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Post by Tasha on Apr 4, 2014 22:10:35 GMT
I would guess that Dan's ROI on developing, supporting and maintaining HD is pretty darn low. That plus a long list of repeated (dumb/ignorant/stupid) questions which are answered either in the user manual or in a previously posed question on the forum, would tend to make anyone "cranky". Some of Dan's Customer Service problems would be solved with a FAQ post at the top of the HD board. The documentation is mediocre for the program and doesn't really go into troubleshooting installations. Upgrades are both easy and hard, but do have a learning curve that most other products don't have. |
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Post by Tasha on Apr 4, 2014 22:17:05 GMT
Honestly, I liked Creation Workshop more. There was better looking Character output with that product. It wasn't persnickety enough with the Rules for Steve and I think that DOJ wanted complete control over the Software. I just never like the Super Hero centric view of both the rules and Hero Designer. Heroic level games have always been a something that DOJ ignored with Hero Designer. I think it comes from Steve's insistence that PC's pay for every little smidgen of ability they get. So it's VERY important to him that you stat out every weapon to the last power point in both Weapons list and when you build them in HD. Which adds a LOT of detail that most players don't need or want on their Character sheet. When it comes to pre-existing equipment, I just enter it on the Equipment tab as a Custom Power with the name of the weapon in the Name field and the stats in the Display field. It will look like this: .30-06 (Springfield M1903): +1 OCV, +2 RMod, Dmg: 2d6+1, STUNx: +1, Shots: 5 Yeah, I know the workarounds, but there's still the part of me that thinks that Character Gen software should do more stuff than I can with MS Word. ie autoenter the stuff I buy for my character also enter the correct armor value on the Hit Location chart for ease of play. HD is missing that functionality as well. The program just needs to great equipment as stuff you buy with money and not as stuff you purchase with powers and character points. DOJ Hero has been over focused on Character points for everything since They took over from Cybergames. It seems to be the way that Steve approaches the game. |
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Post by rjcurrie on Apr 7, 2014 3:43:31 GMT
When it comes to pre-existing equipment, I just enter it on the Equipment tab as a Custom Power with the name of the weapon in the Name field and the stats in the Display field. It will look like this: .30-06 (Springfield M1903): +1 OCV, +2 RMod, Dmg: 2d6+1, STUNx: +1, Shots: 5 Yeah, I know the workarounds, but there's still the part of me that thinks that Character Gen software should do more stuff than I can with MS Word. ie autoenter the stuff I buy for my character also enter the correct armor value on the Hit Location chart for ease of play. HD is missing that functionality as well. The program just needs to great equipment as stuff you buy with money and not as stuff you purchase with powers and character points. DOJ Hero has been over focused on Character points for everything since They took over from Cybergames. It seems to be the way that Steve approaches the game. Fair enough. And the documentation does not cover installation because it was always positioned that the PDF would be installed with the program. So it seemed pretty pointless to include instructions on installation when such instructions would not be available until the installation was complete. Also, many of the installation problems did not exist when the program was written but rather came about as a result of Microsoft's changes to Windows. Forgive me if I seem defensive but authors tend to get that way when their work is called mediocre. |
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Post by Tasha on Apr 7, 2014 20:00:22 GMT
I have always appreciated the Documentation. Since I mod Output Formats, the list of usable tags is really nice. Documentation is always nice. Especially when the program has a quirky interface and a prickly person writing the software.  |
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Post by rjcurrie on Apr 8, 2014 15:31:14 GMT
I have always appreciated the Documentation. Since I mod Output Formats, the list of usable tags is really nice. Documentation is always nice. Especially when the program has a quirky interface and a prickly person writing the software. I realized after the fact that your comment about the documentation being mediocre was probably referring to documentation about installation and not about the documentation as a whole. And I appreciate the fact that you have looked at the documentation. Nothing bugs me more than when people ask a question about HD on the boards and the question is answered in the manual. |
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Post by Tasha on Apr 9, 2014 6:07:20 GMT
I have always appreciated the Documentation. Since I mod Output Formats, the list of usable tags is really nice. Documentation is always nice. Especially when the program has a quirky interface and a prickly person writing the software. I realized after the fact that your comment about the documentation being mediocre was probably referring to documentation about installation and not about the documentation as a whole. And I appreciate the fact that you have looked at the documentation. Nothing bugs me more than when people ask a question about HD on the boards and the question is answered in the manual. Sorry, I meant that the instructions for installation were spotty at best. I am sure that I really meant that there should be a nice Stickied bit on the HD boards that goes over installation using the installer, and then FAQ's that. Then also mentions the "hard way" (Creating all of the Folders manually, then installing the newest .Jar file and where to place all of the files and set up all of the pointers in the programs to look into the new custom folders). |
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gojira
Double Digit Master
in a rubber monster suit.
Posts: 85 
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Post by gojira on Apr 22, 2014 19:04:39 GMT
And I just saw this thread on the Hero Games website, mentioning some troubles accessing the site and getting a Hostgator.com error screen. www.herogames.com/forums/topic/88690-hero-games-site-troubles/I don't recall Hostgator.com being used before. Is my recollection wrong? I thought Dan was using a different ISP, and was co-locating his own hardware there. Any one remember from the breakdown about a year ago where he said he had to replace some hard drives? I thought he drove to Chicago where he used to work, but I could be misremembering. |
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Post by tikiman on May 23, 2014 1:59:46 GMT
Never seen Hero Designer..is that like the disc or whatever that came with "Chapions Deluxe 4th Edition" (never used it)?
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Post by Tasha on May 28, 2014 8:49:38 GMT
Hero Designer is similar in function to the Program with came with the Deluxe 4e Champions book. It's a Java based program that will help you create correct RAW characters for 5e and 6e Hero System. The program can output PDF or any number of other formats depending on the Export formats installed (the Big ones are HTML/CSS, XML, RTF, and Txt). Also Hero Designer can output speed charts for running the game or produce the file Hero Combat Manager needs to do it's magic. The interface is a bit quirky in places, but is a solid program.
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Post by tikiman on Jun 18, 2014 17:57:03 GMT
I've always thought the perceived need for software to create a character in Hero is whatever the opposite of a selling point is called. It screams "Convoluted! Complicated!" I can only imagine how many folks have been turned off Hero as a result. I see the software gettin pimped all the time on the Hero forums to the point that it makes it seem like it should come free with the book.
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Post by Tasha on Jun 20, 2014 23:31:29 GMT
You CAN make characters without Hero Designer. Making characters with Hero Designer take a fraction of the time. Mostly because it autoadds up the powerpoints. Also being able to plug in and remove limitations and Advantages on powers allows for experimentation that is hard to duplicate with manual methods or basic spreadsheets.
Also, Folks coming from D&D and Pathfinder are USED to having software to help in character design. WotC charges a monthly fee for their program and Paizo licenses it's system out to The Hero Lab folk (Lone Wolf Software). I don't think that it's as big of an issue as you might think.
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Post by tikiman on Jun 21, 2014 16:50:55 GMT
You CAN make characters without Hero Designer. Making characters with Hero Designer take a fraction of the time. Mostly because it autoadds up the powerpoints. Also being able to plug in and remove limitations and Advantages on powers allows for experimentation that is hard to duplicate with manual methods or basic spreadsheets. Also, Folks coming from D&D and Pathfinder are USED to having software to help in character design. WotC charges a monthly fee for their program and Paizo licenses it's system out to The Hero Lab folk (Lone Wolf Software). I don't think that it's as big of an issue as you might think. See, I think your answer actually proves the point that it's overly complicated if without software it takes so much longer. Never met anyone who used software for D&D. I thought Pathfinder was a Nissan SUV. In any case, "Buy these two huge ugly blue textbooks and by the way, you'll want to spend another $25 on software just to make a character" isn't much of a sales pitch to new or cahlsh-poor players. |
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mhd
New Member
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Post by mhd on Jun 23, 2014 7:24:17 GMT
Having software for D&D character creation and management was supposed to be one of the big items of the D&D 4E introduction. Didn't quite work out that way, as WotC isn't really good with that online/software thingamajig in general.
But in the 3E days, I would've paid good money for a decent character generator, as clicking together a high-level multi-classed templated NPC took quite some time, even though you're just adding options. For HERO (or GURPS) the biggest benefit I got was keeping a proper point tally, so you can have smaller iterations when working with your character. Same goes for creating Powers... It's not really impossible without it, and I wouldn't call HD a requirement, but it does save some time. And that's what software is good for (I'm admittedly a bit biased in that regard).
I'd still like to see a good character creator that's both open source and web-based...
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gojira
Double Digit Master
in a rubber monster suit.
Posts: 85
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Post by gojira on Jun 23, 2014 14:53:46 GMT
Interesting.
I'm also of the opinion that a software character generator means the base character generation system is too complicated. But I also see that some other folks have similar problems with other game systems, including popular ones like DnD.
I think perhaps this is due to the current system and books over-emphasizing the toolkit nature of Hero. Other system tend to give you pre-built characters. You can just grab a character and go if you are so inclined. Whereas recent (since 5e) Hero books rarely have pre-built characters that are intended for players to use.
Personally I started on 3rd ed.; that book had a lot of pre-built characters for players. It had more player character builds in fact than NPCs. (The NPCs in 3rd ed. were what -- Mechanon, a Viper boss, a Viper mook, and a UNTIL agent; vs. 12 ish PC builds.)
So I think I'd like to see Hero go back to something like that. I also think some simplification on the character sheet would be good, and simplify some builds. But the key seems to be not "less complicated" per se but providing players with a "grab and go" option so folks who don't want to mess around much with points have that option.
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Post by Tasha on Jun 24, 2014 7:18:19 GMT
I have been playing since 2nd edition. For superheroes I always made my own powers etc. It was part of the fun of character gen. Like it or not this is a Points based character gen. Back in the days of 2nd -4th edition I could do the math behind Advantages and Limitations mostly in my head. Which I would do while prototyping a character, then I would sit there with a calculator and check everything, Add up the cost of Characteristics, Skills/Talents/Perks, Powers, then Disadvantages. Now Hero designer does it in a fraction of the time that I would take with a calculator. Even IF the system went to pure addition and subtraction (ie Fuzion) there will still be a need for software that could add up the columns for you. Also having the powers and options available make things easier. Just because a program makes things easier doesn't mean that the system is broken. A computer can add much faster than I can and I am a very fast 10key input typist. As a GM I prefer PCs that came out of a character Gen program. I can be reasonably sure that such characters are legal by RAW. They also tend to be more legible and
I have been using Character gen programs for D&D since 2nd edition. 3rd edition D&D came with a Character Gen program. 3.5 we had one of 4 different programs/ Spreadsheets for character gen. Traveller was the game that spreadsheets were made for. GURPS is next to impossible to create characters without a chargen program. Savage Worlds has 2 or 3 different Character Gen programs (including Metacreator the Fuzion/4e character gen prog). Hell, even FATE has a character Gen program for it.
There's a LOT of misinformation about Hero out on the internet. 5er and 6e1&2 didn't help those perceptions of Hero being too complicated. The current ownership has a different Philosophy about all genres of the game. He treats all genres of the game the same as if they were Superhero games. He still owns a majority of the company, so I don't really see things changing beyond the small edited versions we are seeing now.
Thinking about it now, Superheroic games work great now. I would separate the Heroic Genre games from the Superheroic games. I would stop worrying about having weapon writeups that are the same powerlevel for all genres. Keep all weapons in the DC 1 - 12 range. Just use Damage Negation to keep it real between genres. ie Fantasy Weapons are -3d6 damage vs modern armor. All non Superheroic weapons are -3d6(or more) when used against Superheroes(making the value -6d6) sets the campaign for a more DC universe feel) etc.
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