|
3 years ago ::
Nov 15, 2010 - 10:30AM
#461
|
|
|
Unfortunately, because they are running Silverlight in a browser the character builder won't be able to directly access your hard drive (much like Java web apps, Silverlight runs in a sandbox and is restricted from doing certain things on your computer). The export/import stuff is going to be the only way they can do it.
If it is going to have export capability (albeit not at launch), it has to be able to write to the hard drive. An export is really no different than "Save as..." in the long run.
Actually, that is not entirely correct. You could have an export feature where the server creates the file and gives you a URL link to the file - then when you click and save it is your web browser accessing your hard drive, not the silverlight application. You may not notice a difference, but the difference is there - and that difference is why they will not be able to do things like see characters stored on your hard drive (which is what I was responding to) You may be able to upload and export characters from the system, but the application will not be able to manipulate characters stored on your local machine.
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 15, 2010 - 10:34AM
#462
|
|
|
yeah but are you really gonna make more than 20 new pcs in the month or so it takes hem to do that? that need essentials and dark sun? so once you can save pcs then you agree this is meaningless?
Your not familiar with WotC definition of "soon" then are you?
Soon - Pronounciation (Sune)
- When we have time between lay-offs, playing our own games, and naps.
- One day in the next few years.
- When we feel like it.
- In the next month or two, if your lucky. (depreciated)
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 15, 2010 - 10:38AM
#463
|
|
|
Though I know this won't help many, I have settled on the solution that will work best for me (and, frankly, for my group):
1) I let my D&Di subscription expire (and, in fact, despite the fact I turned off auto-renew, it renewed today, though it was a glitch with a previous subscription, so no biggie.)
2) I am going to create my characters using... pen/pencil and paper.
Ta-da! No character limit, no worrying about bugs or missing features. I only need to worry that my (a) math is correct and (b) I keep up-to-date on the rules.
Beyond that, the CB (whether stand alone on my machine or web-based) does nothing for me that I cannot do for myself. If I felt so inclined, I'd just do what I did for 3.x and make an excel spreadsheet that did all this stuff, but it really isn't necessary. With the appropriate card designer (and you can find a billion of them on-line), I can make my own power cards.
And the best part? It's FREE.
No, this isn't the solution for everyone - I get that. But, if the strictures of the web-based (or heck, even the downloadable version) are too much for you, just go back to the way people have always done it. It works just fine (sort of like telling my students they cannot use laptops in class - hey, people have taken notes for centuries with a writing instrument and writing surface - surely today's students can do that, too.) :-)
I'd bring a digital voice activated SD sound recorder...
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 15, 2010 - 12:45PM
#464
|
|
|
First off as someone I the IT field 20 characters sounds about right to start with. Many of you do not understand the difference between a personal system and a company server. I suspect that the number will go up and settle around a 100 per person.
Second why are the DM’s bitching about storage space you have your players store their own characters and as for NPC most of the time all you need to do is make it than print it up why save it to the server? Use some common sense.
Third how many for these 100’s of characters are you playing or are you just creating one character after another if so get your self a printer and a Hard File. This is why the limit is about 20 because not only will most of you create character after character but you will never delete them so they will eventually over run the server.
Fourth have any of you who are complaining thought about the fact that you have not even tried it yet? I remember when 4th came out as well as when 3rd come out and the biggest complainers were the one that love it best. Save your complaints until it been out and you have tried it for a week or 2.
Afraid of Change anyone!!
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 15, 2010 - 1:05PM
#465
|
|
|
First off as someone I the IT field 20 characters sounds about right to start with. Many of you do not understand the difference between a personal system and a company server. I suspect that the number will go up and settle around a 100 per person.
I don't know what part of the IT field you come from, but I can get unlimited storage space on a business server for $100 or less. We did the calculations already for every subscriber to have 100 per person is only 80GB or so... Easily accomplished in this day and age for pennies per customer.
Second why are the DM’s bitching about storage space you have your players store their own characters and as for NPC most of the time all you need to do is make it than print it up why save it to the server? Use some common sense.
This assumes that players are going to pay $10 per month for nothing useful but an online CB and a crappy Dragon magazine that most DMs don't allow in their games because of errata and balance issues. A compendium which is now worthless to players because the CB is online. Most don't think MMO prices are worth it for an online only CB. Since originally we were supposed to get everything for this price (VTT, CV (visualizer), CB, MB, CP (compendium), D&D magazines and whatever else there were gonna roll out).
Third how many for these 100’s of characters are you playing or are you just creating one character after another if so get your self a printer and a Hard File. This is why the limit is about 20 because not only will most of you create character after character but you will never delete them so they will eventually over run the server.
What so we have to re-enter everything each time we level one of our non-20 characters? No thanks, my time is co-opted for other things than messing with a simple program.
Fourth have any of you who are complaining thought about the fact that you have not even tried it yet? I remember when 4th came out as well as when 3rd come out and the biggest complainers were the one that love it best. Save your complaints until it been out and you have tried it for a week or 2.
Afraid of Change anyone!!
Yeah, except they have a video demo out and the features are shown working in the video. So we do actually know what it will do.
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 15, 2010 - 4:41PM
#466
|
Date Joined:
Jan 29, 2008
|
First off as someone I the IT field 20 characters sounds about right to start with. Many of you do not understand the difference between a personal system and a company server. I suspect that the number will go up and settle around a 100 per person.
Second why are the DM’s bitching about storage space you have your players store their own characters and as for NPC most of the time all you need to do is make it than print it up why save it to the server? Use some common sense.
Third how many for these 100’s of characters are you playing or are you just creating one character after another if so get your self a printer and a Hard File. This is why the limit is about 20 because not only will most of you create character after character but you will never delete them so they will eventually over run the server.
Fourth have any of you who are complaining thought about the fact that you have not even tried it yet? I remember when 4th came out as well as when 3rd come out and the biggest complainers were the one that love it best. Save your complaints until it been out and you have tried it for a week or 2.
Afraid of Change anyone!!
First, as someone in the IT field, I can tell you that 20 characters is absolutely absurdly low if we are talking about what the company can afford easily given our sub fees. For the number of actual DDi subscribers, we are talking about a pitifully low amount of space on a corporate scale.
Second, just because you don't like to run your games a certain way doesn't invalidate the desired uses of others. As a DM, I like to be able to examine my PCs at my leisure, but seeing as I only see them at sessions, making them re-copy everything for me whenever they change anything and put it in paper format for me to store and have to find would be an extremely irritating activity.
Third, most importantly of all, people play this game (and all others) differently. Have you ever been to CharOp? The amount of good that community has done for this edition is absolutely astounding, between helping new players not fall into horrible pitfalls, creating fun combinations to help imagine people's goals, finding the broken material and not only providing extensive math to back it up, but also suggesting many decent solutions to keep the feel alive. Do you know how we do that? By testing new content, by making new characters to see the combinations, by using the CB to have access to all legal material so we don't have to guess or overlook things. Let me ask you this- how many characters do most people play with at any given time? Rarely more than 3. So why not set the CB limit to 3 or 4 then? You are arguing that your way of doing things is better than everyone else, and that anyone who disagrees is lazy, and doesn't deserve consideration, even though accommodating their usage patterns would be ridiculously easy and cheap. The assumption that anyone who doesn't act or think the same way as you does not deserve consideration because they are greedy, lazy, idiotic, or whatever other pejorative is used is a fairly weak point of argument.
Fourth, I am not complaining about the look and feel, or the concept of this product. I am complaining about the lack of functionality it will 'ship' with at its launch. Not supporting houserules of any sort, and not allowing more than 20 characters are not issues of game design principle, they are matters of usability and they are plain to see for argument as to whether they are going to be hindrances until remedied. They will be to thousands of gamers.
And finally, GOD WHY AM I STILL READING AND ARGUING IN THESE THREADS???
A note to all who think I am being aggressive or angry- 99% of the time, I do not intend to be. I apologize if you think I am attacking you, odds are very strong that I am not. The only exceptions are when people become extremely uncivil to me, and even then I usually ignore them. I think it is very obvious when I am really mad; if I just seem generally abrasive, it is a reflection of my thought process rather than a state of emotion. I have the greatest respect for those who can debate rationally, even if we come to different conclusions.  I am Blue/White Take The Magic Dual Colour Test - Beta today!Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.I'm both orderly and rational. I value control, information, and order. I love structure and hierarchy, and will actively use whatever power or knowledge I have to maintain it. At best, I am lawful and insightful; at worst, I am bureaucratic and tyrannical.
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 15, 2010 - 9:49PM
#467
|
Date Joined:
Jul 28, 2003
|
Second why are the DM’s bitching about storage space you have your players store their own characters and as for NPC most of the time all you need to do is make it than print it up why save it to the server? Use some common sense.
Some of us like creating characters just to see how they might work.
Some of us are DMs who like having local copies of their players' PCs for quick reference while planning games.
I have 36 characters in the CB right now. 10 of them are my players PCs. The rest are either old characters I've converted to 4e but don't ever expect to play, RPGA characters that I do/have play/ed, or characters that I made because a) I found some cool art and wanted to make a character based on it, b) had an idea for a rules combo for a character and wanted to make it even if I never get a chance to play it.
NPCs don't get made in the CB. NPCs are Monster Builder creations.
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 16, 2010 - 3:03AM
#468
|
Date Joined:
Aug 12, 2001
|
First off as someone I the IT field 20 characters sounds about right to start with. Many of you do not understand the difference between a personal system and a company server. I suspect that the number will go up and settle around a 100 per person.
I'm also in the IT field, I'm a software engineer. And my largest ddi file is 547Kb. So on a 1Tb drive I could create just over 1.7 million characters.
If there are 40,000 DDi subscribers, that's about 44 characters each. And this is only 1, 1Tb drive. I assume they have a server farm.
Second why are the DM’s bitching about storage space you have your players store their own characters and as for NPC most of the time all you need to do is make it than print it up why save it to the server? Use some common sense.
As a DM I like to have a copy of my player's characters. Not only for my own review, but what if I'm playing a session and the one player can't make it at the last minute. I will have a copy of the character so I can run it.
Are you willing and are your players willing to give you their credentials to log in so you can inspect their character when it levels up.
Third how many for these 100’s of characters are you playing or are you just creating one character after another if so get your self a printer and a Hard File. This is why the limit is about 20 because not only will most of you create character after character but you will never delete them so they will eventually over run the server.
Keep the 20 character limit as a players active characters and allow the players to save the character's locally. This way I can have 50, 75, or even 200 characters. They would useless without the CB, but it frees up server space on WotC servers. Then we can easily hand a character to another player or DM via USB drive. And they can be easily uploaded to the server if I need to swap it.
Fourth have any of you who are complaining thought about the fact that you have not even tried it yet? I remember when 4th came out as well as when 3rd come out and the biggest complainers were the one that love it best. Save your complaints until it been out and you have tried it for a week or 2.
The reason we are complaining before it came out is because we are being told right off the bat that we have a 20 character limit, we can't export character's, amoung other things we currently get in CB.
Yes, essentials & Dark Sun were both added. If I was starting a new campaing great. I'm in the middle of running a campaign right now. I don't see the players needing either of these.
Afraid of Change anyone!!
Given the track record of WotC. Hell yeah we are scaried.
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 16, 2010 - 3:40AM
#469
|
Date Joined:
Nov 16, 2007
|
Unfortunately, because they are running Silverlight in a browser the character builder won't be able to directly access your hard drive (much like Java web apps, Silverlight runs in a sandbox and is restricted from doing certain things on your computer). The export/import stuff is going to be the only way they can do it.
If it is going to have export capability (albeit not at launch), it has to be able to write to the hard drive. An export is really no different than "Save as..." in the long run.
Actually, that is not entirely correct. You could have an export feature where the server creates the file and gives you a URL link to the file - then when you click and save it is your web browser accessing your hard drive, not the silverlight application. You may not notice a difference, but the difference is there - and that difference is why they will not be able to do things like see characters stored on your hard drive (which is what I was responding to) You may be able to upload and export characters from the system, but the application will not be able to manipulate characters stored on your local machine.
Possible but very inelegant. There are a lot easier ways out of the Silverlight sandbox and there is no reason that the same trick couldn't be done in the background for a Save. As far as the user interface is concerned (i.e. the front end), it is the same thing.
The fact of the matter is that an export generally only differs from "Save As..." in respect to the formats it can save to. A "Save As...", for example, might save the character as a .dnd4e character while the export feature allows you to save it as a PDF. The export requires that extra conversion step which is what makes it an export.
|
|
|
|
3 years ago ::
Nov 16, 2010 - 12:28PM
#470
|
|
|
I shouldn't do this, but I want to help you guys out there to understand.
I could write a script in about 10 minutes that automates the new Character Builder and then creates a new level 20 character. I could run this on a number of machines (10? 20?) and let it go overnight creating, say, one character every 10 seconds.
So Paolo, how would one go about creating a new char every 10 sec? You can't even assign the ability scores in 10 sec...
|
|
|
