having started ot play gridless i can tell you... my players after 3 sessions only never needed the sticks anymore...

for instances you have everything you need reguardless of the type you use just by looking around you.

human brains works wonders for determining distances... your height, your actual feet. i'm wearing 12 inches which is exactly 1 foot. so the number of foot it takes me tells me the distance. the flooring of my friends house is exactly 1 foot. i can tell the room size by counting her floor tiles. the samehappens in D&D. if you play with miniatures, the grid is exactly 1 character base. my playersand i were counting the number of spaces wemoved instead of any measurements. i can move 6 squares, so i move 6 times my miniature base.

when it comes to meters and feet... meters is losing badly. feets are easier to calculate from and meters are too long for being good. you'd need to use centimeters and even there you'd get fractions. a whole 30 foot walk would be 9 meters. but that number isn't exact by any means. the problem you are experiencing right now... is that those numbers are rounded. even 5 foot for a character is a huge number. in real life it would be closer to 3 foot. but they use 5 foot increment because multiplying by 5 is easier to understand then multiplying by 3. same happens to meters... 9.XX is not a good number, so rounding it down to 9 is better. back in 3E we had the actual number of spaces and didn't even need the foot number. but since 5e dropped the entirety of the miniature base, we're stuck back into feet.

in all cases... this is a moot point... your brain doesn'T care if you are in metric or not... it uses the environment around itself to determine distances.
even in fantasy lands it will use real world elements to associate distancing. wanna know what 1 foot is... just look down at your feet. there you go. you have your basic measurement already. i know for a fact that 100 feet for a spell is not a big distance. because my fathers lawn is  exactly 100 feet acoss. 5 times that and i get dimension door. it literally was enlightening ot me to realise that d&d distances are very very short distances.

As a French DM, my books are in metric. Some of my players use D&D Beyond, some do not. Sure we do some quick maths and we can get the numbers easily, but in the long term and for new players it's a hassle.

Having an option on your profile where you can choose to convert everything into metrics would be a very good addition for a lot of players.

Quote from Davyd >>

Converting measurement units on the site into metric, even as a toggle, would be a localisation matter that depends on Wizards of the Coast and isn't a decision that can be made by DDB. Imperial measurements do not convert neatly into metric (for example, 5ft. is 1.524 meters), and how to round these conversions would have mechanical impact on the game. D&D Beyond will always respect how the rules are presented by Wizards of the Coast, including formatting, language and mechanics. If WotC decides to provide metric localisation outside of their localised books, D&D Beyond will strive to mirror that. Until then, DDB cannot make decisions about how content is provided that contradict what WotC says.

The conversion has already been done by WoTC as they allowed their books to be displayed in metric in other languages. It's already done ! Whatever mechanical impact you are referring to, are more theoretical than practical. Those books are edited by other companies, but they still are official WoTC licensed material. If those companies had an approval to make the conversion, then that approval can be given to D&D Beyond.

If you can't change the text of the books at all, you can at least change the display on the character sheets, and add conversion in metric in hovering boxes for the rule books as you did for conditions and spells. Make a disclamer about it on every addition if you need to, it would be better than having nothing at all. Also, D&D Beyond is quite important and could be more pro-active about getting an approval from WoTC. The need to wait for an metric translation specifically in English is insanely counter productive, and will most likely never happen as you are fully aware.

I am sure there are solutions that would permit player to have access to the metric system in the scope of what is permitted by your contract with WoTC.

This choice should be added long ago, but as always the rest of the world gets discriminated! Do you even know, that there is world beside America?

Quote from Wlasiuk >>

This choice should be added long ago, but as always the rest of the world gets discriminated! Do you even know, that there is world beside America?

 so does this means we should add yards to the game ?
its not discrimination when you consider the problems that arises from converting to metrics...
all the distancings are out of whack... for everything is designed for ease of play... so what you are expecting people would be to play together over th enet... and somehow some players are now able to hit things further because they use metrics... aka 5 feet isn't an exact metric number... so what do you do ? you round it up or down ? either way you are either upgrading a player range, or nerfing a player range.

i live in canada... we all use the metric system... yet many of use have gone to the old systems.. with feets and inches, cause its way easier to calculate.
that said... i understand why people want the metric system... but you have to know that everything changes when you get to that point, not just the distancing... but everything... after all your squares won'T be measuring 5 feet... they will be measuring 1.524 meters... which rounded down. will be measuring 1.5 meter. meaning that in the long run, the whole calculus gets nerfed cause in the end your entire scale is out of whack. let's say you have 10 squares... 1.5 meters... becomes 15 meters... which is in fact...49,2126... thats literally 1 square less. now it seems a low number, but as you go higher in number of squares... your whole thing starts to break down.

so now that we have people playing from countries to countries... how will you solve that one ?
after all, metric values aren't the same as feet values... after all 1.5 is not 1.524. 
sure you could argue that you are playing with friends that all use metrics... yeah ok cool... its easy to make your own system.
but imagine the work to be done in translations if you also have to change the entire distancing system... 

overall what im saying is... its not as easy as you think it is to change the books to relate those...
what is dndbeyond gonna use ? 1.5meter or 1.524 meter ?
again that makes a difference in the scale of things.

If you just convert every 5 feet to 1.5 meters it works out fairly well. That’s the conversion WotC used for their foreign language publications.

The reason DDB won’t make that conversation available is because WotC has never printed an English language version of the game in metric.

Quote from IamSposta >>

If you just convert every 5 feet to 1.5 meters it works out fairly well. That’s the conversion WotC used for their foreign language publications.

The reason DDB won’t make that conversation available is because WotC has never printed an English language version of the game in metric.

 the keyword being "Fairly"
that 0.024 actually adds up to a long thing that doesn'T work once you go pass the high numbers.
the scale doesn'T really work either. i get it though... your canadian, japanese or any other country with metrics... you want your metrics to be there... but in reality is that reguardless of which system you use, there will always be problems related to it in some sort of way.

honestly, may it be in metrics or not, my players are always confusing distances anyway.
to them 100 feet is pretty darn close. when i say that, everytime they think, oh thats not far because my spells reach it. to them... 150 feet of a fireball is pretty darn far away...
like some of my players just used tidal wave on a battlefield thinking 300 feet was awesomely far. like we're at the far back of the battlefield they dont even see us. because the game consider 60 feet to be visible thing. but 60 feet is pretty gosh darn close.

honestly people dont care if its metric or not, in their head it doesn't matter... the only thing that matters is... the DM tells them they are in range of their spells or not.
its the same as encumberment... i use it, my players don't... they just wait for me to tell them they are overburdened... the same way most players don't check components for their spells they just hope the DM doesn't check that either.

Congratulations on missing the point entirely.

"Imagining distance doesn't matter, except when 0.001% adds up in a rare scenario then suddenly it matters loads. Humans don't visualise distance in numbers, only in real world experience... which is measured in familiar numbers."

Gatekeepers insisting minor details of a game must be STRICTLY adhered to, or that any creativity "breaks the game", are the main reasons anyone looks at D&D and says "I'd rather do something FUN!"

Besides, why argue against ANYthing? If a group of friends all agree they'd rather play ANY way, then they're right. Anything else is the equivalent of telling someone they're wrong for liking food or music.

Everyone voting "yes please" for a metric version, even a sloppy not perfect version, would Definitely find it more enjoyable and easier to play. Telling them they're wrong is insane, but in a game where a GM is constantly fudging numbers already... it's just weird that anyone would even bother to argue against it.