I've been looking around for a bit on the forums. will there be a character builder built into the DNDBEYOND iOS App in the roadmap?
There will be a character SHEET in the mobile app. I'm not sure whether the builder will be part of that.
The roadmap is linked in the 1st post of this thread. :)
Won't be much use if we can't manage our characters on the go.
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Grant K. Smith A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
I disagree. All Depends on the user. Only time I need to get into the builder is for ASI or other features that require a selection. And my group doesn’t level up mid game so I don’t need to get into the builder for it. On mobile I don’t need to build anything, just need to pull up my character on game day to play from.
I disagree. All Depends on the user. Only time I need to get into the builder is for ASI or other features that require a selection. And my group doesn’t level up mid game so I don’t need to get into the builder for it. On mobile I don’t need to build anything, just need to pull up my character on game day to play from.
It does depend on the user, you're right, but for me, if I'm at a convention with shoddy Internet connectivity (my number one use case for offline [character] access) and I play a mod or two and need to level up before the next mod I need access to the character builder.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Grant K. Smith A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
I've been looking around for a bit on the forums. will there be a character builder built into the DNDBEYOND iOS App in the roadmap?
There will be a character SHEET in the mobile app. I'm not sure whether the builder will be part of that.
The roadmap is linked in the 1st post of this thread. :)
What all would the character sheet let us do? Is that basically the PDF form we see, that is uneditable? Or is it the sheet that lets us add/remove hit points take short/long rests and check of limited use features?
While everything i need is on the roadmap... His point is... Most of it is in the far back burner. While i agree he could of said it otherwise... You all cannot deny the fact that a whole team, let alone three, have accomplished far less then a single individual. Taking the chrome extension which already gives initiative trackers and other features this site has been boasting to be in development for a whole year.
His deal is quite simple...
By the time this site will be done... About 2 other editions will have came out. Sorry but by comparisions to the competitions... Roll20 et fantasy grounds have been much much much faster in delivering content. Taking only 2 years for a full system that allows its players and dm to create their stuff. Including the ability to create your own adventures. And at that in only 2 years.
If i had to guess based on the past 2 years...
Id say they are about another 3 years before we have half the roadmap.
Thats my 2 cents on the guys original post and why he thinks that way. I really really love ddb and am promoting it. But right now what my players want the most is characters without internet. On their phones. And also... No payment per month just for more character slots. The subs are weird really.
Thats what my players want and they be wanting it for a year now.
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DM of two gaming groups. Likes to create stuff. Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games --> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
While everything i need is on the roadmap... His point is... Most of it is in the far back burner. While i agree he could of said it otherwise... You all cannot deny the fact that a whole team, let alone three, have accomplished far less then a single individual. Taking the chrome extension which already gives initiative trackers and other features this site has been boasting to be in development for a whole year.
His deal is quite simple...
By the time this site will be done... About 2 other editions will have came out. Sorry but by comparisions to the competitions... Roll20 et fantasy grounds have been much much much faster in delivering content. Taking only 2 years for a full system that allows its players and dm to create their stuff. Including the ability to create your own adventures. And at that in only 2 years.
If i had to guess based on the past 2 years...
Id say they are about another 3 years before we have half the roadmap.
Thats my 2 cents on the guys original post and why he thinks that way. I really really love ddb and am promoting it. But right now what my players want the most is characters without internet. On their phones. And also... No payment per month just for more character slots. The subs are weird really.
Thats what my players want and they be wanting it for a year now.
I don't normally agree with you DnDPaladin (respectfully, differing opinions on most matters), but I do agree with what you have said, especially the parts I have bolded. I have never realized it until now that Kabalistus' chrome extension has added a lot more features that we have been asking for, and to my knowledge, he's doing it all himself (though I could be wrong on that). That being said, chrome extensions cannot function on mobile, which makes the mobile device still unable to do much of the same features, which is just odd, considering D&D Beyond is a full team working full time.
Just like you said, I love D&D Beyond and am an advocate for the site and what it's doing, but I'm with you in the sense that I don't understand how others are able to get us these features much faster than the actual team.
While everything i need is on the roadmap... His point is... Most of it is in the far back burner. While i agree he could of said it otherwise... You all cannot deny the fact that a whole team, let alone three, have accomplished far less then a single individual. Taking the chrome extension which already gives initiative trackers and other features this site has been boasting to be in development for a whole year.
His deal is quite simple...
By the time this site will be done... About 2 other editions will have came out. Sorry but by comparisions to the competitions... Roll20 et fantasy grounds have been much much much faster in delivering content. Taking only 2 years for a full system that allows its players and dm to create their stuff. Including the ability to create your own adventures. And at that in only 2 years.
If i had to guess based on the past 2 years...
Id say they are about another 3 years before we have half the roadmap.
Thats my 2 cents on the guys original post and why he thinks that way. I really really love ddb and am promoting it. But right now what my players want the most is characters without internet. On their phones. And also... No payment per month just for more character slots. The subs are weird really.
Thats what my players want and they be wanting it for a year now.
I don't normally agree with you DnDPaladin (respectfully, differing opinions on most matters), but I do agree with what you have said, especially the parts I have bolded. I have never realized it until now that Kabalistus' chrome extension has added a lot more features that we have been asking for, and to my knowledge, he's doing it all himself (though I could be wrong on that). That being said, chrome extensions cannot function on mobile, which makes the mobile device still unable to do much of the same features, which is just odd, considering D&D Beyond is a full team working full time.
Just like you said, I love D&D Beyond and am an advocate for the site and what it's doing, but I'm with you in the sense that I don't understand how others are able to get us these features much faster than the actual team.
As a software engineer, it's quite simple to explain: If I'm working to maintain feature X I don't have time to implement feature Y. The more complex a system gets, the more time gets devoted to maintaining it or redesigning it to make it easier to maintain. Time being used to maintain and improve doesn't show up as flashy new features but it DOES make the overall system work better in the long run.
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Grant K. Smith A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien "Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
While everything i need is on the roadmap... His point is... Most of it is in the far back burner. While i agree he could of said it otherwise... You all cannot deny the fact that a whole team, let alone three, have accomplished far less then a single individual. Taking the chrome extension which already gives initiative trackers and other features this site has been boasting to be in development for a whole year.
His deal is quite simple...
By the time this site will be done... About 2 other editions will have came out. Sorry but by comparisions to the competitions... Roll20 et fantasy grounds have been much much much faster in delivering content. Taking only 2 years for a full system that allows its players and dm to create their stuff. Including the ability to create your own adventures. And at that in only 2 years.
If i had to guess based on the past 2 years...
Id say they are about another 3 years before we have half the roadmap.
Thats my 2 cents on the guys original post and why he thinks that way. I really really love ddb and am promoting it. But right now what my players want the most is characters without internet. On their phones. And also... No payment per month just for more character slots. The subs are weird really.
Thats what my players want and they be wanting it for a year now.
We appreciate the feedback and take it seriously, but I can say with utmost confidence it is not representative of the majority (or even other pockets of the minority). Your feedback (as it is with everyone) is based on your personal experience, and your personal experience marks offline character access as the most important thing to you. I understand and some others share that desire and priority, and we are working to make it happen - in the best order of priority we can considering the entire community's wants/ needs.
I can also confidently say that there is no "done" for the site (or really platform) that is D&D Beyond - we will continue to work to provide more and more value to the community for as long as we operate.
I would also share that you are basing your idea of our projected development velocity on two years of development where we had 4 total developers for a year and a half of it. We grew to 14 in the last six months, and we're up to 20 as of this week. In other words, the past velocity is not representative of the future velocity.
You also mention something like "creating your own adventures" in the context of how we haven't been able to deliver that in the last two years. On that front, it doesn't really even make sense to mention since we haven't even looked at that yet. When we do decide to develop that feature, it will take far less than 2 years. Not trying to place words in your mouth, but what I hear you saying is "DDB hasn't developed the two or three things I and my group really want, so therefore they are not moving as fast as they should." While I again understand why you could feel that way, I don't believe it aligns with the reality of the situation.
...I don't understand how others are able to get us these features much faster than the actual team.
If you have played a game like World of Warcraft, I believe this kind of thing is easy to understand.
World of Warcraft developers have always been concerned with meeting the needs of the entire bell curve of players. For years and years, some part of the community couldn't rationalize why the WoW devs couldn't add in the "easy" functionality that community devs created as mods, such as inventory management or things like raid frames.
Over time, WoW incorporated those natively into the game (and if asked, they would say doing the dev work for those was "easy" to do). Those mods were important to validate community needs in order for the team to incorporate them in the first place. So things like the various Chrome extensions are great testing grounds for us just like those WoW mods were with the World of Warcraft devs.
I haven't played WoW in a long time (so this could be a bad example), but they never did add in the functionality from all the popular Auction House mods, even though people said it would be "easy" to do. I imagine there were a variety of reasons they didn't, and I would venture a guess a big part was bandwidth and prioritization.
This would be the same for us. Of course we could develop most of this functionality "easily" and quickly - we have very talented developers. But when the list on the roadmap is 1,000 things long, we must cover those things which we assess will provide the most value for the entire community.
I can also confidently say that there is no "done" for the site (or really platform) that is D&D Beyond - we will continue to work to provide more and more value to the community for as long as we operate.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond to feedback like this, Badeye. I think what may help (and I know I'd certainly love to see this), is more feedback from the developers regarding the progress being made on maintaining DDB and adding new features.
I'm probably not alone, but I check DDB every day, and the first thing I do is click on "changelog" to see if anything has been updated on the site. If the team had an established "changelog" day every month, that would go a long way to alleviating some of my anxiety. Part of me feels as though the "changelog" is being misused by only providing news to the community when some major feature or bug is addressed. I'd rather see a little log about small bug fixes, or database changes, or anything really, just so that I can point to the changelog each month and say, "Yep, the team at DDB is working on the product continuously, and that's where my monthly subscription money is going".
Been a while since I posted on the forums. I feel bad that my forum stalking of you dropped off last year.
Regarding the idea of an Adventure Builder Function: For me this would be an insanely awesome feature as a DM, as I would love to be able to build adventures within the DDB site that natively pulls information from the compendium and monsters/homebrews. As you stated, this is a ways off due to a focus on priorities and meeting general needs over specific needs.
Is there a monetization aspect to this at all? For instance, would it be possible to Kickstarter something like this and fund a 1 or 2 developers for this kind of specific action? That way it doesn't utilize resources focused on general development, while allowing increased velocity of development for specific tools tasks. I am sure this raises a whole separate question of how do you then prioritize "Specific Needs" functions, but its just a thought.
Anyway, thank you to you and the team again for an amazing product that adds significantly to the D&D experience.
I can also confidently say that there is no "done" for the site (or really platform) that is D&D Beyond - we will continue to work to provide more and more value to the community for as long as we operate.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond to feedback like this, Badeye. I think what may help (and I know I'd certainly love to see this), is more feedback from the developers regarding the progress being made on maintaining DDB and adding new features.
I'm probably not alone, but I check DDB every day, and the first thing I do is click on "changelog" to see if anything has been updated on the site. If the team had an established "changelog" day every month, that would go a long way to alleviating some of my anxiety. Part of me feels as though the "changelog" is being misused by only providing news to the community when some major feature or bug is addressed. I'd rather see a little log about small bug fixes, or database changes, or anything really, just so that I can point to the changelog each month and say, "Yep, the team at DDB is working on the product continuously, and that's where my monthly subscription money is going".
Honest question: is not the point of the now weekly dev stream Adam does exactly to update the community each week on the current state of things? Or would you believe some lines in a webpage more than a person putting his face on what he says?
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Honest question: is not the point of the now weekly dev stream Adam does exactly to update the community each week on the current state of things?
An hour long video versus a text summary results in a false equivalency fallacy.
Or would you believe some lines in a webpage more than a person putting his face on what he says?
How is an official changelog any less valid than Adam on a Twitch stream?
I am not saying the stream and a changelog are the same thing, I am saying they serve the same purpose in terms of providing updates, which seems to be what Eldritch_Song wanted.
I am also not saying that one is less valid than the other, although I see how my wording could have given the impression I was implying that [EDIT], and I am sorry for giving the wrong idea[/EDIT]. What I wanted to stress was actually the fact that while both can serve the same purpose, I personally appreciate the fact that Adam delivers news to us putting his face on what he says each week.
The dev update is to inform the community about upcoming features, interesting data and for the Q&A session.
The changelog is to provide detailed information on features that have been implemented.
The reason there's not been any entries in the changelog for a couple of months is because the team has been busy with maintenance and migrations tasks. They're back into proper feature development now though. :)
The dev update is to inform the community about upcoming features, interesting data and for the Q&A session.
The changelog is to provide detailed information on features that have been implemented.
The reason there's not been any entries in the changelog for a couple of months is because the team has been busy with maintenance and migrations tasks. They're back into proper feature development now though. :)
Adam also talks about what has been going on, usually, but I get there is a greater difference than I would attribute them in this sense. I stand corrected, thank you Stormknight.
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Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
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I am very much looking forward to more development!
I've been looking around for a bit on the forums. will there be a character builder built into the DNDBEYOND iOS App in the roadmap?
There will be a character SHEET in the mobile app. I'm not sure whether the builder will be part of that.
The roadmap is linked in the 1st post of this thread. :)
Pun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Won't be much use if we can't manage our characters on the go.
Grant K. Smith
A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
I disagree. All Depends on the user. Only time I need to get into the builder is for ASI or other features that require a selection. And my group doesn’t level up mid game so I don’t need to get into the builder for it. On mobile I don’t need to build anything, just need to pull up my character on game day to play from.
It does depend on the user, you're right, but for me, if I'm at a convention with shoddy Internet connectivity (my number one use case for offline [character] access) and I play a mod or two and need to level up before the next mod I need access to the character builder.
Grant K. Smith
A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
What all would the character sheet let us do? Is that basically the PDF form we see, that is uneditable? Or is it the sheet that lets us add/remove hit points take short/long rests and check of limited use features?
Published Subclasses
While everything i need is on the roadmap... His point is... Most of it is in the far back burner. While i agree he could of said it otherwise... You all cannot deny the fact that a whole team, let alone three, have accomplished far less then a single individual. Taking the chrome extension which already gives initiative trackers and other features this site has been boasting to be in development for a whole year.
His deal is quite simple...
By the time this site will be done... About 2 other editions will have came out. Sorry but by comparisions to the competitions... Roll20 et fantasy grounds have been much much much faster in delivering content. Taking only 2 years for a full system that allows its players and dm to create their stuff. Including the ability to create your own adventures. And at that in only 2 years.
If i had to guess based on the past 2 years...
Id say they are about another 3 years before we have half the roadmap.
Thats my 2 cents on the guys original post and why he thinks that way. I really really love ddb and am promoting it. But right now what my players want the most is characters without internet. On their phones. And also... No payment per month just for more character slots. The subs are weird really.
Thats what my players want and they be wanting it for a year now.
DM of two gaming groups.
Likes to create stuff.
Check out my homebrew --> Monsters --> Magical Items --> Races --> Subclasses
If you like --> Upvote, If you wanna comment --> Comment
Play by Post Games
--> One Shot Adventure - House of Artwood (DM) (Completed)
I don't normally agree with you DnDPaladin (respectfully, differing opinions on most matters), but I do agree with what you have said, especially the parts I have bolded. I have never realized it until now that Kabalistus' chrome extension has added a lot more features that we have been asking for, and to my knowledge, he's doing it all himself (though I could be wrong on that). That being said, chrome extensions cannot function on mobile, which makes the mobile device still unable to do much of the same features, which is just odd, considering D&D Beyond is a full team working full time.
Just like you said, I love D&D Beyond and am an advocate for the site and what it's doing, but I'm with you in the sense that I don't understand how others are able to get us these features much faster than the actual team.
Published Subclasses
As a software engineer, it's quite simple to explain: If I'm working to maintain feature X I don't have time to implement feature Y. The more complex a system gets, the more time gets devoted to maintaining it or redesigning it to make it easier to maintain. Time being used to maintain and improve doesn't show up as flashy new features but it DOES make the overall system work better in the long run.
Grant K. Smith
A+, Network+, MCP x 2, BSIT/VC, MIS
Software Engineer & Dungeon Master
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger." - J. R. R. Tolkien
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup" - Anonymous
We appreciate the feedback and take it seriously, but I can say with utmost confidence it is not representative of the majority (or even other pockets of the minority). Your feedback (as it is with everyone) is based on your personal experience, and your personal experience marks offline character access as the most important thing to you. I understand and some others share that desire and priority, and we are working to make it happen - in the best order of priority we can considering the entire community's wants/ needs.
I can also confidently say that there is no "done" for the site (or really platform) that is D&D Beyond - we will continue to work to provide more and more value to the community for as long as we operate.
I would also share that you are basing your idea of our projected development velocity on two years of development where we had 4 total developers for a year and a half of it. We grew to 14 in the last six months, and we're up to 20 as of this week. In other words, the past velocity is not representative of the future velocity.
You also mention something like "creating your own adventures" in the context of how we haven't been able to deliver that in the last two years. On that front, it doesn't really even make sense to mention since we haven't even looked at that yet. When we do decide to develop that feature, it will take far less than 2 years. Not trying to place words in your mouth, but what I hear you saying is "DDB hasn't developed the two or three things I and my group really want, so therefore they are not moving as fast as they should." While I again understand why you could feel that way, I don't believe it aligns with the reality of the situation.
Thanks!
If you have played a game like World of Warcraft, I believe this kind of thing is easy to understand.
World of Warcraft developers have always been concerned with meeting the needs of the entire bell curve of players. For years and years, some part of the community couldn't rationalize why the WoW devs couldn't add in the "easy" functionality that community devs created as mods, such as inventory management or things like raid frames.
Over time, WoW incorporated those natively into the game (and if asked, they would say doing the dev work for those was "easy" to do). Those mods were important to validate community needs in order for the team to incorporate them in the first place. So things like the various Chrome extensions are great testing grounds for us just like those WoW mods were with the World of Warcraft devs.
I haven't played WoW in a long time (so this could be a bad example), but they never did add in the functionality from all the popular Auction House mods, even though people said it would be "easy" to do. I imagine there were a variety of reasons they didn't, and I would venture a guess a big part was bandwidth and prioritization.
This would be the same for us. Of course we could develop most of this functionality "easily" and quickly - we have very talented developers. But when the list on the roadmap is 1,000 things long, we must cover those things which we assess will provide the most value for the entire community.
Thanks!
Appreciate you taking the time to respond to feedback like this, Badeye. I think what may help (and I know I'd certainly love to see this), is more feedback from the developers regarding the progress being made on maintaining DDB and adding new features.
I'm probably not alone, but I check DDB every day, and the first thing I do is click on "changelog" to see if anything has been updated on the site. If the team had an established "changelog" day every month, that would go a long way to alleviating some of my anxiety. Part of me feels as though the "changelog" is being misused by only providing news to the community when some major feature or bug is addressed. I'd rather see a little log about small bug fixes, or database changes, or anything really, just so that I can point to the changelog each month and say, "Yep, the team at DDB is working on the product continuously, and that's where my monthly subscription money is going".
I suggest you subscribe to the RSS feeds. Then articles and changelogs show up in my inbox as they come out.
Check out all my important links here.
May we live in Less Interesting Times
Hey BadEye:
Been a while since I posted on the forums. I feel bad that my forum stalking of you dropped off last year.
Regarding the idea of an Adventure Builder Function: For me this would be an insanely awesome feature as a DM, as I would love to be able to build adventures within the DDB site that natively pulls information from the compendium and monsters/homebrews. As you stated, this is a ways off due to a focus on priorities and meeting general needs over specific needs.
Is there a monetization aspect to this at all? For instance, would it be possible to Kickstarter something like this and fund a 1 or 2 developers for this kind of specific action? That way it doesn't utilize resources focused on general development, while allowing increased velocity of development for specific tools tasks. I am sure this raises a whole separate question of how do you then prioritize "Specific Needs" functions, but its just a thought.
Anyway, thank you to you and the team again for an amazing product that adds significantly to the D&D experience.
Honest question: is not the point of the now weekly dev stream Adam does exactly to update the community each week on the current state of things?
Or would you believe some lines in a webpage more than a person putting his face on what he says?
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
An hour long video versus a text summary results in a false equivalency fallacy.
How is an official changelog any less valid than Adam on a Twitch stream?
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
I am not saying the stream and a changelog are the same thing, I am saying they serve the same purpose in terms of providing updates, which seems to be what Eldritch_Song wanted.
I am also not saying that one is less valid than the other, although I see how my wording could have given the impression I was implying that [EDIT], and I am sorry for giving the wrong idea[/EDIT]. What I wanted to stress was actually the fact that while both can serve the same purpose, I personally appreciate the fact that Adam delivers news to us putting his face on what he says each week.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
They're actually pretty different.
The dev update is to inform the community about upcoming features, interesting data and for the Q&A session.
The changelog is to provide detailed information on features that have been implemented.
The reason there's not been any entries in the changelog for a couple of months is because the team has been busy with maintenance and migrations tasks. They're back into proper feature development now though. :)
Pun-loving nerd | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Adam also talks about what has been going on, usually, but I get there is a greater difference than I would attribute them in this sense.
I stand corrected, thank you Stormknight.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games