Did a quick run-through of the online CB, and was able to replicate my slayer from Essentials in about five minutes of build time. The interface (at least for quick essentials characters) is very good, and it does seem to run more smoothly than the offline CB did.
I did have two fatal errors occur - once while adjusting ability scores and again while attempting to build a character using the "Home Game" setting. I'm giving WotC the benefit of the doubt, though, as I'm currently running a bunch of scripts in this browser (splitting my attention between real work and gaming, as usual), which could interfere with Silverlight in an unexpected fashion.
The good news is that even with a fatal error, when I refreshed the window, the CB recovered the progress I'd made so far on my build. So kudos for that.
(And yeah, I caved and got a one-month membership even after my previous bravado about going pen-and-paper only. Basically, the chance to grab the offline CB with all updates was just too good a deal to pass up knowing that it would be unavailable as of today.)
Holy balls this is so hilariously awful
Once I installed Silverlight, I was pleased to say that I could finally run the builder on my mac. I was easily able to throw a few characters together. So far so good.
Imported my character. That was a bit odd. It hung but how the heck do you tell? I eventually got bored and closed it down. Upon opening the thing again there was my imported character. Scratched my head and continued on.
It seemed to miss a number of things in importing and I found I had to load up the old character builder just to check things out and add where necessary. The fact that it did not import that my Human Cleric used the human +2 stat bonus on wisdom was pretty perplexing. I mean that is pretty basic.
Nonetheless it only took a few minutes to add the material that was not imported. the online character builder does use colours to indicate what has to still be added to the character to make it legal. Took me a bit to recognize that but once I did I went through this pretty fast.
It messes up retraining. Not only issues with not carrying the retraining over during import but it also does not really say what was retrained into what anywhere. This applies to the character sheet as well where it insists that my character has the toughness feat (though it does not give me the mechanical benefits) when that feat was retrained for In Death, Life. It does have In Death, Life as well and the mechanical benefits have been applied so this is more annoyance then a real fatal bug.
Program is a bit unstable though its pretty good at recovery.
I like how it often gives you the exact math breakdown when reviewing powers and I think there are a handful of other nice additions but most of the time when I saw something I liked I could think of something I thought was missing.
For example my cleric's Healing Word Power is on the character sheet but I did not see it on the builder...which is too bad because I really want to see how the bonuses stack there. I'm pretty sure the CB is not stacking my bonus' right but am not positive and I had this problem with the old CB as well. I was hoping to resolve this here as there is a feature in the new version where it points out when your getting bonuses that don't stack. I really like that element and want to see a lot more of this sort of thing, but we are by no means fully there.
In terms of use I don't think this is really better or worse then the old character builder though I can see glimmers of how it might eventually be significantly more slick. Essentially you can see faint outlines of what WotC learned from the original character builder but currently there are about as many elements of the builder that feel less polished then what we used to have as there are elements that a user is happy to have. Even in considering these elements all of the improvements feel like ones that could just as easily have been applied to a downloaded CB.
Overall, for me, its pretty much a wash. Nothing has been brought to the table that really excites me and yet nothing has been removed that makes this a deal breaker for me.
in passing I think the new Essentials character sheets are absolutely awful...on the other hand I actually like the 'Character Builder' sheets better then what we used to get. Mainly because they moved the stats over to the right and de-emphasized them. In reality your basic stats are are super important to the underlying math of your character but are very rarely important when your actually playing your character. Since we are using character builders it makes sense to have ones character sheet really be designed for utility at the table and not so much for utility in character creation.
The new power cards look to be an improvement. Especially if you have newbs that get easily confused. The critical initial information (what you need to hit, how much damage, what kind of power this is and what kind of action is being used) have been nicely highlighted while stuff like keywords have been moved to a less prominent part of the card.
Finally, having imported my Cleric and updated him, including the awesome new Heroic Effort power I have no real way to download him. I hear rumours that there is some method of creating a PDF but am unclear how to do that. If I have a major complaint with this product this is it. Anyone care to explain how one turns these character sheets into PDFs to me?
I have a feature on my computer/printer (not sure which) that allows me to save as a pdf instead of printing. I tried it out, and it made a nice pdf duplicate of how the character sheet looks on the builder. The only slight difference is that the text on the pdf seems a little blurry compared to the builder, though for the most part I can still read it fine (some of the small font on the power cards is a little difficult to read).
I tried it out yesterday. I was neither impressed nor disgusted. I use a lot of web-based programs at work, so it wasn't any more difficult than that. The only problem with web-based stuff is you are at the mercy of your internet connection and the server. At least with an offline builder, the only factors you had to worry about were your own hardware and software.
I also made a character using a pencil, a character sheet, and 3x5 cards for power cards. I think I prefer this for now. When Hero Lab starts making Essentials characters available for creation (which should be in December), I will use that.
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I have a feature on my computer/printer (not sure which) that allows me to save as a pdf instead of printing. I tried it out, and it made a nice pdf duplicate of how the character sheet looks on the builder. The only slight difference is that the text on the pdf seems a little blurry compared to the builder, though for the most part I can still read it fine (some of the small font on the power cards is a little difficult to read).
How is the layout?
If I print it up from PDF is it sepreated the correct way per page?
Day Two of Online CB Muckaround!
Last night: Ran CB in Chrome. Minimal difficulties, some slowness. Crashed on first attempt to make custom build of slayer. About an hour later, helped a n00b friend build a quick Essentials thief, again using Chrome, and had no problems completing the build, saving it to the cloud, and printing a copy for him to join us for Keep on the Borderlands on Wednesday night.
This morning: Used Firefox to run CB. Did a custom build of my slayer so I could add the magic armor he looted a few sessions back. Went pretty well, except I can't seem to just print specific pages of the character sheet. Wanted pages 1 and 4 (main sheet and power cards only). Can't seem to get the CB to print a single page that isn't the first page. Didn't want to waste that much ink, but I guess I'll just print a full sheet and throw out the fluff in the middle that I don't need. At least I have a shiny looking sheet for tonight's Encounters session.
I suspect someone somewhere was busy late last night fixing code, because I didn't notice anywhere near the number of hangups I did immediately after launch.
My thoughts so far: It's not bad. It certainly needs work, and the number of complaints I see on the WotC forums suggests that it's far from being perfect. I'm a little wary of people paying subscription price for this; it'll be interesting to see if their customer service division gives out DDI refunds to people who complain about limited functionality. They probably should, given the circumstances and the lack of goodwill toward this move.
For me, though, the CB is working as intended and without too many problems. I haven't done a detailed math check to make sure the numbers on my new character sheet are calculated correctly; it seems okay at a glance, though.
This is still a temporary concession for me, I think. Once Hero Lab supports Essentials builds and the Compendium includes the HotFK classes, I will probably cancel my DDI sub and just start using Hero Lab instead.
It was slow, and crashed a few times. And I noticed differences in powers for damage, and to hit, versus the same character from the old CB which I imported. But the biggest problem is the user interface in regards to the old character builder, i.e. the amount of mouse clicks and windows that open to access information and how it is organized.
Over time anything can be fixed, but it is not worth paying for beta testing, so wizards knows what to fix. And it will not support offline character generation (already known).
I expect with all the windows and clicking that is necesary it will not be netbook friendly either. My subscription was almost over, so at least I know it is not worth the subscription price and they should have tested it more.
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Ok, wait. I pay very little attention to DDI since I only use it to update the character builder I access through my DMs account, so I didn't know there was a change coming.
So, I gather that an online builder will bring an end to updates to the offline builder? Will they continue to allow multiple person access to accounts for purposes of character management? Or am I just stuck with the latest offline build I have and that's it?
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Ok, wait. I pay very little attention to DDI since I only use it to update the character builder I access through my DMs account, so I didn't know there was a change coming.
So, I gather that an online builder will bring an end to updates to the offline builder? Will they continue to allow multiple person access to accounts for purposes of character management? Or am I just stuck with the latest offline build I have and that's it?
Yup, the old CB is dead, no more updates.
They never allowed sharing the same account. Your DM was breaking the rules he agreed to when he made the account, and could lose it if WotC found out, not sure how they would though, unless they pay attention logons and where it is coming from. Though there is nothing stopping him from continuing doing it.
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Ok, wait. I pay very little attention to DDI since I only use it to update the character builder I access through my DMs account, so I didn't know there was a change coming.
So, I gather that an online builder will bring an end to updates to the offline builder? Will they continue to allow multiple person access to accounts for purposes of character management? Or am I just stuck with the latest offline build I have and that's it?
Yup, the old CB is dead, no more updates.
They never allowed sharing the same account. Your DM was breaking the rules he agreed to when he made the account, and could lose it if WotC found out, not sure how they would though, unless they pay attention logons and where it is coming from. Though there is nothing stopping him from continuing doing it.
I'm 'pretty sure' that's not true. The builder itself allowed up to 5 updates per account. I doubt that even WotC expected one person to need to update five computers for personal use. In fact, I vaguely recall the discussion of using one account by multiple players at one table as one of the selling points. Though I could be wrong about that or it could have changed. (The later wouldn't surprise me at all.)
Ok, wait. I pay very little attention to DDI since I only use it to update the character builder I access through my DMs account, so I didn't know there was a change coming.
So, I gather that an online builder will bring an end to updates to the offline builder? Will they continue to allow multiple person access to accounts for purposes of character management? Or am I just stuck with the latest offline build I have and that's it?
Yup, the old CB is dead, no more updates.
They never allowed sharing the same account. Your DM was breaking the rules he agreed to when he made the account, and could lose it if WotC found out, not sure how they would though, unless they pay attention logons and where it is coming from. Though there is nothing stopping him from continuing doing it.
Its presumably against the terms of use agreement but the new system seems even less viable for stopping this sort of thing then the old one. In any case the whole 'on the clouds' model means anyone with the password and account name can access from any location.
My DM just sent an email saying to use his account for our character sheets. I'm less then keen on the idea, I have my own account in any case so why use his...except that WotC has given me no way to transfer material from my account to his and a DM has the right to demand that his players turn over their character sheets. Thinking about it I'll probably just tell him to wait for a month and WotC will have fixed this sort of thing. I doubt he needs to see my character in that space and if necessary he can use the old CB to look at my character, its near identical.
Yup, the old CB is dead, no more updates.They never allowed sharing the same account. Your DM was breaking the rules he agreed to when he made the account, and could lose it if WotC found out, not sure how they would though, unless they pay attention logons and where it is coming from. Though there is nothing stopping him from continuing doing it.
I'm 'pretty sure' that's not true. The builder itself allowed up to 5 updates per account. I doubt that even WotC expected one person to need to update five computers for personal use. In fact, I vaguely recall the discussion of using one account by multiple players at one table as one of the selling points. Though I could be wrong about that or it could have changed. (The later wouldn't surprise me at all.)
I'm fairly sure Dragnmoon is correct. Your license agreement did not allow you to spread the account to all your friends.
Five accounts can get sucked up by one person surprisingly quick. Your home computer, both living room and den, your work computer, the netbook you take on business trips and your super fancy phone.
Now I'm fairly sure you could open you account and let your friends come to your house and use your builder at your computer but don't think you can hand the account info over for their use at their computers.
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Yup, the old CB is dead, no more updates.They never allowed sharing the same account. Your DM was breaking the rules he agreed to when he made the account, and could lose it if WotC found out, not sure how they would though, unless they pay attention logons and where it is coming from. Though there is nothing stopping him from continuing doing it.
I'm 'pretty sure' that's not true. The builder itself allowed up to 5 updates per account. I doubt that even WotC expected one person to need to update five computers for personal use. In fact, I vaguely recall the discussion of using one account by multiple players at one table as one of the selling points. Though I could be wrong about that or it could have changed. (The later wouldn't surprise me at all.)
I'm fairly sure Dragnmoon is correct. Your license agreement did not allow you to spread the account to all your friends.
Five accounts can get sucked up by one person surprisingly quick. Your home computer, both living room and den, your work computer, the netbook you take on business trips and your super fancy phone.
Now I'm fairly sure you could open you account and let your friends come to your house and use your builder at your computer but don't think you can hand the account info over for their use at their computers.
Was just looking over the licensing stuff and it looks like he is right. :-/
I'm still convinced they at least talked about allowing account sharing. But then that was when they were talking about the gaming table and a lot of other things as well.
Arrrgggh...
Tried to make a character, CB froze 3 times and I had to exit CB and the WotC website and then re-enter to continue. The third time the character wasn't recoverable and had to start from scratch.
I think I'm not going to renew my subscription and wait half a year for WotC to fix the CB or come out with a new version.
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I'm watchin the WotC message boards with morbid facination. I'm just glad I'm a spectator and not part of it. It's like a bad reality show where tempers are going up and the contestants just fail miserably.
It's bad for the community and all the poor subscribers - but for some reason it feels hard to feel sorry for WotC.
We are now reaching day 3. WotC tried in vain to fix stuff until late night (their time). Unfortunately this being online only they have customers in different time-zones - waking up to a tool not yet fixed and nobody working on it right now.
Being in a big company with our servers in the US I know the problems. If there is a server issue that came up during night - we poor people in the UK are the first to notice - but there is nothing we can do until the US wakes up.
WotC will be losing quite a few hard core players/GMs with this Public Relations debacle. I just hope other systems can pick them up and they aren't lost.
Thod
I like the new builder, the only thing that seriously annoys me is that they used a fixed resolution for the whole thing. Wow, resizing actually just zooms the whole thing but doesn't allow to enlarge the small text boxes. Major user-interface NO-GO. Especially for a web-based app, where anything from 640x480 to 2560x1920 resolutions should be possible.
Idiots.
Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the new system.
I like the new builder, the only thing that seriously annoys me is that they used a fixed resolution for the whole thing. Wow, resizing actually just zooms the whole thing but doesn't allow to enlarge the small text boxes. Major user-interface NO-GO. Especially for a web-based app, where anything from 640x480 to 2560x1920 resolutions should be possible.
Idiots.
Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the new system.
The resolution explains why it will not let me get past the first page with my netbook, and to add insult to injury I have close to 100 characters on my netbook, as I often substitute player characters as NPCs for my oriental, forgotten realms, and dark sun campaign (which died after the CB delays). Some of those characters are my own for encounter nights, living forgottem realms and homebrew. I feel embarrassed I bought into DDI this long, knowing how I am being treated in the end (literally).
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The resolution explains why it will not let me get past the first page with my netbook, and to add insult to injury I have close to 100 characters on my netbook, as I often substitute player characters as NPCs for my oriental, forgotten realms, and dark sun campaign (which died after the CB delays). Some of those characters are my own for encounter nights, living forgottem realms and homebrew. I feel embarrassed I bought into DDI this long, knowing how I am being treated in the end (literally).
Well Since there is a 20 character limit, you won't be able to update 80 of them to the New CB.
*snipped reasoned analysis*
As it is, I think they will continue to take flak (and rightfully so) for having released a buggy and incomplete piece of software. They will hopefully weather the storm, because I'm pretty sure it will be a vast improvement in the long run. Some of the changes with it - the filtering and search features, for example - are simply amazing.
So, for now, I'll continue to wait and see.
Agreed. I think the make-or-break here is going to be how well Wizards does with supporting AND updating the new CB as well as integrating the other digital tools in the works. There's a lot of frustration being vented on their message boards; a lot of DDI subscribers just take it for granted by now that any promises on the digital front are either waiting to be broken or outright lies. That's a perception WotC needs to work to change.