# Online Character Builder is LIVE!



## captainspud (Nov 16, 2010)

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Tool (D&D Character Builder)

Have at it, kids.


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## brehobit (Nov 16, 2010)

A bit slow, and I don't know that I like waiting on "vecna.wizards.com" but maybe that's me.  So far, so good (other than the slow part).


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## Sunseeker (Nov 16, 2010)

Loaded up about as quick as the builder on my PC, but seems to run smoother.  Still working with it, not gonna rehash existing complaints, and without those, I realy don't have any.


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## webrunner (Nov 16, 2010)

Tried to equip a weapon.. crashed.. -1 point.
Loaded up, immediately asked me to continue on from where it crashed since it wasn't saved.  +2 points.


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## Peraion Graufalke (Nov 16, 2010)

Ooooh, shiny. Looks very nice. I'm just building a Dark Sun character for fun, and you can now sort the class list by:
- Role
- Power Source
- Primary Ability
- Source

Quite unexpected, I must say. Thumbs up. 

Minor bug: when choosing a theme, it automatically scrolls to the bottom of the description for me.


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## Pseudonym (Nov 16, 2010)

Even with Moonlight, it didn't run under Ubuntu, but I pretty much expected that.

Playing around with it now on my old XP laptop. So far so good.


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## Reaper Steve (Nov 16, 2010)

For me, it opens a blank window that does nothing.
;(


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## brehobit (Nov 16, 2010)

Duplicate poste


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## brehobit (Nov 16, 2010)

Misc issues so far.

Took me a while to figure out how to select my human stat bonus.  Probably my fault there...

When selecting feats if I collapse a category it comes back uncollapsed on the next feat. 

It greys out after every data entry.  That's too slow...

It just crashed when buying a sword.


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## samursus (Nov 16, 2010)

Crashed when I chose a Daily.

Edit: Didn't lose character on reload, CB asked me if I wanted to Restore character or Discard.  I chose restore and everything was there.  And Daily selection worked this time.

Edit 2: Choosing Battle Armaments Feat seems to have killed this character... on my third attempt to Restore.  Failed.

Edit 3: Cannot create any characters, crashes after choosing Custom Character OR Quick Essentials Character <sigh>


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## Burchard (Nov 16, 2010)

...and it doesn't do math. It failed to add my +1 feat bonus to my attacks. Boo!


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## captainspud (Nov 16, 2010)

Three crashes so far.


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## webrunner (Nov 16, 2010)

Is there any way to get set bonuses, whatever?  I can't seem to see any indication of any set support at all, but the known issues say one particular set isn't calculating correctly, so I'm wondering how?

I tried equipping both a Harmony Blade and a Rhythm Blade but i don't see any "set" indicator, any set card...


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## CAFRedblade (Nov 16, 2010)

Started testing it out, creating a Lvl 11 Monk, was going through the system.
Personal preference is to do Abilities first, then choose class, thankfully you can skip and return fairly easily, but I liked the Over-head menu navigation more.  Anyways, picked choices down to abilities, as mentioned above, seemed to grey out as it talked back to the servers after every choice I made... slowing me down.  When I got to my abilities, and was entering my charisma it decides to crash.  Try to go back in, crash again.  Discard, try from scratch... no dice... must be a fair amount of people trying it out for this to happen.( at least this is what I'm telling myself so far...)  First day, it's going to be a rough stress test.  More errors as I attempt an essential ... crash.. sigh, I'll try again later tonight.  

Oh, and from a coder viewpoint, one shouldn't probably use names for things like  
"at WotC.XAMLUtilities.PropertyUpdatePropertyData.GetPropertyValue[TValueType](IDataSource dataSource, TValueType& value) in e:\DDiApps\trunk\CharBuilderEssentials\DDiApps\CharBuilderEssentials\trunk\XAMLUtilities\NotificationProperties\PropertyUpdatePropertyData.cs:line 278
   at stupid(Object )
   at WotC.XAMLUtilities.LazyAttribute.CreateValue(Object owner)"

There could very well be a context for these name choices I don't see from the error messages, but it seems an odd choice to me.


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## Markn (Nov 16, 2010)

Interface is nice looking.

Built a character without any issues.

Tried to deselect a feat and it crashed.  Went back in, asked if I wanted to recover the character which I tried and sent me back to the same error.  

Loaded program again, this time I deleted the character (as it was a copy of the main one) and tried to load the original one and it came up with the exact same error.  

Now I can't access that character at all without the system crashing. 

Edit:  My errors are similar to CAFRedblade above.  However, after waiting 5 minutes and going back in, it now works.  I suspect the error I had may be load related but who knows.


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## Alan Shutko (Nov 16, 2010)

LazyAttribute probably refers to lazy instantiation: ie it's not instantiated until it's needed.


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## brehobit (Nov 16, 2010)

More crashes.  Paragon path etc.  Now recovering the character causes it to crash immediately.

Also doesn't seem to be a way to "delevel" a character.  That's annoying if true.

Testing seems weak.  Features are okay if the bugs get fixed.


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## samursus (Nov 16, 2010)

Turning off Windows Firewall seems to have fixed the issues for me so far AND its running a LOT quicker.


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## AnthonyRoberson (Nov 16, 2010)

Too bad Silverlight does not run on an iPad.


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## Peraion Graufalke (Nov 16, 2010)

Crashed while building a mage (quick building), crashed again on restoring him, but did finally work on the second restore attempt.

And a crash in the shop when buying clothes.


Now that I've added Microsoft Silverlight to my firewall exceptions, the CB runs faster. (I don't recommend turning off the firewall completely.)


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## Mirtek (Nov 16, 2010)

So far two crashes and generally noticeably slower than the offline version.


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## DK (Nov 16, 2010)

No free trial?!?!?

Seems a bad marketing move...


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## Askaval30 (Nov 16, 2010)

Anyone try loading a character from the old CB? It keeps hanging up on me on the gray loadscreen every time I try...


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## Mirtek (Nov 16, 2010)

No way to insert my own character portrait or to switch the character sheet to landscape?


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## renau1g (Nov 16, 2010)

Askaval30 said:


> Anyone try loading a character from the old CB? It keeps hanging up on me on the gray loadscreen every time I try...




Same...


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## Ryujin (Nov 16, 2010)

Crashed, repeatedly, when trying to load it in Firefox. Gave up and switched to IE8 and got further, then ran into multiple crashes again. Now on my 8th or 9th attempt to work through a test character.

*EDIT* Correction; IE7.


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## Kelvor Ravenstar (Nov 16, 2010)

I wish there was a way to see the math, like we could with the old character sheet, for at least the defenses. It took me a few minutes to figure out why my Knight's AC jumped up a point, until I realized it had automatically given the bonus for masterwork plate to AC. I couldn't find masterwork armors listed separately at all.

One neat benefit of the builder, is it has a little information that the compendium does not yet have. One of my player's just acquired the Anarusi Codex tome implement, and when I looked it up in the builder I found that it had been given the Rare type. So check your items for new rarities! Maybe there's more Common or Rare items that haven't been noticed yet. No Staff of the Magi yet, Anarusi Codex is the only rare implement thus far, not counting weapliments. Holy Avenger is still Uncommon, so I guessing that some things will change when the DM's kit information is added.

I haven't had any technical issues with the program yet, but I haven't tried Importing a character. Running fine and faster than the offline builder did in some ways in Safari 5.0.2 on my Macbook with the latest Silverlight update.


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## Piratecat (Nov 16, 2010)

I'm trying to separate "overwhelmed by people and crashing" from "dang, this is buggy and crashing." I'm running into more of the latter. If you look at the known bug list, it looks to me like the CB needed another month of bug-squashing and polish before it went live. 

I really want a good first impression, but it isn't happening and I'm getting frustrated. I'll come back in a week or so once they've had a chance to stomp some more bugs.


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## Pseudonym (Nov 16, 2010)

Ryujin said:


> Crashed, repeatedly, when trying to load it in Firefox.




Same on my end. Crashed in Firefox, ran at a snail's pace under Chrome. Better speed on IE8, but it still keeps crashing trying to do up my mage for tonight.  Made it through my Encounters character with no problems though.


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## Ketjak (Nov 16, 2010)

I heard the downloadable CB is still available if hidden - anyone have the link in their history? I don't here at work. :/


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## Riastlin (Nov 16, 2010)

I was planning to wait a week at least to worry about using it.  There's always a rush to use stuff when it first comes out which is likely (though not necessarily) a big cause of the crashing that people are experiencing.  In other words, in a typical day, the servers will probably handle the load just fine.  When everyone wants to use it at the same time though . . . crashes will likely be common, at least in the near future.

That said, it is disappointing if its truly not doing all the math correctly, that is the main reason (in my opinion) to use the CB after all.  Having the power cards with the math already done makes it so much quicker during game play.  While its still quicker and easier to use the CB to build a character, the power cards were always my favorite feature.


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## renau1g (Nov 16, 2010)

Oh...umm maybe I'm doing something wrong but a Mage can't select any Wizard powers...it's limited to only Mage ones.


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## Sunseeker (Nov 16, 2010)

Running commentary as I work on a character.

One crash so far, recovered, not bad.

Seemed to lock up for a moment, but came out after about 5 seconds, oop!  Did it again, seems to get more revalent as you raise your level.  But it could be that a lot of people are using it right now too.  Hmm, did it a lot, but I hadn't saved it.  Saved it, and now no problem.  Perhaps a storing unsaved data problem?

Hmm, seems to be greying out more as time goes on, I suspect it's an issue with how many people are using it.


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## Insight (Nov 16, 2010)

Tried to make a Mul Psion Level 2.  Crashed after selecting Race with the following:



> Error: Template Not Found
> 
> and some other code related jargon




Unfortunately, I can't select and copy/paste the error and I'm not retyping all of it.

There should be a bug report button of some kind.

Upon relaunching char builder, I was able to recover the character in progress back to the point where it had crashed.

After I selected "Dwarf" as my "Born of Two Races" option, it crashed again.  When I recovered it again, it took my "Born of Two Races" option without crashing.

The Character Details screen was a little slow, but it didn't crash.  I like the character portrait choice option.  I didn't see an option to upload a picture from my computer, though.  Oops, spoke too soon.  Crashed again.  After restarting again, I was able to get through Theme and Background just fine.

Got through Ability Scores, Skills, Powers, and Feats fine.

Completed everything without any further issues.  

Only issue: they need to work on the item names.  Maybe just rituals.  It listed Unseen Servant as an item and did not say that it was a ritual.


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## webrunner (Nov 16, 2010)

renau1g said:


> Oh...umm maybe I'm doing something wrong but a Mage can't select any Wizard powers...it's limited to only Mage ones.




There's a checkbox to show wizard powers (it's like, 'show all options' or something)


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## mudbunny (Nov 16, 2010)

A note from WOtC_Trevor:



> Hey all. We have discovered an issue with the servers that is causing some people to crash out or hang up in the CB when filling out their characters. We're working to pinpoint the exact issue and fix it, and as soon as I have any new information I'll let you know.


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## Foundry of Decay (Nov 16, 2010)

While the interface looks clean and nice, I dislike the fact that after each selection I have to wait for up to 10 seconds for the next step in the process to load.  I realize in the grand scale of things 10 seconds isn't long, but the offline 'classic' builder seems much quicker at processing since it doesn't have to contact the server every button click.

I've had two rather massive fatal errors when creating a cunning bard, both times I was greeted with some 'template' error and no way to report it.  The third try finally let me through, and did keep all of the data which I'm pleased about.

I still wish you could just enter a custom race though, or click a 'custom' option, which led to simply typing in bonuses and the like.  Even the 'classic' character builder at least let you do that in a very broken and rudimentary way.

But I do realize this is very, very, very early in the character builder process.  Just thought I'd add my thoughts.


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## Charwoman Gene (Nov 16, 2010)

Slow.  "Waiting on Vecna"  

Also worse keyboard support than offline.  (Which was already abysmal.)

Vecna is the god of DRM.  (Keeper of Secrets)


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## Mengu (Nov 16, 2010)

Crashed 5-6 times, froze about that many times in the last hour. I tried to add some stinking thieves tools to the monk I was trying to create, and finally gave up.

Sometimes an operation (like selecting or unselecting a power) takes 2+ minutes.

It's got a ways to go before I can use it in a meaningful way. Today may have been the launch day, but at best I'm going to consider this a beta.


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## Festivus (Nov 16, 2010)

CAFRedblade said:


> Started testing it out, creating a Lvl 11 Monk, was going through the system.
> Personal preference is to do Abilities first, then choose class, thankfully you can skip and return fairly easily, but I liked the Over-head menu navigation more.  Anyways, picked choices down to abilities, as mentioned above, seemed to grey out as it talked back to the servers after every choice I made... slowing me down.  When I got to my abilities, and was entering my charisma it decides to crash.  Try to go back in, crash again.  Discard, try from scratch... no dice... must be a fair amount of people trying it out for this to happen.( at least this is what I'm telling myself so far...)  First day, it's going to be a rough stress test.  More errors as I attempt an essential ... crash.. sigh, I'll try again later tonight.
> 
> Oh, and from a coder viewpoint, one shouldn't probably use names for things like
> ...




The fact that you are even seeing a verbose error message like this is a bit of a problem in my opinion.  Really, stuff like this should never be exposed, only a cryptic error message and perhaps a code, but the rest should just be quietly logged somewhere to be reviewed.


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## Sunseeker (Nov 16, 2010)

Finished creating my character, lots of freezing and a couple more crashes(or at least what I assumed to be crashes because it greyed out for a long time).  Overall, not bad for a first day, could be better, but certainly could be MUCH worse.


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## Raunalyn (Nov 16, 2010)

Overall, not bad. I'm running IE9, and it seems to run pretty smoothly with a few minor crashes that I'm easily able to refresh (hit F5) and restore my character. Minor annoyances with the character sheet, and that is the lack of math on defenses.

Another minor annoyance is the skills. Either it's a bug, or the "Trained" tag next to each skill means that the player is supposed to circle it. Anyone have an opinion on that?

So far, made an essentials thief for Dark Sun and added an Athasian Minstrel theme for giggles.


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## Raunalyn (Nov 16, 2010)

Oh, and imported an old CB character with no problem, other than the portrait. Not sure if the online CB will allow for custom portraits, but that isn't a complaint, just a curiousity.


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## mudbunny (Nov 16, 2010)

Importing custom portraits is something that they are looking at.


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## Dragonblade (Nov 16, 2010)

Overall I like the builder. It has potential, but here are the dislikes I would like WotC to address:

It doesn't like me hopping around to different steps. Boo! Making a PC is an organic process for me and I like to hop around and do things out of order. Crashed when I tried to save after skipping a few steps and doing things out of order.

No way to set my bastard sword to use 2-handed. It only gave me the option for one-handed.

No way to implement house rules that give me bonus ability points, feats, trained skills, and powers. This is really critical for me. All three of my 4e games employ these types of house rules. For example, one game I play in lets us start with higher stats and a couple of bonus feats and an extra trained skill and an extra square of movement. Another game allows the human bonus at-will to apply to the at-will stances that the Essentials fighters get.

No math breakdown. If I have +8 to something, I want to see exactly where all those bonuses are coming from. The bonus breakdown on the old CB helped me notice times when I took two feats with the same feat bonus in error.

Minimized feat categories don't stay minimized when picking another feat.

Need to be able to increase the size of the screens so I can see more options at one time.


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## UnknownAtThisTime (Nov 16, 2010)

I very much wanted to report flawless use of the Character Builder. Unfortunately, it crashed while selecting my character race .... that was quick.

"Fortunately" upon restart it recovered the in-progress character file, but 17 seconds of use and then a crash is not promising. I hope they have spun this as a "soft opening". Fortunately, I am a patient person.

EDIT:  Giving up for the day.    Another crash filling in name, allignment  & height etc.  A crash every 30 seconds is not a good start.


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## Mentat55 (Nov 16, 2010)

(Running Firefox 3.6 on Windows 7 64-bit) I generated a Dark Sun character, level 1 half-elf ardent|battlemind hybrid, with equipment.  Everything seems to have worked, I had no crash issues, I saved the character, and printed up a character sheet.

The noticeable load times are a bit annoying.  The interface is slicker, though only repeated use will tell me if it is better.


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## BobTheNob (Nov 16, 2010)

2 error so far

1 when selecting a skill for training
1 when selecting a stat as racial bonus.

Do like the interface...its clean. Slow but


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## Mirtek (Nov 16, 2010)

Any way to add a dragonshard augment to a weapon?


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## hexgrid (Nov 16, 2010)

DK said:


> No free trial?!?!?
> 
> Seems a bad marketing move...




Subjecting potential subscribers to what's being reported in this thread would be an even worse marketing move. Maybe they're waiting until the initial bugs get worked out.


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## Insight (Nov 16, 2010)

hexgrid said:


> Subjecting potential subscribers to what's being reported in this thread would be an even worse marketing move. Maybe they're waiting until the initial bugs get worked out.




LOL true!

Sensible people, however, will realize that this is launch day and the servers are getting more traffic than they likely will down the road.  I'm not holding my crash-heavy experience against them.


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## Sunseeker (Nov 16, 2010)

Insight said:


> LOL true!
> 
> Sensible people, however, will realize that this is launch day and the servers are getting more traffic than they likely will down the road. I'm not holding my crash-heavy experience against them.




When I first started, when it first came online, it was much faster and less crashy, so server load is apparently a big one.  The more posts and topics I noticed here, the more often things froze up and crashed on the CB.

Which is a common flaw of any online-based system.


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## Ryujin (Nov 16, 2010)

hexgrid said:


> Subjecting potential subscribers to what's being reported in this thread would be an even worse marketing move. Maybe they're waiting until the initial bugs get worked out.




Their version of Microsoft's "Corporate Preview Program"?


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## Prestidigitalis (Nov 16, 2010)

Piratecat said:


> I'm trying to separate "overwhelmed by people and crashing" from "dang, this is buggy and crashing." I'm running into more of the latter. If you look at the known bug list, it looks to me like the CB needed another month of bug-squashing and polish before it went live.




As I wrote elsewhere, it makes more sense if you think of it as a Beta release.  And although some might not like it, and it may give them a black eye, they _will_ get to a high quality product faster by bringing it out when they did.


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## Terramotus (Nov 16, 2010)

Speaking as someone who's had an active D&D Insider subscription since launch, I feel cheated.  This is, quite simply, not a robust product, and is inferior to the original one offered.  And actually, I'm somewhat offended that the product would be released in this condition when there was a perfectly good one already extant.  There should be no question in anyone's mind, having now seen the builder, that it was a move that was purely a money grab, with no attempt to improve the experience for the user.

Some complaints:


No house rules.  I can't allow free feats, exclude anything by source (Essentials, I'm looking at you).  I can't even change the freakin stat array.  This alone makes the builder useless for my campaign.

The only character sheet option is the "I can't do math" version.  The original character builder's sheet was superior.

Even internally, there's no breakdown of all of your bonuses.  When you look at a power, it just states "Primary Ability" instead of the actual numbers.  End result is that you can't easily use the program to find out if X ability works with Y feat and such, or use the numbers easily to figure out which power is better for you.

No custom portraits.

I have to step through the ridiculous "What kind of class do you like to play?" screen every time I build a character.  Seriously?

No scroll wheel support.  I have to drag my way through the program.

It's just plain buggy.  Crashes galore.

End result is that I'm seriously thinking of just using the old CB and making adjustments on the paper.  We'd have to do that anyway with the new CB.  Not only should this program have been held back for further testing, it should have been held back until it was at least somewhat feature complete with the existing CB - and the original CB updated until then.


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## Nikosandros (Nov 16, 2010)

I found it extremely slow. It froze once and I had to reload, but the character was recovered. After printing Silverlight crashed, hanging up my machine for a couple of minutes. Not impressed so far.


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## CAFRedblade (Nov 16, 2010)

Reading the FAQ, linked in the other thread on the launch of the Online CB, there will be a Demo at some point, but who knows when that will come to pass.  
It'll probably allow creation of one character up to level 3, without storage and other limitations pertinent to a demo.  But as it stands now, this CB is late Beta, and probably could have used another month or two to get bugs and features worked out.  But, milestones must be met, or heads can roll sometimes.. 

I'll continue playing with it tonight, and see if I can get through my seven players' characters, and my one DMpc without too much frustration.


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## mudbunny (Nov 16, 2010)

A quick update on the Server problems that they have been experiencing.

According to WotC_Trevor, they are not due to server load. The traffic hitting the servers is well within what they can handle.


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## Sunseeker (Nov 16, 2010)

mudbunny said:


> A quick update on the Server problems that they have been experiencing.
> 
> According to WotC_Trevor, they are not due to server load. The traffic hitting the servers is well within what they can handle.




This this is certainly a moment where he who opens his mouth proves himself to be the fool.  They'd have been better off claiming it was a server issue, and fixing the program, than actually admitting the program is bugged all to heck.

BTW, does anyone remember when the offline CB was in beta?  Was it more stable than this?


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## Ryujin (Nov 16, 2010)

CAFRedblade said:


> Reading the FAQ, linked in the other thread on the launch of the Online CB, there will be a Demo at some point, but who knows when that will come to pass.
> It'll probably allow creation of one character up to level 3, without storage and other limitations pertinent to a demo.  But as it stands now, this CB is late Beta, and probably could have used another month or two to get bugs and features worked out.  But, milestones must be met, or heads can roll sometimes..
> 
> I'll continue playing with it tonight, and see if I can get through my seven players' characters, and my one DMpc without too much frustration.




I would characterize this as an Alpha release, not Beta, given that almost everyone is commenting on crashes. It makes me wonder if they did ANY off-site testing, at all.


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## samursus (Nov 16, 2010)

A few more addenda: I was able to create and save a character using the L4E pbp point-buy (3 extra points).  It doesn't like it (didn't check off the Abilities tab when done) but allowed me to save.

Second I was able to create a Warpriest MC Druid.  It prompted me to choose a Druid At-Will and converted it into an Encounter.  Greater than expected functionality in that respect.

I'll also add my disappointment for the lack of a math breakdown on the Power numbers.


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## mudbunny (Nov 16, 2010)

shidaku said:


> This this is certainly a moment where he who opens his mouth proves himself to be the fool.  They'd have been better off claiming it was a server issue, and fixing the program, than actually admitting the program is bugged all to heck.




According to WotC_Trevor, this is not a problem with the program, nor is it a problem with the server not being able to handle the load, but rather a non server-load problem with the server itself.


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## fanboy2000 (Nov 16, 2010)

*Ugh*

I running the CB in Safari 5 on a laptop running Mac O X 10.6.5. 

I created Ugh the Barbarian, a level 1 Half-Orc Barbarian for my Norse campaign. I originally created him in the old CB, but rather than import him, I just built him from the ground up.

Not bad. I had one crash, when I entered weight and height info beyond the range. I suspect it was the same issue that's been plaguing the other early adopters. Ugh was brought back after the crash though.

My only gripe is that I can't select one of the awesome portraits I have sitting on my computer. (Ugh's a Larry Elmore fan.)

I then created a brand new PC. I level 1 Human Monk in Dark Sun. No crashes this time. My only problem is that the CB doesn't include the Monk's +3 Proficiency bonus to unarmed attacks. Tisk tisk.


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## Sunseeker (Nov 16, 2010)

mudbunny said:


> According to WotC_Trevor, this is not a problem with the program, nor is it a problem with the server not being able to handle the load, but rather a non server-load problem with the server itself.




So, the server is buggy.  Wow, I dunno if that's better or worse.


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## UngeheuerLich (Nov 16, 2010)

It is inconvenient having to chose each power of the same category individually (cantrips e.g.).

I am really no expert in coding, but shouldn´t it be possible to select both at once having reduced grey time?


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## avin (Nov 16, 2010)

All this wait and it didn't work on Chrome and I can't use it on my netbook (1024x600) at the hotel... while trying to create a normal char I can't see an ok button after selecting setting... and upper text is also cut out.

Total piece of garbage. Another digital epic fail from Wotc.


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## Oldtimer (Nov 16, 2010)

Askaval30 said:


> Anyone try loading a character from the old CB? It keeps hanging up on me on the gray loadscreen every time I try...



Same here... after the third attempt it just hangs completely.

As a professional developer I'd be embarrased to let something like this go live. Version 0.1 indeed...


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## pjrake (Nov 16, 2010)

How do you delete an item from the equipment list? I only see that you can de-select an item.

I made an Essential character (level 9) but wish to swap some of the magic items it chose for it.

-PJ


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## MerricB (Nov 16, 2010)

avin said:


> All this wait and it didn't work on Chrome and I can't use it on my netbook (1024x600) at the hotel... while trying to create a normal char I can't see an ok button after selecting setting... and upper text is also cut out.




It works on my copy of Chrome on my laptop running Windows 7.

Cheers!


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## Terramotus (Nov 16, 2010)

samursus said:


> A few more addenda: I was able to create and save a character using the L4E pbp point-buy (3 extra points).  It doesn't like it (didn't check off the Abilities tab when done) but allowed me to save.



How did you even get it to do that much?

EDIT: Nevermind.  You can still click the +/- buttons to raise or lower stats after you've hit the max.


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## Littimer (Nov 16, 2010)

Has anyone found out where the magic ammunition section is?  It doesn't appear to be under Magic Items, Gear, Misc, or Weapons.  I'm out of ideas, which I guess means for the time being I will use both CBs for searching through items/feats/etc.


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## Shroomy (Nov 16, 2010)

pjrake said:


> How do you delete an item from the equipment list? I only see that you can de-select an item.
> 
> I made an Essential character (level 9) but wish to swap some of the magic items it chose for it.
> 
> -PJ




The way I found was to go into the Marketplace and sell the stuff you don't want.


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## MerricB (Nov 16, 2010)

pjrake said:


> How do you delete an item from the equipment list? I only see that you can de-select an item.
> 
> I made an Essential character (level 9) but wish to swap some of the magic items it chose for it.
> 
> -PJ




Very, very good question. I couldn't see that either.

Cheers!


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## pjrake (Nov 16, 2010)

Shroony is right... go to Marketplace, sell item, and choose Remove.

-PJ


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## Kirnon_Bhale (Nov 16, 2010)

Overall - I think it is okay - I see both good and bad in it. The most frustrating thing was while creating a Pyromancer Mage I was unable to select any Fire atwills. I ticked the show additional options box but it still only showed the essentials choices.

Unlike everyone else (or so it would seem) I have not experienced any crashes with any of my creations.


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## Nebulorum (Nov 16, 2010)

*My impressions*

I gave it a quick test. As with most Wizard programs interface is gorgeous, but as some famous computer billionaire once said: "If you can't make it good, make it look good." 

The crashes and missing rules will be fixed in time, but I will have to use the offline version for the time being. What I did not like was the character sheet and printing:



PRO: They do look nice (as stated above)
PRO: Better navigation trough parts
PRO: Clean interface
CON: More use of color on the cards, which will deplete my toner quicker;
CON: Less options for printing (just base template)
CON: No break down any where;
CON: Does not have the option to show all weapons;
CON: Really ugly on the PDF print out, it sees to be really low res (use PrimoPDF just like on CB-Old-And-Faithful)
CON: No option to limit source material, my Eberron character got a Darksun item.
As many have stated it does not look like a finished product. I would sure love Wizards to focus more on a good rock-solid foundation then go to the slick interface.


----------



## Raunalyn (Nov 16, 2010)

Oldtimer said:


> Same here... after the third attempt it just hangs completely.
> 
> As a professional developer I'd be embarrased to let something like this go live. Version 0.1 indeed...




I had no problems importing my Level 4 Half-Elf Avenger. The only thing it didn't do was load my portrait. No biggie there.

I'm running Windows 7 Pro 64bit with IE9 beta and it works ok...a few crashes here and there and a small bit of delay when choosing things.


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## Dr_Ruminahui (Nov 16, 2010)

Mentat55 said:


> Everything seems to have worked, I had no crash issues, I saved the character, and printed up a character sheet.




Up until the printing part, that was my experience too - for some reason, although it lets me select my printer and click okay, nothing actually prints.  Odd.


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## Kurtomatic (Nov 16, 2010)

Since it appears to be mostly feature-complete, it would be a beta rather than an alpha. A beta not ready for prime time, nonetheless.

It runs fine for me in Chrome on XP at work, if a bit slow. I expect better performance at home tonight on my personal equipment.

I've imported some of my LFR characters I downloaded from iplay4e , and the import works well enough, except the management notes (mannerism, appearance, etc.) did not appear to transfer. Has anyone seen the ability to journal your character at all? This seems to have not made their requirements spec for the initial release, which sucks for me.

BTW, do we need a merge?


----------



## NMcCoy (Nov 16, 2010)

First impressions as I get them:
* Hangs when I try to import my current character.
* Hangs when I try to recover my current character from the crash.
* Trying to recreate him from scratch. Choosing a class, *scrollwheel doesn't work*. Major, major UI fault.
* The pop-up bubbly thing when choosing an option annoys me, though I may get used to it eventually. Currently feels like needless bling.
* Making a Lv12 Dragonborn Sorcerer; I get two buttons labeled "Choose a Dragon Breath option". Bug? No, one is for an ability score, one is for elemental type. A clear case where the older CB's transparent options worked a bit better from a clarity standpoint.
* Ability scores. No way to drag/drop to swap them, from what I can tell. Dropdown box for choosing level up abilities is _still_ a terrible interface for it. Seriously, give me a horizontal list of "STR CON DEX INT WIS CHA" and let me click two of them. The way it shows primary/secondary stats for a class is brilliant; make _use_ of that innovation, please.
* Want to do skills later, heading to Feats instead.
* AUGH WALL OF GREEN BUTTONS. And they're too wide for the column, even.
* When searching by name for an element: if the search returns a unique result, hitting enter should select that option and close the popup. it doesn't.
* A rare moment of UI working as I expect: double-clicking a selected feat lets me reselect it.
* The skill choosing interface is juuust shy of excellent: I've multiclassed paladin, and if I check History first (i.e., as a Sorcerer skill behind the scenes) I can't choose Athletics as my last choice, but if I do it the other way around (History as my last choice) I can.
* Feat-related options in the feat section is good; would be better if the option were directly below the feat chosen rather than at the bottom. Also, having the Powerful Breath choice ALSO shown on the racial tab would be nice.
* Can't find a way to add bonus feats. When they said "no houserule support", they weren't kidding.
* Can't figure out how to attach a dragonshard augment. "Equip Selected" is clickable, but has no apparent effect.
* Shopping feels weird. More on this later.
* Can't find my bonus breakdown on my Dragon Breath damage. Can't find the Dragon Breath power at all, actually. Except on the character sheet as a power card.
* Dragon Breath power card is immensely unsuited to actual play. Card doesn't reflect ability score/element choices made, still has the "Special" section.


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## MrBeens (Nov 16, 2010)

Not impressed.

It is sluggish and overall really badly laid out. Horrible amount of  wasted space.  off, I don't need a little random picture next to  each class to somehow demonstrate what that class is.
No mouse wheel or keyboard controls.

Things that are not in the new CB that used to be in the old version


You can only have 1 weapon assigned to a power card at any one time.  Even powers that are dual weild powers don't properly list the attack  and damage for both attacks. Powers that can be used for melee and  ranged (like twin strike for instance) can only have one of the versions  listed at any one time.

No holy symbol slot. You have to equip it in your hand!

No summary of feats - you have to click on each one individually to read the text.

Rituals are just listed in the equipment section with all your other stuff.

Non magic items can't be shown as item cards (I had ritual components as  cards so I had more space for keeping track of what was mine, the  parties etc)
Can't make a blank item card - useful for so many things.

Can't rename items - yes, thats about as far as item customisation went in the old version but it was really useful.

No custom portait - wtf! You can't even have no portrait.

No customisation on the character sheets. Both of the character sheets  are really ugly and have so much wasted space. Whats with the massive  amount of white space down the right hand side?

None of the character sheets show the calculations for what they are doing liek it did on the old sheet.

Can't remove flavour text from power cards.

The item selection screen is awful. You have to choose a weapon  category, then a weapon both from drop down lists, then you can look at  the stats on that one weapon.

For comedy - made a quick 2 weapon human ranger. Made it auto pick feats at first level. Sheild finesse and power attack 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			






That said there are some bits I like. 
I like the new second page for feat, racial and class features. The old sheets didn't show enough.
Apart from the  no customisation etc I said above I like the new style power cards. They are much cleaner.
I ummmm like the skill select when creating a new character. Before you  had to click skill, click choose skill. Now you just tick tick tick.  Well you would if it didn't pause for 10 seconds after each click.  Really I am clutching at straws of things to like here.


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## Kzach (Nov 16, 2010)

I keep trying to load the demo of the CB but I can't find the link to it!

Oh, wait, that's because there isn't one... OMG! I better give them money right now or else I'll never know what it's like!


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## TerraDave (Nov 16, 2010)

Yes, I can finally make charecters on my work PC.

No, I could not get it to become a pdf. 

Otherwise, a little slow, and the math seemed right. 

Oh, and "choose for me" super bad (and not the good super bad). But I guess it was like that before?


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## pjrake (Nov 16, 2010)

Healing Word card for a WarPriest is not showing the effect and special text. Where can I report this bug again?

-PJ


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## ProfessorCirno (Nov 16, 2010)

This is a hot mess.

Ignoring the hilariously long list of issues, many of which are basically just "woops it doesn't work" (Guess they decided to cut down from twenty characters to *two!*)...

Feats don't have a summary, so you need to manually click and scroll though _every single one_ to see what they do.

It calls back to the server _every time_ you make a selection.  Annoying as hell, to put it lightly.

None of the "new styles" looks like the old one.  Hey, who needs to see what all your modifiers are, anyways?

Insanely buggy, insanely crash ridden.

Mages can't take wizard powers.

Hybrid characters can't be imported over.

In fact, check out more here!

*Exactly* how I predicted, this software wasn't even close to being ready for release, and they pushed it out anyways.  It's a buggy mess with issues spewing out.  It's completely and utterly inferior to the original Character Builder in just about every way

But hey, on the bright side, their feature of "You can't download it" works just as advertised!


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## RigaMortus2 (Nov 16, 2010)

Can anyone answer this...

In the old CB, when you go to the feat section, it showed you "recommended feats", then racial feats, then class feats, then all the feats available to you.  I really like that.  Is the online CB set up the same way?


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## Oldtimer (Nov 16, 2010)

I'm giving up - this thing doesn't work at all. Whatever I try, I get either "session timed out" or the whole thing just freezes up. What a load of rubbish!


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## No Name (Nov 16, 2010)

*It's not worth the money*

I remade my monk in the game I currently play in.

*Human, not able to choose a second language
*Not able to choose where weapons are equipped
*Centered Breath Fortitude increase is incorrect

Still broken AND less functional??? Sign me up!


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## TerraDave (Nov 16, 2010)

RigaMortus2 said:


> Can anyone answer this...
> 
> In the old CB, when you go to the feat section, it showed you "recommended feats", then racial feats, then class feats, then all the feats available to you.  I really like that.  Is the online CB set up the same way?




I got recomended feats on one test (mage wizard) and not another (08 ranger). In each case got class and racial, then a big wad of other, then more subcatagories, like multiclass and I think the ones in the Heroes of books. 

In general feat selection is one of the weakest bits.


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## Bold or Stupid (Nov 16, 2010)

RigaMortus2 said:


> Can anyone answer this...
> 
> In the old CB, when you go to the feat section, it showed you "recommended feats", then racial feats, then class feats, then all the feats available to you.  I really like that.  Is the online CB set up the same way?




Yes by default, you can organise it in other ways as well. The search function seems to be better, if a little slow, showing every feat that meets the search string, much like the MB one does.

Over all I actually like it and have yet to have many problems beyond lag. The only real error crash was when I picked ritual caster for a Mage (eWizard).


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## sigfile (Nov 16, 2010)

FYI: the list of known issues (I have *no* idea how often this gets updated) can be found here.

You can click on this link to submit bug reports for items not listed in the known issues list.


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## badmojojojo (Nov 16, 2010)

Riastlin said:


> I was planning to wait a week at least to worry about using it.  There's always a rush to use stuff when it first comes out which is likely (though not necessarily) a big cause of the crashing that people are experiencing.  In other words, in a typical day, the servers will probably handle the load just fine.  When everyone wants to use it at the same time though . . . crashes will likely be common, at least in the near future.




Thats also my plan. I probably wont renew my subscription until after Im back from Thanksgiving holiday. I think you are correct as to the reason why the CB is experiencing so much crashing.


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## malraux (Nov 16, 2010)

badmojojojo said:


> Thats also my plan. I probably wont renew my subscription until after Im back from Thanksgiving holiday. I think you are correct as to the reason why the CB is experiencing so much crashing.




FWIW, mudbunny has a quote from some of the devs that says it isn't a load issue, but a different sort of problem.


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## Ryujin (Nov 16, 2010)

mudbunny said:


> According to WotC_Trevor, this is not a problem with the program, nor is it a problem with the server not being able to handle the load, but rather a non server-load problem with the server itself.




If we're talking about "a server", then I think that I can tell them where their problem is.


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## Abraxas (Nov 16, 2010)

Finally finished creating my character. Painfully slow.

However - while trying to print it I ran into 2 problems.

1) Even though I had the CB character sheet showing it printed the essentials sheet

2) I can't print just a single page of the whole character...that's not exactly true - I can print one page, I'm just not sure which page that will end up being. Twice now it produced a random page when printing, so I'm missing one page in the middle of my character sheets and can't seem to print just that page.

This is freakin funny


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## Quickleaf (Nov 16, 2010)

Quick question. Is the downloadable version still available to long time subscribers? My OS died over the weekend (stupid vista) so I need to reinstall it.


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## Festivus (Nov 16, 2010)

I will give bonus points for my wizard named $username' or '1'='1' not crashing the server or exposing anything good.

But I just noticed that you cannot copy/paste... not huge but really?  I can't copy / paste my characters name into a web browser?


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## Jools (Nov 16, 2010)

The important question for me is: can you log into (and use) the new CB  on two (or more) computers at once? What happens if another machine logs  onto CB whilst another is already using it?


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## Scribble (Nov 16, 2010)

Abraxas said:


> Finally finished creating my character. Painfully slow.
> 
> However - while trying to print it I ran into 2 problems.
> 
> ...




HRmm... That doesn't seem to be happening to me... How are you opting to print the single page?


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## Abraxas (Nov 16, 2010)

Scribble said:


> HRmm... That doesn't seem to be happening to me... How are you opting to print the single page?



Selecting pages instead of all pages in range and then entering the page(s) I want. Tried 1-4, got 1, 2, 3 and *taadaa* page 7 (I think, there are no page numbers - and I'm not running it at the moment). Tried to print just page 4, got the same page (7), tried 3-6 got page 1 and pages 5, 6, 7.

An aside - I actually like the HUGE printing on the CB sheet - I'm getting old and my eyes are getting weak and it is VERY easy to read. The summary sheet is also nice.


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## Sunseeker (Nov 16, 2010)

Quickleaf said:


> Quick question. Is the downloadable version still available to long time subscribers? My OS died over the weekend (stupid vista) so I need to reinstall it.




No.  Though the page was still there as of this morning, as soon as the online CB went live, the page was replaced with the one we see currently.


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## Dragonhelm (Nov 16, 2010)

TerraDave said:


> No, I could not get it to become a pdf.




I tried it with Adobe, and Adobe didn't like the idea of making a PDF.  Tried again using Cute PDF, and success!  

Other than that, I've experienced the same problems as others.  The errors seem to have gone down during the day.


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## pjrake (Nov 16, 2010)

Me too. Printed page 1, no problem. Then tried printing page 2 on the back and instead it printed page 3 (the equipment and character details). I wanted the Feats and Features.

-PJ


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## Bagpuss (Nov 16, 2010)

Ketjak said:


> I heard the downloadable CB is still available if hidden - anyone have the link in their history? I don't here at work. :/




Google cache to the rescue

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/tool/characterbuilder/DDI_CB.exe


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## Stormtower (Nov 16, 2010)

I feel totally vindicated in my choice to discontinue my subscription to DDI.  Bye, WotC.  You have successfully fired me and my group as customers and we will happily play Pathfinder with Hero Lab forever more.


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## RigaMortus2 (Nov 16, 2010)

I can't figure out how to view a lower level version of my character.  If I make a level 10 Monk, I can't find an option to see what he looks like at a lower level, like I can with the old CB.  Anyone know how to do this?

Also, why can't I find Themes for a Homebrew Campaign?  I assumed if it was Homebrew, it would open up all available options.  Isn't there any way to make an Essentials build, using Eberron rules and a Dark Sun theme?  I would figure that is the point of selecting Homebrew, but can't find where to get the Dark Sun theme...


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## Caerin (Nov 17, 2010)

RigaMortus2 said:


> I can't figure out how to view a lower level version of my character.  If I make a level 10 Monk, I can't find an option to see what he looks like at a lower level, like I can with the old CB.  Anyone know how to do this?
> 
> Also, why can't I find Themes for a Homebrew Campaign?  I assumed if it was Homebrew, it would open up all available options.  Isn't there any way to make an Essentials build, using Eberron rules and a Dark Sun theme?  I would figure that is the point of selecting Homebrew, but can't find where to get the Dark Sun theme...




It won't let you lower a character's level unless you change the XP, I believe- then you can either raise or lower the character to the level matching the XP. I read that at least one of the XP levels was off in some fashion, but I haven't seen that yet.

Homebrew and that type of mixing isn't currently supported. Right now only Dark Sun characters can use themes.

Edit: AsmodeusLore's list of errors is a pretty good place to check if you're seeing unexpected behavior.


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## BobTheNob (Nov 17, 2010)

Stormtower said:


> I feel totally vindicated in my choice to discontinue my subscription to DDI.  Bye, WotC.  You have successfully fired me and my group as customers and we will happily play Pathfinder with Hero Lab forever more.



Bye

Now, there was a weirdness with the CB. If I create an "essentials" character, it plays along as if essentials only (odd, its like it "marks" the character as essentials only).

If I set my campaign as darksun, I can choose themes.

Is there a way the two can combine (i.e. an essentials dark sun character), and I mean apart from creating a Dark sun character and selecting a Essentials build.


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## Scribble (Nov 17, 2010)

BobTheNob said:


> Is there a way the two can combine (i.e. an essentials dark sun character), and I mean apart from creating a Dark sun character and selecting a Essentials build.




You mean by making a quick essentials character with Darksun stuff? Doesn't seem to be... Quick Essentials seems to be literally a quick essentials only character.


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## Obryn (Nov 17, 2010)

This is, so far, unsatisfactory.

While the interface is okay-ish, and certainly attractive, it doesn't allow any jumping around whatsoever.  It's faster than I had expected, though.

I've tried to put in two characters from my Dark Sun game, and have had issues with both of them.  First off, not implementing inherent bonuses is pretty crappy.  Second, while I figured out you can allow for extra stat points, it'd be nice to have that implemented more smoothly.  On the easiest character of all, I even had a bug - it's adding damage bonuses for Spear Expertise on all attacks.

It's vastly inferior to the old builder so far.  Right now, it's not worth my continued subscription.

-O


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## webrunner (Nov 17, 2010)

Obryn said:


> Second, while I figured out you can allow for extra stat points, it'd be nice to have that implemented more smoothly.
> 
> -O




How do you do that?  Whenever I try, it doesn't let me hit "next" at all unless one stat is below 10.


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## Obryn (Nov 17, 2010)

I just hit the next box on the right hand side and let it stay browned-out.

-O


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## CAFRedblade (Nov 17, 2010)

Festivus said:


> But I just noticed that you cannot copy/paste... not huge but really?  I can't copy / paste my characters name into a web browser?




While you can't seem to right click paste(or right click anything due to Silverlight), you can keyboard ctrl-v paste (on windows) probably cmd-v i think on Macs (correct me if I'm wrong)


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## fanboy2000 (Nov 17, 2010)

BobTheNob said:


> Is there a way the two can combine (i.e. an essentials dark sun character), and I mean apart from creating a Dark sun character and selecting a Essentials build.



Well, sort or. Essentials Classes are available when you choose the DS campaign setting.

If you set things to sort by source (like when choosing a feat) HorFL shows up first usually.

Odd, but there you go.


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## pjrake (Nov 17, 2010)

Does anyone know when the characters for the second book (forget the name, the ones with the Paladin Cavalier) will be available?

-PJ


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## yesnomu (Nov 17, 2010)

Aside from the lack of scrolling (wow, that's irritating), my biggest problem is that it's in Silverlight, rather than the rather more universal Javascript. It means on most computers, I'd need to download something before I can use it, which kinda diminishes the value of having it online. Plus, Gmail is so much more responsive than the CB, it isn't funny.

Second big problem: I imported my level 19 shaman from my Dark Sun game... and I can't give him his Elemental Priest theme. Or sort him out as a Dark Sun character. So that's irritating. Then, when I go to build him as a new character (which takes quite a long time), I can't take his Invoker MC feat. (Yes, I know, but even the DS book mentions corner cases it can be allowed.) Like, it doesn't list it as homebrew or anything, the option's just not there. That's not really cool!

I'm not going to say this will drive me to another game system or anything... but I'm definitely keeping the old CB installed. I'm sure this will get better in time--one month from now, I expect it to be quite nice.


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## Sunseeker (Nov 17, 2010)

pjrake said:


> Does anyone know when the characters for the second book (forget the name, the ones with the Paladin Cavalier) will be available?
> 
> -PJ




Sadly, no.  I was hoping they would come part and parcel with it, given the book came out today.  I really wanted to use those variable Tiefling stats.


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## Zaukrie (Nov 17, 2010)

Seems really slow to me, but then Firefox seems slow in general to me lately, so maybe that is it.

Not impressed with the over simplification. I kind of need to see the math to understand the implications of my choices.

What's with all the color? Do they not know we have to print this stuff out?

Just not a fan at all so far. It better get better, or they are likely to lose my as a subscriber.


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## pjrake (Nov 17, 2010)

Just made a level 9 Essential Knight (Fighter). At level 7 I get a Weapon Specialization, and it gave me Staggering Hammer. However, I equipped him with a longsword so I want to change the WS to Bladed Step.

Looked everywhere but couldn't find where I change make that switch. I can swap Powers, Feats, but no Weapon Specialization?

-PJ


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## webrunner (Nov 17, 2010)

Obryn said:


> I just hit the next box on the right hand side and let it stay browned-out.
> 
> -O




if I do that then I dont get power cards


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## Aristotle (Nov 17, 2010)

I *really* like the interface.

No rule files? I liked the character generator because it allowed my players, who are mostly casual gamers, to see all of their options... but I don't necessarily want ALL of the options in my game. I loved that I could throw them a file and it would limit the language, deity, races, or whatever choices to the campaign parameters..

That's  my primary complaint, but it's kind of a deal breaker for my group and since I purchase the subscriptions for my group it affects all 5 accounts.

It also breaks my ability to port characters into FG2. But I'm sure a new parser will come along for this.


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## ProfessorCirno (Nov 17, 2010)

On one hand, you can't edit the character sheet in the slightest.

On the other hand you don't need to because this program is goddamn useless and you can't even copy and paste character sheets onto forums.


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 17, 2010)

Keep the old one.

I can't blame anyone at this point for cancelling their subs for this. There's no added value in this CB, and a _lot lot lot_ of problems. Hand-adding the DS and Essentials stuff you want is better than this. Doing up your character by hand is probably better than this. 

The reduced functionality might be bearable if it did what it said on the tin adequately enough. If it *built a D&D character*. 

Unfortunately, it can't really do that very well. It crashes, or decides to add a random bonus, or decides to not add a random bonus, or decides to hide options, or decides to not let you get rid of items, or decides to not let you equip things, or decides to take it's sweet time and fart the national anthem while it turns grey and sits around for a few minutes, just chilling out, like that's it's job.

I mean, you might get it to help you make a D&D character. Y'know, if you let it kick you in the shins and give it $10/month for the privilege while it laughs at you with all the popular kids.

Okay, yes, there's some absurdist hyperbole in here. But when making a character is nearly a Kafkaesque experience, all red tape, pointless restrictions, and a grim hilarity at the suffering of life, I feel absurdist hyperbole is the most appropriate response.

Seriously, keep the old one, and, unless you _really love_ Dragon, Dungeon, and the Compendium, cancel yer sub, at least for a few months until they get this into a workable state. 

Because the CB as it exists now is making me feel like it's 2000 all over again, and I've just bought the 3e PHB, and here's this nifty character creator on a disk in the back of it and _oh sweet jesus this is more hassle than help_. It is not worth money. I feel like they should be paying _me_ to bug-test the sunbich.


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## Mercurius (Nov 17, 2010)

I just have to laugh...what is Wizards of the Coast thinking? I actually got the thing to work after a couple crashes, but you just don't release a program this buggy, especially with such a lousy track record.

As for the CB itself, after watching the video I thought I would like it better - and I think once I get the hang of it, it might be a tad easier - but overall I don't like it as much. I can't really explain why, but it is an aesthetic quality, mainly.

It also doesn't give full info on races, afaict, at least after you've already selected it.


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## Piratecat (Nov 17, 2010)

I'm not a negative guy, but I just can't believe this launched. Okay, they were between a rock and a hard place, what with customers demanding Dark Sun and Essentials in their character builder and time ticking away. I understand that. But letting something this buggy out the door is embarrassing and insupportable. I want it to succeed, but it's got a ways to go. 

I've told my group to pretend it's not there for another week or two.


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## rjdafoe (Nov 17, 2010)

Mercurius said:


> I just have to laugh...what is Wizards of the Coast thinking? I actually got the thing to work after a couple crashes, but you just don't release a program this buggy, especially with such a lousy track record.
> 
> As for the CB itself, after watching the video I thought I would like it better - and I think once I get the hang of it, it might be a tad easier - but overall I don't like it as much. I can't really explain why, but it is an aesthetic quality, mainly.
> 
> It also doesn't give full info on races, afaict, at least after you've already selected it.





The only thing they must be thinking is this:

What a way to protect our content!  Now our customers can't even use our content reliably!  We are safe from those damn Pirates now....


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## JoeGKushner (Nov 17, 2010)

Stormtower said:


> I feel totally vindicated in my choice to discontinue my subscription to DDI.  Bye, WotC.  You have successfully fired me and my group as customers and we will happily play Pathfinder with Hero Lab forever more.




I'm not quite on the same boat. I let my auto-renewal off, which ends this month but got to test this software.

It's not ready for prime time.

Maybe in a few months but for now? No $$ for you WoTC.


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## Retreater (Nov 17, 2010)

Was contemplating renewing my membership, but won't until I hear more positive feedback. 

Thanks for the heads up.

Retreater


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## zoroaster100 (Nov 17, 2010)

So if I create a Quick build character, it is forever restricted to Essentials options only and I can't ever decide to select other options unless I re-create the character in the Character Builder from scratch?


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## lkj (Nov 17, 2010)

Piratecat said:


> I'm not a negative guy, but I just can't believe this launched. Okay, they were between a rock and a hard place, what with customers demanding Dark Sun and Essentials in their character builder and time ticking away. I understand that. But letting something this buggy out the door is embarrassing and insupportable. I want it to succeed, but it's got a ways to go.
> 
> I've told my group to pretend it's not there for another week or two.





I've been playing around with the Builder for about an hour or two, in Chrome, and haven't had an issue. Built a couple of different characters, including a 30th level one. 

I can't speak to specific data errors, but I haven't had a crash. And by and large I like the interface. 

Maybe I'm just lucky. But I'm encouraged. 

AD


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## Obryn (Nov 17, 2010)

Alright, well, still no crashes.  Which puts me in the minority, I guess?  In fact, I find the interface a little snappier than I expected.  (The youtube demo was more laggy than the finished product.)

Anyway, all I wanted this thing to do was reliably store and update the characters in my Dark Sun game.  If it had been able to do that, I would have gladly reupped my subscription.  As it stands, I'm happy to let it sit for a while until I hear more positive stuff coming out about it.

My current concerns:
(1) The lack of inherent bonuses is a major drag when it comes to Dark Sun.  Sure, technically I can work around it by giving everyone magic items.  But I use CB to _avoid_ those sorts of bookkeeping snafus.

(2) The simplest character in the game - a Human Inspiring Warlord - is getting hit by two bugs.  Spear Expertise gives +1 to all his damage (when it's just on charges), and his Hungry Greatspear is nowhere to be found, no matter which boxes I check or uncheck.

(3) Speaking of, I kinda hate those boxes.  They don't work properly on Wild Talents or on selecting a third At-Will for a Human much of the time.

(4) The new Marketplace and Equipment screens are ... well, kind of abominable.  It's slow, clunky, unattractive, and extremely difficult to find stuff with.  I really hate this part of the process.  (Also, for DS, we need materials.  Minor point, but there you have it.)

(5) As I mentioned elsewhere, my houseruled carrot to encourage my players to try new Roles out was to give them 1 extra stat point.  Not a big deal in theory, and a dev even said it would work on the WotC site, but it hoses up the entire process.

-O


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## Shemeska (Nov 17, 2010)

Mercurius said:


> I just have to laugh...what is Wizards of the Coast thinking? I actually got the thing to work after a couple crashes, but you just don't release a program this buggy, especially with such a lousy track record.




My guess is that the program simply was not ready for release, but it was released anyways because marketing or someone higher up the decision chain decided that they couldn't continue to stall on updating the offline builder which they didn't want to include material kept in reserve for leverage to move folks onto the online one. Presumably they felt the blowback would be greater if they just sat on the stuff that wouldn't be making it into the offline builder versus releasing the online builder when it wasn't ready for primetime.

I feel bad for the IT guys if that was the case because they'll be getting the blowback front and center.


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## Kurtomatic (Nov 17, 2010)

Having spent some more time with this at home tonight; it runs pretty good for me here, but I have shload of RAM sitting on FiOS fiber connection. What bothers me is the poor value. While the cloud storage, online-only, no local DB, 20 character limit stuff never bothered me _at all_, I agree that the new CB represents a pretty severe loss of utility, even if it was all working flawlessly.

This release is absolutely going to negatively impact the value of a DDI subscription for many users. For me, DDI was under-priced at $8/month; that's basically lunch money. It doesn't take much to keep me subscribed, but this loss of utility puts my subscription in play. They have to significantly increase the value of this app in a fairly impressive way to keep me interested.

I'm completely okay with WotC making big changes and shaking things up in order to improve the game. Apparently, you can't make an omelet without firing a few customers (mixed metaphors ftw!), but they _have_ to deliver, and this wasn't worth the wait or the inevitable churn they'll get in response.

I'll stick with the old CB for the foreseeable future.


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## ProfessorCirno (Nov 17, 2010)

CB Loader ( cbloader - Project Hosting on Google Code ) has been developed and released by fans, allowing custom content to be patched into the "Classic" Character Builder, thus rendering the online version even more useless, as new content can simply be patched in by third party.

Themes are already in...because *they were already coded in*.  At least one of the preview themes was already programmed into the old Character Builder, it simply wasn't available for viewing.  WotC dropped it to provide extra "incentives" to use the online version.

So far my most negative predictions are 2/2 (online version being utterly incomplete, themes being unupdated strictly to provide for "incentives").  Way to go, WotC.


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## Mengu (Nov 17, 2010)

Crashes aside, the slowness just makes me lose interest. I make a selection, come over here, read a few posts, oh the selection is done, I choose another power, hit select, the next few go fast enough, then I decide to unselect something, oh I have to wait, come over here, read a few more posts, still processing, I forget what I'm working on, etc.

It has potential, bugs can be fixed, features can be added, but the slowness problem has to be resolved if the product is to survive.


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## ProfessorCirno (Nov 17, 2010)

Mengu said:


> Crashes aside, the slowness just makes me lose interest. I make a selection, come over here, read a few posts, oh the selection is done, I choose another power, hit select, the next few go fast enough, then I decide to unselect something, oh I have to wait, come over here, read a few more posts, still processing, I forget what I'm working on, etc.
> 
> It has potential, bugs can be fixed, features can be added, but the slowness problem has to be resolved if the product is to survive.




The slowness is due to quite possibly the most inept coding imaginable.

EDIT: removing my note, as we're talking via PM. ~ PCat

Basically, every time you do anything in the new CB - pretty much _anything at all_, it completely reloads your entire character.

So, you make a character.  That bright happy new ranger, completely untouched, unedited, and really not-yet-made, is 73kb.  You decide to click the plus arrow next to strength.

The entire server pauses, sends, and reloads 73kb.

It does this_ every time you click anything_.

That's why there's such severe slowdown issues, and it's why the servers are basically catching on fire and melting.


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## Piratecat (Nov 17, 2010)

Shemeska said:


> I feel bad for the IT guys if that was the case because they'll be getting the blowback front and center.



Agreed. It's not their fault they were told to release it today, even when it wasn't ready. I hate to think of the amount of overtime they're probably putting in. 

But I need a character builder that I can have confidence in. I need something that I can trust to be right, that I know will be available, and that will let me make the minor customizations and house rules tweaks that every campaign requires. _A character builder that can't do this is useless to me._ And with errata and multiple sourcebooks, WotC is a victim of its own success, because I now consider character building in 4e to be a pain in the butt without an electronic tool. 

I look forward to the upcoming bug fixes! One of the cool things is that they'll doubtlessly overhaul the usability issues and any layout issues in the process.


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## Jack99 (Nov 17, 2010)

1) WotC- This is just not good enough. And I have no crashes or anything like that. But the constant reloads????? Seriously? Pleass try again. Quickly.

2) W
3) T
4) F

5) I agree with the Marauder on this. First Imaro, then Shemeska. Hell will be freezing over pretty soon.

6) See 2)-4) again. Please consider a public apology (refund) to your customers. You have just insulted them all.  This simply won't fly unless fixed, like yesterday.

And yeah, I am a fan....


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## sarria22 (Nov 17, 2010)

Character Builder

I haven't read the full thread but, anyone notice this? Not only is it a lot faster way to access the builder than going through the main site, but it has a debug tab where you can copy the XML for your character data... so export ability is already there, they just need to add a button for it.


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## RigaMortus2 (Nov 17, 2010)

Stormtower said:


> I feel totally vindicated in my choice to discontinue my subscription to DDI.  Bye, WotC.  You have successfully fired me and my group as customers and we will happily play Pathfinder with Hero Lab forever more.




So let me get this straight.  I'm gonna try to follow your logic here.

You're going to quit playing an entire game system from a company that gives you the *option* to have additional features/content by paying a subscription fee, to play a different system from a company that does not offer that at all?

Why not just pretend there is no such thing as DDi?  Then you won't feel the psychological "need" to have to pay for additional content.  And you won't be let down when it doesn't meet your expectations.

Unless your real reason for no longer playing D&D 4e (or supporting WotC) is because you don't care for the system.  And if that's the real reason you are quitting, then I have to wonder why you felt the need to post in a thread that has nothing to do with the subject of "I don't like 4e"?


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## sarria22 (Nov 17, 2010)

Hah, I just copied the xml from the CharacterFile part of the Debug tab at vecna.wizards.com and saved it as a .dnd4e file in my old character builder save directory... and loaded it up just fine in the old character builder, well, to an extent, all the new powers and such are missing from the character sheet, but hey, at least it shows that it should be easy enough for things like iplay4e to update for the new characters, assuming wotc doesnt remove this ability right away.


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## Dannager (Nov 17, 2010)

RigaMortus2 said:


> So let me get this straight.  I'm gonna try to follow your logic here.
> 
> You're going to quit playing an entire game system from a company that gives you the *option* to have additional features/content by paying a subscription fee, to play a different system from a company that does not offer that at all?
> 
> ...



This isn't the first time we've seen this line of "reasoning", and it won't be the last. This is the consumer mentality at its worst. WotC doesn't need customers who think along these lines, anyway. I wouldn't fret over it.


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## tuxgeo (Nov 17, 2010)

I am _*so*_ glad that I didn't try out this piece of <redacted> today. 
Yes. 

Thanks to everybody who did try it out, however. 
(Better that you should suffer through BETA 0.01 instead of I.) 

Today, I had fun with the Classic CB: My spoiled, imperious human child-Sorcerer, Sarah, just went from being a Dagger Sorcerer to being a Staff Sorcerer instead (because the better Ral Partha mini* that is still in the mail is sculpted as brandishing a Staff instead of a Dagger), and she thereby began having even more boatloads of fun, as follows: 
Without limiting her choices by imagining that "Ensorcelled Blade" had any positive value, I freed her to take "Dragonfrost" instead! And by leaving off the "Toughness" feat, I was able to  give her the "Melee Training" feat at Level 1 for an actually respectable Melee Basic Attack using Quarterstaff, instead of -1 tohit with her Dagger and a STR value of 8.  

It's Win-Win, so I'm now willing to share with you Sarah's current, reflavored At-Will powers: 
(1) "Flame Wave." Yes, Wizards had called it "Burning Spray." What do they know, right? Sarah's rewritten flavor text for this power is: 
"I wrote down what this does on a scroll, but the scroll got burned up!"
(2) "Madhammer." Yes, Wizards had called it "Chaos Bolt." What do they know, right? Sarah's rewritten flavor text for this power is: 
"A gust of vacillating vagary leaps from your hand to inveigle their minds."
(3) "Snowball." Yes, Wizards had called it "Dragonfrost." What do they know, right? Sarah's rewritten flavor text for this power is: 
"You're kidding, right? You want me to describe a snowball? REALLY?!? If I hit them with the snowball, they have to stagger away! Duh!"

And there you have it: You dedicated souls were bug-testing a Beta product while I was away having fun by mocking their flavor text. Thanks for letting me off the hook for any of that work, guys!


 *Edit: FYI: "Ral Partha: Fantasy Adventures FA47 Sorceress" -- look for it at an online reseller of obsolete products near you today, if it matters to you. . . .


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 17, 2010)

> You're going to quit playing an entire game system from a company that gives you the option to have additional features/content by paying a subscription fee, to play a different system from a company that does not offer that at all?




I can't speak for Stormtower, but anyone is certainly free to stop buying anything that they ever want to stop buying for any reason under the sun. 

If someone feels like quitting 4e and picking up Pathfinder is the best way to express their displeasure/restore their joy, then they are free to do so. 

WotC is not owed anyone's money for any reason. 



> Why not just pretend there is no such thing as DDi? Then you won't feel the psychological "need" to have to pay for additional content. And you won't be let down when it doesn't meet your expectations.




I imagine there's plenty of folks who, if they can't use the CB, won't bother with playing 4e. 

Doesn't matter if it's the most "logical" chain of events. 

If this hiccup gets someone to try out new games and new ideas for a month or two, ideas that they can bring back when the CB isn't quite such a bitter pill, the hobby as a whole rejoices.  



> This is the consumer mentality at its worst. WotC doesn't need customers who think along these lines, anyway. I wouldn't fret over it.




Glad to see WotC makes enough money out of thin air that it can forgo actual human beings with all their messiness as customers.

Naah, really, everyone who wants customers needs to deal with the messy complexity of human beings, which can include: "This experience does not meet my needs, so I will consider patronizing a competitor until such a time as I feel like it may."

Which really isn't that crazy, anyway.


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## Caerin (Nov 17, 2010)

I do understand that attitude. Although I don't quite share it (I'm still a DDi subscriber and play 4E, and don't plan to stop anytime soon) the character builder was the tipping point amongst systems for some of my friends. If they don't have access to the character builder the way they like to use it, there's nothing really tying them to this system over other systems.


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## Nyronus (Nov 17, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Naah, really, everyone who wants customers needs to deal with the messy complexity of human beings, which can include: "This experience does not meet my needs, so I will consider patronizing a competitor until such a time as I feel like it may."
> 
> Which really isn't that crazy, anyway.




Actually, yeah, yeah it is. Basically he is abandoning a perfectly functional game system to go to a competitor out of spite. Its further made absurd when you learn that hero labs has 4th Edition support. Changing to Pathfinder is an act of pure spite meant to punish WotC for not meeting his demands. Of course, such an action means almost nothing since spending money somewhere else hurts a company no more than if the money was not spent at all.  Its irrational and stupid.

There is also the fact that, as Mac user, I can safely say that the Compendium is more than functional as a character building tool: I should know since I've been using it for three years now. Yes, the new builder is a buggy piece of , and, yes, the loss of the character builder is lame (you know, for those who got to actually use, and particularly for those who got to _abuse_ it), but its not the end of the game or the hobby. Most of the perpetual chicken littles and rage-quiters don't really have a leg to stand on, and the threats of running to pathfinder more or less confirm suspicious I've had for a while that some of the characters act as they do not out of an objective judgement but merely out of spite. Yes, WotC screwed the pooch big time, but most people act like Mike Mearls personally invaded their homes and snapped the neck of their favorite pet while whistling "Singing in the Rain." Its a software accessory for a hobby game.

*Get over it.*


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## Jan van Leyden (Nov 17, 2010)

Tried it in the evening at home, running Opera on Win7-64 with a 4k DSL.

On the plus side:
+ was able to load characters made with the old CB

+ a home-ruled item survived the transfer intact and is represented via a card

+ Recover function seems to work rather reliably

+ clear reminder of one selection missed during generation

On the minus side:
- slow. Makes me think whether something is broken.

- hangs when importing a house-ruled character. Can be recovered, though

- print-out character sheet not configurable

- generated PDF is too big and of bad quality. The PDF generated with FreePDF is 2.5MB whereas the same character yields a 350k PDF in the old CB. Looks like the thing sends an image only; text items are blurry

- some text is cut off

Questions:

* can one open multiple instances of this thing? I like having my players' characters open on my laptop and don't want to suffer this ugly PDFs

* will software updates go live only with the regular (I know. that's a strecth) monthly updates or more often?

So the first impression isn't favourable. Let's see how competently WotC will react.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 17, 2010)

I had to laugh at the person using that "WotC has fired me as a customer" meme. I can only call it meme because I can't take it seriously to say something like that.

But that's probably the only really funny about this. I am very disappointed by this.

As a whole, the new Character Builder takes out the entire fun of building a character.

You make a selection? A modal dialog opens. I am very constrained. I have to make this choice now, I can't just quickly move to another area of the software. 

And then, I finally make a selection? It takes 10 seconds or so until it finishes. 
So I am contrained and slowed down. I can't just "quickly" update something. I have to open the modal dialogue, then wait the Gary-Gygax Memorial minute, and finish it.
Occassionally, the app crashes. Someone said -1 for crash, +2 for crash recovery? That would be a net positive. Nope, it's -3 for crash and +1 for crash recovery. It's still sucks that it happens and crash recovery can dampen the disappointment, but it can't eliminate it.
At least the 20 character limit is no real problem - I don't really feel compelled to create 20 characters on the online builder. 

As a sum, it's not just that the performance is low or that some features I'd hope for are still missing, it's also that the UI design is weak and the app is buggy and unstable.

I think I just renewed a few weeks back for a year, so there is not much that I can actively do on my end, but I _can_ say that I am disappointed. I am not sure where to go from here. Maybe at least a symbol disabling of auto-renewal. Maybe a customer support letter.


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## Aegeri (Nov 17, 2010)

I am very disappointed.

But this is par for the course with me and Wizards at the moment.


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## Jhaelen (Nov 17, 2010)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> At least the 20 character limit is no real problem - I don't really feel compelled to create 20 characters on the online builder.



See? They totally expected this


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## ProfessorCirno (Nov 17, 2010)

Even better, unless they fixed it, there's a bug that keeps you capped at *2* sheets (Watch as it turns out someone just left out the zero somewhere).  So you can worry even less about it! ;p


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## vagabundo (Nov 17, 2010)

I'm testing this in work on an XP virtual machine in ubuntu. Installed sliverlight on chrome.

Works at a decent speed - about the same as the character builder - which is on the slow side. It seems smooth, no crashes yet. I've made two characters, a quick dwarvan slayer and a bullywug mage. It is usable.

I'm liking it so far, but I would have been more comfortable with it labelled as the beta that it is. It is a step up for me from the previous character builder. 

I look forward to some decent speed increases and new features - new character sheets and an export being top of my feature list, and a custom campaign option next on that list.




ProfessorCirno said:


> Even better, unless they fixed it, there's a bug that keeps you capped at *2* sheets (Watch as it turns out someone just left out the zero somewhere).  So you can worry even less about it! ;p




Must be fixed - I have three characters now.

EDIt: Amusing Bug #001. If I try to print the character sheet it produces a huge file in the spooler, around 500-700MBs. Impossible to print!!


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## NMcCoy (Nov 17, 2010)

As I keep trying to use this thing, the interface faults get to me more and more. I have this irrational desire to find the person responsible for some of those design decisions and beat them upside the head with an Edward Tufte book while shouting "WALL! OF! HUGE! GREEN! BUTTONS!"


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 17, 2010)

NMcCoy said:


> As I keep trying to use this thing, the interface faults get to me more and more. I have this irrational desire to find the person responsible for some of those design decisions and beat them upside the head with an Edward Tufte book while shouting "WALL! OF! HUGE! GREEN! BUTTONS!"



I am sure this interface is great for people that build their first or second character ever.

But for anyone (say, someone that could have theoretically needed more then the 20 character limit) else it will probably become annoying very soon.


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## Peraion Graufalke (Nov 17, 2010)

vagabundo said:


> EDIt: Amusing Bug #001. If I try to print the character sheet it produces a huge file in the spooler, around 500-700MBs. Impossible to print!!




Some people have reported file sizes of up to 1 GB. 

The next problem is that you can't edit the pdf when you print to pdf (which is around 10 MB for a character sheet, btw).


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## Insight (Nov 17, 2010)

Peraion Graufalke said:


> Some people have reported file sizes of up to 1 GB.




4.5MB here!

Old Char Builder: 453kb

hmm....


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## Peraion Graufalke (Nov 17, 2010)

Insight said:


> 4.5MB here!
> 
> Old Char Builder: 453kb
> 
> hmm....




Yes, that's strange. I should check it on my comp.

EDIT: 631 MB for my thri-kreen druid lvl 1.

EDIT2: 883 MB for my thri-kreen druid lvl 30.


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## Canor Morum (Nov 17, 2010)

ProfessorCirno said:


> CB Loader ( cbloader - Project Hosting on Google Code ) has been developed and released by fans, allowing custom content to be patched into the "Classic" Character Builder, thus rendering the online version even more useless, as new content can simply be patched in by third party.




Do you know if anyone has been successful at adding Dark Sun to the old CB?


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## UngainlyTitan (Nov 17, 2010)

I think that this has been released about 3 months too early. It is not optimised. I am not a web developer, just desktop apps but this is posting to the server on every click which is not optimal and not exploiting the client side capabilities on Silverlight. 
I get a lot of crashes, can not import a character from local harddrive, it hangs and I did manage to create a level 10 mage but did not appear to be able to select non essentials at wills.

Also for the homebrow/general campaign the only background options were the general ones. I could not see a way to get Scales of War. 
While I could set non standard ability scores, the CB did not ever give me a next button I had to manually select the other tabs.

I reckon it will be the new Year before this will be of any use to me.

I do believe it has potential but it is not much use at the moment.


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## UnknownAtThisTime (Nov 17, 2010)

I tohught I'd come back to the thread and post an update.

Despite frequent crashes the first time I tried the CB, when I tried again Tuesday night it worked with no problems. I completed a character in quick order.

I will note there are several interface designs I do not like. In particular, choosing equipment and weapons was a chore to me.


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## Insight (Nov 17, 2010)

This is slightly off topic, but when did Humans lose their second language?  Seems like a stupid nerf to me.


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## Ryujin (Nov 17, 2010)

Seems to be much snappier this morning, with no crashes and minimal delays between screens. Have enough people given up, in disgust, that the server is operating at minimum load?


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## Peraion Graufalke (Nov 17, 2010)

Ryujin said:


> Seems to be much snappier this morning, with no crashes and minimal delays between screens. Have enough people given up, in disgust, that the server is operating at minimum load?




While it didn't crash for me today, it's actually slower than yesterday. Try making a lvl 30 druid - it took me half an hour with lots of waiting for vecna. 

Also, don't click "Choose all for me" when selecting the feats. It's painful to see which feats it chooses. Maybe it's rolled randomly?


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## Obryn (Nov 17, 2010)

Insight said:


> This is slightly off topic, but when did Humans lose their second language?  Seems like a stupid nerf to me.



They didn't.  The system just doesn't handle languages very well as of yet.

-O


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## Onderzeeboot (Nov 17, 2010)

I can't even get to www.wizards.com. Magic, D&D, it's all down  :-/  Have to try from home later on. I'm intrigued by the idea of an online character builder, though I'm a little bit apprehensive after reading the comments here. One of the main attraction for me is printing my character at the DM's house without having to jump through several hoops. I think printing a blurry 1GB pdf qualifies as a hoop...


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 17, 2010)

> Actually, yeah, yeah it is. Basically he is abandoning a perfectly functional game system to go to a competitor out of spite. Its further made absurd when you learn that hero labs has 4th Edition support. Changing to Pathfinder is an act of pure spite meant to punish WotC for not meeting his demands. Of course, such an action means almost nothing since spending money somewhere else hurts a company no more than if the money was not spent at all. Its irrational and stupid.




It may be born out of spite. It may also be born out of disappointment, or frustration, or anger, or regret. It may be to "punish" WotC (even if the vengeance is purely a construct of their imagination), and it might just be because the person who makes that choice could also be happier with a company that doesn't make decisions like this. Helping a competitor that you enjoy might help them become more successful, helping you and others to enjoy their products.

Those are all perfectly valid reasons. Not that anyone even needs a valid reason. The _invalid_ reasons of, I dunno, "WotC's fun police have implanted spy chips in my brain to detect every session in which I do not utter the word 'war' and have poisoned my drinking water to make me see the Far Realm!" is enough reason to want to cancel your account and go spend your money on meds.

No one owes WotC anything. If the CB debacle makes someone get kind of irked whenever they have to sit down and play a game of 4e for whatever reason (maybe the character sheets are borked, or maybe they can't get their current character to work right), they're well within their rights to get their fantasy gaming mojo elsewhere. And in the grand scheme of things, that's not even a very incredible reason to do such a thing. A little work in any public sector will prove that people are irrational. And they're allowed to be. Heck, given advertising hoodoo, they're _encouraged_ to be. 



> There is also the fact that, as Mac user, I can safely say that the Compendium is more than functional as a character building tool: I should know since I've been using it for three years now. Yes, the new builder is a buggy piece of !!!!, and, yes, the loss of the character builder is lame (you know, for those who got to actually use, and particularly for those who got to abuse it), but its not the end of the game or the hobby. Most of the perpetual chicken littles and rage-quiters don't really have a leg to stand on, and the threats of running to pathfinder more or less confirm suspicious I've had for a while that some of the characters act as they do not out of an objective judgement but merely out of spite. Yes, WotC screwed the pooch big time, but most people act like Mike Mearls personally invaded their homes and snapped the neck of their favorite pet while whistling "Singing in the Rain." Its a software accessory for a hobby game.




They don't need a "leg to stand on."  It's their money. They can give it to whatever snake-oil salesman they want to. They can do it out of spite if they want to. WotC isn't entitled a customer base. Irrationality and reactionary attitudes are things that anyone who works with the public faces, and it's part of the risk they manage.

And it's not even that irrational.

Say, you're a resident of New Orleans and maybe you operated a shrimp boat and maybe you bought your gasoline for your shrimp boat from the BP station a few blocks away from the dock.

Maybe after the spills and such you say "I have some serious ethical concerns about BP!" like it means something and then you go a few blocks out of your way to buy your gas at the Mobil station instead. 

Or, heck, maybe you're some dude in Idaho who does that. 

BP still makes servicable gasoline (in fact, it's better than other choices for you due to location!), but you're going to patronize a competitor instead because you don't agree with some subset of the company's policies and actions. 

Happens with blood diamonds and sweat-shop clothing and restaurants all the time.

Happens in a less ethical way with "rude service" at retail stores and fast food joints (and anywhere else that employs surly underpaid teenagers) _daily_. 

Happening now with the CB.



> Get over it.




That's one of the beauties of capitalism! No one has to "get over" anything! Because no company deserves anybody's money by virtue of simply existing. They have to do things to keep and earn a customer's irrational loyalty. That can be lost for any reason.

And "releasing a borked electronic supplement" isn't even as irrational as half of the things you'd hear as a retail employee this Christmas.

Besides, to what end? If someone goes away and plays Pathfinder for a few months and enjoys it more than they would enjoy 4e, and thus is a happier person with less angry nerdrage, what's the negative outcome, here? Why should they get over it?

Anyway, this whole thing is just one long way of saying the obvious. "Hey, everyone, spend money on things that will improve your life!" If that's not WotC right now, then screw 'em. If that is WotC right now, then hey, good for them. Either way, it's your choice, for whatever irrational reason you feel compelled to make it.


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## Kirnon_Bhale (Nov 17, 2010)

sarria22 said:


> Character Builder
> 
> I haven't read the full thread but, anyone notice this? Not only is it a lot faster way to access the builder than going through the main site, but it has a debug tab where you can copy the XML for your character data... so export ability is already there, they just need to add a button for it.





Wow! so much faster - If the generally available one worked as well as this it would have had so much better feedback.


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## Abraxas (Nov 17, 2010)

Peraion Graufalke said:


> Yes, that's strange. I should check it on my comp.
> 
> EDIT: 631 MB for my thri-kreen druid lvl 1.
> 
> EDIT2: 883 MB for my thri-kreen druid lvl 30.



I got 1.18 GB for my level 24 human rogue. What's up with these file sizes?


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## Scribble (Nov 17, 2010)

Pretty much the same speed it was for me today as it was yesterday... 


Yesterday I only had 2 crashes and both of them were from me playing around with the zoom in/out function.

Aside from that no other crashes... I didn't have the weird printing issues some have reported, although I haven't tried printing to a pdf.


----------



## Scribble (Nov 17, 2010)

Abraxas said:


> I got 1.18 GB for my level 24 human rogue. What's up with these file sizes?




Are these file sizes of the pdf afterward or something? Where are people seeing the file sizes?


----------



## Phaezen (Nov 17, 2010)

Scribble said:


> Are these file sizes of the pdf afterward or something? Where are people seeing the file sizes?




Size of the files sent to the printer, and they do seem unusually large


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Nov 17, 2010)

I only printed to XPS so far (as a printer device that should be standard with Windows 7), and that didn't seem to create any issues, I though the printing was pretty fast.


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## Scribble (Nov 17, 2010)

Phaezen said:


> Size of the files sent to the printer, and they do seem unusually large




Ah... Yeah my level 1 mage was 182 megs...

I THINK it's because everything is a picture... But yeah some of the sizes seem ridiculous.


----------



## Abraxas (Nov 17, 2010)

Scribble said:


> Pretty much the same speed it was for me today as it was yesterday...
> 
> 
> Yesterday I only had 2 crashes and both of them were from me playing around with the zoom in/out function.
> ...



I have found that it works best (at least from my limited experience so far) when using chrome. However - I still had a couple crashes when using the retraining options, and it seems to get progressively slower as you level up a character. It was more pronounced when leveling up 1 level at a time instead of just creating the character at a higher level. The speed still isn't up to where I would want to use this - although the alternate access referenced on these boards does seem to bee faster.

I have printed to PDF - which took almost as long as printing out the character sheets and it looks like the top and bottom margins are zero. I haven't printed the PDF to see what gets cropped, but it is annoying. Also, looking at the printed character sheets - the formatting is off for some of the items - ends of words getting cut off.

Is there an option to not display any weapon stats on the power cards?


----------



## IronWolf (Nov 17, 2010)

Nyronus said:
			
		

> Actually, yeah, yeah it is. Basically he is abandoning a perfectly functional game system to go to a competitor out of spite. Its further made absurd when you learn that hero labs has 4th Edition support. Changing to Pathfinder is an act of pure spite meant to punish WotC for not meeting his demands. Of course, such an action means almost nothing since spending money somewhere else hurts a company no more than if the money was not spent at all. Its irrational and stupid.




People support companies with their money.  If a company over time does not meet your expectations in some area it seems only logical that you are going to want to stop giving them your money.  There may even be parts of the product you like, but the parts you don't like out weigh the parts you do.

People abandon perfectly functional products all the time for a competitor's products because they think company x does something better than company y even though both are making functional products.  Look at automobiles - they all get a person from point A to point B - but some people feel better about spending their money on one brand versus another because of their perceived value.  That value may be in customer service, where the cup holders are at or how close they are to the local dealership.

As for spending money elsewhere versus just not spending.  I have to disagree.  Continuing the car analogy again - if I spend money with Toyota and not Honda then you are right - in both cases Honda does not receive money from me.  *But* Toyota now has a little extra to keep paying those customer service people or invest in R&D or possibly even run with their margins a little lower because they are moving more product.  On a single person scale, not a big difference - but if you get more people doing this then that scale suddenly starts to matter.

But really, why bother wasting time or energy worrying about how people handle this online CB release?  If you are happy with the game and the optional tools provided to you - then have fun!  Enjoy the game and the time you get to spend with your friends playing it.  A person leaving your system of choice does not condemn your system and should not impact your enjoyment.


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## graylion (Nov 17, 2010)

*De-Level = Change XP Total*



brehobit said:


> More crashes.  Paragon path etc.  Now recovering the character causes it to crash immediately.
> 
> Also doesn't seem to be a way to "delevel" a character.  That's annoying if true.
> 
> Testing seems weak.  Features are okay if the bugs get fixed.




Change the XP Total and the Level Up / De Level box changes.

Regards


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## Scribble (Nov 17, 2010)

Abraxas said:


> I have found that it works best (at least from my limited experience so far) when using chrome.




Maybe that's it? I'm on Chrome.



> However - I still had a couple crashes when using the retraining options, and it seems to get progressively slower as you level up a character. It was more pronounced when leveling up 1 level at a time instead of just creating the character at a higher level. The speed still isn't up to where I would want to use this - although the alternate access referenced on these boards does seem to bee faster.




See this one gets me.. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't seem slower to me then the old CB did... In some ways it feels smoother and faster.



> Is there an option to not display any weapon stats on the power cards?




Don't think there is anyway to change the cards at all.



I also actually like the layout of this one beter... It feels, like.. easier to flow through for me if that makes sense? 

I didn't make extensive use of the old CB though, as I mainly DM... so maybe if I was more used to the old one I'd notice a bigger problem?


That said... They need to add some of the missing elements REAL soon.


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## darjr (Nov 17, 2010)

I have had enough of 4e and WotC. I have always liked 3.5 and Pathfinder even more. Paizo is a fantastic company run by great folks with wonderful products. I was playing Pathfinder WHILE I was playing 4e. I'm just done with 4e, largely because I'm done with WotC. Am I irrationally angry and doing it out of spite? No. I'm doing it because enough is enough.


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## Stormtower (Nov 17, 2010)

Dannager said:


> This isn't the first time we've seen this line of "reasoning", and it won't be the last. This is the consumer mentality at its worst. WotC doesn't need customers who think along these lines, anyway. I wouldn't fret over it.




Your sterling judgment of who is and is not qualified to give Wizards of the Coast their consumer dollars is much appreciated, and I am quite sure it's entirely justified.  Who am I to vote with my wallet, anyway?  Such temerity I possess, to dare to complain.  Pfui on that.

My comments are not really intended for your consumption anyway, Dannager, but you are of course free to comment to your heart's content since you seem to enjoy judging who is and isn't qualified to be a WotC customer.   I think you can win the internets this way... keep trying.

It is a known fact that WotC employees read these boards and as a Day-1 DDI subscriber (concurrent, consecutive since launch, cancelled this week) I felt the company which I have supported since the beginning of 4E might wish to hear that their recent business decisions have aliented certain of their paying customers.

Good day, sir.


----------



## godfear (Nov 17, 2010)

I also was able to remove an extra Adventurer's Kit by entering "-1" in the amount before selecting Add in the marketplace. : D


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## Infiniti2000 (Nov 17, 2010)

shidaku said:


> This this is certainly a moment where he who opens his mouth proves himself to be the fool.  They'd have been better off claiming it was a server issue, and fixing the program, than actually admitting the program is bugged all to heck.



  See, I for one appreciate the honesty.  It's funny that you'd even say this since if they weren't honest and it was found, you know how badly they'd be criticized?  Moreover, I can understand that fixing the bugs is likely an easier problem to solve than server load.  We're not sure that their server capabilities would be that scalable and even less sure if the WotC management would approve additional resource expenses for it.  I feel much more confident that the programmers will beat away a majority of the serious bugs causing the crashes.

I mean, it's SilverLight after all!  I'd be shocked if there were no crashes!


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## graylion (Nov 17, 2010)

*Chrome Browser & New Character Builder*

I too am using the Chrome Browser and have only had crashes when I tried to import a house ruled character ( which is most ).

I generally find Chrome faster and less prone to problem then some of the big browsers.

Regards


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## sarria22 (Nov 17, 2010)

Something i wish it would do is just have the adventurers kit be a shortcut that automatically purchases and lists each item individually in my inventory, instead of just saying "adventurers kit" As it is i have to look up whats in that and write it all down separately anyway to track the sunrods and rations.

EDIT: It seems the issue with only allowing two characters saved has been fixed, and the debug tab is still there too! *saves local copies of her characters*

I've also discovered that i can take the character data XML and paste it in notepad, save it as a .dnd4e file, then re-import it into the online builder. Allowing me to share a copy of my character with my DM.

Lets hope they leave this debug tab here on the Vecna site eh?


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## mysticknight232 (Nov 17, 2010)

As I was working with a higher lvl character today, I came across another annoyance.  When in the equipment selection screen, I added magic items and the like.  When you start to get multiple magic items in your inventory screen, you are unable to see which items are equiped or not equiped just by looking because the price of magic items is so large and takes up a large amount of the inventory page.  This is extremely annoying considering how nice the "shop" interface was in the original CB.  I cannot see at a glance what is equipped and what is not.  Instead, I have to click on each item individually to determine this, or worse, go to the god awful character sheet to view it.  

I hadn't seen this mentioned on the threads so I thought I would post this as a concern of mine.


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## Scribble (Nov 17, 2010)

mysticknight232 said:


> As I was working with a higher lvl character today, I came across another annoyance.  When in the equipment selection screen, I added magic items and the like.  When you start to get multiple magic items in your inventory screen, you are unable to see which items are equiped or not equiped just by looking because the price of magic items is so large and takes up a large amount of the inventory page.  This is extremely annoying considering how nice the "shop" interface was in the original CB.  I cannot see at a glance what is equipped and what is not.  Instead, I have to click on each item individually to determine this, or worse, go to the god awful character sheet to view it.
> 
> I hadn't seen this mentioned on the threads so I thought I would post this as a concern of mine.




You can slide the tabs around, so equipped is listed right after the name if you want.


----------



## ProfessorCirno (Nov 17, 2010)

Obryn said:


> They didn't.  The system just doesn't handle languages very well as of yet.
> 
> -O




Indeed - it can't even handle it's own


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## Mallus (Nov 17, 2010)

1st attempt at using the on-line CB, at work, with Firefox: crash, hang, crash, hang, give up.

2nd attempt, at home, with Firefox: hey, no problems. I recreated my 12th level paladin and tooled around w/the new interface. Didn't print. 

I'm disappointed there's no house rules support out of the box. Also, it's a little slow. I'm guessing the jury won't be in on this one for a while... does anyone know when material from Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms is hitting the Compendium? 

I might play around with it some more tonight after I drink a few pints of my favorite IPA --Bear Republic Racer 5-- with my mates.


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## Nyronus (Nov 17, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> -snip-




I want to be clear on this: I am a supporter of capitalism and let no one say otherwise. I never once said that he or anyone else "owes" WotC anything. I never said that and if you inferred it from my posts I have to inform you that you are utterly mistaken. Anyone who cancels over this, I can understand. DDi is still of great value, even for the compendium alone, but I can understand why some people would see the character builder as a deal breaker.

What I can't understand or tolerate is "fired us as customers" nonsense. Its abandoning a good majority of value to "punish" a company for not offering a periphery service in the way he wanted. The Character Builder is not the be all end all of 4th Edition. It is an accessory, a periphery product. A toy. Self-righteously quitting the game because of the quality of a side toy is, well, stupid. Its cutting off your nose to spite your face. Its not merely throwing the baby out with the bath water, but burning the house down because you did not feel like cleaning a toilet. Its irrational, petty, and stupid.

I am not saying people shouldn't stop paying for a product that they don't like. I am saying people who quit the hobby over what amounts to an add-on either have a total lack of perspective or are being mean or stupid. They are free to do it though. As I said, I am whole hearted supporter of capitalism. They are more than free to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose. Or, hey, maybe it will turn out that Pathfinder will be better than sliced bread and they'll attain Nirvana. Just let it be known that this self righteous victim act they are putting on has grown old and tiresome.


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## Mirtek (Nov 17, 2010)

Seems like the online CB finds a new way to disappoint every day. After I finally managed to enter my swordmage I now have to find out that the online CB doesn't know that a swordmage can use a heavy blade as an implement and thus lists all power cards of implement attacks as being used unarmed.

Really, that's not a lacking comfort feature, that's failure to apply the freaking rules!


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## Oldtimer (Nov 17, 2010)

1st attempt (last night) - crash, crash, hang. Gave up. Reported a bug and got back a totally inane response from WotC support.

2nd attempt (tonight) - really slow, but no crash. Tried to import my current character (hybrid feylock/swordmage), no luck. Tried to recreate it, found numerous bugs:
- Cannot choose Pact Boon as my Hybrid talent.
- Cannot choose any powers at all! The page is completely blank. When I open my charcter sheet, I find that CB has chosen them for me... and all wrong (all warlock powers are infernal pact, for example). Still no way to change them manually.
- Cannot add my Shadowdance leather armour. I search for it among the other leather armours, but find nothing.
- Cannot add the free Versatile Expertise feat our DM allows us. No house ruling.
- Open the character sheet again and see that all my warlock powers are used Unarmed and therefore not getting the enhancement bonus from my magic rapier. It didn't give me any Swordmage Implement powers, so I cannot check if those are correct.
- Cannot print out the character sheet. Three empty sheets of paper emerge from my Color LasetJet. Not a trace of my character on them.

All in all, pretty much useless.


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## Mithreinmaethor (Nov 17, 2010)

Oldtimer said:


> 1st attempt (last night) - crash, crash, hang. Gave up. Reported a bug and got back a totally inane response from WotC support.
> 
> 2nd attempt (tonight) - really slow, but no crash. Tried to import my current character (hybrid feylock/swordmage), no luck. Tried to recreate it, found numerous bugs:
> - Cannot choose Pact Boon as my Hybrid talent.
> ...




Are you using a TSR-80 and a 300 baud modem?  Just checking   You are an oldtimer after all.

Actually can you tell us what browser and browser version you are using etc.

_Edit: Ok I tried to create a character as you described above.  I also was not able to add the Pact Boon as a Hybrid talent, it just did not show up as an option.  And the armor you named does not exist.  I even looked for it in the old CB and it does not exist.  Where did the armor come from?  Also I was able to choose each of my powers they were not chosen for me. I did equip a +1 Rapier and it showed as being figured into the implement powers for both warlock and swordmage powers.  So I was only able to not find the Pact boon and the armor. Also mine runs smoothly and the only crashes I have had (2 of them) came when importing characters from the previous CB.
_


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 18, 2010)

> I want to be clear on this: I am a supporter of capitalism and let no one say otherwise.




Senator McCarthy is appeased! 



> What I can't understand or tolerate is "fired us as customers" nonsense. Its abandoning a good majority of value to "punish" a company for not offering a periphery service in the way he wanted.




You don't seem to quite acknowledge that "value" is an _insanely subjective concept_. 

It's quite possible that the periphery service is the main attraction of the game for certain folks. Or that it's a prerequisite to play in the situation they find themselves in (forex, an online game over MapTool that requires DM oversight of CB files). Or the idea that additions become core strategies (ie: collectible toys in happy meals drive sales of happy meals and for MacD's in general when the toys were originally an additive ancillary product). Or even just that the experience is spoiled -- looking at the character sheet reminds you of the annoyance of making a character reminds you that you hate the CB and thus puts a damper on your mood.

Not getting a usable CB might mean that the "value" of 4e is entirely obliterated for some people.

Or at least that it is reduced below the value of something like Pathfinder (which has its own value that is quite competitive with 4e according to some measures...)



> The Character Builder is not the be all end all of 4th Edition. It is an accessory, a periphery product. A toy. Self-righteously quitting the game because of the quality of a side toy is, well, stupid. Its cutting off your nose to spite your face. Its not merely throwing the baby out with the bath water, but burning the house down because you did not feel like cleaning a toilet. Its irrational, petty, and stupid.




That's only true if the CB is perhiphery, or if the alternatives provide no competitive value. 



> I am not saying people shouldn't stop paying for a product that they don't like. I am saying people who quit the hobby over what amounts to an add-on either have a total lack of perspective or are being mean or stupid. They are free to do it though. As I said, I am whole hearted supporter of capitalism. They are more than free to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose. Or, hey, maybe it will turn out that Pathfinder will be better than sliced bread and they'll attain Nirvana. Just let it be known that this self righteous victim act they are putting on has grown old and tiresome.




They're not quitting the hobby. They're taking their fantasy mojo to another company.

Someone who buys gas at a Mobil station is still buying gas. They're just not getting it from the guys most recently in the news for killing millions of innocent dolphins and fish and birds and shrimp and livelihoods through negligence. 

If they said they were leaving tabletop games altogether to play Diablo, that might be more like quitting the hobby, but Diablo provides a competitive value for some people (for others, it doesn't).


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## fuzzlewump (Nov 18, 2010)

[MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]
Good points, but are Pathfinder and 4E D&D really just two different gas stations? Yeah, they're both games, but are they similar enough for a statement like "I'm quitting 4E and going to pathfinder!" to really mean anything? For example, if someone says I'm quitting cars and going to bicycles! I mean, yeah, they're certainly related, but they're so different (and can coexist!) that there's not significant competition.

Of course, there is some amount of competition between the two, but I guess I'm just saying I find them different enough to play both if I wanted. And fellow players in my group here do just that.


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## Ryujin (Nov 18, 2010)

fuzzlewump said:


> [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION]
> Good points, but are Pathfinder and 4E D&D really just two different gas stations? Yeah, they're both games, but are they similar enough for a statement like "I'm quitting 4E and going to pathfinder!" to really mean anything? For example, if someone says I'm quitting cars and going to bicycles! I mean, yeah, they're certainly related, but they're so different (and can coexist!) that there's not significant competition.
> 
> Of course, there is some amount of competition between the two, but I guess I'm just saying I find them different enough to play both if I wanted. And fellow players in my group here do just that.




Any analogy will fall apart, if you look too closely at it. The best I can come up with is that they're both cars but that 4e runs on gas, and Pathfinder runs on diesel. You get more for your money with Pathfinder, but there are fewer stations. It's easier to find a station for 4e, but it'll cost you more to run.

And the whole thing brings to mind the old open letter from Lee Iacocca to Bill Gates.


----------



## I'm A Banana (Nov 18, 2010)

> Good points, but are Pathfinder and 4E D&D really just two different gas stations? Yeah, they're both games, but are they similar enough for a statement like "I'm quitting 4E and going to pathfinder!" to really mean anything? For example, if someone says I'm quitting cars and going to bicycles! I mean, yeah, they're certainly related, but they're so different (and can coexist!) that there's not significant competition.
> 
> Of course, there is some amount of competition between the two, but I guess I'm just saying I find them different enough to play both if I wanted. And fellow players in my group here do just that.




Man, sometimes I think people loose all sense of perspective on this hobby.

D&D and Pathfinder like a bike and a car? They're more like...I dunno...a Honda Civic and Toyota Camry. To the car dorks, I'm sure there's a world of difference. But to most folks, they'll both do the same basic thing in the same basic way. 

They're both fantasy-genre tabletop RPG's, and they're even more similar to each other than most other fantasy-genre tabletop RPG's are to them (Warhammer is quite different from both!).


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## fuzzlewump (Nov 18, 2010)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> Man, sometimes I think people loose all sense of perspective on this hobby.



"people," as in... me? Go ahead and say so if you think so. I'm right here.



Kamikaze Midget said:


> D&D and Pathfinder like a bike and a car? They're more like...I dunno...a Honda Civic and Toyota Camry. To the car dorks, I'm sure there's a world of difference. But to most folks, they'll both do the same basic thing in the same basic way.
> 
> They're both fantasy-genre tabletop RPG's, and they're even more similar to each other than most other fantasy-genre tabletop RPG's are to them (Warhammer is quite different from both!).



Fair enough. We are the equivalent of car geeks here, though, really. We're the type of people who log on to car forums and discuss all about cars, including the theory of cars and transportation. By creating an account, let alone posting with it, we are no longer 'most folks.'

That aside, I still think 3.5 and 4E are quite different. Obviously we disagree there.


----------



## Remathilis (Nov 18, 2010)

Peraion Graufalke said:


> Some people have reported file sizes of up to 1 GB.
> 
> The next problem is that you can't edit the pdf when you print to pdf (which is around 10 MB for a character sheet, btw).




No WONDER WotC was talking about storing PCs on your HD and limits you to 20 PCs!


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 18, 2010)

fuzzlewump said:
			
		

> "people," as in... me? Go ahead and say so if you think so. I'm right here.




Nah, not specifically, sorry if I gave that impression. Just seems like the idea that D&D and Pathfinder are very distinct is amongst the galaxy of ideas that seem to lack perspective on the hobby to me. Also amongst that galaxy: the idea that someone leaving D&D is leaving the hobby. Or 90% of Edition Wars. 



> Fair enough. We are the equivalent of car geeks here, though, really. We're the type of people who log on to car forums and discuss all about cars, including the theory of cars and transportation. By creating an account, let alone posting with it, we are no longer 'most folks.'




Oh, definitely. But not everyone who posts here is necessarily that hardcore about it. One reason that they might go spend money on some other system over this is because that other system might give them an experience close enough to the one they're getting here to be fun.



> That aside, I still think 3.5 and 4E are quite different. Obviously we disagree there.




Heck, maybe some of the people who are going to play other games over this don't think they're that different, either, and that could add in to their decision.

Mostly I'm just trying to help explain to the incredulous and confused why someone might go play _Mouse Guard_ instead of 4e for the next few months, and why that's not really that big of a deal.


----------



## fanboy2000 (Nov 18, 2010)

Remathilis said:


> No WONDER WotC was talking about storing PCs on your HD and limits you to 20 PCs!



That was my first thought.

I just checked, there is no text in the PDF of my 1st level Half-Orc Barbarian, in the sense that there is nothing my PDF view recognizes as text. It's just one big image.


----------



## shmoo2 (Nov 18, 2010)

Created a new character, worked well. Saved.

Imported a character from the old CB, added an Essentials feat (only crashed once). Saved.

Now, when I try to load either character the Builder freezes irrevocably. 
I can't access either of my characters. At all.

Has anyone else had this problem and been able to solve it?

A Character Builder program that does not allow me to use the characters I've built is not useful. At all.


----------



## Abraxas (Nov 18, 2010)

Ok, earlier this evening I opened up the CB in chrome and went about recreating a Level 23 Warlord - everything went smooth and was actually running pretty snappy. It gave me time to really look at the layout with out getting frustrated with lag. I made it all the way to selecting powers/feats at epic levels then I had three errors and had to refresh in quick succession. After the error everything seemed to start running slower. If this happens to me again I'm going to time it.

I noticed some of the formatting is off - text not fitting into spaces mostly.
I also couldn't select any exotic chain armors - just chain mail. Hide, leather, cloth - all had the various exotic versions - but not chain.

Overall, I am not a fan of the layout. It just seems crowded. The equipment section is ... difficult. I'm not happy with the CB always defaulting which levels (character level + or - 3) to show when searching for items.

And now I can't open it in firefox or chrome.


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## Peraion Graufalke (Nov 18, 2010)

Remathilis said:


> No WONDER WotC was talking about storing PCs on your HD and limits you to 20 PCs!




The problem isn't the file size of a character when it's stored on a server, it's when the printer converts the character information into what I assume to be a high-resolution image before printing the character sheet. I can't think of another explanation of how to get ~700 MB out of a ~150 kB dnd4e file.


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## nerfherder (Nov 18, 2010)

fuzzlewump said:


> We are the equivalent of car geeks here, though, really. We're the type of people who log on to car forums and discuss all about cars, including the theory of cars and transportation. By creating an account, let alone posting with it, we are no longer 'most folks.'



What do you mean _equivalent of_ car geeks?

<Logs onto pistonheads.com to check the car forum>

Honda Civic like a Toyota Camry indeed! Can you do this in a Camry?


----------



## Jan van Leyden (Nov 18, 2010)

fanboy2000 said:


> I just checked, there is no text in the PDF of my 1st level Half-Orc Barbarian, in the sense that there is nothing my PDF view recognizes as text. It's just one big image.




Of course! You've switched to semi-3e mode, meaning that your character is illiterate. He's got no use for text, he needs pictures!


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## dvvega (Nov 18, 2010)

Playing with the character builder with my current characters imported I have only the following "issues":

It is slow - I'm working on a BIG machine here and it is slow. I normally run the CB in a "Share Screen" session from my laptop and it is faster than this Silverlight app. It might be because the servers are in the US and I'm in Australia.

The 20 character limit will obviously not be good enough for me. On the old CB I have every level of my characters saved in separate files so I have an historical record of what they were, what changed, etc. Not just the retraining but also notes about history/adventuring/etc. Sure, you could argue I do not need this since I could just keep adding notes and labelling them, however I like this system of filing. If I am in need of a quick character of a certain level I can look through my stores of characters and go - yes a 7th level Seeker today.

D


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## UnknownAtThisTime (Nov 18, 2010)

dvvega said:


> The 20 character limit will obviously not be good enough for me. On the old CB I have every level of my characters saved in separate files so I have an historical record of what they were, what changed, etc. Not just the retraining but also notes about history/adventuring/etc. Sure, you could argue I do not need this since I could just keep adding notes and labelling them, however I like this system of filing. If I am in need of a quick character of a certain level I can look through my stores of characters and go - yes a 7th level Seeker today.
> 
> D




This is a concern of mine as well, because I too use this "filing system".  It will become somewhat of a non issue if we can (continue to?) export the .DND4E files.


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## Bagpuss (Nov 18, 2010)

dvvega said:


> The 20 character limit will obviously not be good enough for me. On the old CB I have every level of my characters saved in separate files so I have an historical record of what they were, what changed, etc.




You know you don't need to do this with the old builder as it had a view at an earlier level feature built in.....

The new builder doesn't have this feature (another missing feature to add to the list) so you would have to do it this way, erm yeah 20 characters is going to be a problem.


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## dvvega (Nov 18, 2010)

Bagpuss said:


> You know you don't need to do this with the old builder as it had a view at an earlier level feature built in.....
> 
> The new builder doesn't have this feature (another missing feature to add to the list) so you would have to do it this way, erm yeah 20 characters is going to be a problem.




It was just much easier to load what you needed, quickly - in my case anyway - instead of making it recalculate stuff.

In addition, importing two of my characters caused problems because of Essentials (which my group does not use). I had to fill in the choices that essentials brought into the game for my 12th level characters - it should have automatically recognised that I had already "chosen" the PHB options etc.

What I do like - I can use it on my Mac - finally - but at what cost really? I do not think it is worth a subscription compared to the previous CB however I have understood the anti-piracy move.

And so far my characters seem to have their numbers in the right places.

D


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## sigfile (Nov 18, 2010)

Mithreinmaethor said:


> And the armor you named does not exist.  I even looked for it in the old CB and it does not exist.  Where did the armor come from?



Shadowdance armor is out of Seekers of the Ashen Crown.  I suspect that equipment introduced in adventures didn't make it in to the builder.  That's certainly reportable.  ((No, wrong - it's a different issue.  Shadowdance is supposed to be both cloth and leather, but it only shows up as a cloth variant))



Mithreinmaethor said:


> I did equip a +1 Rapier and it showed as being figured into the implement powers for both warlock and swordmage powers.



Just a stock +1 Magic Rapier?  I can't replicate that behavior.  The system doesn't seem to recognize weapons as implements at all.


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## Lord Ernie (Nov 18, 2010)

sigfile said:


> Shadowdance armor is out of Seekers of the Ashen Crown.  I suspect that equipment introduced in adventures didn't make it in to the builder.  That's certainly reportable.



That's not a good idea. The latest update removed RPGA items from the Compendium and the Builder - there was some noise of RPGA fans about this, already - so it's not there for a reason.


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## Stormtower (Nov 18, 2010)

Nyronus said:


> I want to be clear on this: I am a supporter of capitalism and let no one say otherwise. I never once said that he or anyone else "owes" WotC anything. I never said that and if you inferred it from my posts I have to inform you that you are utterly mistaken. Anyone who cancels over this, I can understand. DDi is still of great value, even for the compendium alone, but I can understand why some people would see the character builder as a deal breaker.
> 
> What I can't understand or tolerate is "fired us as customers" nonsense. Its abandoning a good majority of value to "punish" a company for not offering a periphery service in the way he wanted. The Character Builder is not the be all end all of 4th Edition. It is an accessory, a periphery product. A toy. Self-righteously quitting the game because of the quality of a side toy is, well, stupid. Its cutting off your nose to spite your face. Its not merely throwing the baby out with the bath water, but burning the house down because you did not feel like cleaning a toilet. Its irrational, petty, and stupid.
> 
> I am not saying people shouldn't stop paying for a product that they don't like. I am saying people who quit the hobby over what amounts to an add-on either have a total lack of perspective or are being mean or stupid. They are free to do it though. As I said, I am whole hearted supporter of capitalism. They are more than free to shoot themselves in the foot if they so choose. Or, hey, maybe it will turn out that Pathfinder will be better than sliced bread and they'll attain Nirvana. Just let it be known that this self righteous victim act they are putting on has grown old and tiresome.




How quickly we rush to judgment.

Would it have appeased your needs if I had phrased it "We are firing WotC as our gaming company," rather than the other way around?

Hmm, I am looking around my house.  Just looked in the mirror, my nose is still attached.  House doesn't seem to be burning down.  Baby's still in the tub with the bathwater.  I don't see a bullethole in my foot.  Heck, my 4E books (the non-Essentials 2007-2010 stuff) are still on my shelf!  Does that mean... I can still use them with pencil & paper if I don't like the new online CB?  Wow, whoda thunk it.

You call me a self-righteous victim?  That raises my hackles, right there.  I ran 4E at the last three GenCons and was tapped to judge the 2010 D&D Championship preliminary and finals rounds there.  It was awesome!  4E ran great, I had fun, and my tables had fun.  I've been one of the on-the-fence customers for the last three years, buying D&D and Pathfinder stuff and running both, because I am fracking lucky and can afford the time and $$ for both.  No way am I "quitting the hobby."  

As far as consumer loyalty goes, I'm ticked off that the Essentials launch and the new CB have reduced my existing 4E collection in value.  Note that, as another poster said, value is a very subjective term.  In my opinion, there is no further perceived VALUE in remaining a customer of WotC.  Yet, there has been and remains perceived value (for ME, not you) in supporting Paizo with my consumer dollars.

Perhaps you are correct that I am "punishing" Wizards of the Coast by withdrawing my financial support when their products no longer suit my needs.  How else shall I voice my displeasure with their business decisions?  You come on here and drop accusations of being "irrational, petty and stupid."  Shall I in turn say the same of those who have decided to stay with 4E and the new CB?  

No, not so much.  Want to know why?  It's their choice.  Know why else?  It's disrespectful to them.  One more reason why not: I have been a TTRPG gamer since 1982, and I want our hobby to survive & thrive.  Only mutual respect and open discussion can engender its survival and evolution.  I don't begrudge anyone their 4E gaming, so leave off with the personal accusations of self-righteousness.  We might have more in common than you think, aside from our different game system preferences.  But you chose to drop terms like "irrational, petty and stupid."  Tell me why the edition wars are raging again?  Whose fault is it?  Check my posting history on here -- I have consistently argued that room exists in the TTRPG world for both systems (plus many more!). 

What has grown old and tiresome is the lack of cooperation and unity among gamers since the 4E/PF split.  We are all here largely because we are passionate about fantasy RPGs.  The discourse between gamers has rapidly grown harsher and more judgmental.  Play what you like, and I'll do the same.


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## fanboy2000 (Nov 18, 2010)

Lord Ernie said:


> That's not a good idea. The latest update removed RPGA items from the Compendium and the Builder - there was some noise of RPGA fans about this, already - so it's not there for a reason.



Seekers of the Ashen Crown was the Eberron Adventure that came out last year for sale. It's not an RPGA adventure.


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## boolean (Nov 18, 2010)

sigfile said:


> ((No, wrong - it's a different issue.  Shadowdance is supposed to be both cloth and leather, but it only shows up as a cloth variant))




According to reports, Shadowdance armor is listed as "Type: Cloth and leather".

Unfortunately, the software is expecting "Type: Cloth and *L*eather".


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## Bagpuss (Nov 18, 2010)

boolean said:


> According to reports, Shadowdance armor is listed as "Type: Cloth and leather".
> 
> Unfortunately, the software is expecting "Type: Cloth and *L*eather".




Seems you are right.

Shadowdance is listed as "Armor: Cloth, leather" and only appears under Cloth, where as for example Runic Armor is listed as "Armor: Chain, Cloth, Leather, Hide, Plate, Scale" and appear under all of them.

What's odd is the compendium has Shadowdance armor listed as "Armor: Cloth, Leather" so obviously they aren't reading from the same database, which I thought was part of the point of moving online.


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## ProfessorCirno (Nov 18, 2010)

As I said in the other thread, I want to state that it's the height of entitlement when paying  customers outright demand that the products they are given work and  function properly when they receive them after paying for it.

And it's not the customers that're acting entitled.


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## tuxgeo (Nov 18, 2010)

Bagpuss said:


> Seems you are right.
> 
> Shadowdance is listed as "Armor: Cloth, leather" and only appears under Cloth, where as for example Runic Armor is listed as "Armor: Chain, Cloth, Leather, Hide, Plate, Scale" and appear under all of them.
> 
> What's odd is the compendium has Shadowdance armor listed as "Armor: Cloth, Leather" so obviously they aren't reading from the same database, which I thought was part of the point of moving online.




And the new CB can't tell that "leather" with a lowercase "L" is the same word as "Leather" with an uppercase "L". (As already indicated above with the bolding of the L in "*L*eather," but not stated in words.)


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## ProfessorCirno (Nov 18, 2010)

fuzzlewump said:


> "people," as in... me? Go ahead and say so if you think so. I'm right here.
> 
> Fair enough. We are the equivalent of car geeks here, though, really. We're the type of people who log on to car forums and discuss all about cars, including the theory of cars and transportation. By creating an account, let alone posting with it, we are no longer 'most folks.'
> 
> That aside, I still think 3.5 and 4E are quite different. Obviously we disagree there.




I've begun questioning this, personally.

We can, I think, all agree that D&D is an inherently nerdy hobby.  We can also, I think, all agree that the average person spends an incredible amount of time on the internet.

True, most D&D players will not read EN World.

Or the WotC website

Or the Penny Arcade forums

Or Something Awful

Or any other gaming forum...

..._At the same time._

But I think the vast, vast majority of D&D gamers reads _one_ of those.  People like to talk about their hobbies, and what better place to do that then the internet?  I doubt there's many D&D players who have no web access at all, and it's completely natural to look up D&D if you enjoy playing it.  Compounding this is the fact that, well, _we're nerds_.  Congregating to websites to discuss minutia is more or less what we do.

So yeah, I think the idea of the clueless casual D&D gamer who literally knows nothing about the game outside of going to the local bookstore to play it with friends is false.  I think that's really far, far rarer then anything else.


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## Mithreinmaethor (Nov 18, 2010)

I have probably played with the online CB for approx 10 hrs or so.  I  have created probably 40 to 50 characters (printed them to pdf to avoid  the 20 character limit).  I have crashed the builder 3 times.  Each time  was when I was importing a character from the old character builder.

I am running Windows 7 on my laptop with this.  I have used Chrome, IE 9  and Firefox with the builder.  It has worked fine and has worked  quickly for me.

So I wish I could respond to those that are having problems.


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## nerfherder (Nov 18, 2010)

ProfessorCirno said:


> I've begun questioning this, personally.
> 
> We can, I think, all agree that D&D is an inherently nerdy hobby.  We can also, I think, all agree that the average person spends an incredible amount of time on the internet.
> 
> ...



And yet it describes 50% of my group perfectly.  Outside of a Monday night, they couldn't care less about D&D.

Most groups I've played in have only had 1 or 2 "hardcore" gamers who buy magazines or browse gaming websites.  They will very occassionally pop into a gaming store when they're in town with their spouse shopping, but that, and the weekly game, is the limit to their exposure to gaming.


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## Obryn (Nov 18, 2010)

nerfherder said:


> And yet it describes 50% of my group perfectly.  Outside of a Monday night, they couldn't care less about D&D.



It describes ... well, everyone but me, in my own group.  Two have DDI subscriptions but don't even know what ENWorld is, or care about online forums.  The other four or five just play on Wednesdays and are done.

-O


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## Dausuul (Nov 19, 2010)

nerfherder said:


> And yet it describes 50% of my group perfectly.  Outside of a Monday night, they couldn't care less about D&D.
> 
> Most groups I've played in have only had 1 or 2 "hardcore" gamers who buy magazines or browse gaming websites.  They will very occassionally pop into a gaming store when they're in town with their spouse shopping, but that, and the weekly game, is the limit to their exposure to gaming.




Yeah, this sums it up pretty well. Out of my group, I'm the only one who regularly reads ENWorld or follows what's going on with D&D outside the gaming table. Nobody else even knew there was a new character builder, until I told them today.

And that's the pattern in most groups I've seen. You get one person who's heavily into D&D, keeping up with the latest news, buying lots of books, and so on. That person is usually the DM. If there happens to be a second enthusiast, that person takes the role of "player rules master," guiding the less rules-savvy players and advocating on the PCs' behalf when questions about the rules come up. The rest of the group is made up of more casual gamers who just show up to play and have fun.

Very rarely have I seen a group with more than two hardcore gamers.


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## Scribble (Nov 19, 2010)

We're old heads though... So it makes sense about the not being on the internet thing. 

I doubt they give a crap what old heads like us say, and would probably make fun of us for some of the arguments we have- But if there are still kids and teens playin this game I can almost guarantee they're on the interwebs talking about the game.


If there aren't that's a REAL bad sign.


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## Dausuul (Nov 19, 2010)

Scribble said:


> We're old heads though... So it makes sense about the not being on the internet thing.
> 
> I doubt they give a crap what old heads like us say, and would probably make fun of us for some of the arguments we have- But if there are still kids and teens playin this game I can almost guarantee they're on the interwebs talking about the game.




"Old heads?"  I don't know about your group, but the folks at my gaming table are in our late 20s/early 30s. Three of us work for an Internet-based company and three more work at Radio Shack. And I think the last one is a software developer. We're a techy bunch.

Nor are we all grognards--I'm the only one who could claim anything like that status. Besides me, there's a guy who started in 2E, then went on hiatus until 4E, but he's always been a casual gamer-type as far as I can tell. For the rest, three of them started in 3.5 and two started in 4E.

Out of all of us, I am the oldest and the grognardiest, and I'm the only one who hangs around these forums or pays any attention to what's going on in the D&D community. Everyone else just shows up to play.


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## Scribble (Nov 19, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> "Old heads?" I don't know about your group, but the folks at my gaming table are in our late 20s/early 30s. Three of us work for an Internet-based company and three more work at Radio Shack. And I think the last one is a software developer. We're a techy bunch.
> 
> Nor are we all grognards--I'm the only one who could claim grognard status, having started with BECMI back in the day. There's one guy who started in 2E, then went on hiatus until 4E, but he's always been a casual gamer-type as far as I can tell. For the rest, three of them started in 3.5 and two started in 4E.




Yes- you're no longer a teenager, so to a teenager you are old. So am I. 

It sucks- but we're old heads. 

(That also makes us boring. )


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## Dausuul (Nov 19, 2010)

Scribble said:


> Yes- you're no longer a teenager, so to a teenager you are old. So am I.
> 
> It sucks- but we're old heads.
> 
> (That also makes us boring. )




Heh, fair enough. But my point was that I don't think teens are engaging on forums like this one any more than older folks--in fact, from what I've seen, ENWorld is disproportionately populated by people who know what "THAC0" stands for. Newbies are a minority around here.

I'm sure teen players are more likely to chat about their games on Facebook, but that doesn't mean they're connecting with the larger D&D community; it's just another way of talking with your friends, which people have been doing since the invention of language.


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## IronWolf (Nov 19, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> ENWorld is disproportionately populated by people who know what "THAC0" stands for.




Wait... Everyone doesn't know that?


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## Scribble (Nov 19, 2010)

Dausuul said:


> Heh, fair enough. But my point was that I don't think teens are engaging on forums like this one any more than older folks--in fact, from what I've seen, ENWorld is disproportionately populated by people who know what "THAC0" stands for. Newbies are a minority around here.




Yeah- we're also a board that caters to old heads. 

We have things like moderators who actively promote "thoughtful discussion" of gaming "subjects," while actively dissuading raging on each other, and off topic posts.

Since we also have a lot of old heads, our topics of conversation are boring.



> I'm sure teen players are more likely to chat about their games on Facebook, but that doesn't mean they're connecting with the larger D&D community.




And I say that's a bad thing. Take a look at the xbox forums, or sony forums. They're alive with kids. It's not just hardcore xbox players posting.

If there aren't any forums where kids are posting- thats not a good sign I would say.


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## Insight (Nov 20, 2010)

Has anyone tried to make a Bard recently?  I've found problems with both the "Classic" and the online version in terms of using magical instruments.  The bonuses both from the item itself and the feat bonus from Versatile Expertise (Instrument) do not display on the power cards.  The "Classic" version doesn't even allow you to equip the instrument, whereas the online builder does, but it doesn't make any difference in reflecting the proper bonus.

Example: I have a Changeling Bard level 2 with an 18 CHA.  He has a +1 Fochlucan Bandore and the Versatile Expertise feat (Light Blade and Instrument are the choices).  His attack bonus with Bard Implement powers should be CHA (4) + 1/2 Level (1) + Magic Item (1) + Feat Bonus (1).  The displayed bonus (in both the Classic and Online builders) shows +5 on all of his Implement powers.  It apppears that the builders are ignoring both his magic item's enhancement bonus and the feat bonus.

Interestingly, the Light Blade portion of Versatile Expertise is adding to his Dagger attack bonus.

I played a Gnome Bard about 6 months ago and I know that this wasn't a problem then.  This was before Versatile Expertise seemed to have "taken over" Implement Expertise (which is what I used back then).  It seems as though the programming for "Instrument" isn't being implemented properly, nor are the enhancement bonuses for magical instruments.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?


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## I'm A Banana (Nov 20, 2010)

> I've found problems with both the "Classic" and the online version in terms of using magical instruments. The bonuses both from the item itself and the feat bonus from Versatile Expertise (Instrument) do not display on the power cards.




With my dwarf bard, it's the same thing.

I think it's an issue with "equipping" instruments. Like, the system doesn't recognize them as implements that can be equipped and used. All of my implement powers default to "unarmed" or (weirder) my weapon -- the waraxe.


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## renau1g (Nov 21, 2010)

Anyone able to attach a dragonshard augment to a weapon?


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## ki11erDM (Nov 21, 2010)

Works well in IE9.  Fast once first loaded.  No issues of any kind.  PDFs are clear when printed with CutePDF and not of any unusual size.  Used it on 5 different systems, all with IE9, and have had absolutely no crashes or hang-ups.

Some basic clean up and bug fixing needs to occur.  Like power swap feats.  And the UI can use a bit of fine toning, maybe put in an “Advanced” tab or something…

I have no clue what the angst is about... just seems like normally internet hysteria.


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## Echohawk (Nov 21, 2010)

Oldtimer said:


> - Cannot choose any powers at all! The page is completely blank. When I open my charcter sheet, I find that CB has chosen them for me... and all wrong (all warlock powers are infernal pact, for example). Still no way to change them manually.



Hey Oldtimer,

You're in good company. There is a bug in the CB which seems to prevent users outside of the US from selecting any powers at all. As bizarre as that might sound, I'm not making it up.

There's a work around mentioned on this thread. It didn't work for me, but it might do the trick for you.


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## renau1g (Nov 21, 2010)

I'm in Canada and it works fine, do you mean outside North America?


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## Nikosandros (Nov 21, 2010)

ki11erDM said:


> I have no clue what the angst is about... just seems like normally internet hysteria.



There is no angst nor hysteria. There's perfectly legitimate complaining about a piece a software with many problems and which performs far worse than what it replaced.

Quite frankly, this attitude of dismissing all the complaints about the new CB with condescending snark is starting to be annoying...


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## Nikosandros (Nov 21, 2010)

renau1g said:


> I'm in Canada and it works fine, do you mean outside North America?



I'm in Italy and I'm not seeing this problem, but my OS and all my browsers are in English.


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## Phaezen (Nov 21, 2010)

So far, so good - I have transferred all my campaign's characters to the new builder.  A couple of crashes, but the auto-recovery means the loss of time was minimal.

Houserules and custom items would be nice, but not really a deal breaker at the moment.

Yes, there are some issues and bugs, but the offline builder has its own set of bugs.  I am looking forward to seeing improvements coming down the line though.


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## Echohawk (Nov 21, 2010)

renau1g said:


> I'm in Canada and it works fine, do you mean outside North America?



I can only speak for my own experience with the CB, which is that selection of Powers doesn't work at all, no matter what I do. But judging from the thread I linked to above, the bug affects people who have their OS "region" set to something other than "United States". I'm not sure what that means for Canadians.


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## mudbunny (Nov 21, 2010)

ki11erDM said:


> I have no clue what the angst is about... just seems like normally internet hysteria.






Nikosandros said:


> There is no angst nor hysteria. There's perfectly legitimate complaining about a piece a software with many problems and which performs far worse than what it replaced.
> 
> Quite frankly, this attitude of dismissing all the complaints about the new CB with condescending snark is starting to be annoying...




I think what comes about is that there are some people who have has no problems whatsoever with the CB. Either they haven't crashed, or they haven't made a character for which there are problems.

For others, there are some serious bugs which makes it difficult/impossible to make characters.


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## Nikosandros (Nov 21, 2010)

mudbunny said:


> I think what comes about is that there are some people who have has no problems whatsoever with the CB. Either they haven't crashed, or they haven't made a character for which there are problems.
> 
> For others, there are some serious bugs which makes it difficult/impossible to make characters.



Yes, this is understandable, but I'm not seeing many being aggressive to those who are reporting positive experiences.

Furthermore, the fact that at the moment it has less features than the previous version is objective.


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## Ryujin (Nov 21, 2010)

Echohawk said:


> I can only speak for my own experience with the CB, which is that selection of Powers doesn't work at all, no matter what I do. But judging from the thread I linked to above, the bug affects people who have their OS "region" set to something other than "United States". I'm not sure what that means for Canadians.




Microsoft believes that everyone using a "Canadian Region" PC must obviously speak French, so they get a code page 863 French Canadian keyboard. For this reason the majority of Canadians will be running with a US language setting. It should only mess with French Canadians


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## renau1g (Nov 21, 2010)

I have a french keyboard...my wife is francophone...


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## Ryujin (Nov 21, 2010)

renau1g said:


> I have a french keyboard...my wife is francophone...




So if it works for you, then there goes that theory as to why some international users are having problems.

.... unless it's because you also have the US code page loaded?


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## avin (Nov 21, 2010)

It does not work on my (Brazilian) Google Chrome.


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## Ryujin (Nov 21, 2010)

It would be a good test if people having the problem could try loading US, through the Regional and Language settings in Control Panel (assuming Windows), then try it again.


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## Oldtimer (Nov 21, 2010)

Ryujin said:


> It would be a good test if people having the problem could try loading US, through the Regional and Language settings in Control Panel (assuming Windows), then try it again.



I wish I could. But I can't access the CB at all any longer.

vecna.wizards.com gives me the "LOG IN!!!" message and the regular link gives me the "Your session has timed out" message. Customer support told me to try using another browser or another computer. 

When (if?) I can access CB again, I'll try using it with US settings and see if that will allow me to select powers.


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## JoeGKushner (Nov 21, 2010)

ki11erDM said:


> Works well in IE9.  Fast once first loaded.  No issues of any kind.  PDFs are clear when printed with CutePDF and not of any unusual size.  Used it on 5 different systems, all with IE9, and have had absolutely no crashes or hang-ups.
> 
> Some basic clean up and bug fixing needs to occur.  Like power swap feats.  And the UI can use a bit of fine toning, maybe put in an “Advanced” tab or something…
> 
> I have no clue what the angst is about... just seems like normally internet hysteria.




I am confused by your lack of clues. Well, clueless does describe it I guess. the inability to read all of the various issues people have had, not to mention a failed hot swap by WoTC seem to indicate some problems.

but hey, that's the neighbors problem and only exists in their head despite claims from the company otherwise eh? 

*This comment just earned Mr. Kushner a suspension. We are really, really sick of rudeness. Whether you agree with someone or not, we expect you to treat them with respect. If you can't do that, use ignore. - PCat*


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## Ryujin (Nov 21, 2010)

Oldtimer said:


> I wish I could. But I can't access the CB at all any longer.
> 
> vecna.wizards.com gives me the "LOG IN!!!" message and the regular link gives me the "Your session has timed out" message. Customer support told me to try using another browser or another computer.
> 
> When (if?) I can access CB again, I'll try using it with US settings and see if that will allow me to select powers.




Sounds like a corrupt cookie. Are you using Internet Explorer? If so I would recommend going into Tools / Internet Options, then clicking on Delete, and selecting all options for deletion. You will need to re-enter any saved passwords after that, but I think you'll find that you can access CB after that.


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## Oldtimer (Nov 21, 2010)

Ryujin said:


> Sounds like a corrupt cookie. Are you using Internet Explorer? If so I would recommend going into Tools / Internet Options, then clicking on Delete, and selecting all options for deletion. You will need to re-enter any saved passwords after that, but I think you'll find that you can access CB after that.



I've deleted all cookies from *.wizards.com. Didn't help.
Do I want to wipe every cookie in my system hoping that will help? No.

Suggestion 1A from every help desk regarding web applications is always to delete all cookies and temporary files. That really annoys me. If a cookie file contains the wrong information, the server should simply update it. I can see the problem with cached javascript files that need to be updated before they expire, but I am quite capable of doing a specific delete if told what file to remove. Mass deletes are rather desperate and will cause me a lot of other problems.


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## Ryujin (Nov 21, 2010)

Oldtimer said:


> I've deleted all cookies from *.wizards.com. Didn't help.
> Do I want to wipe every cookie in my system hoping that will help? No.
> 
> Suggestion 1A from every help desk regarding web applications is always to delete all cookies and temporary files. That really annoys me. If a cookie file contains the wrong information, the server should simply update it. I can see the problem with cached javascript files that need to be updated before they expire, but I am quite capable of doing a specific delete if told what file to remove. Mass deletes are rather desperate and will cause me a lot of other problems.




It's suggestion 1A because it's the most effective, especially if you don't know what specific content needs to be deleted. I don't 

You could always load up Firefox or Chrome instead.


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## Lord Ernie (Nov 22, 2010)

[MENTION=10503]Oldtimer[/MENTION]: I had a similar problem for a while, but I waited for 5 minutes between logins, switched to another browser (I normally use Firefox, switched to IE8), and was able to log in correctly there. When I went back to Firefox later, the problem was fixed there, too. Hope that helps.


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## Tenchuu (Nov 22, 2010)

Not that I plan to use this function very often, but the "choose for me" button in the powers select window appears to be a random selection. I have unselected a power and done choose for me a few times, and it picks a different one each time. 

Meh. Perhaps I will build characters in old CB, import them, and then double check the feat/power selections for PH3 and onwards.


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## Oldtimer (Nov 22, 2010)

Ryujin said:


> It would be a good test if people having the problem could try loading US, through the Regional and Language settings in Control Panel (assuming Windows), then try it again.



I had some time to waste at work today, so I experimented a bit with this.

The problem with power selection is 100% related to the decimal separator (we use comma in Sweden). I tried all four variations:
US english default settings: works
US english settings but with comma as decimal separator: doesn't work
Swedish default settings: doesn't work
Swedish setting but with period as decial separator: works

So the decimal separator needs to be set to period for the power selection to work.

I also tried to find out when this is evaluated, and it seems to be at program start. Changing decimal separator while working on a character doesn't affect anything. Not even reloading the character has any effect. Only by closing the CB and restarting it, could I get it to recognise the changed setting. Either it's caching the setting (less likely) or the detrimental effect of using a comma occurs at program start (though the consequences aren't visible until power selection).

I wish I had the source code so I could find it and fix it...


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## mudbunny (Nov 22, 2010)

[MENTION=10503]Oldtimer[/MENTION] - Thanks!! I am passing that up to WotC!!


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