I hope you take my comments in the spirit that I wrote them - an attempt to explain our rationale for the design decisions we made and how much feedback and testing played into it - and not as anything personal. You do make some solid and valid points that we will add to our consideration as we parse feedback in the coming weeks.
Thanks!
Thoroughly appreciate the response - particularly because you posted hours ago that you were going to bed, so I'm sorry to have kept you from sleep!
I completely accept the comments in the spirit - and I'm sorry for having posted mine as a rant. I should have taken the time to phrase things more constructively. I want to make it clear that I thoroughly appreciate the work the team has done on this: no major product update is easy, and I can imagine how much effort has gone in behind the scenes. I may not personally agree with all the decisions made, but I absolutely respect the effort and passion of the team that's gone into the update, and think it's something you should collectively be proud of.
I'll dig through and respond, but this time I'll make sure that any criticism is more constructively expressed.
Instead of having two separate boxes for (features and traits, description, notes) and (combat, actions, spells, equipment), combine them into one taller box. You can still break these out on mobile and tablet form factors.
It would give more room for viewing lists and snippets at a glance.
This also means more room in the spell box to see all your spell slots at a glance.
The equipment section is basically fine, I just wish it was taller.
You could probably combine combat and actions into one box.
Ritual spells should be listed under Actions (Other)
My problems are a bit more specific, as I'm playing a Fire Genasi Homebrew Wizard.
Produce Flame doesn't show the attack range. This is what I care about in the attack section. Burning hands can be excused because it's in the additional info, but Produce Flame is annoying.
Also, Toll the Dead has two damage types and I only see one. Maybe put the other one in the notes, somehow.
Also, I'm playing a homebrew class. While, it's showing the proper added spells (opposed to how it was before), it's not showing the proper class features. Everything looks good in the builder but not in the sheet.
For those wanting to see all of your spells and spell slot boxes, if you click the gear beside the Spells heading it will open a sidebar. At the top is a collapsed section for Spell Slots, just click to expand to show all your slots at a glance. You can also see all of your available spells below that section.
My problems are a bit more specific, as I'm playing a Fire Genasi Homebrew Wizard.
Produce Flame doesn't show the attack range. This is what I care about in the attack section. Burning hands can be excused because it's in the additional info, but Produce Flame is annoying.
Also, Toll the Dead has two damage types and I only see one. Maybe put the other one in the notes, somehow.
Also, I'm playing a homebrew class. While, it's showing the proper added spells (opposed to how it was before), it's not showing the proper class features. Everything looks good in the builder but not in the sheet.
It would definitely be nice to see Range: Self / 30' or Damaage: 1d8 / 1d12 Necrotic in the above mentioned spells.
I think the reasoning behind how it is currently is because that's how it's listed in the books. This would be a good case for breaking the convention of matching the book's format.
I haven't been able to sit down much with the sheets today as I was working a double, but on my breaks I kept pulling it up on my phone and tablet... This sheet is a MASSIVE improvement to the old one, and I LIKED the old one!! I can't wait to see it on desktop tomorrow and get a closer look at everything. Currently I love the UI, the look, the ease of access to information. There's certainly bugs, but there's no way it could have been bug free. Gotta say, I was worried about mobile in the last dev update preview, but it's fantastic.
Amazing job and kudos to the whole team for such a great product. Looking forward to seeing the polish that gets added as we keep going!
For those wanting to see all of your spells and spell slot boxes, if you click the gear beside the Spells heading it will open a sidebar. At the top is a collapsed section for Spell Slots, just click to expand to show all your slots at a glance. You can also see all of your available spells below that section.
Just saw that a few minutes ago. It's not a perfect fix to the being in the middle of an enemy turn trying to plan my next one panic, but I might be able to live. Also to be fair I need to look at it on a PC. All i comments were about mobile use.
Instead of having two separate boxes for (features and traits, description, notes) and (combat, actions, spells, equipment), combine them into one taller box. You can still break these out on mobile and tablet form factors.
It would give more room for viewing lists and snippets at a glance.
This also means more room in the spell box to see all your spell slots at a glance.
The equipment section is basically fine, I just wish it was taller.
You could probably combine combat and actions into one box.
Ritual spells should be listed under Actions (Other)
While the functionality improvements are excellent, this is a massive step backwards in user experience and design.
Good web design gives you access to the information you need as you need it, not all at the same time. Why would you replicate a 45-year-old pen and paper character sheet design, instead of continuing to use clean modern web design?
Here's the biggest problem: this design is fundamentally unfriendly to new players.
New players have years of experience with clean modern web design, thanks to Facebook, Apple, Google and the like. These companies have ingrained standard patterns of interface design and user behaviour into literally billions of people - everyone knows to pinch to zoom, or pull to refresh, because these designs cut across everything we use. The old Beyond design built on those patterns of design; you didn't have to learn how to use Beyond, because you already knew how. It was the same as any other modern web tool - intuitive to any five-year-old who's ever used an iPad. This redesign disregards all digital design principles users are intuitively familiar with from modern web design, in favour of recreating a pen and paper experience.
This character sheet is basically just an index you click on, to bring up the relevant rules in the side pane - it's functionally no different from just flicking between PHB pages.
This redesign clearly did not consider new players, and their ability to quickly and easily pick up the game; it did not consider how modern web design allows you to present and access information in ways more efficient than just having an index and a reference book.
Expandable drop down items. Simple visual representations. Clear visual distinctions between objects and sections. These are core to modern design, and all seem to have gone out the window. The best thing about using Beyond was that it wasn't burdened by the D&D character sheet's existing design paradigm and 45 years of history; it gave a fresh, clean interface, relevant for a modern digital toolset like Beyond. Returning to the information overload of the pen and paper character sheet is a bad decision, if for no other reason than it makes it exponentially harder to introduce new players to the game.
Previously, information was sorted into clean, simple headings, following the principles of modern web design in a way that any of those five-year-olds I mentioned before can navigate; now it's an information overload, where you almost have to know specifically what you're looking for in order to find it anywhere. When you do find it and click it, all you get is "great, here's the relevant section of the PHB; you can figure out how it works yourself."
Spell slots were previously a nice easily understood grid of checkboxes of how many you had at each level, visible clearly on the main page.
Now, if you want to know how many spell slots you have, you have to find the spells tab on the confusingly grouped combat/actions/spells/equipment pane, click the right tab, then count up the numbers next to the levels of your slots. Why on earth would you get rid of a perfect at-a-glance way of visually representing spell slots, and replace it with 'count up all these numbers'?
Oh no wait, you can still get the visual layout - you just have to go to the spells tab, click the completely un-obvious cog to open the side pane, then expand out the drop-down for spell slots. Three unclear steps - so much easier than just having it immediately visible! /s
Under the old design: "Hmm, what's the right spell for this situation? Let me scroll through my list."
New design: "Hmm, what's the right spell for this situation? Let me click back and forth between tabs for each level, or again open up that unmarked cog to get that sidebar thing."
Want to add an item previously? Easy! In the Equipment pane, click add item, search, and add it!
Whoops, now you've got to go into the equipment tab and search for an item, then click add item, then search for the item again, then add it, then clear your previous search to see your items, then scroll down to the new item. That's much easier! /s
Alternatively, you can click on the completely unexplained cog in the bottom right corner.
This goes completely against sensible UX - when people want to add an item, they're not going to think "I should search for an item, or click that tiny almost invisible cog", they're going to look for something that says "Add Item".
There used to be a nice visual distinction for key useful numbers - AC, Initiative, Passive Perception, Move Speed, etc; they were separated out at the top, in a visually distinct section, because they're useful numbers. What's it like now?
There is basically zero visual distinction between my base stats, walking speed, and proficiency bonus
Passive stats are buried off to the side separately
AC is only visible if you have the combat tab open (WHY?)
Also why do base stats take up so much space?
No clear section headings to direct new players. Used to have clear, visually distinct headings - Abilities, Skills, Attacks, Equipment, etc. - with a clear difference in background colour, to identify them as headings.
"Yeah nah, let's make them visually indistinct, move some of them to the bottom of the pane (like Senses, Saving Throws, and Skills), and move the rest into equally unremarkable tabs at the top (Combat, Actions, Features and Traits)."
Or, how about, you know, have visually clear headings that are both consistent in terms of their placement in the pane, and visually distinct?
Skills. Before: nice modern UI, with unintrusive indication of which base stat was relevant to the skill, and modern green 'notification' style dots to indicate proficiency.
Now: Remember when you were in school and had to fill out those machine-marked tests by filling in the right circle? THEY'RE BACK BABY.
Suddenly, a third of the entire panel is taken up by literally one dot and three letters.
Speaking of skills, why has the font size and weight of everything in that panel been changed to the least sensible combination? The bonus number shouldn't be bold, and nor should the three letter base stat abbreviation, because those aren't what needs to catch my eye when I look at that pane; what I'm going to be looking for more often than not is the name of the skill! But let's keep that nice and plain, because we'd rather you see a whole bunch of bolded numbers and then have to figure out which one is which, than easily find the skill and then look across for the bonus number!
Saving throws: remember the good old days (last week) when the section that explained what you had advantage on for your saving throws had all the words there? Yeah, those were the days.
Now if you have multiple different ones, the text gets cut off by an ellipsis (...), and you have to mouse over it to read it.
Spells: Before, a nice list with good use of bold font for names, with other details in lighter, smaller font. Nice little colourful icons to visually distinguish different spell schools.
Now: Italics baby. Also do you like Excel spreadsheets? Cause that's what you've got now.
In fact, font in general. Did this change? Because everything feels a lot less readable - feels much denser and smaller.
Also the side panel - massively awkward at times. Clicked on a class feature? Great! We won't just use a familiar expandable item to give you the information you wanted where you clicked - instead you have to look all the way up over here at this new window thing that's opened! Isn't that easy to follow?!
Actually I know why this pisses me off - it's because it feels like instead of having a modern digital toolset, that's designed for digital use, I'm just flipping back and forth between my character sheet (main panes) and the PHB/DMG/whatever (side pane). The whole advantage of digital tools is you shouldn't have to be flipping back and forth, because in a modern digital toolset, your character sheet should be interactive, not just an index you click on that brings up a second reference document on the side. A digital character sheet should not act like a piece of paper. If I click on a spell because I want more details, it should expand the details right there, not ask me to look up some other reference pane. That's the whole point of digital design - get what you want, where you need it.
This has been a rambling rant, but the fundamental question I have is this:
Why are you trying to recreate the pen and paper experience, when you should be designing a modern, interactive web tool?
If I wanted to use a paper character sheet, I would.
(Also, to reiterate, I really like some of the new functionality improvements - it's just the design I take issue with)
I totally agree with you QQMCRage. 100% on everything you wrote! Glad to see someone else who understands UXD on here. Maybe you should be working for D&D Beyond?
Why on earth indeed is D&D Beyond giving me a digital version of the original paper Character Sheet? If I wanted to use that archaic character sheet (which is really badly designed in itself) I would. I'm so disappointed in this new interface. It's so hard to find and access information, it's so old fashioned and it such a huge let down. I am (was) a paying customer for a service that brought D&D into the 21st century, but now I have an antiquated interface that is horrible to navigate and is no longer a joy to use.
Part of the attraction initially to D&D Beyond was everything QQMCRage highlighted - the former interface was modern and intuitive. I had content in places that made sense, and no information overload. The old interface was perfect for new players, which is how I got my partner to play D&D. It was D&D Beyond's old interface that won him over. I was about to do the same with another friend - but I won't be showing them D&D Beyond now.
If D&D Beyond is smart they will allow those of us who prefer a modern, intuitive interface to be able to switch that back on.
Overall I am flummoxed as to why they replaced an intuitive interface with something that is inferior. They got it so right from a UXD point of view with the older interface, to now get it so wrong says something. What a disaster.
Maybe D&D Beyond doesn't care about the next generation of players after all? Seems like it to me.
So now that D&D Beyond has lost its point of difference compared to the original paper Character Sheet I see no more reason to use D&D Beyond. I'll take my money elsewhere.
For those wanting to see all of your spells and spell slot boxes, if you click the gear beside the Spells heading it will open a sidebar. At the top is a collapsed section for Spell Slots, just click to expand to show all your slots at a glance. You can also see all of your available spells below that section.
Just saw that a few minutes ago. It's not a perfect fix to the being in the middle of an enemy turn trying to plan my next one panic, but I might be able to live. Also to be fair I need to look at it on a PC. All i comments were about mobile use.
Yeah, I've been acclimating to both because I've got 2 games I use my phone for and 2 games I use my laptop for.
Once you get use to the new layout you'll probably reference the sidebar piece less because all the info is there, it just looks different.
While the functionality improvements are excellent, this is a massive step backwards in user experience and design.
Good web design gives you access to the information you need as you need it, not all at the same time. Why would you replicate a 45-year-old pen and paper character sheet design, instead of continuing to use clean modern web design?
Thanks for the feedback. To offer some counterpoints:
Here's the biggest problem: this design is fundamentally unfriendly to new players.
New players have years of experience with clean modern web design, thanks to Facebook, Apple, Google and the like. These companies have ingrained standard patterns of interface design and user behaviour into literally billions of people - everyone knows to pinch to zoom, or pull to refresh, because these designs cut across everything we use. The old Beyond design built on those patterns of design; you didn't have to learn how to use Beyond, because you already knew how. It was the same as any other modern web tool - intuitive to any five-year-old who's ever used an iPad. This redesign disregards all digital design principles users are intuitively familiar with from modern web design, in favour of recreating a pen and paper experience.
This character sheet is basically just an index you click on, to bring up the relevant rules in the side pane - it's functionally no different from just flicking between PHB pages.
This redesign clearly did not consider new players, and their ability to quickly and easily pick up the game; it did not consider how modern web design allows you to present and access information in ways more efficient than just having an index and a reference book.
Expandable drop down items. Simple visual representations. Clear visual distinctions between objects and sections. These are core to modern design, and all seem to have gone out the window. The best thing about using Beyond was that it wasn't burdened by the D&D character sheet's existing design paradigm and 45 years of history; it gave a fresh, clean interface, relevant for a modern digital toolset like Beyond. Returning to the information overload of the pen and paper character sheet is a bad decision, if for no other reason than it makes it exponentially harder to introduce new players to the game.
Previously, information was sorted into clean, simple headings, following the principles of modern web design in a way that any of those five-year-olds I mentioned before can navigate; now it's an information overload, where you almost have to know specifically what you're looking for in order to find it anywhere. When you do find it and click it, all you get is "great, here's the relevant section of the PHB; you can figure out how it works yourself."
Lots of generalizations and opinions here, and based on the theoretical instead of actual play using the sheet. First of all, this was playtested with hundreds of beginner players and the feedback was positive. When UX testing was performed with new players, a great deal of negative feedback was recorded regarding the collapsibles and how difficult it was to find specific information when asked (like a DM would do during a session) on the old sheet.
Additionally, Dungeons & Dragons as an interactive game that is played is far different than browsing Ars Technica's news content. In other words, designing a digital character sheet for use during play of a game with a complex ruleset might not be conducive to the same modern design principles as a general news/ content/ blog website.
Lastly on this section, when you click to pull in the sidebar, we are absolutely not just plopping down a section of the PHB and forcing you to fend for yourself - the content in that sidebar is both specific and focused on what was clicked. The design goal was to capture what information might need to be seen and understood at a glance while still providing the full context from the rules of the game that we support close at hand. Now we might not have gotten the balance between those two perfectly right as a first pass, but the design intent is not necessarily bad because it doesn't fit into the mold of some other websites out there.
Plenty of websites (especially those that would be considered closer to an "app" and have meaningful information to show in it) use sidebars effectively. A great example is Google Drive.
Spell slots were previously a nice easily understood grid of checkboxes of how many you had at each level, visible clearly on the main page.
Now, if you want to know how many spell slots you have, you have to find the spells tab on the confusingly grouped combat/actions/spells/equipment pane, click the right tab, then count up the numbers next to the levels of your slots. Why on earth would you get rid of a perfect at-a-glance way of visually representing spell slots, and replace it with 'count up all these numbers'?
Under the old design: "Hmm, what's the right spell for this situation? Let me scroll through my list."
New design: "Hmm, what's the right spell for this situation? Let me click back and forth between tabs for each level, or again open up that unmarked cog to get that sidebar thing."
The numbers representing spell slots on each spell level are quick indicators, and you still get the visual boxes at each level - you don't have to open the sidebar to check them. This was also based on feedback that most players tested got overwhelmed by having the entire spell list/ spell slot boxes thrown at them. If we see the representative sample is not in fact representative of the broader community, we will make adjustments.
Oh no wait, you can still get the visual layout - you just have to go to the spells tab, click the completely un-obvious cog to open the side pane, then expand out the drop-down for spell slots. Three unclear steps - so much easier than just having it immediately visible! /s
Want to add an item previously? Easy! In the Equipment pane, click add item, search, and add it!
Whoops, now you've got to go into the equipment tab and search for an item, then click add item, then search for the item again, then add it, then clear your previous search to see your items, then scroll down to the new item. That's much easier! /s
Alternatively, you can click on the completely unexplained cog in the bottom right corner.
This goes completely against sensible UX - when people want to add an item, they're not going to think "I should search for an item, or click that tiny almost invisible cog", they're going to look for something that says "Add Item".
I agree (and we asked the question before release and ultimately decided to see what kind of feedback we got) that the cog icon is not enough to call out spell or equipment management. Our goal of utilizing screen real estate more effectively (instead of having strange puzzle pieces that players had a hard time of navigating) was on our mind with the icon, but we saw the early feedback and know that it's not enough. A change was already developed today, is being tested, and should roll out tomorrow.
There used to be a nice visual distinction for key useful numbers - AC, Initiative, Passive Perception, Move Speed, etc; they were separated out at the top, in a visually distinct section, because they're useful numbers. What's it like now?
There is basically zero visual distinction between my base stats, walking speed, and proficiency bonus
Passive stats are buried off to the side separately
AC is only visible if you have the combat tab open (WHY?)
Also why do base stats take up so much space?
You're making some assumptions here on priority of information. You could be correct, but what you feel like should always be exposed might not be the same as what others would want. Again, this was based on hundreds of thousands of posts and internal and external playtesting (and UX testing with focus groups). This is what we came up with as a starting point. Many players wanted the ability scores to be prominent, for instance.
Having said all of that, we are paying attention to information display priority and I would expect some tweaks to that in the coming weeks as we sort through what is reactive versus real, especially after actual use during play.
No clear section headings to direct new players. Used to have clear, visually distinct headings - Abilities, Skills, Attacks, Equipment, etc. - with a clear difference in background colour, to identify them as headings.
"Yeah nah, let's make them visually indistinct, move some of them to the bottom of the pane (like Senses, Saving Throws, and Skills), and move the rest into equally unremarkable tabs at the top (Combat, Actions, Features and Traits)."
Or, how about, you know, have visually clear headings that are both consistent in terms of their placement in the pane, and visually distinct?
Your opinion for this is noted, and I'll share that your calling it out here is the first time we've seen this specific feedback in any of our months-long testing. We'll keep an eye on whether players do indeed struggle with this and adjust if needed.
Skills. Before: nice modern UI, with unintrusive indication of which base stat was relevant to the skill, and modern green 'notification' style dots to indicate proficiency.
Now: Remember when you were in school and had to fill out those machine-marked tests by filling in the right circle? THEY'RE BACK BABY.
Suddenly, a third of the entire panel is taken up by literally one dot and three letters.
Speaking of skills, why has the font size and weight of everything in that panel been changed to the least sensible combination? The bonus number shouldn't be bold, and nor should the three letter base stat abbreviation, because those aren't what needs to catch my eye when I look at that pane; what I'm going to be looking for more often than not is the name of the skill! But let's keep that nice and plain, because we'd rather you see a whole bunch of bolded numbers and then have to figure out which one is which, than easily find the skill and then look across for the bonus number!
The green notification style dots used for proficiency were literally the most-reported point of confusion in all of our feedback and testing. Virtually no one knew what they meant and 9 out of 10 people requested a better visual representation of not only proficiency but half and twice proficiency.
If we see that folks are struggling with the text formatting for skill names or numbers we will indeed make changes to that.
Saving throws: remember the good old days (last week) when the section that explained what you had advantage on for your saving throws had all the words there? Yeah, those were the days.
Now if you have multiple different ones, the text gets cut off by an ellipsis (...), and you have to mouse over it to read it.
Many testers complained about the space the save modifiers were taking up, and that those were elements they needed to see when making saves but that the full information was "already known." So, with that feedback, we made that section more of a "notification." If players wanted to be reminded of the full information they could mouse over or pull in the sidebar.
We'll see if that was the right approach over time and keep an eye on it.
Spells: Before, a nice list with good use of bold font for names, with other details in lighter, smaller font. Nice little colourful icons to visually distinguish different spell schools.
Now: Italics baby. Also do you like Excel spreadsheets? Cause that's what you've got now.
Spells in D&D are italicized. We need to support that formatting standard as WotC uses it. In our testing, we also observed that spell school has very little to do with a player making spellcasting choices, so we de-emphasized it. When's the last time you cast a fireball because it was an evocation spell? If you're an evoker and care, you likely already know its school. Also, it's relatively easy for me to point to make the claim that people do like spreadsheets for the presentation of like/ similar information because it makes it easier to digest.
In fact, font in general. Did this change? Because everything feels a lot less readable - feels much denser and smaller.
Yes, fonts changed in an attempt to utilize the space as I noted above. If we end up needing to make changes for readability, we will do it.
Also the side panel - massively awkward at times. Clicked on a class feature? Great! We won't just use a familiar expandable item to give you the information you wanted where you clicked - instead you have to look all the way up over here at this new window thing that's opened! Isn't that easy to follow?!
We received many more complaints about how players didn't like the way collapsibles moved all the other content around the element they were browsing when clicked than any other thing with the old sheet (except for the green proficiency dots). The sidebar was a way for us to still be able to fit in full description information without the information in the character sheet jumping around.
Actually I know why this pisses me off - it's because it feels like instead of having a modern digital toolset, that's designed for digital use, I'm just flipping back and forth between my character sheet (main panes) and the PHB/DMG/whatever (side pane). The whole advantage of digital tools is you shouldn't have to be flipping back and forth, because in a modern digital toolset, your character sheet should be interactive, not just an index you click on that brings up a second reference document on the side. A digital character sheet should not act like a piece of paper. If I click on a spell because I want more details, it should expand the details right there, not ask me to look up some other reference pane. That's the whole point of digital design - get what you want, where you need it.
I've never been able to touch a piece of paper and have every detail about what I touched slide in magically on the side of it. I know - particularly at this point in what you wrote - that there's some healthy ranting going on (as you state below) - but I have to say that "flipping back and forth" is a bit of a dramatic phrase for what's actually happening on a screen. I click a spell (and for many spells, I hopefully didn't even click because I saw all the major info I needed to make my decision already at a glance in the list) and the sidebar appears, even on the largest screens that would typically fit on a desk, a few inches away.
This has been a rambling rant, but the fundamental question I have is this:
Why are you trying to recreate the pen and paper experience, when you should be designing a modern, interactive web tool?
Why can't we have both? [insert meme here]
In all seriousness, we are trying to walk that line. We might not always succeed, but we are going to be earnest in the attempt, course correct where needed, and relentlessly work towards making this better and better. Sure, we are trying to make a modern, interactive tool, but we are supporting a pen and paper game (not a video game).
I hope you take my comments in the spirit that I wrote them - an attempt to explain our rationale for the design decisions we made and how much feedback and testing played into it - and not as anything personal. You do make some solid and valid points that we will add to our consideration as we parse feedback in the coming weeks.
Thanks!
While D&D Beyond 'tinkers' with the design of its 'new' interface, my gaming experience is now compromised. You have taken away the joy of using your tool, so I can't see how you are supporting me.
Also if it's going to take D&D Beyond several more weeks to improve their 'new' interface, then why not allow the older interface to be accessible, while you fix the 'new one'? That makes best business and customer service sense to me.
In an era of personalisation of service and choice, why can't I as your paying customer choose which interface I want?
I love the new sheet, great work. The useful content for my character is a lot easier to find.
Couple of minor suggestions:
Custom actions:
Add a 'Reach' toggle/drop-down/field;
Add a 'Versatile' toggle.
Ability to favourite certain class or racial features to have them duplicate at top of the list:
To give a use case, I play a Gloom Stalker Ranger in my home game, so the class feature I check often is 'Dread Ambusher', and it would be really useful to have that marked for quick reference.
Instead of having two separate boxes for (features and traits, description, notes) and (combat, actions, spells, equipment), combine them into one taller box. You can still break these out on mobile and tablet form factors.
It would give more room for viewing lists and snippets at a glance.
This also means more room in the spell box to see all your spell slots at a glance.
The equipment section is basically fine, I just wish it was taller.
You could probably combine combat and actions into one box.
Ritual spells should be listed under Actions (Other)
Aside from these, I am really loving the revamp!
This is my take on it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat On - Mod Hat Off
Personally I don't like it. I understand that for long time players it's easier as they are used to the paper character sheet, but for me compared to the old layout this is a cluster**** of information and your layout is now limited to these boxes and you have to scroll for more info or click on things you do not immedialty recognise as navigation. I really liked the old layout, but I get you want to make the transition from paper sheets easier. The problem is the layout of the paper sheet is a cluster**** too, so with these restrainst it's still a nice job but overall stepping away from the paper character sheet layout would make for a much better layout.
Woohoo, this new character sheet is great ! That said, I noticed a few issues:
Improved pact weapon Invocation is not not adding the +1 magical damage to pact weapons. In my case, with +4 CHA, my Pact Glaive should make +5 damage, but it shows as +4.
Armor of Agathys - it would be great that casting the spell adds automatically to temp HP (as well as for other spells that add to temp HP).
Race/Class features - They cannot be activated like before so it's not possible to keep track of their use between rests. For example, Hexblade's curse or Feline Agility. A simple check box next to them would be useful to keep track of that and, in the case of features that are reusable after a short/long rest, that check box should reset after a rest.
Woohoo, this new character sheet is great ! That said, I noticed a few issues:
Improved pact weapon Invocation is not not adding the +1 magical damage to pact weapons. In my case, with +4 CHA, my Pact Glaive should make +5 damage, but it shows as +4.
Armor of Agathys - it would be great that casting the spell adds automatically to temp HP (as well as for other spells that add to temp HP).
Race/Class features - They cannot be activated like before so it's not possible to keep track of their use between rests. For example, Hexblade's curse or Feline Agility. A simple check box next to them would be useful to keep track of that and, in the case of features that are reusable after a short/long rest, that check box should reset after a rest.
Thanks again for the great work guys !
The checkboxes for rage are still there under Class Features. Although, the one for Hexblade's Curse is gone.
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How I'm posting based on text formatting: Mod Hat On - Mod Hat Off
While the functionality improvements are excellent, this is a massive step backwards in user experience and design.
Good web design gives you access to the information you need as you need it, not all at the same time. Why would you replicate a 45-year-old pen and paper character sheet design, instead of continuing to use clean modern web design?
Thanks for the feedback. To offer some counterpoints:
Here's the biggest problem: this design is fundamentally unfriendly to new players.
New players have years of experience with clean modern web design, thanks to Facebook, Apple, Google and the like. These companies have ingrained standard patterns of interface design and user behaviour into literally billions of people - everyone knows to pinch to zoom, or pull to refresh, because these designs cut across everything we use. The old Beyond design built on those patterns of design; you didn't have to learn how to use Beyond, because you already knew how. It was the same as any other modern web tool - intuitive to any five-year-old who's ever used an iPad. This redesign disregards all digital design principles users are intuitively familiar with from modern web design, in favour of recreating a pen and paper experience.
This character sheet is basically just an index you click on, to bring up the relevant rules in the side pane - it's functionally no different from just flicking between PHB pages.
This redesign clearly did not consider new players, and their ability to quickly and easily pick up the game; it did not consider how modern web design allows you to present and access information in ways more efficient than just having an index and a reference book.
Expandable drop down items. Simple visual representations. Clear visual distinctions between objects and sections. These are core to modern design, and all seem to have gone out the window. The best thing about using Beyond was that it wasn't burdened by the D&D character sheet's existing design paradigm and 45 years of history; it gave a fresh, clean interface, relevant for a modern digital toolset like Beyond. Returning to the information overload of the pen and paper character sheet is a bad decision, if for no other reason than it makes it exponentially harder to introduce new players to the game.
Previously, information was sorted into clean, simple headings, following the principles of modern web design in a way that any of those five-year-olds I mentioned before can navigate; now it's an information overload, where you almost have to know specifically what you're looking for in order to find it anywhere. When you do find it and click it, all you get is "great, here's the relevant section of the PHB; you can figure out how it works yourself."
Lots of generalizations and opinions here, and based on the theoretical instead of actual play using the sheet. First of all, this was playtested with hundreds of beginner players and the feedback was positive. When UX testing was performed with new players, a great deal of negative feedback was recorded regarding the collapsibles and how difficult it was to find specific information when asked (like a DM would do during a session) on the old sheet.
Additionally, Dungeons & Dragons as an interactive game that is played is far different than browsing Ars Technica's news content. In other words, designing a digital character sheet for use during play of a game with a complex ruleset might not be conducive to the same modern design principles as a general news/ content/ blog website.
Lastly on this section, when you click to pull in the sidebar, we are absolutely not just plopping down a section of the PHB and forcing you to fend for yourself - the content in that sidebar is both specific and focused on what was clicked. The design goal was to capture what information might need to be seen and understood at a glance while still providing the full context from the rules of the game that we support close at hand. Now we might not have gotten the balance between those two perfectly right as a first pass, but the design intent is not necessarily bad because it doesn't fit into the mold of some other websites out there.
Plenty of websites (especially those that would be considered closer to an "app" and have meaningful information to show in it) use sidebars effectively. A great example is Google Drive.
Spell slots were previously a nice easily understood grid of checkboxes of how many you had at each level, visible clearly on the main page.
Now, if you want to know how many spell slots you have, you have to find the spells tab on the confusingly grouped combat/actions/spells/equipment pane, click the right tab, then count up the numbers next to the levels of your slots. Why on earth would you get rid of a perfect at-a-glance way of visually representing spell slots, and replace it with 'count up all these numbers'?
Under the old design: "Hmm, what's the right spell for this situation? Let me scroll through my list."
New design: "Hmm, what's the right spell for this situation? Let me click back and forth between tabs for each level, or again open up that unmarked cog to get that sidebar thing."
The numbers representing spell slots on each spell level are quick indicators, and you still get the visual boxes at each level - you don't have to open the sidebar to check them. This was also based on feedback that most players tested got overwhelmed by having the entire spell list/ spell slot boxes thrown at them. If we see the representative sample is not in fact representative of the broader community, we will make adjustments.
Oh no wait, you can still get the visual layout - you just have to go to the spells tab, click the completely un-obvious cog to open the side pane, then expand out the drop-down for spell slots. Three unclear steps - so much easier than just having it immediately visible! /s
Want to add an item previously? Easy! In the Equipment pane, click add item, search, and add it!
Whoops, now you've got to go into the equipment tab and search for an item, then click add item, then search for the item again, then add it, then clear your previous search to see your items, then scroll down to the new item. That's much easier! /s
Alternatively, you can click on the completely unexplained cog in the bottom right corner.
This goes completely against sensible UX - when people want to add an item, they're not going to think "I should search for an item, or click that tiny almost invisible cog", they're going to look for something that says "Add Item".
I agree (and we asked the question before release and ultimately decided to see what kind of feedback we got) that the cog icon is not enough to call out spell or equipment management. Our goal of utilizing screen real estate more effectively (instead of having strange puzzle pieces that players had a hard time of navigating) was on our mind with the icon, but we saw the early feedback and know that it's not enough. A change was already developed today, is being tested, and should roll out tomorrow.
There used to be a nice visual distinction for key useful numbers - AC, Initiative, Passive Perception, Move Speed, etc; they were separated out at the top, in a visually distinct section, because they're useful numbers. What's it like now?
There is basically zero visual distinction between my base stats, walking speed, and proficiency bonus
Passive stats are buried off to the side separately
AC is only visible if you have the combat tab open (WHY?)
Also why do base stats take up so much space?
You're making some assumptions here on priority of information. You could be correct, but what you feel like should always be exposed might not be the same as what others would want. Again, this was based on hundreds of thousands of posts and internal and external playtesting (and UX testing with focus groups). This is what we came up with as a starting point. Many players wanted the ability scores to be prominent, for instance.
Having said all of that, we are paying attention to information display priority and I would expect some tweaks to that in the coming weeks as we sort through what is reactive versus real, especially after actual use during play.
No clear section headings to direct new players. Used to have clear, visually distinct headings - Abilities, Skills, Attacks, Equipment, etc. - with a clear difference in background colour, to identify them as headings.
"Yeah nah, let's make them visually indistinct, move some of them to the bottom of the pane (like Senses, Saving Throws, and Skills), and move the rest into equally unremarkable tabs at the top (Combat, Actions, Features and Traits)."
Or, how about, you know, have visually clear headings that are both consistent in terms of their placement in the pane, and visually distinct?
Your opinion for this is noted, and I'll share that your calling it out here is the first time we've seen this specific feedback in any of our months-long testing. We'll keep an eye on whether players do indeed struggle with this and adjust if needed.
Skills. Before: nice modern UI, with unintrusive indication of which base stat was relevant to the skill, and modern green 'notification' style dots to indicate proficiency.
Now: Remember when you were in school and had to fill out those machine-marked tests by filling in the right circle? THEY'RE BACK BABY.
Suddenly, a third of the entire panel is taken up by literally one dot and three letters.
Speaking of skills, why has the font size and weight of everything in that panel been changed to the least sensible combination? The bonus number shouldn't be bold, and nor should the three letter base stat abbreviation, because those aren't what needs to catch my eye when I look at that pane; what I'm going to be looking for more often than not is the name of the skill! But let's keep that nice and plain, because we'd rather you see a whole bunch of bolded numbers and then have to figure out which one is which, than easily find the skill and then look across for the bonus number!
The green notification style dots used for proficiency were literally the most-reported point of confusion in all of our feedback and testing. Virtually no one knew what they meant and 9 out of 10 people requested a better visual representation of not only proficiency but half and twice proficiency.
If we see that folks are struggling with the text formatting for skill names or numbers we will indeed make changes to that.
Saving throws: remember the good old days (last week) when the section that explained what you had advantage on for your saving throws had all the words there? Yeah, those were the days.
Now if you have multiple different ones, the text gets cut off by an ellipsis (...), and you have to mouse over it to read it.
Many testers complained about the space the save modifiers were taking up, and that those were elements they needed to see when making saves but that the full information was "already known." So, with that feedback, we made that section more of a "notification." If players wanted to be reminded of the full information they could mouse over or pull in the sidebar.
We'll see if that was the right approach over time and keep an eye on it.
Spells: Before, a nice list with good use of bold font for names, with other details in lighter, smaller font. Nice little colourful icons to visually distinguish different spell schools.
Now: Italics baby. Also do you like Excel spreadsheets? Cause that's what you've got now.
Spells in D&D are italicized. We need to support that formatting standard as WotC uses it. In our testing, we also observed that spell school has very little to do with a player making spellcasting choices, so we de-emphasized it. When's the last time you cast a fireball because it was an evocation spell? If you're an evoker and care, you likely already know its school. Also, it's relatively easy for me to point to make the claim that people do like spreadsheets for the presentation of like/ similar information because it makes it easier to digest.
In fact, font in general. Did this change? Because everything feels a lot less readable - feels much denser and smaller.
Yes, fonts changed in an attempt to utilize the space as I noted above. If we end up needing to make changes for readability, we will do it.
Also the side panel - massively awkward at times. Clicked on a class feature? Great! We won't just use a familiar expandable item to give you the information you wanted where you clicked - instead you have to look all the way up over here at this new window thing that's opened! Isn't that easy to follow?!
We received many more complaints about how players didn't like the way collapsibles moved all the other content around the element they were browsing when clicked than any other thing with the old sheet (except for the green proficiency dots). The sidebar was a way for us to still be able to fit in full description information without the information in the character sheet jumping around.
Actually I know why this pisses me off - it's because it feels like instead of having a modern digital toolset, that's designed for digital use, I'm just flipping back and forth between my character sheet (main panes) and the PHB/DMG/whatever (side pane). The whole advantage of digital tools is you shouldn't have to be flipping back and forth, because in a modern digital toolset, your character sheet should be interactive, not just an index you click on that brings up a second reference document on the side. A digital character sheet should not act like a piece of paper. If I click on a spell because I want more details, it should expand the details right there, not ask me to look up some other reference pane. That's the whole point of digital design - get what you want, where you need it.
I've never been able to touch a piece of paper and have every detail about what I touched slide in magically on the side of it. I know - particularly at this point in what you wrote - that there's some healthy ranting going on (as you state below) - but I have to say that "flipping back and forth" is a bit of a dramatic phrase for what's actually happening on a screen. I click a spell (and for many spells, I hopefully didn't even click because I saw all the major info I needed to make my decision already at a glance in the list) and the sidebar appears, even on the largest screens that would typically fit on a desk, a few inches away.
This has been a rambling rant, but the fundamental question I have is this:
Why are you trying to recreate the pen and paper experience, when you should be designing a modern, interactive web tool?
Why can't we have both? [insert meme here]
In all seriousness, we are trying to walk that line. We might not always succeed, but we are going to be earnest in the attempt, course correct where needed, and relentlessly work towards making this better and better. Sure, we are trying to make a modern, interactive tool, but we are supporting a pen and paper game (not a video game).
I hope you take my comments in the spirit that I wrote them - an attempt to explain our rationale for the design decisions we made and how much feedback and testing played into it - and not as anything personal. You do make some solid and valid points that we will add to our consideration as we parse feedback in the coming weeks.
Thanks!
While D&D Beyond 'tinkers' with the design of its 'new' interface, my gaming experience is now compromised. You have taken away the joy of using your tool, so I can't see how you are supporting me.
Also if it's going to take D&D Beyond several more weeks to improve their 'new' interface, then why not allow the older interface to be accessible, while you fix the 'new one'? That makes best business and customer service sense to me.
In an era of personalisation of service and choice, why can't I as your paying customer choose which interface I want?
The main thing is that in order to make the new sheet work (aside from bugs) required breaking the old sheet's logic, so the old sheet is not longer compatible with the data. It sounds like from BadEye's last post that there will be hotfixes interspersed with the weekly updates.
It does take getting use to, but it's not as devastating as a few people have made it out to be. I think the initial shock would have been less...erm...shocking...if they had given us a heads up on the deployment so we would have been prepared for a bumpy game night.
But I would just suggest reducing some of the bright colour difference on the page. It makes the sheet hard to look at without straining your eyes. It also just makes everything almost meld together, making things difficult to find.
But I still like to idea and with some tuning it will be amazing!
But I would just suggest reducing some of the bright colour difference on the page. It makes the sheet hard to look at without straining your eyes. It also just makes everything almost meld together, making things difficult to find.
But I still like to idea and with some tuning it will be amazing!
If you click on the character portrait area and click Change Theme, you can select a different color scheme.
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Thoroughly appreciate the response - particularly because you posted hours ago that you were going to bed, so I'm sorry to have kept you from sleep!
I completely accept the comments in the spirit - and I'm sorry for having posted mine as a rant. I should have taken the time to phrase things more constructively. I want to make it clear that I thoroughly appreciate the work the team has done on this: no major product update is easy, and I can imagine how much effort has gone in behind the scenes. I may not personally agree with all the decisions made, but I absolutely respect the effort and passion of the team that's gone into the update, and think it's something you should collectively be proud of.
I'll dig through and respond, but this time I'll make sure that any criticism is more constructively expressed.
What a cool dude, BadEye. Thanks for staying WAY up, sorry if my quote was the reason :(. Glad this service has such great... service? lol
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ModeratorHUGE quality of life suggestions
Instead of having two separate boxes for (features and traits, description, notes) and (combat, actions, spells, equipment), combine them into one taller box. You can still break these out on mobile and tablet form factors.
Ritual spells should be listed under Actions (Other)
Aside from these, I am really loving the revamp!
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For those wanting to see all of your spells and spell slot boxes, if you click the gear beside the Spells heading it will open a sidebar. At the top is a collapsed section for Spell Slots, just click to expand to show all your slots at a glance. You can also see all of your available spells below that section.
It would definitely be nice to see Range: Self / 30' or Damaage: 1d8 / 1d12 Necrotic in the above mentioned spells.
I think the reasoning behind how it is currently is because that's how it's listed in the books. This would be a good case for breaking the convention of matching the book's format.
I haven't been able to sit down much with the sheets today as I was working a double, but on my breaks I kept pulling it up on my phone and tablet... This sheet is a MASSIVE improvement to the old one, and I LIKED the old one!! I can't wait to see it on desktop tomorrow and get a closer look at everything. Currently I love the UI, the look, the ease of access to information. There's certainly bugs, but there's no way it could have been bug free. Gotta say, I was worried about mobile in the last dev update preview, but it's fantastic.
Amazing job and kudos to the whole team for such a great product. Looking forward to seeing the polish that gets added as we keep going!
Just saw that a few minutes ago. It's not a perfect fix to the being in the middle of an enemy turn trying to plan my next one panic, but I might be able to live. Also to be fair I need to look at it on a PC. All i comments were about mobile use.
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I totally agree with you QQMCRage. 100% on everything you wrote! Glad to see someone else who understands UXD on here. Maybe you should be working for D&D Beyond?
Why on earth indeed is D&D Beyond giving me a digital version of the original paper Character Sheet? If I wanted to use that archaic character sheet (which is really badly designed in itself) I would. I'm so disappointed in this new interface. It's so hard to find and access information, it's so old fashioned and it such a huge let down. I am (was) a paying customer for a service that brought D&D into the 21st century, but now I have an antiquated interface that is horrible to navigate and is no longer a joy to use.
Part of the attraction initially to D&D Beyond was everything QQMCRage highlighted - the former interface was modern and intuitive. I had content in places that made sense, and no information overload. The old interface was perfect for new players, which is how I got my partner to play D&D. It was D&D Beyond's old interface that won him over. I was about to do the same with another friend - but I won't be showing them D&D Beyond now.
If D&D Beyond is smart they will allow those of us who prefer a modern, intuitive interface to be able to switch that back on.
Overall I am flummoxed as to why they replaced an intuitive interface with something that is inferior. They got it so right from a UXD point of view with the older interface, to now get it so wrong says something. What a disaster.
Maybe D&D Beyond doesn't care about the next generation of players after all? Seems like it to me.
So now that D&D Beyond has lost its point of difference compared to the original paper Character Sheet I see no more reason to use D&D Beyond. I'll take my money elsewhere.
Yeah, I've been acclimating to both because I've got 2 games I use my phone for and 2 games I use my laptop for.
Once you get use to the new layout you'll probably reference the sidebar piece less because all the info is there, it just looks different.
While D&D Beyond 'tinkers' with the design of its 'new' interface, my gaming experience is now compromised. You have taken away the joy of using your tool, so I can't see how you are supporting me.
Also if it's going to take D&D Beyond several more weeks to improve their 'new' interface, then why not allow the older interface to be accessible, while you fix the 'new one'? That makes best business and customer service sense to me.
In an era of personalisation of service and choice, why can't I as your paying customer choose which interface I want?
I love the new sheet, great work. The useful content for my character is a lot easier to find.
Couple of minor suggestions:
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ModeratorThis is my take on it.
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Personally I don't like it. I understand that for long time players it's easier as they are used to the paper character sheet, but for me compared to the old layout this is a cluster**** of information and your layout is now limited to these boxes and you have to scroll for more info or click on things you do not immedialty recognise as navigation. I really liked the old layout, but I get you want to make the transition from paper sheets easier. The problem is the layout of the paper sheet is a cluster**** too, so with these restrainst it's still a nice job but overall stepping away from the paper character sheet layout would make for a much better layout.
Woohoo, this new character sheet is great ! That said, I noticed a few issues:
Armor of Agathys - it would be great that casting the spell adds automatically to temp HP (as well as for other spells that add to temp HP).
Thanks again for the great work guys !
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ModeratorThe checkboxes for rage are still there under Class Features. Although, the one for Hexblade's Curse is gone.
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The main thing is that in order to make the new sheet work (aside from bugs) required breaking the old sheet's logic, so the old sheet is not longer compatible with the data. It sounds like from BadEye's last post that there will be hotfixes interspersed with the weekly updates.
It does take getting use to, but it's not as devastating as a few people have made it out to be. I think the initial shock would have been less...erm...shocking...if they had given us a heads up on the deployment so we would have been prepared for a bumpy game night.
I like the direction the layout is going.
But I would just suggest reducing some of the bright colour difference on the page.
It makes the sheet hard to look at without straining your eyes.
It also just makes everything almost meld together, making things difficult to find.
But I still like to idea and with some tuning it will be amazing!
If you click on the character portrait area and click Change Theme, you can select a different color scheme.