It used to be pretty decent. They worked to get books fully functional and kept you informed along the way. You had a trello for the ongoing big things so we, the consumers, could easily see progress. There were Dev Updates that were videos but would also get transcribed or given an overview post - for those of us who didn't have the time to watch through long videos just to see if the update they wanted was even mentioned or not. And small but annoying things were quickly found and resolved. Easily fixed bugs were fixed within days. There were frequent changelogs. If you raised a Support ticket, answers came within 1 to 2 days. If more than that, the mods were happy to escalate if you made a forum post. Devs/staff were frequent on the forums even just for regular discussion. If somebody posted in the Bugs forum then staff or mods would be answering within 2-3 days at most.
Then the site was bought by Fandom. There was a spark of enthusiasm and then things started to slow down. It was a very noticeable drop in dev activity, updates, and fixes.
Then Adam and more all left. We were all told these were all unrelated. Only to find they actually left together to go work together in a new DNDB-esque platform for rivals. And their platform has frequent updates while this one stagnated (#sus). Trello disappeared.
Then WotC took over stating it was to improve the speed of the dev projects - to finally get things working like they should (because there's something from every official book not fully implemented) and they wanted to improve everything. Great. Except it didn't happen.
And now everything has gone dark. There's barely any updates, even less communication, books are released with even more functions missing from site with no sign or promise of ever being implemented. Devs almost never grace forums in any capacity and even mods are really scarce now. Simple bugs now take months to fix, if ever, and not a single tidbit of progress on the ongoing stuff relayed to us. There's still stuff from PHB and DMG not fully implemented. There's almost no communication on anything. Most mods and staff seem to be gone now and the mods who are here barely post. Support tickets typically take a week or two - often longer - and raising a forum post about it gets nothing. Very few new threads in bugs forum gets seen by mods now, it's rather rare to see. It's usually the ol' timers here who are doing all the helping there.
It's a woeful shame because this is one of the best character building tools out there, and a great source for the books and whatnot. But man, oh, man does it now feel like a sinking ship these days.
Change : bring back the old dev team enthusiasm, the open discussion between company and customer, the peeps who were happy to go "here's our projects and where we're at with them!" Bring back that show of progress and pride.
And for "add" : a new system of prioritisation. Stuff from core books you have openly said you're working on are still not implemented. Stuff that's simple as heck to make, we've been waiting years for, because of how you prioritise your projects. You seem to always have the stuff we, the customers, scream for are things you're leaving at the bottom of list. You got rid of UA so you could focus on prioritising the old and new stuff but that has not happened. You didn't have a great system in the beginning (and your trello even showed that) but you seem to have abandoned all sense of priority now.
So.. Yeah. A little bit of enthusiasm from the devs - some actual rapport with us who fund you - would be incredibly appreciated. I am aware your job isn't easy (I've done similar myself) and I'm not trying to discount the amazing work that has been put into this site. It's just before there was always something, and now we get slightly more than nothing.
Oh.. and: A better homebrew system / backend system.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
Better integration of in-person play with physical dice. Like having the option to switch from digital dice rolls to a dialogue pop-up that would tell the user what dice they should roll and ask for the roll and calculate the result.
Example: I want to roll for deception. I click the box next to "Deception" and a dialogue appears prompting me to roll D20 and type in what I rolled. After I do that, it takes the roll, adds my +6 on Deception, tells me the result and logs it in the game log.
That way users could enjoy the convenience of having a game log while also using physical dice. Also, new players would be able to learn the ropes without handing the entire mechanical part of gameplay to DDB.
Allowing players to edit each other's character sheets (In my group, when a player is away, someone else plays their character. It makes it really tedious to manage their hp, or add their share of coins to their sheet)
Allowing a 'joint' inventory for the party. This could represent the wagon and everything on it, or investments like trading post income or stronghold inventory.
Adding a 'roll for it' option to every section in character creation (race, background, languages, etc) (I'm a crazy person that likes to roll for everything. It would be nice to have randomization built in rather than having to count the options and then put it through a third party randomizer)
Adding more categorization, or the ability for multi part encounters in the encounter builder. When I plan the encounters in an adventuring day, It would be nice if I could group and order them instead of needing to name them stuff like 'fight number 1, bandit attack'
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Same as Sposta.
It used to be pretty decent. They worked to get books fully functional and kept you informed along the way. You had a trello for the ongoing big things so we, the consumers, could easily see progress. There were Dev Updates that were videos but would also get transcribed or given an overview post - for those of us who didn't have the time to watch through long videos just to see if the update they wanted was even mentioned or not. And small but annoying things were quickly found and resolved. Easily fixed bugs were fixed within days. There were frequent changelogs. If you raised a Support ticket, answers came within 1 to 2 days. If more than that, the mods were happy to escalate if you made a forum post. Devs/staff were frequent on the forums even just for regular discussion. If somebody posted in the Bugs forum then staff or mods would be answering within 2-3 days at most.
Then the site was bought by Fandom. There was a spark of enthusiasm and then things started to slow down. It was a very noticeable drop in dev activity, updates, and fixes.
Then Adam and more all left. We were all told these were all unrelated. Only to find they actually left together to go work together in a new DNDB-esque platform for rivals. And their platform has frequent updates while this one stagnated (#sus). Trello disappeared.
Then WotC took over stating it was to improve the speed of the dev projects - to finally get things working like they should (because there's something from every official book not fully implemented) and they wanted to improve everything. Great. Except it didn't happen.
And now everything has gone dark. There's barely any updates, even less communication, books are released with even more functions missing from site with no sign or promise of ever being implemented. Devs almost never grace forums in any capacity and even mods are really scarce now. Simple bugs now take months to fix, if ever, and not a single tidbit of progress on the ongoing stuff relayed to us. There's still stuff from PHB and DMG not fully implemented. There's almost no communication on anything. Most mods and staff seem to be gone now and the mods who are here barely post. Support tickets typically take a week or two - often longer - and raising a forum post about it gets nothing. Very few new threads in bugs forum gets seen by mods now, it's rather rare to see. It's usually the ol' timers here who are doing all the helping there.
It's a woeful shame because this is one of the best character building tools out there, and a great source for the books and whatnot. But man, oh, man does it now feel like a sinking ship these days.
Change : bring back the old dev team enthusiasm, the open discussion between company and customer, the peeps who were happy to go "here's our projects and where we're at with them!" Bring back that show of progress and pride.
And for "add" : a new system of prioritisation. Stuff from core books you have openly said you're working on are still not implemented. Stuff that's simple as heck to make, we've been waiting years for, because of how you prioritise your projects. You seem to always have the stuff we, the customers, scream for are things you're leaving at the bottom of list. You got rid of UA so you could focus on prioritising the old and new stuff but that has not happened. You didn't have a great system in the beginning (and your trello even showed that) but you seem to have abandoned all sense of priority now.
So.. Yeah. A little bit of enthusiasm from the devs - some actual rapport with us who fund you - would be incredibly appreciated. I am aware your job isn't easy (I've done similar myself) and I'm not trying to discount the amazing work that has been put into this site. It's just before there was always something, and now we get slightly more than nothing.
Oh.. and: A better homebrew system / backend system.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
👆 Couldn't have put it better myself.
#Open D&D
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
Better integration of in-person play with physical dice. Like having the option to switch from digital dice rolls to a dialogue pop-up that would tell the user what dice they should roll and ask for the roll and calculate the result.
Example:
I want to roll for deception. I click the box next to "Deception" and a dialogue appears prompting me to roll D20 and type in what I rolled. After I do that, it takes the roll, adds my +6 on Deception, tells me the result and logs it in the game log.
That way users could enjoy the convenience of having a game log while also using physical dice. Also, new players would be able to learn the ropes without handing the entire mechanical part of gameplay to DDB.
Allowing players to edit each other's character sheets (In my group, when a player is away, someone else plays their character. It makes it really tedious to manage their hp, or add their share of coins to their sheet)
Allowing a 'joint' inventory for the party. This could represent the wagon and everything on it, or investments like trading post income or stronghold inventory.
Adding a 'roll for it' option to every section in character creation (race, background, languages, etc) (I'm a crazy person that likes to roll for everything. It would be nice to have randomization built in rather than having to count the options and then put it through a third party randomizer)
Adding more categorization, or the ability for multi part encounters in the encounter builder. When I plan the encounters in an adventuring day, It would be nice if I could group and order them instead of needing to name them stuff like 'fight number 1, bandit attack'