Categories
Editorial Technology

Character Builder: Working As Intended

Disappointed. The word barely scratches the surface on my feelings towards the Character Builder. When Wizards of the Coast made the original announcement about the changes to the CB we remained silent, deciding we would wait until the new version was released before we commented. We had our opinions to be sure, but we felt to be critical of something we couldn’t actually experience wouldn’t be fair.

Well today I had my first taste of the new version of Character Builder. At first glance I was entranced. The interface is slick and very fluid. The updated CB is very user friendly, very new-to-the-hobby friendly as well. At first glance it appears that creating a new character would be a breeze and for the most part it is. It’s when you want to go beyond that first character that you start bumping into problems.

It didn’t take long for WotC to release a page of Known Issues for Character Builder.

Let’s take a look at a hand full of these known issues before I take a more general rant towards the DDI.

Importing custom characters from Character Builder Classic may cause crashes. To resolve this, remove all house ruled items and try to re-import again.

I read this as house rules are not supported on this version of Character Builder. While creating a character for the purposes of experimenting with the new build I found no option to add a house ruled item. Indeed there was no ability to add any custom data. It appears that though WotC will allow third-party material through the GSL they won’t support them with the character builder which really does choke the life out of any custom classes that may have been designed and published.

Import of hybrid characters is not working as intended.

I have a hybrid Wizard/Warlock. This character has one of the new defensive feats from the Essentials line up. I guess I’m just out of luck as the Classic version of Character Builder doesn’t have the feat and the new version is not supporting Hybrids properly.

Character sheets are not user customizable. Power cards are not customizable.

Seriously? In age of Web 2.0 this couldn’t be worked into the programming? I can understand power cards to an extent, but not being able to arrange the character sheet to my preference is a step back from Character Builder Classic.

Exporting character to a local drive is not implemented.

I distinctly remember reading that we would have the ability to save the character sheet as a pdf to share with friends. I’m not sure if I should read not implemented as not yet, or not ever. What I would like see is the ability to create a link and to share my character with anyone else who has a DDI subscription. As a DM I like to review the characters my players have, it allows me to create adventures that suite their powers and to provide appropriate challenges. I used to be able to request they email me a copy of the Character Builder file. Now I have to take a paper copy of the character home with me. Talk about a step backward.

These points are some of my larger issues with the new version of the Character Builder. I’m sure they will all be addressed and corrected in time, but that’s not the point. The point is there is a version of Character Builder that is working perfectly. While it may have some small data bugs, we are able to use it to create and share our characters freely. I’m speaking of course about the Classic version of Character Builder, which is in my limited experience far superior to the new version just released.

While I can completely understand, and agree with, the business decision to make the change to how the Character Builder operates, the implementation has left a great deal to be desired. In fact it’s left a bad taste in many a players’ mouths. With characters that now don’t work properly and house rules left out in the dark, I fail to see how the new version of Character Builder is an improvement. As I mentioned above, I’m sure these issues will be addressed and corrected, but the product should have been released in a far more functional format.

The DDI platform has been plagued with problems since the release of 4e. From delayed to scraped projects and now a revamp of an essential feature of 4e. I can’t imagine creating a character in 4e without the Character Builder and now I’m stuck with a version that has a few too many bugs and features missing.  The classic version hasn’t been updated in approximately three months which makes it less desirable as an alternative. A rock and a hard place, maybe paper and pencil is the route to go.

During the WotC Preview Seminar at GenCon I asked the panel what new digital offerings we would see for the DDI. The group was very noncommittal, after all they have been burned in the past. I let it slide. To realize now that what the digital team has been working on is a new version of Character Builder and not any of the other items we have long been promised is disappointing. That the new version is full of bugs is a further disappointment.

I don’t expect WotC to be a leader in digital/web technology. I expect them to be a leader in the hobby/RPG industry and they are. However, they have created a digital stream to accompany their print products. This digital stream, the DDI, is a significant income generating vehicle for WotC. Yet, since the release of 4e everything connected to it appears to be an afterthought. Either support it properly or drop it. Better yet, test the product. WotC has the email address of every single subscriber. Select 5 or 10% of us and ask us to beta test the new products so that they can be released to the general community with far less bugs. Just about every other digital gaming company does this and it works for them.

At the end of the day I’m a fan of Dungeons & Dragons, I’m a fan of what WotC is doing. I love 4e, I think the staff do a great job overall providing us with new content. I just wish they’d get the digital aspect of things right. The constant mistakes and short comings give the impression that WotC doesn’t care for its subscriber base. I know nothing could be further from the truth, all I ask is to get it right. Provide the digital team with the resources and man power to get things done right.

What are your initial impressions of the updated version of Character Builder? Do you love it or hate it? Given a choice would you use the classic interface or the new one? Let’s provide some feedback to WotC so that they can produce the products and platforms that we want to use.

Looking for instant updates? Subscribe to the Dungeon’s Master feed!

34 replies on “Character Builder: Working As Intended”

I feel pretty much the same way, and I’ve seen exactly the same bugs/problems as you. I pay for my DDI membership under the assumption that I’ll get some usable tools out of the deal. Character Builder was finally becoming a very usable product, and now it’s taken a step back. I too understand the move to an online product, it makes sense. To do it with MS Silverlight was a poor choice. In the official Wizards podcast last week, they defended this choice by arguing that it’s what the existing staff knows. I’m an IT professional, and I’ll tell you that that excuse doesn’t fly in most companies. A major benefit to moving the application to the web is be OS independent, and WotC has almost accomplished this. It’ll run on any OS that Silverlight will install on, which unfortunately excludes any mobile OS, even Windows Mobile!

Why go through the trouble of developing an essentially new application on technology that just doesn’t serve the purpose. Once again, WotC has ALMOST gotten it right.

– Todd

I do web application development as a career and think the new CB feels like a beta release at best. I encountered 3 crashes making my first character and I wasn’t doing anything strange or different from the expected “happy path”. I was using a MacBook Pro with Firefox, which may not have been a configuration given much testing. I’ve also been in the same position of migrating an application from one technology to a completely new one, and know the pain they are going through. However, in the software business, it’s never a great plan to release a new product with less features and functionality available in the legacy project.

I really wish wotc would get out of the in-house software development business… they don’t do it well. DDI users should not be surprised by this if they have been paying any attention to the issues plaguing Magic Online for years, the failed Gleemax project, and vaporware like the Goblin game. Their one recent success has been Magic: Duel of the Planeswalkers on the XBox, which was done by an outside game development company.

@ FleaBeard
What I can’t believe is that there are no mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry etc. This seems to me a perfect way to keep the subscriber base entreneched by allowing them to access their DDI content anywhere, anytime. If the Compendium and Character Builder were available that way I can’t see WotC having any issues maintaining subscribers. I’m not a programmer, I don’t have the first clue about programming so I don’t know if what I suggest is feasable. However, I have a hard time believing it isn’t possible.

@ Chris
Beta release sounds right. If WotC had released the CB under that pretense for testing to us I would not have written this post, but they didn’t. Which puzzles me as the legacy/classic version was originally released in a beta format for us to use and test.

It’s missing two features I’ve come to rely on – exporting to iplay4e and house rules. I’m cautiously optimistic about the final product, but until these two features are added, I lose more with my character than I gain by moving to the online CB. I’d like to see WotC take better advantage of the fan base that is creating some very good electronic tools.

Re:PDF
You can save as a PDF if you have the ability to print them already. You can do this for free if you don’t have the software (I use PrimoPDF)

@ Drabix
Our group makes use of the iplay4e site as well and this will change the way we share information. I agree with you that I am better off using the classic CB, which begs the question of whether I still require a subscription to the DDI.

@ Colin
I’m aware of that, I also use PrimoPDF. However, the comment was refering to the aspect that native support within CB would allow character sheets to be saved as pdf.

I am crushed by the inability to customize the layout of the character sheet. To me the only purpose of the character builder is to produce character sheets. I love the new layout, and I love how things have been streamlined into a more accessable order, but the character building isn’t a video game. Its only job is to produce character sheets, and if it can’t make the sheet I want than it’s a useless pile of slag.

To make matters worse the design of the character sheet has been changed so that it wastes more space. Goody. Now, the information that I was able to condense to ne page is spread over three. F*** trees, f*** ink, f*** my wallet, we paid a graphic designer to implement squiggley space stealing graphics so now you have to look at them.

It looks like me and the custom entry tool are going to get to know each other a lot better and Wizards of the Coast are going to have to part with my credit card.

OK cool. I’m actually having a problem using the CB now… keeps logging me out or something and I can’t get past the home screen.

@wimwick
From what they’ve implied on the Podcast, app developers like iplay4e will now need to pay for access into the WotC backend in order to utilize WotC’s intellectual property. While I understand that stance, if you’re product does everything that your subscribers want and need, there would be no market for products like iplay4e.

I’m very disappointed in the online Character Builder. WotC were quite clear about the items that would be missing on release, but utterly failed to inform users that the product was beta at best, and would not function with most existing character files (how many users have no custom content in their builds?)

One of my monthly groups is meeting on Friday. I’m going to propose limiting future characters to the Essentials books (or the original CB) and dropping our DDI subscriptions (we have two, one for each monthly group.)

I understand the economic pressures the led WotC to the OCB. That does not excuse the product however. I have paid for access to my characters in digital form, and they have failed to deliver.

I think that Wizards are pretty brave trying to embrace the cloud in this way. Most of the complaints I have seen seem to be from people who want to adapt the system. I don’t think that this should be catered for in the first release. Like others I think it might have helped to release it as a ‘beta’ but I am getting sick of that term and I think many would have said it looked badly if they were paying a subscription for a beta version. Also some companies use the term beta as a cop out for doing shoddy work.

I also think that the Character Builder is a victim of one of the basic problems of D&D and that is the massive scope of the game. So many character choices means that some things are bound to be missed and they have to prioritise some elements and leave out others. As there are many more players than DMs WoTC have to provide products for them and this means we get a bloated character builder that’s hard to use (if you want to meta game) let alone maintain.

@Wimwick, there are actually some good 3rd party apps for iPad. My wife uses i4e. Of course, it’s dependent on the xml output from the old character builder. I don’t think we’ll be upgrading, we don’t tend to use the latest stuff.

I don’t follow this that much, but WotC might think that such 3rd party apps are a problem. Have they said so?

@Chris, it’s an all-too-familiar story in software development. WotC keeps making rookie mistakes in this field. Of course, that’s because they are rookies.

Disappointing is a compliment. Honestly, it’s appalling.

I think they should stick to RPG books and stuff (which they are excellent at), and drop the electronic aids business (in which they suck badly).

They should have done from the start a free, offline CB which mechanically checks eveything but has no descriptions for powers/feats/features/whatever.
This would have required the user to have the books, and everyone would have been happy with it…

After 2 years, so much into the old CB and now we step back to what i call “unfinished” product.

-the whole point of having a CB is to create a sheet.. and now i can’t use the sheet as before (why the hell not? i got used to the old format) or have it Landscape.. BOOO!

-Having some things not working, i understand, but not having a dagger work as an implement for sorcerers ? WTF ? (see list of known bugs.. it’s there)

-Printing a sheet of 5 pages takes about a minute to print and over 120megs of spooler ? WTF? This is so freakishly bizarre.

It’s a good thing i think i still have my money’s worth with all the Dragon/Dungeon issues and galleries/maps.

@Wimwick Expecting a multi-platform rollout of an app as complex as this is asking way, way too much. There is NO similarity in developing front-ends for Silverlight, iOS, Blackberry OS. etc. Each project would pretty much start from scratch. I AM a software professional and I fully expected the OCB to have issues. Maybe a private beta would have been a good idea, but they were already dealing with a public-relations nightmare and leaks from beta users would have made it worse.
I’m willing to give it a chance. If it’s still this buggy in 6 weeks, then I think we have a real case to be pissed off.

@Darth And then everyone would bitch about it not having back-end connections to the Compendium. The only way some people will be happy is if they open-source the entire compendium at which point they may as well close their doors as no one would buy any books anymore…They’re stuck.

I have mixed feeling about the new online character builder. I think it is the hype that threw me off. I watch the YouTube demonstration and though that it was the coolest thing. In the demo he was talking about house rules, customization, etc…. all the features that should have been in the new release. I am not too worried though, I still have the old CB till they iron out those problems. My CB crashed also when I double clicked on an icon. It brought up this weird box and I had to restart the CB. The good thing about this was that on restart it asked me if I wanted to continue working on the character I was working on.

As for the online, I think they will be able to iron things out a lot quicker and get it right faster because update patches are no longer necessary. I think they can modify as they go. So to fix little problems, it can be done ASAP? I am not sure.

The biggest disappointment to me (you are all going to laugh) was that the scrolling wheel on my mouse did not work when the character sheet was opened. There is something fundamentally wrong when you let that kind of error slip.

I love my D&D and I love D&D insider. I can wait for a few months till they iron out the kinks on the system, I am in no rush. I do not think there is any reason for anyone to cancel their subscription, they put out a good product. The compendium is awesome to say the least, and the online content of articles and adventures is more than worth the 5$ I pay per month.

I say we give it some time and let them work it out. It is not that bad. I am glad that they have gone live. I am a patient person.

@Wimwick
I know nothing of programming either, so I do not know if I am talking out of my backside.

@Alton
“The biggest disappointment to me (you are all going to laugh) was that the scrolling wheel on my mouse did not work when the character sheet was opened. There is something fundamentally wrong when you let that kind of error slip.”

Hey man, I’m with you there.

One other thing, the feats are organized differently. They have separated them into a whole bunch of annoying categories. There are the class, racial, other heroic, enduring stamina, learning and lore, quick reaction, steadfast willpower, vigilant reflexes, and the mouse scroll does not work anywhere….SIGH!

The release is almost certainly unfinished but i’m genuinely optimistic that these issues will be fixed. The issues listed on the ‘known bugs and issues’ list are there to (I assume) be worked through and addressed.

After all the negativity and hate flying around Wotc’s official forums regarding secrecy, broken promised and undelivered DDI content recently the staff have been very hesitant to commit to anything. One thing they have repeatedly said is that houseruled/homebrew WOULD be supported (but they specified this would not make the first release) and that the export to .dnd4e functionality would arrive shortly too. The lack of these features at the moment, the dearth of customisation options and the abundance of bugs makes it admittedly poor. The old offline CB probably should have been supported until this worked correctly and that’s the biggest PR mistake in all of this.

I’m not going to list the rest of the main failings, there’s enough space taken up listing all these already. Overall i’m confident that the new CB will *eventually* deliver. It has amazing potential and already has several positives. Lets hope they give the development team the resources to do it justice. I get the feeling that the poor developers are seriously lacking in time/manpower.

As an odd note on the houseruled stuff, importing characters with customised items gave them to me (with custom names and everything). customised feats however just reverted to something random and generic. Doing this crashed the importer initially i’ll admit but on re-loading it allowed me to recover the character with those custom items intact. Was a (minor) pleasant surprise.

A friend of mine figured out how to export from the current CB BACKWARD to the old CB and it works remarkably well. Essentials characters are not supported but – surprise! – Dark Sun themes ARE! (Look under Backgrounds)

If you go to vecna.wizards.com, the new CB opens in a debug mode. Load a character and click the debug tab to see the XML. Copy the XML (actually in the Character File tab, but you can see the raw XML as well), save as a .dnd4e file and the old CB will open it just fine. (See his YouTube video here: http://youtu.be/Xq7pK4oL8ag?a) A few other odd things we’ve found:

*Though the new CB doesn’t have space for your Journal, the data is still there. A character that is uploaded to the new CB modifier and then re-exported retains its entries.
*Each entry (feat, power, etc) references both a url and a internal ID. It may be possible to remove the ID, thus forcing the old CB to reference the Compendium directly and thus keep you updated anyway. We can’t prove this yet as no errata has come through since the final official old CB update.
*The data is apparently stored on WotC’s ioun.wizards.com domain which was open briefly but is now closed. No idea whether WotC is aware of Vecna being open yet. They have been alerted to the situation by my friend (psychopez) but so long as the vecna domain stays open, we are going to assume it’s a temporary allowance in lieu of actual export function. Psychopez covers this in more detail in the video.

@Dave Tavener Actually, I think that there’s a better solution than open sourcing the compendium. They just open up an xml feed to it that’s available to anyone with a DDI login. And you can put a use meter on it, so that downloads of the entire DB aren’t allowed. You could set a download limit of something very big, and still kill off the abuse. Of course there will be some piracy, but that situation still seems better to me than the current one.

Particularly since it allows for the blossoming of clients, which will promote their content, make it more accessible and more valuable.

I’m a software developer and something of that nature is something I’d really like to work on. Why can’t I have my character(s) or NPC(s) on a tablet or phone, with builtin access to the compendium? Oh, and I’d do it on a pay-for-content model, rather than a subscription model.

@ FleaBeard
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with that comment.

@ Toldain
I’ll have to look them up. I’m still new to the whole iPad thing and have other things to absorb myself with.

@ Dave Tavener
I whole heartedly agree with you. I would rather have seen mobile applications than a revamped CB was all I meant by the comment.

@ Alton & Liam Gallagher
That drove me nuts too! It was especially frustrating when I was lounging back trying to explore the new tool with my 7 week old in one arm. Call me lazy, but having to actually click on the scroll bar was annoying.

@ Blinkey
I agree with you. I certainly believe that this tool has a great deal of potential and that the kinks will get worked out. I’m irked that they released it in this format. The amount of bugs indicates that they new well before they announced the release date that the product wouldn’t be ready. So why announce it? Just delay or say nothing.

I also feel like you do that the developers are understaffed or have other duties that they are juggling. This has been my greatest frustration with the DDI. If Wotc is going to have a digital stream for their product, they should take it seriously and support it properly.

The one feature missing for me is the ability to select which items/weapons/implements appear on power cards. Limiting it to one item means that for some characters the card no longer contains all of the information they need. Also, the equipment selection is almost unusable in how it organizes things now. Otherwise, although a step backward, it was able to create characters with only a few glitches. To ask paying customers to endure this release is disappointing. I would have expected that the original CB would be available while the new solution was completed. Finally, I feel like this is a smaller issue compared to the current edition war. Essentials, magic item rarity and Fortune Cards are different enough to feel like a completely new game. I can no longer trust the missives of WotC as my understanding is that it’s the intention to downplay instead of promote.

Like many people, I was excited by the prospect of the new Character Builder, but after finding 5 problems in 5 minutes, my enthusiasm waned significantly.

Wizards has a lot to fix. If they can fix it, well and good. If not, then, as far as I am concerned, 4E support ended on the 16th.

My rationale? I have a character building program that works well on my computer. If the new character builder cannot come close to the versatility of what I have, there is little point in using it.

As for PDF’s, I have GhostWriter and tried to print pdf’s of the sheets, but only got blank pages.

They will eventually get the bugs fixed, but my greater concern is with the lack of multi-user support. I’m hoping they will introduce a subscription rate for players who just want to use CB. I know that none of my players will spend 9.95 per month just to make characters – they don’t use Dragon, Dungeon, and Compendium like I do. Right now, I know they are all planning on using the old local version for as long as they can, and I think that’s not an uncommon sentiment.

I wanted to see for myself what all the hype was about. I couldn’t even get the Online CB to load.

Regardless I stil love 4e and will continue to play it over other editions.

I had nothing but issues when I use the new CB. I had crashes importing (non house rule) characters. I had crashes when building or updating characters that I built with the new CB. When I try to print the character sheet all I get is blank pages, I have to print to a PDF and then print to a printer.
I also noticed some issues that relate directly to the design on the new CB; I have to use thier ugly pictures as there is no way to upload my character pictures. I cannot find any magical arrows in the store. If I buy a lot of 30 arrows and use 7, I cannot remove just 7 I have to remove all 30 and then add 23. I cannot find how to get a familiar back for a character that I imported nor can I find how to choose a familiar,
This new CB should have been beta tested before it was dumped on players as it is definately not ready for us to use.

Ah the Great CB Debacle of 2010. Ok, my take on the whole affair is that it feels rushed because it has been released prior than intended. Paolo stated that he was given a time table of 6 mths to have it up and running and that in the mean time the existing CB would be supported. They then found out that they couldn’t easy fit Themes from DS and the new Essentials builds into the old CB.

People were not happy that the old CB was taking too long to be updated with the above updates into the old CB and all hell broke loose on their forums. The bulk of the problems stem from the apparent gag order placed on the staff when it comes to discussing issues about DDI tools.

So basically what was just released could easily be considered a Beta version, lets remember that the original CB wasn’t perfect at release either. So its either, give us what the have currently or wait out the original 6 mth time table for something. Personally, I’m happy with the Beta assuming that they fix the bugs and add in some more of the bells and whistles that the original CB had over the next coming months.

A more honest comparison between the two could probably be done in January of next year.

Just my 2 c.p. anyway.

I get the “beta” thing. However, this isn’t a functional new product – it’s a replacement for an existing product which had worked through most of its growing pains.

So basically, I don’t agree that WotC deserves the kid-gloves treatment that “It’s just a beta” implies. If you’re going to replace a working product with another one, you’d best make sure that it’s an actual replacement, rather than a sub-par system which nevertheless costs the same as the old one.

I can’t comment on the actual product as I have not used it yet. I have cherry picked my updates to keep costs down, so the money isn’t necessarily an issue for me. However, there are at least two DM’s I know of who had paid for a yearly subscription, and they have been forced to go from a working product to a buggy mess, according to them and other users here. So, I understand the frustration and I agree with Obryn that the kiddie gloves should not be used. When it comes to any actual programs, it seems Wizards just doesn’t have it together.

Regardless though, there was something nice about doing everything by hand yesterday during Encounters.

My feelings on the new CB are mixed. I’m saddened by the amount of hatred that is being slung towards WotC over this. I think they’re honestly having problems doing what they want to do, but are trying to make it right. I think they had trouble integrating DS and Essentials into the old CB and were forced by a raging online community to release the new CB too soon. I think if they had waited until they had the fixes in place for the issues listed above, people would have been screaming even louder about the unsupported classic CB.

The other thing I see as unfortunate is that even though you mention waiting to assess the new builder before you make your criticism, you pretty much gloss over the things about it that are good or an improvement. The new CB has a lot of promise. I’ll agree that what we have here is effectively beta. I’ve had a lot of crashes, particulary the first couple of days. I think a lot of that has to do with loads on the servers. My crashes have steadily decreased since day 1. But yes, crashes are very annoying and should happen rarely if at all.

I will say though, I’ve not experienced many of the problems others have outside the crashes. I’ve been able to import all my existing characters, including some hybrid builds.

The fact that people consider moving forward using the classic character builder rather than the new online CB simply shows how badly they needed to move to online. Pretty much everybody, subscriber or not has access to the classic character builder, with all the content that entails, nearly every book they’ve ever published. If you think about it, to put that out there for download was as close to insane as a for-profit business can be.

I am hopeful that they can get the new builder in shape in the next couple of months. I really hope they do. I like the new CB alot and I love having access to it whereever I go. It is hugely more convenient in many ways.

The idea of subscribing to keep access to the character builder and requiring an active connection instead of being able to just have it on my computer are major turnoffs. With the original character builder I was willing to at least subscribe for a month here and there to update it, but with how it is now I’m not even bothering with it.

Comments are closed.