since WotC could obviously not be bothered to get this information on their website by end of business today.
Cheers!
By the way, Ken...
I find your responses very condescending. All of this "like it or leave it" rhetoric is getting boring. Very.
Page 1 Replies
- The Character Builder that allows you to create a digital character sheet. This application will draw from the same database as the Compendium, which means that you eventually need just the one stop-shop to refer to material from all the official books and e-magazines.
Ken
Question:
Does the highlighted quote section indicate that a) Via D&Di I will be able to refer to my physical books or PDF, or b) that the complete reference (as it apppears in the manual) will be available in the D&Di applications?
I will be very upset if, after having spent $100 on the 4e manuals, (yes I did and I love the game btw, its loads of fun) I am asked to buy them again to have them available in the v-table.
Concern:
I am also one of those who are very concerned that we will be asked pay extra for v-minis. I am VERY loathe to buy this sort of game product (D&Di as a whole) if it will not have all the components necessary for me to run a game available to me as soon as I buy it, and this includes the v-minis.
Unlike a tabletop game, I cannot substitute any object (eraser, ball of fuzz...) for the monster I need on the v-table, and as someone above indicated, it would be rather silly for a digital product to force me to use orcs to represent fire elementals.
The reasons for this reticence are many. For one thing, I have already purchased a few hundred dollars worth of physical minis. I don't want to be forced re-invest. For another it just makes me feel like I am being bilked, exploited, if I bought this game service and then had to pay extra for the content required to play even my first game.
Suggestions:
1) Make the starter set of v-minis substantial 30+ of the most common monsters we are likely to use at least.
2) DO NOT Make us buy additional copies of the same v-minis, I.E. once we have one, allow us to place as many of it on the table as we need. If I buy one orc, let that be all the orcs I ever need until you make a new type of orc. In other words, I would buy an Orc Raider, and and Orc Berserker, and and Orc Drudge separately as they are going to have separate stats and graphics, but I won't buy an orc raider 20 times to have an orc raid in my game. Please don't ask me to.
3) Have one good decent length premade v-table adventure available to download and use for free (using the starter pack v-minis) at launch time.
4) Have at least one Dungeon feature available for the v-table each month or two that adds a few v-mini's to those that we get for free.
Do you see where I am going with this? Your stated intent to have us purchase content for the v-table separately from the v-table, but still charge us monthly makes me feel like you are just trying to get something for nothing. I want to be able to make decent adventures on day one when (if?) I purchase a D&Di subscription, and I also want to be able to dive right in and run something, just like I was able to with H1, without having to spend too much time home brewing. I am a professional, an adult, I don't have endless hours to pore over rulebooks and write scenarios.
Lastly (this has just occurred to me) there is in 4e the ability to adapt any MM humanoid or other creature to be a PC race. How will that work in the Character modeler. Will I be able to make a gnoll pc and represent him on the v-table if I don't have a gnoll v-mini? How is that going to work?
Edit:
Oh, and I also agree with Darque that the whole micro transaction thing feels like a DM tax. Although if you think about it, it supports the current model. Its the same now with the physical products.
1) Order of Release for Applications
Someone asked about what the likely order of release would be for the applications. This list assumes the Compendium is already out there.
a) Character Visualizer -- this application is currently the closest to being done.
b) Character Builder -- this application is also close to being done, but slightly farther away than the Character Visualizer. I understand that for many people, the Character Builder would be great to have as soon as possible...if we can get it out first, we will, but the way that things look right now, it's likely to be second.
c) Game Table and Dungeon Builder -- many people are very excited about the Game Table...but it is also the most complex of all of our applications, as well as the one that needs the most "game" and user polish of all of our applications. This is the application that will take the most time to complete and for which the schedule is least reliable..."is it done" is not the only question that needs to be answered, but also "is it fun?"
2) More v-minis information
a) Why are we charging extra for v-minis?
We're charging extra for v-minis because we have a cost associated with producing the v-mini that isn't accounted in our subscription price.
I'm happy to get more into this conversation and release more information as we get a little closer to the Game Table being released. Specific info about how many v-minis we'll give away for free and what v-minis are included in the initial giveaway.
b) The Game Table does not care who owns the v-mini, so if the DM owns some v-minis, and the players own others, all those v-minis can be used in the game table experience between that DM and those players.
c) If you don't own a specific v-mini, there will always be a 2d token you can use which has the image of the monster.
3) "I want to know exactly what will happen when I stop paying my monthly fee. Will I lose everything? Will I get to export jpgs of dungeons that I've created? Will I be able to use the client apps (unlikely)? Will I retain access to the magazine articles released while I was subscribed?"
No, you will not lose everything. Assuming you've downloaded/saved a copy of the magazines, you will still be able to view those magazine articles. You will get to export .jpgs of the dungeon. In general, you will be able to use the client applications, although you will not be able to connect to the server (D&D Game Table) nor will you be able to get new data/content (Char Builder, Char Visualizer)
Specific Issues
- "Skill Cards / Monster Cards / Trap Cards not available in a prepared printable version. I heard that the character generator will offer me to print the skills my character has. I want to print a cardset for each class though. I want to do that for the monsters, want to do that for the items, want to do that for the traps. Currently I heard no plans of releasing electronic cards for printout."
Good idea....not currently on our to-do list but I'll add it to the list to discuss with the team.
- "No support for fan-programmers"
This is something we'd eventually like to do, but it is not currently high on our priority list. We recognize that this would be beneficial to D&D Insider over the long run.
- "No user content integration"
Also something we'd eventually like to do...we recognize there's a wealth of imagination and talent amongst our audience...but first we have to get our stuff up and running.
- "Please consider some iPhone interface to the builder / char sheets. I'd like to remove the pen and paper from my pen and paper RPG."
We have considered it and will continue to consider it. Not currently on our list, though.
- "Please add quality RSS feeds to the site... particular Dungeon/Dragon."
I know we've talked about it and that we want to do it...I don't have any timetable on it though.
Ken
I think the large outcry against WoTC over this is a bit drastic. Yes, it is a bit anoying. But think how annoyed the staff feel. They worked very hard, and i bet they wanted to see it come out on time just as much as you did.
Compendium=glorified database. All you had to do was have a searchable database...with all the D&D stuff in it. That is possibly the easiest thing you could possibly achieve. It is probably even easier than the garbage scripting used for this forum. This should have been done months ago.
Character Generator=fancy GUI with some minor mathematical calculations and the ability to print it onto a character sheet. It just involves a bunch of drop downs and check boxes and it automatically calculates everything.
Choose race, Choose class, Generate Ability Scores with the option for doing it by all the methods that are out now, Choose powers from the list of powers that you currently meet the prerequisites for, etc. It isn't very hard and I bet if 3 or 4 programmers on this board got together they could put together at least a rudimentary one in about a week if they set their minds to it.
Character Visualizer=Ok seriously...it is pathetic that at least this wasn't available. All you needed to do was have a few 3d models of the characters, some color palets and some armor and weapon models. Thats it... There isn't anything else I can say about this.
Game Table=Ok i'll admit that had you taken into consideration automating the rules, this MAY have been a difficult task, but from what I have read the rules will not be automated meaning the DM STILL has to use pen and paper to keep track of things that the game table SHOULD be taking care of. Essentially you made a 3D chess game...well I wish I could say that...but you havn't made it yet.
Dungeon Builder=...a grid...with textures...the ability to turn it into 3d would take a bit but...a grid with textures. Essentially all you needed to do was modify a CAD program to deal with D&D aspects.
I'm a Computer Science major and have plenty of experience programming so I'm not speaking as someone ignorant of software design and processes.
This leads me to believe that either A.) Your programmers are incompetant, which I highly doubt because I havn't met programmers that are THAT incompetant. B.) You aren't telling us something, most likey that everything was scrapped at some point fairly recently and you had to start all over again or something really drastic happened that you are afraid to tell us. I'm gonna go with B because it makes WoTC not seem QUITE so bad.
Page 2 Issues
3) "I want to know exactly what will happen when I stop paying my monthly fee. Will I lose everything? Will I get to export jpgs of dungeons that I've created? Will I be able to use the client apps (unlikely)? Will I retain access to the magazine articles released while I was subscribed?"
No, you will not lose everything. Assuming you've downloaded/saved a copy of the magazines, you will still be able to view those magazine articles. You will get to export .jpgs of the dungeon. In general, you will be able to use the client applications, although you will not be able to connect to the server (D&D Game Table) nor will you be able to get new data/content (Char Builder, Char Visualizer)
Ken
If I stop my subscription (say I can't afford it one month) and start back up at a later date, will I lose v-content I have purchased (adventures, minis, tiles, objects to place on the v-table)?
Oh the horror... (I don't mean the chioce of music I mean the crappy quality)
Page 2 Issues
2) More v-minis information
a) Why are we charging extra for v-minis?
We're charging extra for v-minis because we have a cost associated with producing the v-mini that isn't accounted in our subscription price.
Ken
I am sorry Ken, but I have a very hard time swallowing that. Why is it so hard for you to defray that cost in the subscription model when every other online game manages just fine? Or is this cost you refer to an expected drop in the purchase of physical minis? If so, shame on you all.
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1043559
How very heartbreaking. You folks are killing your customers' love for your product, one person at a time. Most of us wish we had the stones (and cash) to do just what this guy is doing.
I reviewed pages 3, 4, and 5 of the original thread and saw no new issues or questions that I felt like I didn't address in my earlier posts in this thread.
I'll be on either Monday of next week or the week following to answer questions again...
Thanks,
Ken
Onto the questions specifically in this thread...
1) My concern is, as a DM, what V-minis will be allocated to the game. I dont want to use a Kobold to represent a Dragon or a Elf to represent a Giant. Will D&D Insider contain the same information/V-Minis as the Monster Manual, Players Handbook and DM's Guide?
D&D Insider will not have v-minis for every single monster present in the Monster Manual or future monster material. We will have a lot of them, but not all of them.
2) Via D&Di I will be able to refer to my physical books or PDF, or b) that the complete reference (as it apppears in the manual) will be available in the D&Di applications?
The Compendium and the Character Builder both ultimately derive their info from the same database. This database will contain the exact info the book contains in regards to feats, powers, skills, race info, etc. (sometimes the database will even be more current, due to errata). Neither the Compendium nor the Character Builder are electronic versions of the printed books...we will be selling .pdfs of our printed books separately.
3) If I stop my subscription (say I can't afford it one month) and start back up at a later date, will I lose v-content I have purchased (adventures, minis, tiles, objects to place on the v-table)?
No, you will not lose v-content you have already purchased if your subscription lapses.
I am sorry Ken, but I have a very hard time swallowing that. Why is it so hard for you to defray that cost in the subscription model when every other online game manages just fine? Or is this cost you refer to an expected drop in the purchase of physical minis? If so, shame on you all.
The cost he is verry real, even if there is only a modest design team working on producing the new digital representations of the minis, it will be very expensive.
1) salaries. the design team needs to be paid, and graphic designers and programmers don't come cheap.
2) Resources. the design team will need utilities internet, good well maintained computers, and many other consumed monthly resources.
3) perminant assets. the team will need office space. They will need test servers. They will need tens of thousands of dollars worth of software licences for the tools required to make the kinds of 3d modeling they are expecting to produce.
this will not be cheap. So yes if you want this extra (as in not required in any way) feature, yes you will have to pay for it.
The cost he is verry real, even if there is only a modest design team working on producing the new digital representations of the minis, it will be very expensive.
1) salaries. the design team needs to be paid, and graphic designers and programmers don't come cheap.
2) Resources. the design team will need utilities internet, good well maintained computers, and many other consumed monthly resources.
3) perminant assets. the team will need office space. They will need test servers. They will need tens of thousands of dollars worth of software licences for the tools required to make the kinds of 3d modeling they are expecting to produce.
this will not be cheap. So yes if you want this extra (as in not required in any way) feature, yes you will have to pay for it.
But I am paying for it (assuming I buy a subscription)! $14.95/month.
And don't tell me that is paying for Dungeon and Dragon magazine content, because I could live without that. All I really want out of D&Di (all most of us want) is the Character builder/visualizer/ and the v-table (with minis I can use on it). I don't belive that it is unreasonable for me to get that for $180 a year.
Tell you what Ken. Give me the option to pay $50 up front (just like I do for any Computer MMO) to buy all the v-table content and minis available at release, give me a month free with that purchase (just like the other guys do) and then i'll pay the monthly fee happily and feel I got my money's worth. How does that sound? Just match the market.
... This leads me to believe that either A.) Your programmers are incompetant, which I highly doubt because I havn't met programmers that are THAT incompetant. B.) You aren't telling us something, most likey that everything was scrapped at some point fairly recently and you had to start all over again or something really drastic happened that you are afraid to tell us. I'm gonna go with B because it makes WoTC not seem QUITE so bad.
You forgot C. The dev process was mis-managed. No programmer in the world can compensate for idiots that don't know what they want. (in case you haven't seen yet, the char gen is supposed to be a windows app. not browser based.
I personally am leaning toward D. All of the above. (Bad management, hiring bad programmers (or not enough good ones) and having no proper design).
1a) Why won't you guys sell the components of D&D Insider separately (a la carte)?
It's because we're trying to offer the most value to the player for D&D Insider, truly. If we were to price each application separately, we'd come up with a price much higher than $14.95 a month for everything, and more than double the $9.95 a month a year-long subscriber pays.
Congratulations. One more subscriber lost. At least, if this is correct. In the other topic regarding answers we were told Dragon & Dungeon could be bought separately, now you come around and say they're -not- available? Or not important enough to mention? Really, this confirms nothing other than at this point, I'm not dropping a cent on squat, and I'm pretty darn sure none of the players I know will, either.
I'm trying to be polite as possible, but I can't honestly grasp why you people think every single D&D player is clamoring for these useless tools. Or, is it because you -do- know that not every player wants them, so you force us to pay for them because you know you won't get any money from them otherwise?
I mean, really. Character visualizer. In our current 4e game, my character is a Drow warlock following the FR goddess Eilistraee, who has a warforged-like arm due to an accident in her past. Am I really going to be able to make such a unique character in the visualizer? Somehow I really doubt that. Besides, as has been said countless times, the visualizer "style" is so absolutely hideous as to make itself unusable no matter how varied the options are.
And why would pricing things a la carte make the total cost more expensive? Here's an idea...offer things in a full package, and then offer things a la carte. Keep your $15/month package for people that buy the whole set, and who cares if priced separately, they end up being more?
Honestly, the absolute, total, utter lack of logic behind the D&Di pricing scheme completely blows my mind. In this time, in this state of affairs, in this economy, do you really expect that the majority of players have $15/month to spend on a huge package like this? Especially when I'd wager the vast majority of players do not want the entire suite?
Because, Mr. Troop, I can assure you that people will not be lining up to drop $15 for a couple magazines, or $15 for a character visualizer, or $15 for a map program, and so on and so forth. They will not. I would be willing to wager without a shadow of a doubt that if this pricing scheme is not changed either by the time D&Di releases or soon after, that this entire system will fail. Mark my words.
You forgot C. The dev process was mis-managed. No programmer in the world can compensate for idiots that don't know what they want. (in case you haven't seen yet, the char gen is supposed to be a windows app. not browser based.
I personally am leaning toward D. All of the above. (Bad management, hiring bad programmers (or not enough good ones) and having no proper design).
Amen to that Padden.
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and a side note. pro fantasy is flourishing. so i expect this to do well
I'll still be playing 4e, since I like the system. But like many others I will now be relying on fan-generated Excel sheets to build my characters, and 3-rd party dungeon building programs. Good luck, Ken. I fear you may see many other players going this way.
Will DMs and Players be able to "share" their V-minis during a session?
Yes
DMs and players will be able to share their VMinis and tiles during a session. This will happen automatically and is handled by the game table application.
Last time i checked, the only other compeating product (campain cartographer, by pro fantasy software) costs several hundred for fewer features than dndinsider is offering for a paltry $15.
Campaign Cartographer is not exactly a competitor (it's for map creation), and it doesn't cost "several hundred" unless we're talking yen here. A "paltry" $15 per month is a "paltry" $180 per year, which I'd have to pay even though I don't want half the components included, and it would cost me extra for additional components I do want.
Personally, at this point I think I'd rather pay a once off price for a D&D 4th edition version of an application like Fantasy Grounds, which may not have all the 3d bells and whistles or voice chat, but seems like it would do a much better job of giving the community what they want for a fair price.
Unfortunately, the new Game System License will no doubt forbid any competing 4th edition software applications, so I might be stuck with Skype and generic whiteboard software if I want to play 4th edition online...
the subscription is for content updates. v-minis are just like real minis. an optional extra that is not an integral part of the game. You still get the 2d images for free
Really? They are *JUST* like real minis?
So for every kobold I have on the table, I will need one mini of each? I will not simply be able to 'create' duplicate kobold models as I need them?
I will be able to trade or sell them as collectibles?
Will there be tiers of monsters, with some rarer than others, and that will create demand for them?
They will only run the model for a limited 'production' run and then not allow anyone to ever, ever purchase that again in an effort to mimic a limited supply.
No, they are NOT just like real minis. They are far from it. MTG:O comes the closest to mimicing the real world, better in some respects as you can't bend virtual cards.
As I stated elsewhere, MMOs have to make similar models and more. They do it all for a 15 fee and perhaps an update every few years. The subscription price should include any and all minis IMO. (Tileset and dungeons too)
EDIT: Unless you mean that real minis are an add on. But they are a seperate game unto themselves and have resale value. And if 3D models for your 3D map program is not content, well, I'm not sure what all those MMO players are getting.
Lastly (this has just occurred to me) there is in 4e the ability to adapt any MM humanoid or other creature to be a PC race. How will that work in the Character modeler. Will I be able to make a gnoll pc and represent him on the v-table if I don't have a gnoll v-mini? How is that going to work?
When the character visualizer launches, it will support the eight PHB races, and will not include the races from the monster manual.
If at any point we release an update with the gnoll as a race (as in your example), then yes you can certainly create gnolls and load them in the D&D Game Table.
The character visualizer custom Miniatures, though, are designed to be used for player characters or major NPCs, and normal Virtual miniatures for common monsters will always be more easy to use, and less taxing on your system.
What I fail to understand, however, is why? What's the motivation for blindly defending a company that has proven themselves to either be completely incompetent and insulting to their customers or who is utterly without morals and would sell their grandmas into servitude if it meant the sweatshop bosses bought more books. Either way, they're guilty, yet some people still want sunshine and puppies to be the order of the day. Truly boggles the mind.
Yes they only do the map making. that'ts my point all that money for that one feature. or somthing much cheaper that does more. ooh hard choice
If you are paying by the year for the wizards content it is only 10 a month. i know it is alot of money, if you use it for years. but hey my point is that if pro fantasy can make money of their software, then this should be a snap once they get it working.
Greengrass, pay no attention to Pressurepoint. He has established, with incredible effectiveness, that he operates outside of the bounds of logic, intelligence, and reason that most of us congnitive beings rely on. He is apparently so enamored with WotC that he would argue the color of the sky if someone at WotC told him it was orange.
What I fail to understand, however, is why? What's the motivation for blindly defending a company that has proven themselves to either be completely incompetent and insulting to their customers or who is utterly without morals and would sell their grandmas into servitude if it meant the sweatshop bosses bought more books. Either way, they're guilty, yet some people still want sunshine and puppies to be the order of the day. Truly boggles the mind.
look i don't worship WoTC. i have some real problems with some of the things that have been done with the system (they brutally murdered magic missile, and for that i will never forgive them). But it is simply true that while they are late releasing the compendium, and communication has been horrible. no one ever said that the other features would come out on game day. I am ****** off about the other stuff but the simple fact is they have not charged anyone any money for the features yet. as far as i'm concerned being late sucks, but it is not that big a deal unless i'm being charged for it.
you kidding me. i can show you my reciept, over $200 for the basic world builder set.
No, I not kidding you. The basic software costs way less than that, and if you want to compare bundles, you'd have to take account for additional costs for extra Insider content. You're also comparing a once off cost with a subscription cost.
Besides, your argument assumes that Insider and Campaign Cartographer offer similar features, which they do not. You're comparing Insider with software that only has one thing even vaguely in common, and saying that it's an "affordable alternative". If I were to use the same logic, I could say Skype is a "free alternative" to the Insider game table, because it also handles voice chat. How do you like them apples to oranges?
How do you like them apples to oranges?
Heh, I tried to warn you, Green. ;)
and yes it is a stretch to compair CC 3.0 to the map maker in dndinsider. that was my point. This is the only game in town when you get right down to it. I was just trying to put the pricing in perspective.
Consider this. the table top (and the other features) cost either 15 or 10 dollars depending on your comitment. I use a quarter tank of gass getting to the conan game i'm playing in, and back. i make that trip twice a month. thats more than thirty dollars a month, just to play that one game. i don't know about you but that 15 is suddenly looking pretty attractive (and yes i'm aware that that is a deliberate marketing ploy). Oh and pluss i don't have to do all that driving. i can just sit on my ass.
Why are people objecting to the software coming out later, if they weren't willing to pay for it in the first place?
i mean if you don't want it why would you care when it comes out?
This just occured to me.
Why are people objecting to the software coming out later, if they weren't willing to pay for it in the first place?
i mean if you don't want it why would you care when it comes out?
Yay! Flawed logic again!
One last attempt at sanity before retiring to bed...
Pressurepoint, most people aren't saying they don't want to pay for it. They're saying they don't want to pay SO MUCH for it. Get it?
Once again you're misconstruing the subject and muddying the water with your lack of logic and your apparent inability to actually comprehend what people are saying. You, sir, amaze me.
Good night.
i know this is the game we have come to know and love, it is so much more that a book to us. But you have to remember it is still a buisness, if wizards does not make money, then no more wizards. No wizards, no d&d.
It is still cheap compaired to the cost of gas.
If that is not enough, there's this:
Did you notice the part where they said that if you stop paying, you can still use the program, you just don't get updates. you don't need to be a genius to see that is a very bad idea (for them, i like it)
they are going to get hoards of people paying for one month, downloading everything, cutting it off, then repeating 6 months later.
Just another note about the on-line character builder, Umm, the graphics really arn't that great to pay $15 for. Other than the fact that I have no other option it really isn't worth it. Look at games like Conan and Guild Wars that have amazing graphics (guild wars is free too).
Ken Troop says that he now wishes that the company had communicated more clearly at an earlier date, and promises to correct misleading information on the main website. Many of us are simply observing that this remark really only allows for two possible interpretations about WoTC's development of this product, because given the magnitude of the delay, WoTC MUST have known for some months that the D&D Insider offerings would not be available for a considerable amount of time after the 4E launch.
In that case, either:
1) The internal development process at WoTC is hugely disorganized and unprofessional, to the point that people honestly forgot to update the web page, forgot to put material about the likely launch calendar in promotional information, forgot to make it clear in the ads in the back of the 4E books themselves that these were forthcoming tools. I'm prepared to believe this, but seriously, if it's true, it's time to either hire someone whose job it is to communicate clearly with the public and who coordinates information across multiple outlets or it's time to fire some people. Remember, this is the charitable interpretation.
OR
2) A conscious decision was made to obscure the fact that the tools were very far from ready. You can call that a "conspiracy" if you like, but it's a kind of decision (a bad decision) that companies sometimes make when they have a bad problem with a product line. It is almost never a good idea for a company that is selling a product that is not a necessity, and it is often an especially a bad idea for companies that are planning to sell an expensive subscription-based service, because it undercuts the confidence that customers need to have in order to buy a service.
---------
I suppose there is a third possibility: that WoTC itself did not understand how badly delayed the tools were going to be because the developers it is working with misrepresented the state of the development process to their clients, and the truth has only become clear in the very recent past. If that's so, my sympathies. WoTC wouldn't be the first victim of such a misrepresentation. But even this wouldn't absolve the company of a need to communicate clearly at the earliest possible date.
ok so you don't want to pay that much. same thing. that's the price, you don't get a choice. this is not a flea market, you cant haggle.
There is a version of the pricing complaint that WoTC had better take seriously, however.
MMOs have learned that players expect a basic level of quality and service at the price tier they've established. Yes, every MMO, even the worst (Auto Assault, for example) has its loyalist die-hards who would pay the fee no matter how bad the product or the service behind it. But a potentially successful MMO can lose a large proportion of its customer base if it doesn't provide a base level of service or the core product is seriously inadequate in comparison to similar products.
When potential customers for D&D Insider suggest to WoTC that they see a big problem with the relationship between the price of the service and the things that the service will offer, WoTC probably ought to take that seriously. Because there is a version of "haggling": it's called "not buying".
MMOs have two separate revenue streams. The one is "box sales" of the basic product (and later "box sales" of expansion content). That makes you back some percentage of your development costs. Then your subscription fee is (eventually) profit after you make back whatever remains of your development cost. This is why even MMOs with small subscriber bases can keep running for a long time: as long as what you bring in tops the costs of running and maintaining the servers, it's probably worth it.
I guess the 4E printed rules are the "box sale" of D&D Insider, but they have a development cost of their own to recoup. I dunno what the costs of developing the D&D Insider tools ought to be exactly, but it shouldn't be anything close to the cost of developing a MMO unless the tools really are revolutionary in some respect. So it's useful information for WoTC to hear that many players believe that the tools and the price are out of line.
If they've plotted out likely revenue from the subscriptions and they're very happy with the revenue from a very small number of die-hard players, ok for them. Or if they're so confident that whenever the tools are available, they'll be so superior in their functionality, so unlike anything else on the market, that very large number of players will in fact pay the subscription, also ok for them. In between those two scenarios, however, is the possibility that the tools will be fine but not spectacular, and that there's much more revenue to be had with a lower monthly price. Call it "haggling" if you like, but it's the kind of calculation that all sane companies go through.
Why are we charging extra for v-minis?
We're charging extra for v-minis because we have a cost associated with producing the v-mini that isn't accounted in our subscription price.
Then what exactly DOES account for the subscription price?
aside from dungeon and dragon magazine, I don't really see any associated cost in keeping D&Di running after development has finished.
What does the subscription cost include? The plan is for the subscription to include --
- All Dragon and Dungeon content we produce during your subscription.
fair enough, writers need to be paid, however as expressed by myself and others, not all of us are really interested in these magazines
- The Online Compendium. The database that fuels the Compendium would include data from all official books and e-magazines.
OK so we have a database, but I don't see a massive price tag on running that feature, your website and forum is basically another type of database and we don't have to pay for that.
Furthermore, I'm assuming that this compendium wont replace the need for source books, and is essentially designed with the expectation of you owning the books in addition to paying for D&Di.
- The Character Visualizer that allows you to create 2d and 3d images of your character.
- The Character Builder that allows you to create a digital character sheet. This application will draw from the same database as the Compendium, which means that you eventually need just the one stop-shop to refer to material from all the official books and e-magazines.
Both of these just seem like standalone applications to me, I cant see any monthly cost to wizards of the coast for keeping these running.
- The Digital Game Table and Dungeon Builder which allows you to create dungeons and play in them with other people online. The Game Table will very likely include a starter's set of Virtual Minis and Dungeon Tiles to start you off.
The dungeon builder again, seems like a static application with no associated running cost for WotC, and the game table itself, will I suppose feature some sort of lobby or matchmaking system in order to organise a game, but these games will be, I assume, not run on centralised WotC servers surely, because any group of players can host and run their own games on their own machines.
pretty much any game with a multiplayer option released today works on this model, the game will have a lobby or list of currently running games, and when you host a game it is done off your own back. furthermore these games manage to provide this service at NO COST to the player, aside from the initial purchase cost of the software. What is WotC's reasoning?
The only games you pay on a monthly basis to play are typically MMORPGs, and these require large server farms to keep their sprawling virtual worlds and hundreds of thousands of simultaneous players connected and operating, and even after that cost, they usually still manage to deliver to the player, free of charge, monthly content in the form of new items, monsters, dungeons, character classes or playable races.
however, with D&Di:
What doesn't the subscription include?
- Additional virtual minis and dungeon tiles that we produce. These likely would be sold separately.
- E-adventures that we produce for the Game Table (these would likely come with their own set of v-minis and d-tiles necessary to play the adventure). Sold separately.
- E-book .pdfs. Sold separately.
- Back-issues of Dragon and Dungeon that were produced before your subscriptions. Sold separately.
So pretty much any new content at all, which you would expect might be included in the monthly subscription (a la MMO) is going to cost the player more still.
Secondly
Why won't you guys sell the components of D&D Insider separately (a la carte)?
It's because we're trying to offer the most value to the player for D&D Insider, truly. If we were to price each application separately, we'd come up with a price much higher than $14.95 a month for everything, and more than double the $9.95 a month a year-long subscriber pays.
This is complete rubbish, you as a company decide how much you are going to charge, and its a simple matter of saying this tool will cost X, this tool will cost Y and if you buy the whole suite it will cost you $14.95/mo. (if a monthly cost is indeed even proper) that way people buying the whole suite as you intend will pay the price you want, and those wanting only one or two features will pay for only the features they want.
making a customer pay MORE for what they don't want does not represent good value, so please don't try to palm that off on us, because we aren't idiots.
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That said, we also need the applications to be in a state where it's productive to have players using them and giving feedback.
Funny, I remember beta testing Star Wars Galaxies when the worlds were not even populated.. there were no trees, or NPC's, the game crashed every two hours, and the most you could do was run around and look for holes in the world.
I'd say your program, if able to be given to a group in seattle, can be given to the public for testing. If it's running, trust me, it's productive for the public to have it in beta. I stated before that it's more benificial to have the public testing it, than your in house people going over the same bull crap and not finding the true bugs..
AHHH but then you wont be able to release it as a finished product and charge for it if it's a beta.. you'll go ahead and release a crap product, charge everyone a bunch of money, and then never update any of the bugs. Like the last two times your company has tried making a character creator.. or a program of ANY kind.
I just don't know about this being worth what I pay for high content and graphical MMOs that have MUCH more content. I remember reading something not to long back that said the price would be INBETWEEN a magazine off store shelf price and that of an MMO, not that of an MMO. It now worries me that this is going to flop even though some of us will still try it out.
Also, why doesn't the game table have the option to do automated calculations?? That was kinda the main thing I was wanting to make the game flow smoother because you guys hold the liscense to the content. Without that I might as well go with some of the other options for online gaming.
Oh, and to the person saying that DDI would be cheaper than Campaign Cartographer 3 (even though they aren't similar products at all) ummmm I OWN my copies of that software and do not have to continue to pay for it. If DDI wants to charge me 35$ or so for programs like CC3 does then I'm ok with that.
Campaign Cartographer is not exactly a competitor (it's for map creation), and it doesn't cost "several hundred" unless we're talking yen here. A "paltry" $15 per month is a "paltry" $180 per year, which I'd have to pay even though I don't want half the components included, and it would cost me extra for additional components I do want.
Personally, at this point I think I'd rather pay a once off price for a D&D 4th edition version of an application like Fantasy Grounds, which may not have all the 3d bells and whistles or voice chat, but seems like it would do a much better job of giving the community what they want for a fair price.
Unfortunately, the new Game System License will no doubt forbid any competing 4th edition software applications, so I might be stuck with Skype and generic whiteboard software if I want to play 4th edition online...
30 bucks for Fantasy grounds FOR LIFE!!!!, and then another 5 bucks a month for a ventrillo server. Tada. Theres your game table, at a cheaper cost than DDI
Disapointment in WotCs lack of control over the project is probably the biggest issue. Please fire whichever lowest bidder/idiot cousin that was hired to code DDI.
By losing the goodwill inside the community you will not get any ROI. Reevaluate your pricing model based on other (successful) web based businesses rather than on the book business. These are two totally different markets for different products. Package pricing is fine if there's a package to price...currently there is not one but you are still clinging to the illusion of being able to charge for it.
Micro purchases...not being a big fan of minis (yes they look nice but I'm not buying enough to properly stage a large battle) I fail to see what appeal vminis would have for *future* users. I will have to add my name to the list of those who feel that paying for something that should be included in a subscription model is silly. 2d representations might not be as pretty but they're free and little green plastic army men at 50/$1 aren't goblins but you get the point (beware the Coaster Dragon of doomish doom).
Visualizer...go to the M&M (candy) character visualizer http://www.becomeanmm.com/ choose character creator. Simple and effective.
Hire professionals and spend the money to do it right the first time. Going with the lowest bidder only placates the bean counters and in the end you usually have to pay it twice so even accountants aren't happy.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm out of cheetos and mountain dew.
This means that our job, and ultimately Ken's job, is to evaluate each application and decide when we feel it's at a stage where our customers will consider it to be of value to them. It's not an exact science and it's something that companies get wrong all the time. All we can do is try our best to make the right call.
Ok, now wait a second ! There is the problem right there !!!!!!!! If you guys would involve us in the testing of it WE CAN TELL YOU IF IT'S READY !!!!! Then there will be no doubt of it's value. Put out n Alpha or Beta version and advise it's being tested for these particular sets or features and wait for our feed back. Take the majority of the feed back and implement the suggestions if reasonable. If you let the users decide when it's ready then you'll have a product unlike any other.
You know it will be successful because the people you're making it for helped you get it right. YOu have working versions of the game table and the character visualizer. Put them up, make it free (Take constructive feed back and implement)till there finished and running smooth as silk then charge. (But only if you speed up your web site, right now the site and forums are sllloooowww!!! and no it's not me) It might take a while, but with your clients (ahem..That would be us, the people in these forums who are so upset) involved in the process you're almost guaranteed to for it to be an awesome, highly sought after product.
I know you guys have heard this time and time again, but yall don't have a good record when it comes to software creation. And we've had so many promises from you guys software wise that you haven't delivered on over the years that it's hard to believe that you won't do it again. My biggest fear is that you'll go the way of the Magic game you put out.
You guys can avoid all of this, show us you're serious on delivering a good product by involving us, you're clients, the ones that keep you in a job.
Theres no one better suited to tell you the value of the product than the CLIENTS of the product.
Ok with that said, good luck. I know this won't happen, but you wanted feed back, there it is.
Oh, and Pressure point, go play with your leggos and let the adults talk.
It seems the only big issue left is pricing that folks are upset about. As you have stated, once WOTC releases the product, it will be up to the users to decide if they are willing to pay for it after some sort of trial period.
Simply put, the value proposition of the suite as a whole is not worth it to me for $120-$180 year for the basic product considering I only desire 1-2 of the components (the character builder and the visualizer). I would be willing to pay about $60 year for those two products assuming: The visualizer is updated as new races/classes/etc. are added. The Character builder is also updated to work with new features in a timely manner and works correctly. These updates occur within a month of the products physical release.
I am seeing a number of folks who want different things from DDI but it seems the most common are: game table functionity (which would require the dungeon builder), magazines only, builder /visualizer only, and the whole shebang. I don't think anyone would realy have a problem with A La Carte pricing of the first three of these ($5-8 each depending on subscription length) and a reduced cost total of all three($10-15 based on subscription length). Perhaps another option would be a premium vesion of the service for $5 more that adds all premium vminis. I might even be able to get behind a lifetime subscription of some sort although the track record for SW with WOTC makes that harder.
As for the vmini debate, I think there should be a base set of vminis available that cover most major monsters (ie ones with more than 1 entry for them in the MM) and can be tweaked (different color palettes etc). I think any major release (Monster manual 2, new player races etc) should have vminis added as part of the subscription. More specialized vminis (Gnolls with bows instead of the "standard" ones with axes) could be sold for a separate price. Be aware that I believe that these will be a really hard thing to sell.
Please answer the question of whether the vminis will be number limited or not - ie if i need two of a particular mini do I have to "own" two or just one.
To the folks saying that they want to see what they are getting for their subscription fees, the costs to keep this software up to date with 6 new major releases a year will not be trivial. Inevitably a game designer will add something that will not work under the current software design (Look at the able learner feat from 3.5 races of destiny).
Bottom line: I believe you are pricing yourselves into a much smaller market by not offering some a la carte choices. I believe you need to offer enough value so people don't see add on premiums as something they should get for the base price.
b) Because D&D Insider has always been an extra subscription, it never occurred to me that some players might feel misled about not having tools available at launch. Instead I've always thought it was great that we were willing to give away Dragon/Dungeon content, and soon hopefully some of our Compendium content, away for free. I'm not saying I'm right and those who are so angry are wrong. I thought 4th edition D&D was a great enough product on its own http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/dungeons-dragon.html , and that most people were buying the books for the books, and only then may be willing to check out this D&D Insider, not the other way around.
Ken, Welcome to the 21st century.......c'mon man! You were the lead designer for DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) for Turbine! Today, almost everyone has a home computer (or 5) and access to the internet. After all the DDI hype at the announcement of 4E OF COURSE we want the digital tools.
If you guys deliver them as advertized....WOW! It's gonna take D&D to the next level. It'll open the game up to/for many folks who otherwise wouldn't be interested.
The virtual table has the potential to be the single coolest thing EVER. IF IT WORKS SIMPLY AND SEAMLESSLY!!!!
As soon as it's available I'll be signing up for a year.....BUT, you guys have got to deliver the features you've promised and the performance we demand. No half-assed software that lags and crashes please.......
Verry classy stuff, i want more
I will post this question here as well as your other thread in hopes of getting heard.
Thanx for more information on your price structure, although I still have a hard time seeing the valuea $15 a month charge. I would also rather see a 6month $9.99 vs a 12.
So with your current "planned" price plan (I stress planned in hopes that the concern we as a community have will be heard), I would like more info in regards to family prices.
I want to use the table, I want it to work, but need to know more. I plan on using the table to join my little group (me and my three little kids) to my brother and his two. With the price already so high (IMO), there is no way I can pay for an account for myself, one for my kids to share and then have my brother pay to join us as well, especially when we plan on playing only 1-2 a month.
I have heard talk of game passes and am hoping I can use this avenue in order to make it affordable. Can you elaborate on this?
My hope is that I can purchase the subscription and have enough passes for two more players to join my game (one for my kids, one for my brother and his). In order for this to work I need 4 game passes that regenerate each month, but we have not got a lot of info on this subject, can you shed some light and tailor it my situation?
THanx,
Macpharlan
Page 1 Replies
1a) Why won't you guys sell the components of D&D Insider separately (a la carte)?
It's because we're trying to offer the most value to the player for D&D Insider, truly. If we were to price each application separately, we'd come up with a price much higher than $14.95 a month for everything, and more than double the $9.95 a month a year-long subscriber pays.
We want this decision to be an easy one for players -- we want D&D Insider to be a great value pickup for most players. We also want players to have generall the same gaming experience...every D&D Insider knows that every other D&D Insider has access to the Visualizer, and to the magazines, and to the Game Table, etc., so it builds more of a shared community and shared experience. For all these reasons we originally decided against the a la carte approach.
That said, we have and do occasionally revisit the issue. Obviously, we want to maximize players' happiness with D&D Insider (and while some of that is good feeling, a lot of it is just common sense -- we also want to maximize revenue). This is one of those areas where we'll see, depending on our sense of the market and what players are actually doing and saying.
There's really no two ways I can put this one...the claim that ala carte offerings would drive up the "package" subscription cost holds absolutely no water whatsoever. To allow lower individualized costs for the other components does not impose some mystical imperative that the cost for an all-encompassing "package" subscription be higher. Discounts for getting individually priced items or services as a package deal are incredibly common, and the leaky premise of this statement is extremely obvious.
This entire thing has already been a giant PR black eye, and what is really needed right now is honesty. This sort of claim really doesn't help, and makes the whole dialog smell of being too thoroughly worked over by a not terribly clever marketing department.
Also, as regards revenue. WotC's expectations on what people will pay for is just simply unrealistic. This needs to take a cue from basic high school economics...if you lower the price point to an amount that will bring a significantly higher number of purchases, you make more money. Only those with higher than the average gamer's amount of disposable income will go for a $15/month subscription.
To be honest, for a lot of people the idea that they're getting $15/month worth of value is harmed by the fact that, as I'm seeing echo'd a lot here, all most people really seem to want is the virtual gaming table, and a maybe on the character creator. The rest for most of us seems to be fluff...essentially being forced to buy 10 pounds of what we don't want for 1 pound of what we do. This is why a la carte purchasing options are so clamored for.
You also speak of a strong community...this is in fact a key area where the current price point will hurt. It seems fairly evident upon examination that the percentage of players willing to pay for this service will not make said community populous enough to give it that most important of values. And it can only go downhill from there if the model is not changed.
NOTE: This post that I made in response in another thread outlines why the idea that DDI is of equivalent value to an MMO subscription doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And if you think the average potential customer isn't scrutinizing a little, welcome to a recessiontastic economy. We're counting entertainment dollars.
http://forums.gleemax.com/showpost.php?p=16074901&postcount=15
There's really no two ways I can put this one...the claim that ala carte offerings would drive up the "package" subscription cost holds absolutely no water whatsoever.
This is slightly incorrect. Having tiers of access does cost a little bandwidth, the servers needs to verify cookies or other internal controls that check for access privilege. I have not priced bandwidth in quite a while, however suspect the increased cost is far less then 1 USD per month not counting programing costs.
On the V-mins. Will we buy one of each type and use as many copies on the Game table as we need, or will we need to buy 12 Kobald minons if we want to have 12 on the game table?
- Additional virtual minis and dungeon tiles that we produce. These likely would be sold separately.
- E-adventures that we produce for the Game Table (these would likely come with their own set of v-minis and d-tiles necessary to play the adventure). Sold separately.
Thanks,
Ken
Again I have to reiterate, this seems like double dip pricing.
We are paying a Monthly fee, not a one time fee. I can see charging for these things if the cost was a one time only fee. But it is not.
That is a lot of extra money we are paying that is essentially only supporting our Dungeon and Dragon subscriptions and maintaining those electronic extras like the gaming table. Sorry but in an electronic format, while still great magazines, they are not worth that price and nothing else.
I think you should seriously rethink some of this. Almost every mmo that are month fee subscriber based (and some that aren't ie: Guild Wars), offer way more than you are for their monthly fee. What you are offering from the start doesn't begin to offer what many mmos offer in content but you are charging the same as them??? And you think this is viable???
Heck as someone else point out, one of WotC's other product Magic Online, doesn't have this type of a pricing plan. They get the gaming table and all to play magic free. They only pay for the cards. But you want us to pay a monthly fee for the gaming table, and pay for more 'cards.' I wonder if may be those playing Magic Online should worry.
I know I don't have access to you financial figures for the cost to run and maintain this, but right now given the comparisons, this looks like a major price gouge by WotC.
Hi there,
On the V-mins. Will we buy one of each type and use as many copies on the Game table as we need, or will we need to buy 12 Kobald minons if we want to have 12 on the game table?
It appears that you might need to buy 12, however no official announcement concerning clones of characters have been made on this. Tiles though clearly can be cloned.
TELL.
PEOPLE.
THAT.
D&DInsider.
IS.
NOT.
READY.
ON.
YOUR.
HOME.
PAGE.
It really is that simple, Ken.
*****
Can you be more specific than "soon?"
I understand that you may not know specifically at this time, but for me, I would like to know if the various components are days, weeks, or months from being ready. I don't need a hard and fast date, but something more specific than "soon" would be appreciated.
Thanks.
I know I don't have access to you financial figures for the cost to run and maintain this, but right now given the comparisons, this looks like a major price gouge by WotC.
I might be wrong, but if I understand it, the pricing is partially based on the print editions of Dragon and Dungeon magazine (which is the reason for the emphasis on the magazines in DDI, and I assume the reason they were the only feature available at launch). There are too many problems to count with this concept, the least of which being that there is no print edition of the magazines, meaning there is no printing, shipping, or publishing cost usually related to magazines, yet they are asking the same rate to access them. The other factor is, I assume, rather than maintenance, competition, seeing if DDI can draw the same customer base as a standard MMO, however as too many people have said, DDI is not an MMO, and does not offer comparable content. You honestly will be paying for a subscription to two magazines that you will never get, and probably not read. The weight of the magazine section, I feel was heavily misjudged by WOTC, whereas the actual draw of DDI was the game table and character generator. By failing to implement these, they have basically revealed a useless product, an online magazine subscription, and I lay the blame on this heavily on the fact that they overweighed the draw of the magazines.
This is slightly incorrect. Having tiers of access does cost a little bandwidth, the servers needs to verify cookies or other internal controls that check for access privilege. I have not priced bandwidth in quite a while, however suspect the increased cost is far less then 1 USD per month not counting programing costs.
The bandwidth involved in this type of software at any level, tiered or otherwise, is far, far, faaaaar beneath the amounts of money being discussed. It's a small drop in a large bucket. There are simply no reasons to not use decentralized networking for nearly all of the rather small amounts of information being communicated for the virtual tabletop, and the rest is not a considerable amount of files available for download, certainly not to the costs put forth. D&D and WotC have routeinely put out downloadable content of that amount, of more than that amount, without any payment required on the D&D website, and the RPGA website.
Even if this were not the case, the cost of offering...let's be honest here on what's been asked for...a very non-granular sort of a la carte offering of the items being discussed is so imperceptable in what is already being proposed as a highly-priced premium.
Speaking for myself (and a few others that don't post here), I appreciate your involvement (and courage!) with the players here. Still looking forward to this project.
And sadly I think I may be alone on this, and flame away for all of you who think im nuts (basically saying I don't care).
I plan on buying it. I more than likely will plop down the 12 month sub for $9.99 a month. First of all, I make enough money and like D&D stuff enough that $120 a year is squat. OBVIOUSLY, this is not the case for most people (or at least most of the people on the forums who feel the need to write how they don't like what they are currently seeing). However, many people pay way more than that (or if not, that) for World of Warcraft and the like, so if you like D&D enough and the tools work as designed (ill get to this in a second) then I would suspect its not really the money. Again, comes down to if the tools show a value for you. From my reading of the books (true I have not read them all the way through yet but still) It is not required to have DDI. DDI is an added feature with new stuff, hence the extra cost associated.
Obviously if they release the tools and they suck, people will not buy them. Its not really that hard of a concept. Also, the ideas on the special V minis that might cost more, if the minis are designed well and look cool this might be ok. A awesome looking beholder might be worth some money (and im talking in the single dollar range and I would suspect they would release a group of them for say $5. If the want to charge $20 bucks for like 5 v minis, and thats the only way to get them than again it might be hard to justify the cost. Until they release the pricing on the extra (the ones in addition to the ones that come with the game table), people will have to wait to see if its worth it to them). I can also see the v minis being the DM buys them (either on his own or split between himself and his players) and he holds them all. It would be nice to see if there would be a way to trade v minis or transfer them (as if not, it might cause an issue with that idea).
In regards to the idea that the response Ken gave to the ala carte idea is bs, heres my thoughts on that. One, offering things ala carte is in reality not going to cost more/less as its a digital product. If they said ok $3 for the magazines and $3 for each tool or something, that would come up to $15. However theres a couple of reasons for this. One, they make a lot more money if say you want 2-3 components but are basically forced to buy all of them. This is how a lot of things are. Magazines sell the whole magazines, not ala carte articles. World of Warcraft you get the whole game but say you only wanted to play a rogue. Should you pay less just cause you want to play just the rogue. Not great examples but the idea is there. . And for those who think that its a price gouge, I would be inclined to agree if it were say $30.
I (and apparently im crazy, so I guess take this with some salt) am surprised at the angry response to this. As far as the delay, it sucks but I have been around long enough that I dont think there has been a game yet that was released on schedule, especially the good ones (Lets face it, Blizzard has one of the worst records on this but also one of the best as far as quality). The lack of communication does suck, and I was quite annoyed that the tools weren't there after I had the books (I had not heard of the delay till Saturday). Also, I would think that for those that are angry at either the price being so high or not being able to get them ala carte might want to simmer down and wait till the damn thing is released before judging it. I would understand the resentment if people were paying for this and it was not being delivered, but no one is paying yet (if you want to argue that you bought the books so that you are entitled to the tools and at least the availiability of the tools, thats a different story, one of which I do not agree with but one I would think that others would agree to disagree).
And for those that think that I have any loyalty to wotc, I don't. They have done a poor job on the communication before game day and still not having the info up on the DND Insider stuff about the tools coming soon does bother me. However I do appreciate Ken replying to the questions and concerns (even if you don't like or feel the answers are inaccurate, they are still there) as most companies don't even do that. At best when Blizzard or most game companies delay the game, they put a "Game has been delayed, go away now." message. Very rarely wil you hear from anyone to the extent that Ken has done, so I hope Ken keeps up to answering questions and addressing the concerns that people have.
It appears that you might need to buy 12, however no official announcement concerning clones of characters have been made on this. Tiles though clearly can be cloned.
I have a hunch that this is what they will do also, although I don't think they should. You should only need to buy one, that is the digital mold, you should be able to whip up as much as you need as it does not cost them anything. Let me take that digital artifact and copy it a hundred times on my hard drive.
You are not only going to charge us a very high price for something that has low maintenance, you are also going to tack on the cost of digital minis, please dont charge us to make a digital COPY!
I have a hunch that this is what they will do also, although I don't think they should. You should only need to buy one, that is the digital mold, you should be able to whip up as much as you need as it does not cost them anything. Let me take that digital artifact and copy it a hundred times on my hard drive.
You are not only going to charge us a very high price for something that has low maintenance, you are also going to tack on the cost of digital minis, please dont charge us to make a digital COPY!
I would be surprised if wotc did this. I suspect that you buy say for example a Beholder. You then have that model and if you were setting up something to where you were fighting 3 of them, you could buy one beholder but would be able to have three of them on your virtual game table. If they expect people to buy 15 decrepit skeletons (or just skeletons) for say $15 bucks, then yes even I, who seems to be one of the few not completely ****** would at that point be quite ******.
I suspect that in the cases of people buying the v minis, they would then be able to have however many of that model on the table at anyone time. I obviously could be wrong and certainly as hell hope not (one cause I would be ****** and two cause wotc is crazy).
Ok, heres is my rant on this.
And sadly I think I may be alone on this, and flame away for all of you who think im nuts (basically saying I don't care).
I plan on buying it.
Hey, as critical as I've been, I'm with you all the way. I want to give them money for what they promised. Buying the books was, for me, the first part of that investment. I probably wouldn't have bought them last week (which I think is the point... 4E sure looks popular on Amazon right now), maybe I would have since it was a good deal.
I just don't care for the mishandling and the miscommunication, which only leads me to suspect there's more than meets the eye. I'm new to D&D under WotC, and reading the history of their digital initiatives now makes me wary.
But at least they took some baby steps today. And I think, for the first time, they may actually know how important this is to some of us. Get it right, WotC.
Hey, as critical as I've been, I'm with you all the way. I want to give them money for what they promised. Buying the books was, for me, the first part of that investment. I probably wouldn't have bought them last week (which I think is the point... 4E sure looks popular on Amazon right now), maybe I would have since it was a good deal.
I just don't care for the mishandling and the miscommunication, which only leads me to suspect there's more than meets the eye. I'm new to D&D under WotC, and reading the history of their digital initiatives now makes me wary.
But at least they took some baby steps today. And I think, for the first time, they may actually know how important this is to some of us. Get it right, WotC.
Im not new to WotC. I used to play Magic a lot. To a certain degree I guess im new to them as a company (thanks to the Internet on information gathering). At this point I don't see them much different as most companies and usually I have a low opinion on most. Its them getting me to like them better than others that they have to concern with for my support. However, I bought the books really without even knowing much about the online tools. The tools and what not are a bonus to me. Obviously I understand that many bought the books with the tools in mind. The only thing I can suggest (and its little comfort I know but not sure what else to say) is be patient, its apparently coming. And Amazon (and a few others) had (perhaps still have) one of the best deals at least on the preorders vs the retail price of the book.
I just I guess am rather laid back on the issue and get less so when I see insane knee-jerk reactions that I find surprising.
I would be surprised if wotc did this. I suspect that you buy say for example a Beholder. You then have that model and if you were setting up something to where you were fighting 3 of them, you could buy one beholder but would be able to have three of them on your virtual game table. If they expect people to buy 15 decrepit skeletons (or just skeletons) for say $15 bucks, then yes even I, who seems to be one of the few not completely ****** would at that point be quite ******.
I suspect that in the cases of people buying the v minis, they would then be able to have however many of that model on the table at anyone time. I obviously could be wrong and certainly as hell hope not (one cause I would be ****** and two cause wotc is crazy).
You THINK so? How about magic the gathering online? you don't get to use 4 of every card you have 1 of. Not the same thing? consider that a v mini 'booster' pack will be equated to a DND minis booster pack and just think on that for a second. They get away with charging 4 bucks a pack for virtual magic cards that have no real value... why not charge 10-12 for 7 mini figures just like in the stores!?
It may not be that drastic, but when Ken comes back to post on this, it will be addressed and it will be out in the open then... and I can say right now. The delay sucks, and the prices suck worse, but I will still buy it all because I *NEED* it to play. However, if I am charged for a mini pack and can NOT use x amount of kobolds (if I own 1 kobold) I will not buy any of it, delete my account here, and never come back to this site again and pretend DNDi was never mentioned
That said, to the above above poster who was talking about this stuff coming out and being high quality.... look at what they did to the magic the gathering online game they built in house. thing barely works, runs like crap and looks even worse. WOTC sucks (this is my opinion which I will spread like wildfire no matter what they do now because of this DNDi mess) and I'm not expecting this thing, even when launched, to be half of what I imagined it to be before June 7th
1) "I do have a question/reques[t] about the compendium. Even though it will not have full rules, but "rules elements" why were page numbers taken out?"
We decided not to have page numbers because we occasionally print different editions of our books, and the page numbers between editions might not match up. For example, a Player's Handbook published this year might have different page numbers than that same Player's Handbook that's reprinted years later.
Screw the CoC, you were more than welcome to edit my typos/spelling errors or miskeyed words in any questions. Just don't make too big a stink about my inability to type that well....I went ahead and bracketed in the typo correction in the above quoted portion.
I have a real problem wiht this answer. While I understand that later printings of the same book, may result in some changes, the pagination should not change unless it will be something like a total book rewrite such as that form 3.0 to 3.5 PHB. This should not happen with the books.
PHBI, PHBII, PHBetc may not have the same pages numbers for everything in their own books as each other book, aka classes start on page 40, but should remain a constant within the same book. So PHBI which is currently out SHOULD have the same information on the same pages in a new printing so that all this stuff works together.
Just look at AD&D book rewrites and they WERE the same books for 2e and 2e Revised. Same AMterial, different organization. This should not be needed, and should make the tool much better. There really is no point in using the Compendium otherwise. You may have the book and STILL not be able to find the little passage about something in it.Do you really mean to tell me the Compendium can NOT be used as any kind of index with a larger set of search terms than whatever one is already in the books themselves?
That would seem like faulty design. Now I don't blame the whle web team for it, but the R&D and books' designers should take some of the flak if they cannot even keep a 3rd revision of PHBI to having the same things on the same pages. It isn't like you are adding mountains of material, and form the Zombies MM PDF article it seems there is PLENTY of space left on the pages to add nearly 20% more content each. More than enough for errata to be included in future books that would allow for the same pagination of material so that the compendium could easily be used as an index and have the page numbe statically inserted once and never having to worry about a new revision to the book.
So if this years PHBI has different page numbers than next years PHBII, that is understandable, therefore the reason to include WHICH book it is also. Just having Player's Handbook will never have people knowing which release of book it is without some unique identifier such as the reason why databases have things like primary sort keys and indexes for quicker queries. So if this yers PHBI and next years reprinted PHBI have things on different page nubers there is already a problem.
Again, that is actually the book departments job to fix, and not yours, so you SHOULD add the page numbers of the existing bookm and tell them that they need to keep the same pagination as there is no need to change the database itself.
Think about the custoemrs in this respect. PHBIv1 has some statement referring to page X in the DMG. PHBIv2 has a different page number listed to find the exact same thing in the DMG. How will people playing the game know where to find these things if the books pagination are always changing?
Are players expected to make sure all copies of the core books are the same revision just so that they match up?
So I say blame the book department for messing up and include tha page numebrs, as it is their job to make sure they give you the correct info as well as the players!
What other good will the "rules elements" be to anyone who really needs to look them up if they cannot find them?
I guess if the online suite does not include it they will need about 20 pages in the back of each book for an explicitly detailed index of all possible terms.
I would prefer an online search that is quicker, which was what the Compendium led people to believe it was....
Left hand never does know what the right hand is doing though, so nothing works correctly in those instances.
1) My concern is, as a DM, what V-minis will be allocated to the game. I dont want to use a Kobold to represent a Dragon or a Elf to represent a Giant. Will D&D Insider contain the same information/V-Minis as the Monster Manual, Players Handbook and DM's Guide?
D&D Insider will not have v-minis for every single monster present in the Monster Manual or future monster material. We will have a lot of them, but not all of them.
Well what is the po9int in claming the Game table can be used for D&D? It seems more like the Game table will be a crippled version of D&D to me. Correct me if this has changed, but the videos out there still state that ALL core material will be part of the Game Table, and online tools. One from DDXP, I think, had Scott Rouse saying this.
So the Brand Manager says all mosnters from all core publications including the e-zines will be in the tools, but you say otherwise?
Who should we believe?
2) More v-minis information
a) Why are we charging extra for v-minis?
We're charging extra for v-minis because we have a cost associated with producing the v-mini that isn't accounted in our subscription price.
I'm happy to get more into this conversation and release more information as we get a little closer to the Game Table being released. Specific info about how many v-minis we'll give away for free and what v-minis are included in the initial giveaway.
So not only will the Game Table NOT include all the mosnters from MM and other publications, but you will sell v-minis like the ones displayed in a recent article that have NO monster associated with them, but just litte statues people can buy?
It would make more sense to include ALL the monsters from official publications even IF, no ESPECIALLY IF you expect people to pay for more minis than comes free with the "starter set".
This isn't SecondLife or the Sims where people just buy random skins for things, D&D has monsters that need to be represented, and refusing to offer all the monsters in the Game Table, charging for monsters that have NO rules, etc is foolish to say the least, but totally unacceptable from a buyer standpoint.
The D&D Game Table comes with a library of 3D digital monster minis and 3D digital dungeon tiles. Players and Dungeon Masters can also import 3D digital character minis created using the D&D Character Visualizer.
What I would like to see clarified is the fact that yes, you get a library of 3D monster minis, but there should be mention that you are not necessarily going to get all possible monsters in 3D out of the MMs. I do think that it is a bit misleading to throw around 3d stuff around and then for people to buy it expecting that and then going "Well we gave you a library of Kobold and Orcs, but for say the Beholder and Dragons cough up some extra money." I personally don't have an issue paying more as long as its stated up front and not some bs surprise.
That being said, if the minis are well done that it might be worth it. As with everything its hard to tell till we have it. Until I see it I'm not going to go off the deep end till its out. And its not like you could not sign up for a month, find out that its not worth it to you and then cancel. Big deal, your out $15 bucks. I would suspect that for most that will not be the end of the world.
I might be wrong, but if I understand it, the pricing is partially based on the print editions of Dragon and Dungeon magazine (which is the reason for the emphasis on the magazines in DDI, and I assume the reason they were the only feature available at launch). There are too many problems to count with this concept, the least of which being that there is no print edition of the magazines, meaning there is no printing, shipping, or publishing cost usually related to magazines, yet they are asking the same rate to access them. The other factor is, I assume, rather than maintenance, competition, seeing if DDI can draw the same customer base as a standard MMO, however as too many people have said, DDI is not an MMO, and does not offer comparable content. You honestly will be paying for a subscription to two magazines that you will never get, and probably not read. The weight of the magazine section, I feel was heavily misjudged by WOTC, whereas the actual draw of DDI was the game table and character generator. By failing to implement these, they have basically revealed a useless product, an online magazine subscription, and I lay the blame on this heavily on the fact that they overweighed the draw of the magazines.
Except they stated explicitly because the 2 were going to electronic format, their price would be going down.
So there seems to be some cost not accounted for here.
Doesn't matter if its not an MMO or not. Its still valid to compare what you are getting to price. And again see the Magic Online comparison. And DDI is seriously lacking if they go with what they have stated so far in that comparison. And will be seriously price gouging if they plan to add those additional costs for extra content.
And if they are doing this for DDI, it makes me worried that they'll double dip Magic Online also. I wonder if they'll use this type of monthly fee on top of paying for cards beyond a starter amount MO also. Which is essentially what DDI plans on doing.
For everyone complaining about the pricing issue, has anyone considered this? WotC is not its own company. WotC is owned by Hasbro, who is really really big. How big? Big enough to have over $3.2 billion (yes, that's billion with a "B") in total assets at the end of FY2007. Hasbro regularly turns a large profit. Hasbro has spent over half a billion dollars each year since 2005 in R&D and advertising (it's all in their Annual Report, so this isn't some kind of secret knowledge). Do you not think they've done more than their fair share of market research to determine a pricing structure that the market will support?
"Of course not. Listen to us. We're mad! They screwed up! They're idiots!"
We're also the hardcore fans, from the perspective that we love this game so much that we are willing to spend hours reading about it, writing about it, thinking about it, musing about it, dreaming about it, etc. every day (see my above point about it being after one in the stinking morning). As hardcore fans, we also tend to feel we have a right to get everything for free (or at least minimally above cost) because of our intense love for this product and extreme desire for its success...that's part of the nature of being this type of fan. However, for every one of us, there are probably 10-100 casual fans that will never once read a message board post about this product that will still purchase it once it is released. And remember, their $10-15 per month is no different than your $10-15 per month. Hasbro cares about a pricing structure that will generate the most profits across ALL fans, not just us.
Does that mean Hasbro doesn't care about us at all? Of course not. We're the hardcore fans! While perhaps the smallest potential market for their product, we're also the most vocal (surprise surprise). That means if they can deliver a solid product that we mostly like, we'll sell it by word of mouth. Will some of us be alienated and come up with our top 10 reasons why Hasbro = the devil? Yes, but Hasbro is also probably banking on some of those casual fans (who I am estimating outnumber us by at least 10-to-1) becoming hardcore fans to join the group of previous hardcore fans that enjoyed/appreciated the changes in the newest version. Heck, if that didn't happen, D&D would not still be a viable and profitable entity 30+ years after its birth (how many edition changes has this game gone through since its inception in the 1970s?).
Oh, and one more thing before I come down from my soapbox...
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Also, as regards revenue. WotC's expectations on what people will pay for is just simply unrealistic. This needs to take a cue from basic high school economics...if you lower the price point to an amount that will bring a significantly higher number of purchases, you make more money. Only those with higher than the average gamer's amount of disposable income will go for a $15/month subscription.
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As a response to this comment, this falls under the category of someone knowing just enough to be dangerous. Taking a cue from college level intro microeconomics (which, by the way, I teach, among other things), depending on the product's demand, lower prices eventually result in lower revenues despite the increase in unit sales (and if you think I'm a crackpot, lower the price to $0 and tell me what their revenues would be). Going back to your high school economics, you should also realize that the goal would not be to maximize revenues, but to maximize profits.
Alright...down from the soapbox I come.
Do you not think they've done more than their fair share of market research to determine a pricing structure that the market will support?
To be quite frank to your rhetorical question: Yes. That's exactly what I think. Ken Troop insinuated as much when he said:
Let's start with what the pricing policy is as of today. I say "as of today" because the pricing model is subject to change. Why? Because we think we know what the value propositions in our applications are. We think we know what's going to excite the audience. We think we know what the last remaining technical obstacles are and how to overcome them. Why do we only think? Why don't we know? Because we've never had this type of model before. Wizards historically hasn't done subscriptions, and D&D has never had a digital package before meant to enhance the experience.
Now, he doesn't say they didn't do marketing. He didn't say they didn't do research. He didn't say they're taking a complete shot in the dark. However, the words he chose lacked any real substance or backbone. "We are confident, based on the research we've conducted, potential customers surveyed, tests run...." these things would lend some weight to Ken's statements, but they weren't there. No, it's not his or anyone else's job to give me an inside view of the workings of WotC or Hasbro. It is the job of whoever is posting in regards to these questions, concerns, and rants to instill a sense of security and confidence in the product and brand. That's not happening here. It could be poor wording, or they might be hitting the nail on the head--ohhhh, to be a fly on the wall in those offices.
Let's also be honest that WotC has always been a red-headed stepchild of the Hasbro family. Other portions of the company make mention of Hasbro at the drop of a hat--here, we only see a logo on the home page and in press releases. Those other brands all refer to Big Papa Hasbro, and it is relatively systematic for Hasbro to let some projects go their own way while all they want is to reap the benefits while not dealing with the headaches. Does Hasbro have all that money to throw around on marketing and R&D? Yes. Does that mean WotC does? Not at all.
So, once again, do I think that WotC has missed the mark on their market research with this particular product? Yes. And, for those who are wondering, I took an official poll this afternoon through a number of friends, acquaintances, and contacts about the DnDi. Many had no clue what it was--some people actually bought the books just because they were new and shiny. Of them, there were about 40 who replied thus far. Counting it up, 12 weren't interested in DnDi at all. Of the 28 remaining, 4 were willing to pay $15 a month with possible extra fees for things such as v-minis, 5 were willing to pay $15 a month, 8 weren't willing to pay anything, and the remaining 11 were willing to pay between $5 and $10 a month with no or VERY limited additional fees.
Last time i checked, the only other compeating product (campain cartographer, by pro fantasy software) costs several hundred for fewer features than dndinsider is offering for a paltry $15. yes it is not for everyone but for those few dm's like me who really go all out for their players, this is an affordable alternative.
and a side note. pro fantasy is flourishing. so i expect this to do well
I'm sorry, I'm trying to figure out what you mean pressure. Not only are there other similar tools, there are other *free* similar tools out there. Maptool, openrpg, not to mention other gorgeous paid ones for $30 or less flat fee. I've been reading your posts across a few threads, and I have to ask, what are you trying to sell?
Hm, let's say I start my subscription n-months after the release of DDI. Am I correct that I will only get access to content that is published that month? Or will I be able to browse through "back issues" of Dungeons and Dragon as well?
Will I be able to store data locally from the character builder/ visualizer and the cartographer? Or will all player data be stored on the server?
And finally: What is the background behind the descision to use a windows only solution, if there are well established 3d engines around that work on multipople platforms (several of which also provide web plug-ins)?
Right now my only guess would be that they wanted to use that .net code from D&D online... which would also explain the delays ;)
As a response to this comment, this falls under the category of someone knowing just enough to be dangerous. Taking a cue from college level intro microeconomics (which, by the way, I teach, among other things), depending on the product's demand, lower prices eventually result in lower revenues despite the increase in unit sales (and if you think I'm a crackpot, lower the price to $0 and tell me what their revenues would be). Going back to your high school economics, you should also realize that the goal would not be to maximize revenues, but to maximize profits.
Alright...down from the soapbox I come.
Faulty logic. My posit was that if the current pricing is X, and because the costs of production are far, far beneath X, the level of displeasure with X as the price suggests that a price of (X - Y) would result in higher profits.
Your counter argument boils down to "Where Z > Y, (X - Z) would result in a net profit loss, ergo (X - Y) would result in a net profit loss."
I never suggested that profits would continue to climb as the price went down continuously as the price approached zero. I was suggesting that the current pricing scheme is likely far above the point that will produce a reasonable profit.
TLDR: A price that was too low would decrease profits, yes. But that doesn't mean the current price is not too high.
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a) Our sole goal over these last few months has been to get D&D Insider out the door as soon as possible. When it became apparent that the majority of applications would not be ready at launch of 4th edition, we put up Bill Slavicsek's Ampersand article. But my mind was not feverishly worrying over the problem of how players would perceive this on launch day, it was obsessed with how to get out our applications as soon as possible.
If that's the case I strongly suggest WOTC hire someone skilled in public relations and community management, immediately if not sooner.
b) Because D&D Insider has always been an extra subscription, it never occurred to me that some players might feel misled about not having tools available at launch. Instead I've always thought it was great that we were willing to give away Dragon/Dungeon content, and soon hopefully some of our Compendium content, away for free. I'm not saying I'm right and those who are so angry are wrong. I thought 4th edition D&D was a great enough product on its own http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/dungeons-dragon.html , and that most people were buying the books for the books, and only then may be willing to check out this D&D Insider, not the other way around.
So, DDI is something that we really shouldn't have been excited about? It's human nature that if a person is excited and looking forward to something and is unable to get it they get upset, especially if there is no clear reason why. From your post, it seems as if DDI was just a little something extra tacked onto the books. If that is so, I have two questions for you:
Why did WOTC hype this thing so actively the past year or so?
Why should I pay $15 a month for something I really shouldn't have cared whether it was available for launch or not?
1) I'm a little turned off by the cost per book to use the compendium you mentioned earlier. I thought I'd heard about some sort of code that would unlock pdf. formatted material to the buyer of the books as they were purchased. Not wanting to buy the same material twice, I'm now more skeptical. I hope I read that wrong (it was early in the morning when I was reading the first part of this thread). It also sounds like the Compendium unlocks content for the Character Builder. Double-ugh, if true. I am not one to use computer-based books, I like the feel of a good page of paper at my fingertips for gaming. If the fee is kept nominal, though ti could work out.
2) If it'll cost more to sell the items separately, let us see the costs and decide if it's for us. Treat us like adults, and if we come to the conclusion that the bulk package is the best deal, then fine. If we see that you're charging $5 for Dragon, $5 for Dungeon, $12 for the Gaming table, etc. We'd at least be able to judge for ourselves (but if you put prices close to what I put up as example, prepare the flame-proof suit again.
3) At this point, I'd even like to see this Gaming Table in 2d, without the v-minis. I'd like to be able to contribute what I'd need to see in the program to think it worthwhile.
Just a few more thoughts in an already-ponderous thread.
I would pay for a la carte items if they were even halfway reasonable.
The reason for this is that I am only interested in the character generator and maybe Dungeon magazine. I have zero interest in the remainder and wouldn't use it even if it were free.
Any comparison to MMO pricing is ridiculous because DDI isn't even remotely similar in content or play time. It's like comparing Microsoft Office to Wordpad.
Faulty logic. My posit was that if the current pricing is X, and because the costs of production are far, far beneath X, the level of displeasure with X as the price suggests that a price of (X - Y) would result in higher profits.
Your counter argument boils down to "Where Z > Y, (X - Z) would result in a net profit loss, ergo (X - Y) would result in a net profit loss."
I never suggested that profits would continue to climb as the price went down continuously as the price approached zero. I was suggesting that the current pricing scheme is likely far above the point that will produce a reasonable profit.
TLDR: A price that was too low would decrease profits, yes. But that doesn't mean the current price is not too high.
Thanks. You saved me a lot of typing.
I am sorry Ken, but I have a very hard time swallowing that. Why is it so hard for you to defray that cost in the subscription model when every other online game manages just fine? Or is this cost you refer to an expected drop in the purchase of physical minis? If so, shame on you all.
To the defense of Ken and well everyone involved, if you are comparing the D&D minis to an MMO, don't even try to say they manage fine in creating new models. 90% of the new "models" created are in fact re-skinned or even just recolored and resized models from other places.
Take a look at WoW. You rarely see a monster model that isn't used a dozen times. And that goes for armor and weapons too! To make things even simpler as far as armor is concerned, several parts are invisible, and others change only the skin of the character's body (wrist, chest, belt, and leggings which are either legs or skirt) Even the bosses are often repeats of either random mooks within the dungeon, or even other bosses!
You only see new models during either full expansion packs, or you get a few during major patches. And let me remind you, this is BLIZZARD gaming we are talking about. They have not only a seriously larger moneypot for hiring computer graphic model artists, but they have had experience in the field of it for a LONG time.
I have a lot more to say, but the short of what I was getting at was I understand why miniatures should be a commodity, because they are probably very hard to make.
Now as you can tell by the length of this post, I put a lot of time and effort into it, please give me the simple dignity of reading it.
I want to emphasize how the very concept of these products excites me. They are in fact valuable tools for the imagination. The idea that those of us utterly lacking in the area known as artistic talent, yet blessed with vivid imaginations within our cavernous skulls. In fact the only major complaint at this time is why in the name of the Hellcow did you not think of it and implement it sooner? Of course that question is purely hypothetical and meant to emphasize my excitement for a tool that will help me visualize not only my new fourth edition character, but be useful in portraying my possible future Pathfinder characters, my 3.5 retired characters, and even my first edition characters I have created since I have a DM that refuses to upgrade to any new editions because he finds them too user friendly and feels that ease of use equates to condescension.
Don't worry about it, he had the same attitude when it came to the option of upgrading from Windows 2000 to XP. He found the bright buttons too condescending and too easy to use. Later he had trouble logging on to Windows 2000 because his password wasn't working and it turns out his caps lock was on which XP would have noticed.
This person is also my favorite DM.
[/end tangent]
At any rate, the concept of the character visualizer is hardly novel, even when it relates to D&D characters. In fact while geeking around at my local community college a few years ago, one person brought a PC version of Soul Calibur 3. (At least I remember it being on a laptop type screen so it could have been some sort of PS2 with a screen), and all the gathering D&D nerds began creating their characters within the character creation screen within Soul Calibur 3. To this effect they were actually wildly successful, myself included. The only problem being a lack of ability to have other races besides humans (that may pass for half elf in a pinch), but my human character I had rattling around in my head was visualized beautifully in this completely unrelated program. To have a program dedicated to said character visualization would be a godsend, and frankly a lot of fun. Safe to say this is probably the part of the suite I am looking forward to the most, and I am glad you announced it as being the closest to being done.
It also was my greatest source of disappointment when DDi came online and it was nowhere to be seen nor even an announcement concerning it's possible release date being mildly discussed. It took a widespread SEA of "WTF!!1" posts to dredge the subject up within an interview with Gamerzer0 who placed his "snarky hat" on and proceeded to throw, or rather lob softball questions at Chris Sims who artfully dodged any question related to a release date with a fervent for dodging blows equaled only by level 20 catfolk monks. It wasn't until the phrase "Next year" came up that he finally answered "that certainly is a goal". Although he said that with some degree of confidence, the end of the year is also 5 and a half months away. Instead of assuring me, this portrayal seemed to show someone who clearly had no idea how long it would take, but was loathe to either guess or admit his lack of knowledge.
Despite my rather pushy remarks, I don't actually hold any rancor or anger towards Sims (or Wizards in general) concerning this, except that I have some frustration at your ability to project completion on these products. I know you are probably working your damnedest to get it done and done well. Please do not take me for a person who demonizes you or only sees the negative in people, but the simple fact is when it came to the character visualizer, builder, and 3D game model, you will simply have to be honest about what happened.
You had no idea what you were getting into.
From the bottom of my heart I believe this. I also believe that you probably looked into it, researched it, and thought you knew what you were getting into and were proven wrong by the sheer utter frustration that comes when entering a completely new field of battle with inexperienced soldiers. Wizards never did software before. From the system requirements page 2 things became clear to me. One, that any artists you have should try to have the eladrins wearing blues and greens and other cool colors within their clothing since clothing and gear worn by eladrins that is exclusively or predominately red and yellow (and some of the more red shades of purple) invites a comparison to a certain game's race and style that you may want to disassociate yourself with since a large portion of the D&D population see said game as some sort of harbinger of doom that will turn D&D into some game only 12 year olds who cuss like sailors play, and only play anime character ripoffs with huge boobs or swords depending on the characters gender. The second thing I noticed is a lack of any sort of company logo or company name mentioned besides Wizards concerning this project, which leads me to believe the project was not outsourced to a different company, but instead was funded and run internally. I reiterate the point that you never made software before, which is why this project blew up in your face. One thing we all learn quickly when it comes to any software is release dates get pushed back. Not from lack of trying, but the process of making the program stable and compatible with a slew of different systems, operating systems, and service packs within the operating systems, becomes a monumental task not easily handled even by hardened professionals, much less newbies.
So what am I supposed to say or do about this situation to you to suggest or otherwise help you? Well my advice is actually rather simple.
1. Focus your energy on the character visualizer. This is the project closest to completion.
2. Release a beta ASAP. Unless the program causes someones computer to spontaneously undergo the effects of a Polymorph Any Object spell and your PC turns into a gelatinous cube, I am relatively certain that you will find a community of volunteers waiting to test and help out with your product at the low fee of some bandwidth and the privelage of sampling the work beforehand.
3. When you release this beta, do not feel it necessary to have all the parts ready for even beta testing. The hairstyles can be limited, some of the features can be missing, and the beta testers will have no room to complain. You can release it earlier this way.
Give us a little something to tide us over and even, unless you feel it necessary to have them sign non-disclosure agreements, openly discuss in the forums what works and what doesn't. You have to realize that the D&D forums probably have an audience that is more than a few steps more mature than other gaming boards. And it is not as if the content itself would be spoilers.
I do suggest that you leave yourself open to expansion when it comes to the character builder because after all, DMs will want to stick their hands into it, and make villains. The idea of customizable villains is as attractive as customizable PCs. You have to remember how open this may have to be, after all how many adventures end with a lich? To have customizable liches would certainly add some attractiveness to that $15 a month bill.
Moving along to the discussion of importation of minis to the D&D Game Table, I must say this idea excites me as well. I like the idea of seeing my custom made character in the fray of battle. this definitely makes the subscription worth it.
I WILL say this, I will actually think twice very hard if any one of these things are found to be true (If multiple are found to be true I wont think twice. I will not pay 15 bucks a month for the service):
A. You have to pay multiple times to have the same mini used more than once.
B. Minis cost an absurd amount of money.
C. You have to pay to import a mini from character visualizer to the 3D game floor from the get go. I understand POSSIBLY having a limit of say 10 or 12 minis from character visualizer to the game, and then having to pay for extra "slots" so to speak, but to immediately have to pay to have your first character within a game? I would disapprove greatly.
D. Minis are not available individually. While I think group deals would be an awesome thing, the minis should all be available to be purchased individually, which leads to my next point:
E. If the word "random" comes up at ANY POINT in buying minis online, I will not only not subscribe, but I will actually stop buying Wizards products altogether. Then just to spite you guys I'll see about that job offer with PTME productions just to encourage possible competition for you. I don't find it likely you WOULD, but I'm just giving you a heads up.
A few suggestions for the people in development, you may want to consider a few options when it comes to the visualizer and it's future.
First off, let the community get involved! Allow submissions of hairstyles and other items to be added to the roster of the visualizer. Simply ask for a hand drawn suggestion, but put a few rules. For example, original artwork only, unless you want 100,000 emails requesting you add Sephiroth's sword or Cloud's pointy hair with a jpeg they got off google.
More fun and practical would be contests on mini design where the winner gets their mini created and published in the next batch of minis as a collector's item.
If you decide to get involved like that, there also is the possiblity (much later) when the character visualizer is up and running, that you hire some sort of service to manufacture 3D models for customer's at a price. Blizzard has already done something similar: http://www.figureprints.com/
Of course that is just a pipe dream of sorts but it would be cool anyway.
As far as the compendium and the character builder go, I would actually not worry about those too much at this time. You barely have the core books out, leaving those parts of the suite about as useful as... well, a pdf of the 3 core books (which I am sure a large portion of your audience already unfortunately has). When multiple books come out, and Dungeon and Dragon has many articles to sort through, it will become a VERY valuable tool. As of right now, we can wait and thus it can wait.
As for the map-making software, frankly I've seen free programs on the net that compare to it's concept, except when it comes to the integration of it into the 3D game table. This is the part I am looking forward to, which is an extension of why I love the character visualizer. I completely understand the having to pay for CERTAIN map components, after all the 3D braziers are as much a model to create as any mini. In fact if they are animated they are an even BIGGER chore. So let me voice my hope for this product to come soon after the character visualizer.
And well, that's all I have to say about that. Enjoy the criticism.
You asked for it.
....And well, that's all I have to say about that.
Well said, and seconded.
Well said, and seconded.
I agree. Very well said and one of the few level headed suggestions on how to improve or clarify positions on (especially in the v mini realm). I hope Ken and other wotc look at High Octanes comments as at least for me I agree with just about everything he said.
*ticks sig twice* :D
To the defense of Ken and well everyone involved, if you are comparing the D&D minis to an MMO, don't even try to say they manage fine in creating new models. 90% of the new "models" created are in fact re-skinned or even just recolored and resized models from other places.
The thing is, models in wow are all fully animated too, and can be changed to suit various roles, you might have some peasant orc weilding a shovel, or you might have a mighty orc warlord wearing some sort of magical full plate weilding a two handed mace, or perhaps he is wearing a robe and casting spells from the top of a dragon. etc.. etc.. etc..
its not SO surprising that blizzard decide to make a single basic racial model, and then work in ways to have 100 variations on a theme.
I would hazard a guess that creating a 3d model, and fully animating it for all possible eventualities and then further allowing it to be customised with individual weapons or armour, is probably a more complicated process than creating a single, non animated static model.
If i were to buy an "orc" model from WotC, could i make a convincing orc priestess weilding a staff out of it? or will it (as i suspect) just be a generic orc male weilding an axe in a pose i cant vary
I have a lot more to say, but the short of what I was getting at was I understand why miniatures should be a commodity, because they are probably very hard to make.
in the case of making REAL miniatures, you obviously have to stick to one design otherwise things get costly, but just creating a 3d virtual version of a static miniature isn't exactly going to be a hard task.
I would understand them being hard to make if they were MORE complex or variable than your common computer game character model, but chances are we are looking at a one time 3d render skinned once with no variation and a price tag slapped on it.
The thing is, models in wow are all fully animated too, and can be changed to suit various roles, you might have some peasant orc weilding a shovel, or you might have a mighty orc warlord wearing some sort of magical full plate weilding a two handed mace, or perhaps he is wearing a robe and casting spells from the top of a dragon. etc.. etc.. etc..
its not SO surprising that blizzard decide to make a single basic racial model, and then work in ways to have 100 variations on a theme.
I would hazard a guess that creating a 3d model, and fully animating it for all possible eventualities and then further allowing it to be customised with individual weapons or armour, is probably a more complicated process than creating a single, non animated static model.
Except for one thing: They only have to do it once. Once that is done, all the weapons follow the same path, with just different graphics. The only difference there is there is a 1 handed and a 2 handed movement and posing. Hell even spellcasting has most of the same poses.
And I might mention that armor and weapon graphics are repeated a lot. Hell a lot of spells share the same graphics.
Now making that first character WAS a complex procedure, but after that it was a simple matter of inserting different skins on the same body and different models of weapons in the same poses and movements. That was by design.
Now if Wizards shows a bunch of skeletons that are clearly the same model in different poses, I will call BS on them, but if they are anything like the real minis then they will all be clearly different models. I have yet to see 2 minis that look really similar (unless of course they are actually duplicates) the closest thing I have seen to that are some goblin and kobold minis look like the same model wearing different gear and weapons (or a trap in the kobolds case). In that case they are very differently geared, and theres only 2 or 3 types.
because they are probably very hard to make.
LoL. Assuming 10 cents of their monthly fee went towards v-mini's and the manage to hook in a 100,000 subscribers to DDI (wow is kicking around 10 million, I'd be suprised if DDI couldn't beat 100k subscribers) Then guess what, they could pay for office space, computers, software, and two full time technically skilled employees (Assuming 50k starting salaries, averaged between a graphical designer and programmer) to do nothing but design mini's all year long, and guess what, they aren't that hard to make since they are non moving MODELS. This is about the simplest part of designing graphics for a 3d application next to textures. That's with 1% of their income, assuming everyone is paying for a year at a go, .6% if people are only trying it out for a month. (also on the topic the cost to upgrade the software itself for changing errata, 2 dollars of the fee would employ a 40 man design team year round to do that.)
Also whoever mentioned bandwidth costs since they need to verify access to different tiers.... assuming 1KB sent upstream for verification (generous) and 2KB sent back as some hash of privileges, lets round the total bandwidth of the transaction to 5k to allow some overhead and whatever anti piracy tom foolery they think will stop people. Assuming they charged a flat one time purchase fee of 20 dollars, for the software, and your average gamer wants to play with the table 4 times a month. In the next 80 years of his life his total bandwidth usage with the software will cost WoTC .015 cents. That's a hundreth of a cent. As a portion of the cost of the game? than 7 percent of a percent of a percent.
Now making that first character WAS a complex procedure, but after that it was a simple matter of inserting different skins on the same body and different models of weapons in the same poses and movements. That was by design.
Yes. Except even reducing down to the number of base models wow has, you're still talking 50+ off the top of my head? And many new base types have been added as free content, not part of expansions. (AQ, BWL, Naxx, where all free content featuring new model base types, and many new weapons graphics)
You guys realize you could just take the AutoCAD stuff for DDM miniature sculpts and convert them into a format for DDi? Then clean it up a bit and texture. It'd be quicker than modeling them all from scratch.
Yep, that'd do it alright. If they don't have autocad models for them (they could be made from hand sculpted masters after all) then they can do 3d scans of them (look up NextEngine, it's fantastic stuff, will even create the textures for you).
The big thing about paying for minis is: yes, it costs something to design a mini (unless they scan the physical minis) but once it's designed it's free to "manufacture." In general your subscription to a MMO gets you free content updates (I suspect that they really regret ever comparing DDi to an MMO by now
). It's basically the "deal" in subscription games: you pay a fee that pays for the servers and you get free content updates. You get new stuff, they make money. Occasionally they bring out a paid expansion but these always add major content. I'm wondering, what's going to be in DDis "free content updates"? Will there be any?
They appear to be planning on charging us for, well, just about all new content after all. I suppose for a lot of people (me included) it just stings that they think they can charge us 3 times; for the books, for the DDi subscription and for the content (minis, pdfs of books, adventures). Four times I suppose, if you buy physical minis too.
I think that additional mini updates should be made available as content updates as part of the subscription and I don't buy the line that the costs aren't accounted for in the subscription fee; for that price they should be.
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What does the subscription cost include? The plan is for the subscription to include --
- All Dragon and Dungeon content we produce during your subscription.
- The Online Compendium. The database that fuels the Compendium would include data from all official books and e-magazines.
- The Character Visualizer that allows you to create 2d and 3d images of your character.
- The Character Builder that allows you to create a digital character sheet. This application will draw from the same database as the Compendium, which means that you eventually need just the one stop-shop to refer to material from all the official books and e-magazines.
- The Digital Game Table and Dungeon Builder which allows you to create dungeons and play in them with other people online. The Game Table will very likely include a starter's set of Virtual Minis and Dungeon Tiles to start you off.
Well ignoring the fact that the E-tools are windows only. There are really only two things mentioned there that I have any interest in currently. "The Character Builder" and "The Online Compendium". The "The Digital Game Table" sounds neat, but given my group is face to face not a big deal. I just can't see plopping down $10/month for that (When I'm in I tend to be in for the long haul).
Given that it looks like the builder will be windows only when it's released that makes it 1. (And if the Compendium requires some windows-only reader then it's none) theres just no way I justify paying for this. If push comes to shove I'll make a spread sheet to put my character information in.
So the Brand Manager says all mosnters from all core publications including the e-zines will be in the tools, but you say otherwise?
Who should we believe?
Both are right, one is talking about tokens, the other about Virtual Miniatures.
The D&D Game Table differentiates between a game piece and it's representation.
All Monsters from core publications will be added to the D&D Game Table as base game pieces (i.e. tokens).
Some of those monsters will also have a 3D Virtual Miniature. We do not plan to have one Virtual Miniature for each monster published.
The D&D Game Table will have a mechanism for you to assign a Virtual Miniature representation to a monster that does not have any, if you want to, or to create your own custom monsters, using either a token with a custom image, or an existing Virtual Miniature you have.
Will I be able to store data locally from the character builder/ visualizer and the cartographer? Or will all player data be stored on the server?
You will be able to store data locally indeed.
And finally: What is the background behind the descision to use a windows only solution, if there are well established 3d engines around that work on multipople platforms (several of which also provide web plug-ins)?
Right now my only guess would be that they wanted to use that .net code from D&D online... which would also explain the delays ;)
We are using .Net and we are using a 3D Game Engine that Wizards already had before we started this project, and that was DirectX driven.
There are no links whatsoever with D&D Online, as D&D Insider applications are not a game, but mainly tools to enhance the PnP Role Playing experience.
Both are right, one is talking about tokens, the other about Virtual Miniatures.
The D&D Game Table differentiates between a game piece and it's representation.
All Monsters from core publications will be added to the D&D Game Table as base game pieces (i.e. tokens).
Some of those monsters will also have a 3D Virtual Miniature. We do not plan to have one Virtual Miniature for each monster published.
The D&D Game Table will have a mechanism for you to assign a Virtual Miniature representation to a monster that does not have any, if you want to, or to create your own custom monsters, using either a token with a custom image, or an existing Virtual Miniature you have.
Thank you. As always you come with a very direct and clear answer!
So I will extract information for ease of reading, and you can correct me if I am wrong.
- All official monsters will be 2D tokens
- All tokens will be free for subscribers
- Subscribers get some free 3D v-minis based on the official monsters
- Subscribers can buy special 3D v-minis not in official products
Does that sum it up correctly?
Wherein Scott had corrected you in another thread, it seems you had to correct him from DDXP in this one where it seemed that 3D minis would exist for all monsters, not just tokens.
Again, thanks for clearing up the confussion. Merci.
Thank you. As always you come with a very direct and clear answer!
So I will extract information for ease of reading, and you can correct me if I am wrong.
- All official monsters will be 2D tokens
- All tokens will be free for subscribers
- Subscribers get some free 3D v-minis based on the official monsters
- Subscribers can buy special 3D v-minis not in official products
Does that sum it up correctly?
For most of it yes.
The exact link between V-Minis and official monsters is still up in the air. Technically, there will always be a default stat block for any new V-Mini. Knowing if this stat block comes from an official published monsters or will be made ad-hoc is up to R&D.
So as an example, a mini called Daring Rogue may be appearing in the D&D Game Table as the representation of the Human Bandit from the MM, or may have it's own stats created by R&D as Daring Rogue.
I am sure named NPCs would all have special stats and not just use Human Rogue for Bob the Bandit.
You need to be paid by the marketing and PR departments as well as IT because you do a lot of their work also.
I am sorry Ken, but I have a very hard time swallowing that. Why is it so hard for you to defray that cost in the subscription model when every other online game manages just fine? Or is this cost you refer to an expected drop in the purchase of physical minis? If so, shame on you all.
Well, I know a bit about the way that miniatures are produced, and so I know they already -have- wireframes for all the minis already extant. Additionally, texturing them is simple -- they can scan a painted mini. Really, transforming a physical miniature to a textured, 3d mesh is a trivial thing with the technology nowadays. It's not like they need to be boned or animated.
The 'additional cost' to provide vminis of extant models is vanishingly small, likely into the fraction of a cent range -- maybe a whole cent if the files are stupidly large or something. Brand-new vmini-only models would be slightly more expensive, but not, I think, by much.
Well, I know a bit about the way that miniatures are produced, and so I know they already -have- wireframes for all the minis already extant. Additionally, texturing them is simple -- they can scan a painted mini. Really, transforming a physical miniature to a textured, 3d mesh is a trivial thing with the technology nowadays. It's not like they need to be boned or animated.
The 'additional cost' to provide vminis of existant models is vanishingly small, likely into the fraction of a cent range -- maybe a whole cent if the files are stupidly large or something. Brand-new vmini-only models would be slightly more expensive, but not, I think, by much.
The vminis aren't animated so my mind is blown that they can't do 3D of all the MM creatures, if I'm doing a full year Subscription, using their MM book, why can't I get ALL the monsters? That is shameful, they are stagnant 3d Minis, if they would be animated, I would totally understand.
EK
WotC's bungling of the gametable clearly shows we need someone to create an open source vtt with 3d models that allows for user created content to be added right off the bat. There's already a wealth of 3d models out there at various sites that could be converted for used with it quite easily.
Or we could just continue to use MapTool http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=maptool:intro - MIT license, source code available... expanded community support. No 3D yet, but if we can get the support it'll be there once OS X fully supports Java 6 (on its way).
Ken, Welcome to the 21st century.......c'mon man! You were the lead designer for DDO (Dungeons and Dragons Online) for Turbine!
And we all know how well that turned out.
If you guys deliver them as advertized....WOW! It's gonna take D&D to the next level. It'll open the game up to/for many folks who otherwise wouldn't be interested.
Yeah I don't think WotC truly groks how long folks have been anticipating an official product that will allow us to play Real D&D online, yes we have some third party apps..but for the most part they suck, or are very limited.
The virtual table has the potential to be the single coolest thing EVER. IF IT WORKS SIMPLY AND SEAMLESSLY!!!!
As soon as it's available I'll be signing up for a year.....BUT, you guys have got to deliver the features you've promised and the performance we demand. No half-assed software that lags and crashes please.......
Yeah as will I, I held off on buying the books because, hey I knew they would never deliver in time for the 4e rollout, quite simply this really should have been anticipated. I'm not going to get my undies in a knot over it however. If WoTC delivers on the VGT I'll buy into 4e, if not I won't, and the majority of folks have the same mindset.. ..meanwhile 4e can enjoy sluggish sales until WoTC comes through with what they originally promised.
Here's my question. I hope stuff is being viewed over and perhaps responded to still.
Are we guaranteed to actually see these programs available to the public?
Or will this become Quasi-Vaporware like what Master Tools became (with the far inferior E-Tools taking it's place)?
I understand problems happened with Master Tools, but if WoTC has another event like this happening... I would hope they'd be honest about it.
I'm very enthusiastic about 4th Edition, and hope that WoTC does it justice by keeping up with what we've been hyped up by.
Either way, it would be nice to hear some more stuff from him.
Yeah, I remember him saying something about responding on some Monday which I think might be today, but I would have to look.
Either way, it would be nice to hear some more stuff from him.
Yes his last post was to the effect he would be posting again one or two weeks.
Two weeks are up, however with forum issues perhaps his page by page replies might have become delayed. If he could not read them when he planned he clearly could not type a reply.
I initially heard about the (then pending) release of the 4th edition of D&D purely by coincidence and only as a direct result of the death of Gary Gaygax. My mother, having remembered my boyhood love of the game, told me in passing that he had died, having seen his obituary in the New York Times. I then popped his name into You Tube and, entirely by accident, happened upon some video clips discussing the pending release of the 4th edition and, even more interestingly to me, the new online tools (which I now know are called "D&D Insider").
At the risk of getting a lot of grief from my wife for being "a dork," I asked for the 4th edition gift set as a Fathers Day present. I knew that I'd almost certainly never play the game again. But I also knew that thumbing through the new rulebooks would bring back in a rush some very happy childhood memories. I suspect that there may be thousands of people like me, and that we may be a significant reason why the gift set was pushed to near the top of the Amazon.com sales chart. (And, indeed, apparently sold out on day 1, leaving me among those not to receive a copy until early August.)
I mention all of this background only to emphasize that, while I may come from a very different perspective than many other post-ers here, I agree with many of the comments in the other posts made on this topic (if, perhaps, with dramatically less rancor). I do not think that they should be dismissed merely as the rantings of hard core zealots.
I'll now address a handful of specific comments about D&D Insider:
Firstly, I found it very confusing when, on Fathers Day weekend (having already been disappointed not to receive the gift set from Amazon), I tried to log onto the new D&D Insider website to check out these online tools and found that the site seemed not to exist. I didn't initially understand why I kept being forced back to WoTC main D&D page instead. And there seemed to be no explanation as to why the D&D Insider site was not up. Even today, with the "coming soon" banners having been added, if I had not read this string of posts I am sure that I would not have understood what was wrong.
Secondly, I strongly agree with many of the posts here that this message board is very hard to find on the site and locating information here about the status of D&D Insider was surprisingly difficult.
Thirdly, I have since watched the interview of Ken Troop posted on You Tube, as well as another one with Chris Youngs. As a very distantly removed fan, I found these videos to be very confusing. They each seemed to imply that various parts of D&D Insider were already being rolled out. (This confused me because the D&D Insider site itself seemed not to be active yet.) Yet having read this thread, I now understand the reality of the situation: that the release of the core online tools (the online table top, the dungeon builder and character creator) is many months away and that what has been made "live" so far is merely the posting of PDFs of a couple of magazine articles (and now the compendium). To be honest, from my perspective as a very distantly removed older fan, it's a bit misleading (though I am sure unintentionally so) to imply that the D&D Insider is already in part rolled out, based merely on the fact that a couple of PDFs have been posted on the main D&D site. I'd recommend posting as soon as possible another interview wherein Ken Troop (or perhaps someone else) explain the situation much more directly and frankly, so that the casual fan can better understand the status.
Lastly, I wanted to briefly comment on the proposed pricing of D&D Insider, again from the perspective of a grown man long removed from his playing days. I well recognize that the decision about how to price the D&D Insider must have (and, frankly, should have) been made without old fans like me (who are no longer active players) in mind. Mindful of that caveat, I would note that I would certainly pay a one-time fee of $5 or so to play around with the online tools (once they're up) for a couple of hours and maybe create a character or two for fun, and for old times' sake. But a cost much higher than that (I think that the proposed one month fee is $15) may well be enough of a barrier to cause me to wave it off a just too pricey for my casual, very limited interest. As a result, I would recommend that you add another option to buy a one time block of time, say, three or four hours, for $5 or so, to cater to the thousands of us grown-up, non-players who bought the 4th edition books for "old time's sake" and to peruse, not play. I believe that many like me would happily pay some small amount to check out the D&D Insider for a few hours on our own, without any intention of ever using it to play the game on an ongoing basis. In addition to the additional revenue for WoTC , I am sure that the WoTC marketing department would love to have the contact details (and demographic details) of thousands of additional people who may no longer play the game but who retain a passing interest in D&D largely because of fond childhood memories.
I hope that this feedback is of some help.
Best of luck.