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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 10:22AM
#21
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Date Joined:
Jul 13, 2008
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Magazines: D I used to be an avid reader of the Magazines, both the in-prints before the change and the PDFs. But now I just don't find them interesting enough, there's often so little I can actually use in my games or anything really inspirational, also the hassle of going to the website, downloading the PDF and then reading it on my laptop/iPhone is very frustrating. If it was something I could access quicker I might be more inclined. Character Builder: B - For me, this is the only thing that keeps my subscription going and the same goes for two of my players. Do I want to see improvement? Of course I do, I want the ability to add custom Powers, Paragon Paths, Themes, Backgrounds. But as it is, this is an invaluable tool for me and my group. Adventure Tools: C - I use the old downloaded copy of the Adventure Tools simply because I find the new online one far less useful due to a lack of customisation and copy/paste ability. Still I use the old one a fair amount and it does what it needs to. Compendium: D - I haven't had much experience or need to use the compedium, I use books and my players use me. Again, accessibility is a big problem for me. If there was an iPad/iPhone App that we could use it would likely be far more useful. Virtual Table: - Sadly I can't comment as I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. I have high hopes for when it does however. Customer Service: C - I've never had to contact Customer Support with an issue, but I have found the Account Management parts of the website cumbersome and awkward when I've had to cancel/re-sub. Overall - I keep my subscription ticking over, but I do cancel when my games slow down and we won't play for a month. I use the Character Builder and my downloaded Adventure tools but nothing else is accessible enough to make use of frequently. Magazines: D+ This may sound harsh but its actually up from the F I would have given them just two months ago. There is still only a minimal amount of content that interests me, but at least now there is some. Plus they have gotten better about turning their work in on time. If they keep it up, their grade can improve.
Character Builder: C Adequate for the task but definately not wow inducing. I can make a character on it alright, but there is sooooo much room for improvement. Customization of th character sheet for instance.
Adventure Tools: D- Not really all that useful in their present form. The only thing that keeps this from being an F is that there have beeen a couple of ocasions that I found the limited functions that it has useful. But those have been few and far between. Needs improvement badly.
Compendium: C Useful at times. But has some omissions and quirks that irritate me.
Virtual Table: B Good but with some annoying quirks. ALso not out of beta yet, so not everyone has acccess. Still, with a bit of polish and some added functionality has a shot an A.
Customer Service: C Their communication has improved, but it wasn't great before. Contacting them with a problem usually gets it resolved quickly, but I have to do it far to often for my taste.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 10:23AM
#22
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Date Joined:
Oct 10, 2005
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Disclaimer up front. My DDI sub expired this past March after about a year and a half.
Magazines: C. I don't have any problem with the content and I never really have. But it's hard to call them magazines anymore. They're not collected as a PDF at the end of the month, they're not in print, they're no different than any other website now. Although I still like a lot of things being put out, it doesn't really impress me like it used to.
Character Builder: C. Still not impressed with the online builder. Character limits, the inability to add in custom content, lack of character sheet choices, and a still messy item section are not good.
Adventure Tools: F. The online Monster Builder is a joke. There's no other way to put it. The offline builder, buggy as it may have been, was such a better tool that it puts the current offering completely to shame. Also, where are the other useful Adventure Tools? Not even an encounter builder is available. Lucky that there are so many third party tools filling that blatant lack.
Compendium: A. Never had a problem with the Compendium, aside from the occasional typo or other error.
Virtual Table: B. I admittedly haven't used it since the early friends and family beta, but even then it was very solid in foundation. Just lacking in options (like full sets of dungeon tiles or images for tokens). I'm told a lot of my concerns have been fixed.
Customer Service: C. I hate to rag on this because I know there are nice guys, good guys, working CS. But the communication (in all facets, not just customer service) from WotC has been pretty poor overall. The debacle with Dark Sun and the character builder last year was the beginning of the end of my DDI sub.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 10:29AM
#23
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Date Joined:
Apr 25, 2002
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Magazines: C+ I like the idea of quality over quantity. But much of Dragon material right now is errata rather than new stuff.
Character Builder: B+ I understand a lot of the complaints. The things that do work well really work well, though.
Adventure Tools: F I tried using this once. What I really want is something that you can say to Adventure Tools: Here's how many characters there are, here's what level they are, tell me how much XP an at-level encounter should therefore be, and let me add/subtract monsters to make it fit. Then let me print out that encounter. If it could then make some map suggestions, let me place the monsters, then port to Virtual Table that would be crazy useful, but I think the 1st thing is the minimum.
Compendium: A Insanely useful.
Virtual Table: N/A Sigh...hard to rate something that you haven't yet got an invite to...
Customer Service: B I generally think they do a good job. I'd like to see more consistency and more push back questions. Some people are asking home group questions, some people are looking for universal rulings that they then post on the internet. I like that errata is making its way through the system.
NETH4-1 Containing Shadow (co-author) Handbooks
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 10:31AM
#24
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Date Joined:
Aug 18, 2007
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Magazines: B- Much improved from 6 months ago, but still not filling in design space as I had hoped. I still feel that I get value from the magazines
Character Builder: B+ In my opinion, it still takes far too long for updates, but at least they're back to a consistent level.
Adventure Tools: D- I rate this higher than most here because I use it almost every adventure-- I print out my monsters from here instead of the compendium, and I like the ability to quickly change monster levels. But it needs A LOT of work and functionality. A LOT.
Compendium: A. Works well; end of story.
Virtual Table: Incomplete. I don't use it, and don't plan to.
Customer Service: C Adequate.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 10:40AM
#25
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Magazines: Pass. I don't use these often, and when I do, it's bits and pieces. It would be nice to have an index of maps and other assets for re-use in personal adventures and campaigns. Magazine content, which is often poorly balanced compared to rulebooks, tend to spam up the other tools (our group allows only rulebook content for PCs).
Character Builder: D. The old downloadable CB would have earned a B if it were still kept current. If you had to rewrite it, why not HTML(5)/JS so I can use it on mobile devices? Also, all the changes from "rulebook" 4E to "Essentials" are confusing.
Adventure Tools: F. Once again, the old version would earn you a B if you'd kept it going. Customizing powers and being able to copy text into my own adventure prep docs are not optional features.
Compendium: B. It worked, and you didn't *$^% with it. It has a number of annoyances and UI issues, but it can be dealt with. I would like to see better filtering options by setting and source - i.e. only rule books and ideally only a given setting (base, eberron, dark sun, etc), and I would like to see the layout work better on mobile devices.
Virtual Table: F. This should not be taking resources from CB and AT. That's not "I don't want VT therefore its a waste", but it should be a lower priority compared to in-person tabletop play, and the other tools are in far too much need of work.
Customer Service. N/A
Overall: D. The compendium is still a useful tool, but everything else is really disappointing, which is really frustrating, because it started out better and has so much potential.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 11:25AM
#26
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Magazines: they went from an A to a C-. Recycled articles from past, and less content is the reason.
Character Builder: Went from an A to a D. The reason. Reduced functionality. Updates that keep getting delayed. False expectations based on what WoTC tells us, not what we think they mean. Being told that the online can be updated anytime, only to find out while that is technically true, it's not really possible because they same system they have been using that only allows them to update on one day a week. Features they keep telling us are coming, never appear.
Adventure Tools: F because there is only one tool.
Monster Builder: From a B to a big fat F. It's been over a year since there has been a functioning MB like the offline one. And again, its been 2 months since they hinted that some were going to be turned on. Hasn't happened.
Compendium: B. I don't use it much, but when I do it works fine enough. There are issues with it that prevent it from getting an A.
Virtual Table: C and seems like it's going to stay a C.
Customer Service: They have always had bad customer service, D.
So, over all, They started off around a B+, and now are around a D-.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 11:30AM
#27
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Magazines: D - They are not magazines. They're blog posts, or regular articles or something like that. But instead of being published in HTML on the web like everything else, they're three page PDFs that are not a good aspect ratio for reading on a Kindle DX, an iPad, or a laptop screen. They should be delivered in a format that's easy and convenient to read, not stuck behind a twitchy paywall in a format that requires hoops just to read unpleasantly.
Character Builder: C - The Character Builder is nice, and takes making 4E characters from intolerable to merely tedious. It's slow, though, and slow to load, and buggy, and prints too much or too little, and doesn't allow even the small amount of customization that was in the old CB, on which I relied. (That one probably got a B+)
Adventure Tools: D - The best ones are the ones that do nearly nothing. The monster builder is just too hard to use. It's confusing. The new version and the old version were equally confusing.
Compendium: A- - The compendium's only real problem is missing stuff and its clunky interface. Power2ools blows it away, and you should be stealing liberally from it. That said, it does what it says on the tin: almost all the rules ever available for easy reference.
Virtual Table: N/A - I haven't used it in earnest. It seemed like I was going to dislike it, but I won't be a curmudgeon until I have evidence to back up my gripes.
Customer Service: C- - I have had very little interaction with humans at WoTC customer service, but all of the parts of the site involved in subscription management are dreadful. It's a real hassle to manage my account. I had a player who spent about two weeks trying to get signed because the site wouldn't accept his payment and they couldn't provide any reason or alternative. I get the impression that my gripes are with Digital River, not WoTC.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 12:18PM
#28
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Date Joined:
Aug 15, 2009
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Magazines: C-
The quality has seemed to be increasing over the past few months, but the lack of compiled issues is still annoying.
Character Builder: D-
Adequate, but the total lack of customization is frustrating. The only thing it has going for it over the old offline builder, even now, is an up-to-date data set, which does little-to-nothing to offset the functionality it's still lacking now, roughly 10 months later. Plus the reliance on Silverlight means that the number of supported systems went from 1 to 2.
Adventure Tool(s): F
I still use the offline Monster Builder (running it in vmware on my Mac) and will create monsters using the data from the Compendium in that rather than use the online tool. It occurs to me that because of that, I haven't even bothered to launch the online Adventure Tools in, perhaps, months.
Compendium: B+
Could use some improvements (things that immediately come to mind are Item Set data & searchability, and a better way to do a "show all" when applying a filter to an empty search - I've gotten inconsistent behavior). This is the one piece of DDI that I use the most.
Virtual Table: I
No access, so I can't grade it.
Customer Service: B+
It's a difficult and thankless job, and they're probably doing the best they can.
“If the computer or the game designer is having more fun than the player, you have made a terrible mistake.”
-Sid Meier
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 12:26PM
#29
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Date Joined:
Jan 28, 2006
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Magazines: B Never a fan of tons of mechanical content (for dragon). The increase in "fluff" and other non super powerz content has improved the magazines in my eyes. Plus the change in adventure formating could be for the better. No compiled issue drops this from a possible A.
Character Builder: C OK. Needs an offline version (yeah, I know) and better support for homebrew materials.
Adventure Tools: F Failure so far. Down from the original release of the offline monster builder which I loved - I'd give that an A!.
Compendium: C Useful, but use has been curtailed by WOTC blocking Masterplan.
Virtual Table: B Ok. But of no use to me until available to non DDI users.
Customer Service: C The few times I've contacted them they've been ok...
Total GPA: 2.0 Not great. And the sad thing is I LOVE 4e. This makes me sad.
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2 years ago ::
Jul 15, 2011 - 12:30PM
#30
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Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2010
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Magazines: B
Improved in the last couple months after a dip. Hard to find specific items in back issues, though.
Character Builder: B+
It's come a long, long way from launch, and its deserved mixed reception. Any capability for customization would be nice. It's got houserule flags, but no way to add them unless you remove a prereq or something. Houseruled (if only "free bonus") feat, houseruled power (where you type in things like ability modifier for an attack, and dice roll formats like exist in the VT) that are incoporated into power cards would be ideal and get you to a solid A. Note that at this point, it is factually inaccurate to say that the online version is worse than the offline version on a functional level. It may have been at the start, but it has seen quite a lot of improvement.
Adventure Tools: I
I for Incomplete. Things I hope would be there aren't, and those that are appear to be not even finished.
Compendium: A
Good enough so that it gets my subscription fee all by itself, though the CB is nipping at its heels. Would be really nice if it had a little more QA time devoted toward making sure it agrees with the latest rule updates. If it were the authoritative, go-to source for game element rules, it'd be A+ material.
Virtual Table: B+
Good product, does exactly what I want it to do. A few minor tweaks needed as it grows out of beta, but a solid offering even as is. Dramatic contrast to Adventure Tools, also allegedly in beta.
CustServ: B
Does what it needs to do regarding actual customer service. Universally regarded as worse than useless, however, in rules questions by the Rules Q&A board. Getting contardictory answers is trivially easy, and almost nothing they say is taken seriously without another source backing it up. Could use work, but I'm not really sure that's what CustServ is for. Might be worth splitting it off from the people who handle actual CustServ, and have a dedicated rules question staff, but that's a question of your resources.
D&D Next = D&D: Quantum Edition
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