Look, if they release their own cute little version of maptools and it's not a complete clusterfuck (just kind of a clusterfuck, as I'm currently expecting), AND it's like $5 a month for a DM and 1-5 players at the table, I'd be in.
If they honestly expect to milk MMO levels of money out of me and my group (read: $10-15 per person per month) it'd fucking well better be the next coming of Jebus in digital form.
Otherwise me and my group will just keep playing for free on Maptools using the (previously costed but now free from further cost) offline character builder and accept that any new items or rules will either have to be input manually or ignored. For items I doubt that'll be a big deal, and for rules, well, we adapted to the changes to item usage easily enough, so I have doubts that anything but a full on edition revision would put a dent in us now.
Pardon me. I'm just venting a little due to the VTT being literally the biggest draw for me when the online adventure was announced, and no small part of what got me interested and excited for 4th Edition ("you mean I might be able to get my old crew back together through the magic of the internet, rather than 3 of us having to drive for 1-3 hours to play each weekend??"), and then they pretty much shrugged, said "oops, this shit is harder than we expected" and basically vowed to ignore ever talking about the VTT again.
Even if it's not shit, I'll probably give it a few months of shakedown while they realize that they don't need to reload the entire campaign every time someone roles a die or moves a miniature, or that hard coding a max of 20 enemies on a table was a bad idea, or whatever other asinine design stance they take that the players have to sniff out and yell at them about is.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
My favorite bit was that the "oops, this shit is harder than we expected" should have been followed by a "Uh....that guy is doing it, in his spare time, as a hobby, for free. Why do we give you money again?" from some kind of manager.
They seriously should have just written a fucking check awhile ago.
It would warm the cackles of my heart when their abortion of a VTT comes out if they impinge on the technology developed by RPtools. Well, not the impinging, but the lawsuit would.
My favorite bit was that the "oops, this shit is harder than we expected" should have been followed by a "Uh....that guy is doing it, in his spare time, as a hobby, for free. Why do we give you money again?" from some kind of manager.
They seriously should have just written a fucking check awhile ago.
God, totally agree.
I'd pay $15-25 a month, depending on the quality, for my players and I to have access to an integrated combination of the Compendium, orokos-y sort of character sheets and online dice roller, MapTools, and a wiki/forum space to put up between-session stuff that was all 4E "native" and worked to streamline the prep time I go through with MapTools right now (not that it's particularly burdensome, just that it'd easily be worth it to me.)
On top of that, I'd pay the occasional one-time fee (say, $5-10) for the occasional .pdf of an adventure along with a .cmpgn file that had all of the encounters prebuilt in MapTools for weeks where I'm feeling lazy or adventures that seem particularly awesome (...not that I think Wizards has been very strong in that regard either, lately).
Instead, what will likely happen is that I will begin paying $0 a month to WotC and continue to use the free versions of all the things that exist out there, because they are apparently dead set on churning out options that are worse tools individually and have no integration.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
edited November 2010
Exactly how expensive would it really be for WotC to outsource all the digital tools to competent professionals and pay them to maintain it?
I imagine it must cost somewhere between "too much" and "holy shit."
Exactly how expensive would it really be for WotC to outsource all the digital tools to competent professionals and pay them to maintain it?
I imagine it must cost somewhere between "too much" and "holy shit."
The only theory I have that makes sense is they pay them horribly.
Working for D&D's online integration should be like a dream job kind of thing for a lot of programmers. Given that they should be able to get a high quality for a low price with the intangibles making up the difference. That they still have trouble makes me think the pay is just.....bad.
Alright, new theory. Management type in charge of this section is a fucking idiot and easily bullshitted.
Before I decide whether I find WotC's incompetence amusing or infuriating, I'd need to have some idea of how profitable DDI subscriptions are.
The income is billed online (with a pisspoor account management site as well) that costs them mostly nothing.
The costs are delivered goods, mainly man hours. The content has been developed by the RPG team, the costs incurred are data entry, development, testing, and hosting.
Data entry is a low paying position and fairly so.
Development should pay at least 50k a team member per year. Art assets that they probably grab from other departments at WotC, there isn't too much there for the given tools other than the base UI so far anyways.
We know how much they spend on testing.
Hosting costs for hardware and bandwidth would be a small increase on this total.
Let's say half the yearly costs are wages for a small team of developers, 250k, let's say 100k budgeted for data entry and testing as needed, 50k for infrastructure and misc. 400k could budget an inhouse production of digital tools in line with their vision.
The subscriber base at the cheapest rate provides $72 a year per subscriber. 6000 subscribers over the course of a year would cover that and a bit. That's easily attainable and then some with quality tools being offered, and the intangibles like the good-will (it's a paid product sure, but look at the reactions now) and value-adding for the brand.
If you gave me less than 400k, you'd bet I could put together a development house that could deliver much more than what we have and everyone knows it.
Guys, the FAQ released applies to the beta they're currently testing. WotC_Trevor pointed out that this version of the beta does not feature DDI integration. He also pointed out that this doesn't mean the release won't feature integration, or won't eventually feature integration. I'm sure they want to test the functionality of the product itself before they get to the point where they want to test how it plays nice with other databases.
Or are we back to passing judgment on finished products' features by the features present in beta, again?
I have no doubt that they want full DDI integration, not just because it would be awesome, but also because it would drive people to subscribe to DDI and purchase the VTT in whatever way WotC prices it.
Also, complaining about "MMO pricing" isn't really fair. MMOs have shit tons of subscribers because they are very popular. D&D is D&D, guys. It's a niche hobby, no matter how much we might wish that isn't the case. Niche hobbies cost more, especially when it comes to products like online tools that don't scale like a physical product would.
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TurksonNear the mountains of ColoradoRegistered Userregular
There are five things I really, really like about the new Character Builder.
1. It’s ultimately portable. I can use it on any computer or computer-like device, wherever I am.
2. It’s both PC and Mac friendly. I can access it from either kind of machine.
Coming back to this. Has anyone actually tested this on a Mac, smartphone, or tablet? Did it work? Your experiences?
There are five things I really, really like about the new Character Builder.
1. It’s ultimately portable. I can use it on any computer or computer-like device, wherever I am.
2. It’s both PC and Mac friendly. I can access it from either kind of machine.
Coming back to this. Has anyone actually tested this on a Mac, smartphone, or tablet? Did it work? You experiences?
The amount of phones/tablets/smart devices that support Silverlight 4 and are in hands of significant consumers is ridiculously non-existent.
especially when it comes to products like online tools that don't scale like a physical product would.
huh?
When you have a digital product, you develop it and costs to distribute are fairly low by comparison. The majority of the cost is in development, and whether you have 500 or 500,000 customers the development costs will be roughly the same.
When you have a physical product, you typically develop it and then pay quite a bit to produce and distribute. The lion's share of the cost here is in what it takes to produce each copy of the physical product you're selling. If you want to sell 500 units, you pay the cost to produce 500 units. If you want to sell 500,000 units, you pay to produce 500,000.
The point I'm making here is that for a niche hobby like D&D that has a relatively small customer base (compared to MMOs), we should expect to pay a cost commensurate with the niche nature of the hobby. The smaller the customer base, the less that development cost gets split up among the customers.
As hobbies go, D&D has remained ridiculously inexpensive, especially considering the cost versus number of hours you get out of it. Complaining about paying MMO pricing doesn't really make sense, because D&D's market looks nothing like a sub-based MMO's market. If you want to gripe about pricing, just gripe that $15 is to much to pay for what you'd get out of it.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
edited November 2010
So you're saying that because a digital product is vastly cheaper to sell, we should pay more for it?
Not getting enough for their money is exactly what people are griping about. MMO-pricing just means $10-$20/month. When people complain about MMO pricing their complaining about the price tag.
And no, we're not pre-judging based on its beta, we're pre-judging it based on Wizard's inability to produce a hobby-level product with a professional staff.
especially when it comes to products like online tools that don't scale like a physical product would.
huh?
When you have a digital product, you develop it and costs to distribute are fairly low by comparison. The majority of the cost is in development, and whether you have 500 or 500,000 customers the development costs will be roughly the same.
When you have a physical product, you typically develop it and then pay quite a bit to produce and distribute. The lion's share of the cost here is in what it takes to produce each copy of the physical product you're selling. If you want to sell 500 units, you pay the cost to produce 500 units. If you want to sell 500,000 units, you pay to produce 500,000.
The point I'm making here is that for a niche hobby like D&D that has a relatively small customer base (compared to MMOs), we should expect to pay a cost commensurate with the niche nature of the hobby. The smaller the customer base, the less that development cost gets split up among the customers.
As hobbies go, D&D has remained ridiculously inexpensive, especially considering the cost versus number of hours you get out of it. Complaining about paying MMO pricing doesn't really make sense, because D&D's market looks nothing like a sub-based MMO's market. If you want to gripe about pricing, just gripe that $15 is to much to pay for what you'd get out of it.
D&D tools should also be vastly cheaper to develop than most MMOs.
especially when it comes to products like online tools that don't scale like a physical product would.
huh?
When you have a digital product, you develop it and costs to distribute are fairly low by comparison. The majority of the cost is in development, and whether you have 500 or 500,000 customers the development costs will be roughly the same.
When you have a physical product, you typically develop it and then pay quite a bit to produce and distribute. The lion's share of the cost here is in what it takes to produce each copy of the physical product you're selling. If you want to sell 500 units, you pay the cost to produce 500 units. If you want to sell 500,000 units, you pay to produce 500,000.
The point I'm making here is that for a niche hobby like D&D that has a relatively small customer base (compared to MMOs), we should expect to pay a cost commensurate with the niche nature of the hobby. The smaller the customer base, the less that development cost gets split up among the customers.
As hobbies go, D&D has remained ridiculously inexpensive, especially considering the cost versus number of hours you get out of it. Complaining about paying MMO pricing doesn't really make sense, because D&D's market looks nothing like a sub-based MMO's market. If you want to gripe about pricing, just gripe that $15 is to much to pay for what you'd get out of it.
D&D tools should also be vastly cheaper to develop than most MMOs.
Yes, that's true. That doesn't mean the cost is going to line up with the subscriber base at the same ratio.
Also, complaining about "MMO pricing" isn't really fair.
Bullshit.
The risk/reward ratio is highly subjective, but if you're willing to charge me $10-15 a month for access, then that service is going to be compared to other things I pay $10-15 a month for access.
D&D might not have the "base game" and "expansions" setup that MMOs have, but y'know what, after buying a PHB/DMG/MM trifecta, the PHB/PHB2 combo, Divine Favor and Open Grave, I think I've paid into them a reasonable amount already.
While bandwidth, server space/usage, data entry, development, support, Q&A and other factors certainly cut into their profit margin, we're talking about world wide support here. Do you really think there are less than 6,000 yearly subscribers in the entire world? 10,000? Clearly DDI hasn't been a smash hit, but at the same time I have trouble believing that it's hemoraging money so hard that their response has been to slash and burn one product to make room for another and expanding into yet more (or at least claim to be doing so).
At the very least, I would suspect that DDI is either breaking even or only running at an acceptable loss, including development costs. WOTC is a business, and unless there's a very good reason otherwise, I can't imagine they're running deeply in the red for this long.
I'm not saying "oh, I give Blizzard $15 a month and I get some fairly impressive art assets and 93% uptime on the servers, so WOTC should be able to take that and give me a graphic VTT in, like, a week". I am saying "If WOTC expects me (and possibly even my group) to pay into this little digital pyramid scheme, it had better be reasonably priced for the service we're receiving and sufficiently useful enough to justify that cost". Which may be a tautology, but I'm cranky and want to wrap this up before grabbing coffee.
I didn't find the Compendium terribly useful to my ends, haven't used the monster builder for more than a few minutes, don't really sweat Dungeon or Dragon magazine, and the one application they produced that I loved (the offline Character Builder) has been murdered to make way for another one that lacks features I expect and has requirements that are deal breakers for me. To say that they face an uphill climb IRT the VTT after so many years of silence on the matter is an epic understatement, and I don't feel that's due to grognarding or nerd rage or anything unreasonable, but because as a consumer I am not impressed with much of what they have done, so "we're doing more awesome stuff guys!" is bittersweet at best.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
So you're saying that because a digital product is vastly cheaper to sell, we should pay more for it?
No. I'm saying that because the customer base for D&D is smaller, each customer pays a higher share of the product's development cost than if the product was physical. This is not complicated.
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TurksonNear the mountains of ColoradoRegistered Userregular
So you're saying that because a digital product is vastly cheaper to sell, we should pay more for it?
No. I'm saying that because the customer base for D&D is smaller, each customer pays a higher share of the product's development cost than if the product was physical. This is not complicated.
Is it though? If we take out WoW as an outlier, how big are most MMO's in terms of population? How big is D&D?
I'm very new to the whole D&D scene. I've only got the core 3 books and I'm still trying to learn all the rules. I've been trying to follow all the drama with the CB and after reading everything here on this forum and everything on the official forums... I don't even know if I even WANT to delve into the game at this point.
Should I even waste my time and money on more books and minis or should I just get out now before things get worse?
It's advantage over MapTools is, once it's out, WotC can send Cease and Desist letters to RPTools claiming IP infringement. Or something equally dumb.
MapTools itself is probably safe, but any author of a 4e MT framework might need to be wary.
The only way a framework would have cause to be wary is if they include copyrighted material. Game systems themselves are inherently not copyrightable. This means that my framework I made for my D&D 4e game is 100% safe even though it absolutely uses 4e mechanics and automatically levels up characters in their chosen class.
If I really wanted to, I could publish my own RPG under a different name using D&D 4e mechanics as long as I didn't use any trademarks or copyrighted text, like skill descriptions or fluff text on powers.
SkyCaptain on
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
So you're saying that because a digital product is vastly cheaper to sell, we should pay more for it?
No. I'm saying that because the customer base for D&D is smaller, each customer pays a higher share of the product's development cost than if the product was physical. This is not complicated.
Is it though? If we take out WoW as an outlier, how big are most MMO's in terms of population? How big is D&D?
WoW is quickly becoming part of the norm rather than the outlier, though. MMOs are sprinting away from subscriptions that the industry is starting to feel are untenable. Smaller MMOs are going F2P with microtransactions driving revenue.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
No. I'm saying that because the customer base for D&D is smaller, each customer pays a higher share of the product's development cost than if the product was physical. This is not complicated.
Rubbish.
If product A is niche and physical, and Product B is niche and digital, I can see paying more per unit for A than B.
What you're saying is that because Product C is mass-market and physical, I should pay more per unit for B than C.
Assuming we can define near-identical units for each.
I'm very new to the whole D&D scene. I've only got the core 3 books and I'm still trying to learn all the rules. I've been trying to follow all the drama with the CB and after reading everything here on this forum and everything on the official forums... I don't even know if I even WANT to delve into the game at this point.
Should I even waste my time and money on more books and minis or should I just get out now before things get worse?
One thing to take away from all the bitching.
We bitch about the CB and their mishandling of DDI because we want to play our D&D to the most. The game itself is fine and we are here cause of it.
I'm very new to the whole D&D scene. I've only got the core 3 books and I'm still trying to learn all the rules. I've been trying to follow all the drama with the CB and after reading everything here on this forum and everything on the official forums... I don't even know if I even WANT to delve into the game at this point.
Should I even waste my time and money on more books and minis or should I just get out now before things get worse?
You're getting a very skewed, very unattractive perception of the game based on internet rage. Learn the game and get a group together to play, and form your own opinion on it. Precious few people actually find playing D&D anything less than enjoyable.
And, for my money, DDI is worth every penny and then some. I pay $6 a month for it. If they charged $20 a month, I'd still be paying. It's just that useful as a DM.
So you're saying that because a digital product is vastly cheaper to sell, we should pay more for it?
No. I'm saying that because the customer base for D&D is smaller, each customer pays a higher share of the product's development cost than if the product was physical. This is not complicated.
Psst: The exact same thing applies to the physical products they sell.
The physical object in your hand doesn't even account for half the cost of the book. All the development costs and the like all apply exactly the same. The Essential lines are comparable for other, non-hobby books that retail for ~$10.
I'm very new to the whole D&D scene. I've only got the core 3 books and I'm still trying to learn all the rules. I've been trying to follow all the drama with the CB and after reading everything here on this forum and everything on the official forums... I don't even know if I even WANT to delve into the game at this point.
Should I even waste my time and money on more books and minis or should I just get out now before things get worse?
Nah, most of this is venting dude. Give it a few more pages and I'm sure there'll be a little less vitriol and cynicism. But the internet is made of exaggerated responses.
While there are things that they have done that are baffling—honestly there wasn't much for me to say post "WE UPLOAD THE ENTIRE SHEET, REPEATEDLY"— if you like the game that you have so far (again, decide for yourself not based off the internet bullshit), then you may like the latter products too, at least in printed form.
edit: the compendium is okay too. but really it's not that bad. none of it is.
tastydonuts on
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
Also, complaining about "MMO pricing" isn't really fair. MMOs have shit tons of subscribers because they are very popular. D&D is D&D, guys. It's a niche hobby, no matter how much we might wish that isn't the case. Niche hobbies cost more, especially when it comes to products like online tools that don't scale like a physical product would.
I don't mind "MMO pricing" necessarily.
My problem isn't the potential cost of $15 bucks a month (though I have to admit that I start to balk when me and every one of my players is paying that price). It's the fact that I'm currently getting superior products for free.
It kills me because I think 4th edition is great, and 4th edition online has specifically revived roleplaying as a hobby, for me. But the quality of their work lately has just not been very good, and it makes me concerned about their overall online strategy.
They should outsource, license, or simply hire the guys who are already doing a good job making online tools rather than continue to churn out subpar products.
Precisely where the price point falls is a secondary concern for me. The issue is that they're asking me to pay for stuff that appears to be inferior to things I can get for free. You wouldn't feel good about paying for <insert second-favorite MMO here> if <insert your favorite MMO> was free, would you? The analogy isn't perfect because I'm still actually paying WotC for the physical books and whatnot, but I think it illustrates the point.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
I'm very new to the whole D&D scene. I've only got the core 3 books and I'm still trying to learn all the rules. I've been trying to follow all the drama with the CB and after reading everything here on this forum and everything on the official forums... I don't even know if I even WANT to delve into the game at this point.
Should I even waste my time and money on more books and minis or should I just get out now before things get worse?
You're getting a very skewed, very unattractive perception of the game based on internet rage. Learn the game and get a group together to play, and form your own opinion on it. Precious few people actually find playing D&D anything less than enjoyable.
Pretty much this.
The quality of D&D and the quality of the online tools are separate issues. While the online tools were nice when they were functional, they are strictly optional.
Edit: I should also add that, as the quality of the online tools has deteriorated, the quality of the physical products has actually improved. Which is why there has been so much rage about the digital tools: we wanted our spiffy new printed content to be supported.
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TurksonNear the mountains of ColoradoRegistered Userregular
I'm very new to the whole D&D scene. I've only got the core 3 books and I'm still trying to learn all the rules. I've been trying to follow all the drama with the CB and after reading everything here on this forum and everything on the official forums... I don't even know if I even WANT to delve into the game at this point.
Should I even waste my time and money on more books and minis or should I just get out now before things get worse?
The books are great, and I have no complaints about them. I'm not such a fan of the mini's. I feel they are way to expensive, but to each his own.
What we're discussing is the online side of the business. I probably shouldn't even be talking about it, as I am a "Luddite" and do almost everything with paper and pencil.
I think the best piece of advice is that D&D tends to attract people who are very, very passionate and have difficulties expressing it.
NEW YORK — It must be tough to be 34 and already see your children overshadow you.
That's what's happened to Dungeons & Dragons, the roleplaying game that for decades has drawn geeks to roll dice and pretend to be elves, sorcerers and other fantasy heroes. It has never quite become mainstream entertainment, but it has inspired roleplaying computer games like World of Warcraft to borrow its principles and turn them into a multibillion-dollar industry.
Now, D&D is borrowing from its imitators. The next edition of the game, due out in June, will for the first time be paired with online features that the publisher hopes will lure lapsed players back to the dungeon.
"That group that broke up in 1987 because you all graduated from high school and went to schools across the country? Well, you can get that old teenage group back together," said Scott Rouse, brand manager for D&D at Wizards of the Coast. The Hasbro Inc. subsidiary publishes the game.
Roleplayers have always faced the difficulty of getting together regularly, especially since the games are lengthy. But they talk warmly about the camaraderie fostered by the games, since the players cooperate rather than compete. Though guided by thick rulebooks, the games have an element of theater, with players using the voices of their characters. Not surprisingly, they're considered uncool by those who lack an appreciation of fantasy.
The new edition, the fourth since D&D was created in 1974, may do nothing for the game's social stigma, but at least players will have the option to commune online. Each screen will show the same virtual 3-D "tabletop" with monsters and heroes, and the players will be able to talk via Internet voice chat.
Wizards is also building its own social networking site as a Facebook or MySpace for gamers. The players will be able to create fantasy characters for themselves with an online tool. That streamlines a process that can take hours and dozens of reference books.
Wizards employees are avid players of online games, and the new initiative springs from that experience, Rouse said. It should make it easier to tuck the kids into bed, then "jump on the computer and delve into dungeons, kill monsters and take their stuff," as he put it.
D&D's influence on computer games was highlighted last month when the death of Gary Gygax, the game's co-creator, sparked reminiscences across the computer industry. A senior editor at Wired magazine even hailed Gygax as "architect of the now," seeing the game as inspiring Internet culture in general, like Gmail accounts and Flickr photo sharing.
Yet Gygax, who had not been involved with the game's development since the 80s, told The New York Times in 2006 that he wasn't much into computer games and preferred the intimacy and imagination of the face-to-face game.
"What tabletop gaming gives to people is a reason to get together with your friends and hang out and do a fun social activity together," said Chris Pramas, a former Wizards employee and now the president of another game company, Green Ronin Publishing.
Wizards emphasizes that it's trying to keep the good parts of the tabletop game. It will let players, rather than computers, maintain control of the virtual world. It's also streamlining the rules of the tabletop game to make it faster to play and more accessible.
D&D had about six million players worldwide last year, according to a survey by Wizards, though Rouse said the figure may be somewhat inflated. Many of those players probably yield little revenue for the company. The gamers buy books and sometimes miniatures, but only one player in the group needs to own a copy of each book.
Wizards does not reveal sales figures, but Pramas estimates the overall market for traditional role-playing games at $30 million annually.
Meanwhile, the massively multiplayer online (or MMO) game World of Warcraft has more than 10 million subscribers, most of them paying. Publisher Blizzard Entertainment, a unit of France's Vivendi conglomerate, doesn't say how much the game is earning, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests it pulls in more than $1 billion per year. U.S. subscribers pay $14.95 per month.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the online features of fourth-edition D&D will carry a monthly fee of $14.95, though a one-year contract brings the cost down to $9.95 per month.
The new direction for D&D isn't risk free. Dungeons & Dragons Online, an MMO game like World of Warcraft, hasn't done very well. The game, run by Atari under a license from Hasbro, has less than 100,000 subscribers, according to various estimates.
The new edition of the printed game has already caused a rift in the D&D community. Paizo Publishing, an independent company that publishes popular supplementary books for the game, announced last month that it will not support the new edition. It says the previous edition of D&D is a better fit and will even create its own game based on that edition.
Then there's the risk that the future has passed D&D by. Many of the core fans that got hooked in their teens are in their 30s now and today's teenagers have a wealth of entertainment options.
"World of Warcraft has become the D&D of this generation," said Pramas, 38. "When I was a kid, if you were any sort of nerd, you played D&D. That's not the case anymore."
Jack Warecki, a software developer in Shirley, New York is also 38. He used to play D&D but has shifted toward MMO games — he plays Lord of the Rings Online at the moment.
"In terms of time spent and bang for the buck, MMOs just do it better right now, so I'm just not interested in roleplaying," he said.
All the same, he does find a "great social aspect" to the face-to-face game that's absent from the computer versions. And yes, he and his high-school buddies still get together now and then for a game of D&D. He plays a wizard who shoots fireballs.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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Look, if they release their own cute little version of maptools and it's not a complete clusterfuck (just kind of a clusterfuck, as I'm currently expecting), AND it's like $5 a month for a DM and 1-5 players at the table, I'd be in.
If they honestly expect to milk MMO levels of money out of me and my group (read: $10-15 per person per month) it'd fucking well better be the next coming of Jebus in digital form.
Otherwise me and my group will just keep playing for free on Maptools using the (previously costed but now free from further cost) offline character builder and accept that any new items or rules will either have to be input manually or ignored. For items I doubt that'll be a big deal, and for rules, well, we adapted to the changes to item usage easily enough, so I have doubts that anything but a full on edition revision would put a dent in us now.
Pardon me. I'm just venting a little due to the VTT being literally the biggest draw for me when the online adventure was announced, and no small part of what got me interested and excited for 4th Edition ("you mean I might be able to get my old crew back together through the magic of the internet, rather than 3 of us having to drive for 1-3 hours to play each weekend??"), and then they pretty much shrugged, said "oops, this shit is harder than we expected" and basically vowed to ignore ever talking about the VTT again.
Even if it's not shit, I'll probably give it a few months of shakedown while they realize that they don't need to reload the entire campaign every time someone roles a die or moves a miniature, or that hard coding a max of 20 enemies on a table was a bad idea, or whatever other asinine design stance they take that the players have to sniff out and yell at them about is.
They seriously should have just written a fucking check awhile ago.
It would warm the cackles of my heart when their abortion of a VTT comes out if they impinge on the technology developed by RPtools. Well, not the impinging, but the lawsuit would.
I must still be sleeping.
God, totally agree.
I'd pay $15-25 a month, depending on the quality, for my players and I to have access to an integrated combination of the Compendium, orokos-y sort of character sheets and online dice roller, MapTools, and a wiki/forum space to put up between-session stuff that was all 4E "native" and worked to streamline the prep time I go through with MapTools right now (not that it's particularly burdensome, just that it'd easily be worth it to me.)
On top of that, I'd pay the occasional one-time fee (say, $5-10) for the occasional .pdf of an adventure along with a .cmpgn file that had all of the encounters prebuilt in MapTools for weeks where I'm feeling lazy or adventures that seem particularly awesome (...not that I think Wizards has been very strong in that regard either, lately).
Instead, what will likely happen is that I will begin paying $0 a month to WotC and continue to use the free versions of all the things that exist out there, because they are apparently dead set on churning out options that are worse tools individually and have no integration.
I imagine it must cost somewhere between "too much" and "holy shit."
The DDI subscriptions could afford it, instead of trying to pocket as much money as possible from it and leaving it to a couple dudes to "handle."
Working for D&D's online integration should be like a dream job kind of thing for a lot of programmers. Given that they should be able to get a high quality for a low price with the intangibles making up the difference. That they still have trouble makes me think the pay is just.....bad.
Alright, new theory. Management type in charge of this section is a fucking idiot and easily bullshitted.
I'm a 4e grognard
The income is billed online (with a pisspoor account management site as well) that costs them mostly nothing.
The costs are delivered goods, mainly man hours. The content has been developed by the RPG team, the costs incurred are data entry, development, testing, and hosting.
Data entry is a low paying position and fairly so.
Development should pay at least 50k a team member per year. Art assets that they probably grab from other departments at WotC, there isn't too much there for the given tools other than the base UI so far anyways.
We know how much they spend on testing.
Hosting costs for hardware and bandwidth would be a small increase on this total.
Let's say half the yearly costs are wages for a small team of developers, 250k, let's say 100k budgeted for data entry and testing as needed, 50k for infrastructure and misc. 400k could budget an inhouse production of digital tools in line with their vision.
The subscriber base at the cheapest rate provides $72 a year per subscriber. 6000 subscribers over the course of a year would cover that and a bit. That's easily attainable and then some with quality tools being offered, and the intangibles like the good-will (it's a paid product sure, but look at the reactions now) and value-adding for the brand.
But 6000 subscribers? Seems doable.
If you gave me less than 400k, you'd bet I could put together a development house that could deliver much more than what we have and everyone knows it.
edit: If they gave a shit about testing that is.
If they gave me money to set up shop I would just outsource beta testing to this thread.
Or are we back to passing judgment on finished products' features by the features present in beta, again?
I have no doubt that they want full DDI integration, not just because it would be awesome, but also because it would drive people to subscribe to DDI and purchase the VTT in whatever way WotC prices it.
Also, complaining about "MMO pricing" isn't really fair. MMOs have shit tons of subscribers because they are very popular. D&D is D&D, guys. It's a niche hobby, no matter how much we might wish that isn't the case. Niche hobbies cost more, especially when it comes to products like online tools that don't scale like a physical product would.
huh?
The amount of phones/tablets/smart devices that support Silverlight 4 and are in hands of significant consumers is ridiculously non-existent.
When you have a physical product, you typically develop it and then pay quite a bit to produce and distribute. The lion's share of the cost here is in what it takes to produce each copy of the physical product you're selling. If you want to sell 500 units, you pay the cost to produce 500 units. If you want to sell 500,000 units, you pay to produce 500,000.
The point I'm making here is that for a niche hobby like D&D that has a relatively small customer base (compared to MMOs), we should expect to pay a cost commensurate with the niche nature of the hobby. The smaller the customer base, the less that development cost gets split up among the customers.
As hobbies go, D&D has remained ridiculously inexpensive, especially considering the cost versus number of hours you get out of it. Complaining about paying MMO pricing doesn't really make sense, because D&D's market looks nothing like a sub-based MMO's market. If you want to gripe about pricing, just gripe that $15 is to much to pay for what you'd get out of it.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
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And no, we're not pre-judging based on its beta, we're pre-judging it based on Wizard's inability to produce a hobby-level product with a professional staff.
Bullshit.
The risk/reward ratio is highly subjective, but if you're willing to charge me $10-15 a month for access, then that service is going to be compared to other things I pay $10-15 a month for access.
D&D might not have the "base game" and "expansions" setup that MMOs have, but y'know what, after buying a PHB/DMG/MM trifecta, the PHB/PHB2 combo, Divine Favor and Open Grave, I think I've paid into them a reasonable amount already.
While bandwidth, server space/usage, data entry, development, support, Q&A and other factors certainly cut into their profit margin, we're talking about world wide support here. Do you really think there are less than 6,000 yearly subscribers in the entire world? 10,000? Clearly DDI hasn't been a smash hit, but at the same time I have trouble believing that it's hemoraging money so hard that their response has been to slash and burn one product to make room for another and expanding into yet more (or at least claim to be doing so).
At the very least, I would suspect that DDI is either breaking even or only running at an acceptable loss, including development costs. WOTC is a business, and unless there's a very good reason otherwise, I can't imagine they're running deeply in the red for this long.
I'm not saying "oh, I give Blizzard $15 a month and I get some fairly impressive art assets and 93% uptime on the servers, so WOTC should be able to take that and give me a graphic VTT in, like, a week". I am saying "If WOTC expects me (and possibly even my group) to pay into this little digital pyramid scheme, it had better be reasonably priced for the service we're receiving and sufficiently useful enough to justify that cost". Which may be a tautology, but I'm cranky and want to wrap this up before grabbing coffee.
I didn't find the Compendium terribly useful to my ends, haven't used the monster builder for more than a few minutes, don't really sweat Dungeon or Dragon magazine, and the one application they produced that I loved (the offline Character Builder) has been murdered to make way for another one that lacks features I expect and has requirements that are deal breakers for me. To say that they face an uphill climb IRT the VTT after so many years of silence on the matter is an epic understatement, and I don't feel that's due to grognarding or nerd rage or anything unreasonable, but because as a consumer I am not impressed with much of what they have done, so "we're doing more awesome stuff guys!" is bittersweet at best.
Is it though? If we take out WoW as an outlier, how big are most MMO's in terms of population? How big is D&D?
Should I even waste my time and money on more books and minis or should I just get out now before things get worse?
The only way a framework would have cause to be wary is if they include copyrighted material. Game systems themselves are inherently not copyrightable. This means that my framework I made for my D&D 4e game is 100% safe even though it absolutely uses 4e mechanics and automatically levels up characters in their chosen class.
If I really wanted to, I could publish my own RPG under a different name using D&D 4e mechanics as long as I didn't use any trademarks or copyrighted text, like skill descriptions or fluff text on powers.
If product A is niche and physical, and Product B is niche and digital, I can see paying more per unit for A than B.
What you're saying is that because Product C is mass-market and physical, I should pay more per unit for B than C.
Assuming we can define near-identical units for each.
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One thing to take away from all the bitching.
We bitch about the CB and their mishandling of DDI because we want to play our D&D to the most. The game itself is fine and we are here cause of it.
Just stay away from DDI, imo.
And, for my money, DDI is worth every penny and then some. I pay $6 a month for it. If they charged $20 a month, I'd still be paying. It's just that useful as a DM.
Psst: The exact same thing applies to the physical products they sell.
The physical object in your hand doesn't even account for half the cost of the book. All the development costs and the like all apply exactly the same. The Essential lines are comparable for other, non-hobby books that retail for ~$10.
Nah, most of this is venting dude. Give it a few more pages and I'm sure there'll be a little less vitriol and cynicism. But the internet is made of exaggerated responses.
While there are things that they have done that are baffling—honestly there wasn't much for me to say post "WE UPLOAD THE ENTIRE SHEET, REPEATEDLY"— if you like the game that you have so far (again, decide for yourself not based off the internet bullshit), then you may like the latter products too, at least in printed form.
edit: the compendium is okay too. but really it's not that bad. none of it is.
I don't mind "MMO pricing" necessarily.
My problem isn't the potential cost of $15 bucks a month (though I have to admit that I start to balk when me and every one of my players is paying that price). It's the fact that I'm currently getting superior products for free.
It kills me because I think 4th edition is great, and 4th edition online has specifically revived roleplaying as a hobby, for me. But the quality of their work lately has just not been very good, and it makes me concerned about their overall online strategy.
They should outsource, license, or simply hire the guys who are already doing a good job making online tools rather than continue to churn out subpar products.
Precisely where the price point falls is a secondary concern for me. The issue is that they're asking me to pay for stuff that appears to be inferior to things I can get for free. You wouldn't feel good about paying for <insert second-favorite MMO here> if <insert your favorite MMO> was free, would you? The analogy isn't perfect because I'm still actually paying WotC for the physical books and whatnot, but I think it illustrates the point.
Pretty much this.
The quality of D&D and the quality of the online tools are separate issues. While the online tools were nice when they were functional, they are strictly optional.
Edit: I should also add that, as the quality of the online tools has deteriorated, the quality of the physical products has actually improved. Which is why there has been so much rage about the digital tools: we wanted our spiffy new printed content to be supported.
The books are great, and I have no complaints about them. I'm not such a fan of the mini's. I feel they are way to expensive, but to each his own.
What we're discussing is the online side of the business. I probably shouldn't even be talking about it, as I am a "Luddite" and do almost everything with paper and pencil.
I think the best piece of advice is that D&D tends to attract people who are very, very passionate and have difficulties expressing it.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2008-04-01-dungeons-dragons_N.htm
Edit: forgot the best part.
NEW YORK — It must be tough to be 34 and already see your children overshadow you.
That's what's happened to Dungeons & Dragons, the roleplaying game that for decades has drawn geeks to roll dice and pretend to be elves, sorcerers and other fantasy heroes. It has never quite become mainstream entertainment, but it has inspired roleplaying computer games like World of Warcraft to borrow its principles and turn them into a multibillion-dollar industry.
Now, D&D is borrowing from its imitators. The next edition of the game, due out in June, will for the first time be paired with online features that the publisher hopes will lure lapsed players back to the dungeon.
"That group that broke up in 1987 because you all graduated from high school and went to schools across the country? Well, you can get that old teenage group back together," said Scott Rouse, brand manager for D&D at Wizards of the Coast. The Hasbro Inc. subsidiary publishes the game.
Roleplayers have always faced the difficulty of getting together regularly, especially since the games are lengthy. But they talk warmly about the camaraderie fostered by the games, since the players cooperate rather than compete. Though guided by thick rulebooks, the games have an element of theater, with players using the voices of their characters. Not surprisingly, they're considered uncool by those who lack an appreciation of fantasy.
The new edition, the fourth since D&D was created in 1974, may do nothing for the game's social stigma, but at least players will have the option to commune online. Each screen will show the same virtual 3-D "tabletop" with monsters and heroes, and the players will be able to talk via Internet voice chat.
Wizards is also building its own social networking site as a Facebook or MySpace for gamers. The players will be able to create fantasy characters for themselves with an online tool. That streamlines a process that can take hours and dozens of reference books.
Wizards employees are avid players of online games, and the new initiative springs from that experience, Rouse said. It should make it easier to tuck the kids into bed, then "jump on the computer and delve into dungeons, kill monsters and take their stuff," as he put it.
D&D's influence on computer games was highlighted last month when the death of Gary Gygax, the game's co-creator, sparked reminiscences across the computer industry. A senior editor at Wired magazine even hailed Gygax as "architect of the now," seeing the game as inspiring Internet culture in general, like Gmail accounts and Flickr photo sharing.
Yet Gygax, who had not been involved with the game's development since the 80s, told The New York Times in 2006 that he wasn't much into computer games and preferred the intimacy and imagination of the face-to-face game.
"What tabletop gaming gives to people is a reason to get together with your friends and hang out and do a fun social activity together," said Chris Pramas, a former Wizards employee and now the president of another game company, Green Ronin Publishing.
Wizards emphasizes that it's trying to keep the good parts of the tabletop game. It will let players, rather than computers, maintain control of the virtual world. It's also streamlining the rules of the tabletop game to make it faster to play and more accessible.
D&D had about six million players worldwide last year, according to a survey by Wizards, though Rouse said the figure may be somewhat inflated. Many of those players probably yield little revenue for the company. The gamers buy books and sometimes miniatures, but only one player in the group needs to own a copy of each book.
Wizards does not reveal sales figures, but Pramas estimates the overall market for traditional role-playing games at $30 million annually.
Meanwhile, the massively multiplayer online (or MMO) game World of Warcraft has more than 10 million subscribers, most of them paying. Publisher Blizzard Entertainment, a unit of France's Vivendi conglomerate, doesn't say how much the game is earning, but a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests it pulls in more than $1 billion per year. U.S. subscribers pay $14.95 per month.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the online features of fourth-edition D&D will carry a monthly fee of $14.95, though a one-year contract brings the cost down to $9.95 per month.
The new direction for D&D isn't risk free. Dungeons & Dragons Online, an MMO game like World of Warcraft, hasn't done very well. The game, run by Atari under a license from Hasbro, has less than 100,000 subscribers, according to various estimates.
The new edition of the printed game has already caused a rift in the D&D community. Paizo Publishing, an independent company that publishes popular supplementary books for the game, announced last month that it will not support the new edition. It says the previous edition of D&D is a better fit and will even create its own game based on that edition.
Then there's the risk that the future has passed D&D by. Many of the core fans that got hooked in their teens are in their 30s now and today's teenagers have a wealth of entertainment options.
"World of Warcraft has become the D&D of this generation," said Pramas, 38. "When I was a kid, if you were any sort of nerd, you played D&D. That's not the case anymore."
Jack Warecki, a software developer in Shirley, New York is also 38. He used to play D&D but has shifted toward MMO games — he plays Lord of the Rings Online at the moment.
"In terms of time spent and bang for the buck, MMOs just do it better right now, so I'm just not interested in roleplaying," he said.
All the same, he does find a "great social aspect" to the face-to-face game that's absent from the computer versions. And yes, he and his high-school buddies still get together now and then for a game of D&D. He plays a wizard who shoots fireballs.