So to give a bit of background, I'm currently playing a Divine Soul Sorcerer as the primary healer for my party, and I play with a Linx 7 tablet. Not being able to view my health or my healing spells, or my sorcery points on the combat page is hell. Plain and simply hell. In combat it takes me seven taps and some scrolling to twin cast cure wounds, it should take me two. The content required to do that is spread across 3 different screens, the process looks like this right now.
From Starting on Combat 1. Tap navigation bubble 2. Tap Features and Traits 3. Scroll down to Metamagic 4. Tap a slot as needed 5. Tap navigation bubble 6. Tap Spells 7. Scroll down to the level you want to cast 8. Cast Spell 9. Tap navigation bubble 10. Tap Combat
10 interactions required to cast a spell with metamagic that isn't on the combat page. Simply a mind-numbing process in the middle of a high paced gaming moment.
This is exceptionally slower than the previous where all I had to do was scroll down the page a bit and sorcery points and spells were on a similar horizontal to each other. This is just for a level 5 sorcerer too, I can't imagine how difficult and slow this is going to be when I reach the higher levels and want to utilise my metamagic more often. This process can double if you want to throw out a bonus action spell too!
Not to mention that throughout this entire process, your health is obfuscated on the Abilities page, never made visible to you, so if I was healing myself I'd have to make another six taps to do so...
One thing that would definitely help now is to include healing spells in the combat page, they're inherently going to be used in combat any way, why aren't they already there? I read further up that there's going to be a new system for Qi, Sorcery and Warlock stuff so I'll hold off on that for now, but I highly suggest they're included within the combat page for tablet displays. I shouldn't have to go out of combat to engage in combat.
Thanks for the feedback.
Hit Points are now shown in the header everywhere as of this morning (was an oversight on tablet views).
As for the struggles with metamagic and sorcery points, we do not currently support that whole process well. I'm glad you were able to manage it previously, but we got a huge amount of feedback that the process was terrible in the old sheet too. We are working in the coming weeks to get a full class resource management system in place, and sorcery points will be near the top of that list (with wild shapes and ki).
I'm confident when we can actually address sorcery points and metamagic it will be a big improvement and alleviate your frustrations.
Ah, yeah. I like that quite a bit. I like that you combined both the right-hand boxes; that's where I was getting tripped up. I don't think there are many occasions where you would need to reference, say, actions and features at the same time, so that could work really well. All your suggestions are really good, in fact. Thanks for putting it together. Hopefully the idea gains some traction!
(Just realized I did see your post before; I've been reading through the forums a lot at night before bed so I'm not sure I'm really retaining everything.)
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DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder) Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
I'm curious what folks mean when they talk about the old sheet being all on one page in mobile view. This was never the case, was it? It was always on multiple pages; you just had to swipe between them rather than tapping a button. I get why that maybe feels smoother, but for me personally I never actually managed to get the hang of what order the information was in, and I hated using the mobile sheet for that very reason. The menu makes this process much easier for me, as I'm able to go exactly where I want in two taps instead of sometimes several frustrated swipes. Of course, I don't see why they can't have swipes and a menu selector, since this would help the sheet feel "continuous" for those folks who liked that while still offering a little guidance in finding the right section for those folks like me who need it.
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DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder) Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
My feedback is this. Instead of telling people to "Deal" with it. which is a piss poor attitude. Why not say it's something you could look into. Giving them the option of a layout they prefer. Or at least explaining why that can't happen - and really, anything is possible. It's just about allowing people choice... Something a game called Sword Coast legends failed to do. They told their customers to "deal" with it as well if I remember correctly.
I'm not sure where you are getting the impression that anyone at D&D Beyond is taking a "deal with it" attitude about any of this.
I personally am engaging in this thread to put the message out there that we are not saying that at all - quite the opposite. We are, in fact, listening to feedback. The reason we made these huge changes in the first place come down to listening to more feedback than most people realize.
As for explaining why we can't provide the option to toggle between the old and new layouts, there are many reasons, but I'll share two big ones. We changed so much underlying code in order to add so much new functionality and customization that the schema for the old format wouldn't have even worked - we literally didn't have the space in the UI to allow for the new things.
Most importantly, however, with the feedback we've had over the last year of the former layout's existence, there was no way we could NOT make major changes - too much wasn't working for too much of the community.
While we know that we will never be able to make everyone happy (trying to is an exercise in punching the ocean), now that we have a firmer foundation for the most people, we can tweak and iterate to get to the "best" for the most people, which is what we will do.
The feedback in this thread is something we have intentionally asked for, is valued, and is already influencing ideas/ concepts that we will use to make improvements.
My feedback is this. Instead of telling people to "Deal" with it. which is a piss poor attitude. Why not say it's something you could look into. Giving them the option of a layout they prefer. Or at least explaining why that can't happen - and really, anything is possible. It's just about allowing people choice... Something a game called Sword Coast legends failed to do. They told their customers to "deal" with it as well if I remember correctly.
I'm not sure where you are getting the impression that anyone at D&D Beyond is taking a "deal with it" attitude about any of this.
I personally am engaging in this thread to put the message out there that we are not saying that at all - quite the opposite. We are, in fact, listening to feedback. The reason we made these huge changes in the first place come down to listening to more feedback than most people realize.
As for explaining why we can't provide the option to toggle between the old and new layouts, there are many reasons, but I'll share two big ones. We changed so much underlying code in order to add so much new functionality and customization that the schema for the old format wouldn't have even worked - we literally didn't have the space in the UI to allow for the new things.
Most importantly, however, with the feedback we've had over the last year of the former layout's existence, there was no way we could NOT make major changes - too much wasn't working for too much of the community.
While we know that we will never be able to make everyone happy (trying to is an exercise in punching the ocean), now that we have a firmer foundation for the most people, we can tweak and iterate to get to the "best" for the most people, which is what we will do.
The feedback in this thread is something we have intentionally asked for, is valued, and is already influencing ideas/ concepts that we will use to make improvements.
Thanks!
You can’t please everyone unfortunately, the new sheet is a vast improvement on the old, a few tweaks here and there will be needed, I personally won’t offer any real feedback until I have used it in play on Wednesday.
Keep up the fine work and my regards to the whole team. Now I’m sure you will all need a bit of sleep and a couple of glasses (bottles) of wine after yesterday!
One request I have, and it’s a carryover from old sheet...
Would it be possible to get the text for current and next level XP a teensy bit bigger, I understand that there are space limitations but us old dudes need a microscope to see it in play. I know we can just go to ‘manage xp’ screen but as it’s already on the sheet it would be nice to gave it a bit more legible.
I have highly mixed feelings about this change, so I'll give you a list about what I like and don't like.
The things I like:
The new hit points tab is great, I can finally keep track of temp hit points easier, and the way of writing in a number and pressing damage or heal is quite nice.
The senses table is great, easy way to spot every sens.
Proficiencies and languages table is lovely, it's a much cleaner and organized way to see everything, I was always annoyed about having to search for my languages.
I missed the old fashion skill table and it's great to see it back.
The initiative, defense and conditions, I can't remember is there was a condition table in to old layout, but having right there is amazing and helps me a lot.
The things I don't like:
Spells and equipment. I used too like the old spell and inventory list as it had bold letters, colors and symbols, which for me that have dyslexia made everything easier to read and find.
I will agree that it was annoying to scroll so far down for a spell and description, instead of just having it where it is now and being able to lock it in place, but now that it is possible to lock it in place it should have been default locked, now when you click on it and then click somewhere else it just disappears if you forget to lock it.
Having everything crammed in to this box is annoying especially with this light gray font, most thing can be light gray, but things like spell level and the super tiny cog in the corner should be black, or have a strong color so you can find it. The cog should have been easy to see from the start as going trough equipment and spells now are worse then before.
There should be a currency tab or tiny table.'
Features and traits are messy written.
That is pretty much it for the things I can remember about the new layout that annoys me, I know that over time I will get used to it and be okay with it.
Wanted to indicate my appreciation that you and the team took people's inputs and will continue to do so.
"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."
Playing a wizard and sometimes a bard/rogue, I find that there can be lists and lists of spells (in the first case) and additional skills (in the second case) so I would request you make some adjustments. Scrolling inside the window is a pain, and once I zoom out my browser there is TONS of room at the bottom of the screen. It would be wonderful if we could have a "change layout" toggle to allow us to do two things
1) resize (vertically) the individual windows
2) prioritize items within any given window (drag up/down the list). Better still, allow us to even drag items between windows too!
I'm going to add my voice to what many many others have said: please don't forget your loyal and adoring mobile users! Those of us who play with mobile devices at the table - just like Critical Role - also want to enjoy a brilliant pretty new sheet. Before, we could scroll through our sheet (in landscape) or swipe to each different section (in portrait). That was SO NICE. Please at least give us a navigation ribbon, if everything can't be on one page! Please please please - tap to menu then tap to sheet feels so clumsy and weird. The navigation bubble is so awkward, especially for those with slightly slower devices. At least let us swipe to the different sections. or tap various points on the ribbon, like before. Even better, make sure that our landscape view holds everything, just like the desktop view! It would be so, so, SO appreciated.
Then we could feel like this change wasn't just for desktop users, but us too!
While I like the new features, I really struggle with this Character Sheet format. I like the new features but I liked the old format much better.
Having played with the sheet now, I found that it made things harder at the table. The search bar was helpful in finding gear faster but it required my players to type. We play in my apartment and it's a small space. We don't have room for everyone to sit at the table and have a computer open. Primarily we use phones and Ipads. Typing on mobile devices because it slowed down session time. Also, the need to constantly navigate between tabs using a menu frustrated my players.
Something that would immediately help would be allowing users to swipe or scroll between the pages, instead of having to click the navigation bubble. I think it's safe to say that the smaller number of 'clicks' required to get to what we need, the more positive the system feels. With the current system there seems to be many steps (at least for mobile device users) required in order to make something happen.
I should probably add some context. My group and I are pretty new to this. We have very little experience dealing with character sheets and the like. Some of the people at the table find the character sheet confusing - it's full of boxes and sections and the writing on them is less clear and obvious. D&D Beyond, in it's old incarnation felt more familiar to us; it operated like other programs we are familiar with. It actually made getting into D&D easier for everyone. I'm going to assume that we will not have the option to choose our preferred layout but I'd really like that.
Maybe we just need a 'less hardcore' option because we are new.
I really do not like the new changes. I understand a lot of people do like them but it just seemed way more convenient to have everything on one page, I would love if there was an option to use the old character sheet instead. Right now it feels like I'm just using this new sheet to keep track of exp and gold, whereas I actually used the old sheet to play. I use this on a tablet device and being able to just scroll down and have everything right there was so nice on the old sheet, now I'm constantly having to go back and forth between different pages. D&D Beyond has just become really annoying to use and I will probably just switch to using actual paper character sheets since using your website has just become a nuisance.
I have to agree with many of the comments on the mobile interface. I really am not a fan of the click menu -> click menu item -> lose context to view the requested info, repeat to go back. Personally on a phone I'd rather scroll. Muscle memory can be very effective at knowing how fast to scroll down and how long, etc. you could of course still keep the menu for those who want to jump to the info, but have it be optional. Just a thought.
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Playtesting Fugare Draconis, an epic tale of adventure, loss, and redemption
Just a thought based off of a bit of play - could the feats and combat tabs be combined to share a page? That would alleviate the most switching in combat, when many feats are used.
While I like the new features, I really struggle with this Character Sheet format. I like the new features but I liked the old format much better.
Having played with the sheet now, I found that it made things harder at the table. The search bar was helpful in finding gear faster but it required my players to type. We play in my apartment and it's a small space. We don't have room for everyone to sit at the table and have a computer open. Primarily we use phones and Ipads. Typing on mobile devices because it slowed down session time. Also, the need to constantly navigate between tabs using a menu frustrated my players.
Something that would immediately help would be allowing users to swipe or scroll between the pages, instead of having to click the navigation bubble. I think it's safe to say that the smaller number of 'clicks' required to get to what we need, the more positive the system feels. With the current system there seems to be many steps (at least for mobile device users) required in order to make something happen.
I should probably add some context. My group and I are pretty new to this. We have very little experience dealing with character sheets and the like. Some of the people at the table find the character sheet confusing - it's full of boxes and sections and the writing on them is less clear and obvious. D&D Beyond, in it's old incarnation felt more familiar to us; it operated like other programs we are familiar with. It actually made getting into D&D easier for everyone. I'm going to assume that we will not have the option to choose our preferred layout but I'd really like that.
Maybe we just need a 'less hardcore' option because we are new.
This is a really good post that helped me better understand some of the sticking points people are having.
I think a couple things on the new sheet should help clear some of this up, one of the biggest being putting labels on top of the boxes instead of underneath them! I do like this idea of a "less hardcore" mode, though--something that still has the functionality of the new sheet, using its logic, but is organized in a more familiar manner for those who came to the game with DDB and really clicked with the old sheet. Even if there were just more theme/skinning options for the sheet--maybe one that makes the more well-defined boxes with clear, bold text headings organized in a similar manner as the old sheet. There are some things that I think definitely should not go back to the old ways--the "features" box was a clustercuss of collapsables that made it frankly impossible to find much of what you needed at any given time--but I think a "DDB Classic" (or whatever) theme could work. Obviously I don't know how the programming side of it works but it seems like that'd be pretty feasible. Would that help to address some of those concerns, do you think?
It also seems super clear at this point that the mobile version is a huge sticking point for folks, and, from what it seems to me, the main way that most of the folks who do not like the new sheet seem to engage with the sheet at the table. Hopefully the dev team can come up with a solution that works for folks!
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DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder) Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
My players all use the proficiency dice variant rule, is there a way to update proficiency to use this rule instead? I guess the same question goes for other variant rules in the different books. I bought the legendary bundle and whatever the highest tier subscription is today, but first session this caused a lot of confusion for players to remember to remove their proficiency modifier and add the appropriate dice roll.
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D&D Beyond FoundersThanks for the feedback.
Hit Points are now shown in the header everywhere as of this morning (was an oversight on tablet views).
As for the struggles with metamagic and sorcery points, we do not currently support that whole process well. I'm glad you were able to manage it previously, but we got a huge amount of feedback that the process was terrible in the old sheet too. We are working in the coming weeks to get a full class resource management system in place, and sorcery points will be near the top of that list (with wild shapes and ki).
I'm confident when we can actually address sorcery points and metamagic it will be a big improvement and alleviate your frustrations.
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D&D Beyond FoundersYes, planned (when we can get to it).
Ah, yeah. I like that quite a bit. I like that you combined both the right-hand boxes; that's where I was getting tripped up. I don't think there are many occasions where you would need to reference, say, actions and features at the same time, so that could work really well. All your suggestions are really good, in fact. Thanks for putting it together. Hopefully the idea gains some traction!
(Just realized I did see your post before; I've been reading through the forums a lot at night before bed so I'm not sure I'm really retaining everything.)
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
I'm curious what folks mean when they talk about the old sheet being all on one page in mobile view. This was never the case, was it? It was always on multiple pages; you just had to swipe between them rather than tapping a button. I get why that maybe feels smoother, but for me personally I never actually managed to get the hang of what order the information was in, and I hated using the mobile sheet for that very reason. The menu makes this process much easier for me, as I'm able to go exactly where I want in two taps instead of sometimes several frustrated swipes. Of course, I don't see why they can't have swipes and a menu selector, since this would help the sheet feel "continuous" for those folks who liked that while still offering a little guidance in finding the right section for those folks like me who need it.
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
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D&D Beyond FoundersI'm not sure where you are getting the impression that anyone at D&D Beyond is taking a "deal with it" attitude about any of this.
I personally am engaging in this thread to put the message out there that we are not saying that at all - quite the opposite. We are, in fact, listening to feedback. The reason we made these huge changes in the first place come down to listening to more feedback than most people realize.
As for explaining why we can't provide the option to toggle between the old and new layouts, there are many reasons, but I'll share two big ones. We changed so much underlying code in order to add so much new functionality and customization that the schema for the old format wouldn't have even worked - we literally didn't have the space in the UI to allow for the new things.
Most importantly, however, with the feedback we've had over the last year of the former layout's existence, there was no way we could NOT make major changes - too much wasn't working for too much of the community.
While we know that we will never be able to make everyone happy (trying to is an exercise in punching the ocean), now that we have a firmer foundation for the most people, we can tweak and iterate to get to the "best" for the most people, which is what we will do.
The feedback in this thread is something we have intentionally asked for, is valued, and is already influencing ideas/ concepts that we will use to make improvements.
Thanks!
You can’t please everyone unfortunately, the new sheet is a vast improvement on the old, a few tweaks here and there will be needed, I personally won’t offer any real feedback until I have used it in play on Wednesday.
Keep up the fine work and my regards to the whole team. Now I’m sure you will all need a bit of sleep and a couple of glasses (bottles) of wine after yesterday!
One request I have, and it’s a carryover from old sheet...
Would it be possible to get the text for current and next level XP a teensy bit bigger, I understand that there are space limitations but us old dudes need a microscope to see it in play. I know we can just go to ‘manage xp’ screen but as it’s already on the sheet it would be nice to gave it a bit more legible.
I have highly mixed feelings about this change, so I'll give you a list about what I like and don't like.
The things I like:
The things I don't like:
That is pretty much it for the things I can remember about the new layout that annoys me, I know that over time I will get used to it and be okay with it.
Fix width of input fields on Characteristics and Details pop-up.
For some reason they are arbitrarily narrow rather than full width of the pop-up
Playtesting Fugare Draconis, an epic tale of adventure, loss, and redemption
Hey BadEye,
Wanted to indicate my appreciation that you and the team took people's inputs and will continue to do so.
"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."
Playing a wizard and sometimes a bard/rogue, I find that there can be lists and lists of spells (in the first case) and additional skills (in the second case) so I would request you make some adjustments. Scrolling inside the window is a pain, and once I zoom out my browser there is TONS of room at the bottom of the screen. It would be wonderful if we could have a "change layout" toggle to allow us to do two things
1) resize (vertically) the individual windows
2) prioritize items within any given window (drag up/down the list). Better still, allow us to even drag items between windows too!
Thanks
Unarmed Strike Description, there's a weird zero after To Hit and before Damage Type
0 <-- What's this?
Playtesting Fugare Draconis, an epic tale of adventure, loss, and redemption
I'm going to add my voice to what many many others have said: please don't forget your loyal and adoring mobile users! Those of us who play with mobile devices at the table - just like Critical Role - also want to enjoy a brilliant pretty new sheet. Before, we could scroll through our sheet (in landscape) or swipe to each different section (in portrait). That was SO NICE. Please at least give us a navigation ribbon, if everything can't be on one page! Please please please - tap to menu then tap to sheet feels so clumsy and weird. The navigation bubble is so awkward, especially for those with slightly slower devices. At least let us swipe to the different sections. or tap various points on the ribbon, like before. Even better, make sure that our landscape view holds everything, just like the desktop view! It would be so, so, SO appreciated.
Then we could feel like this change wasn't just for desktop users, but us too!
While I like the new features, I really struggle with this Character Sheet format. I like the new features but I liked the old format much better.
Having played with the sheet now, I found that it made things harder at the table. The search bar was helpful in finding gear faster but it required my players to type. We play in my apartment and it's a small space. We don't have room for everyone to sit at the table and have a computer open. Primarily we use phones and Ipads. Typing on mobile devices because it slowed down session time. Also, the need to constantly navigate between tabs using a menu frustrated my players.
Something that would immediately help would be allowing users to swipe or scroll between the pages, instead of having to click the navigation bubble. I think it's safe to say that the smaller number of 'clicks' required to get to what we need, the more positive the system feels. With the current system there seems to be many steps (at least for mobile device users) required in order to make something happen.
I should probably add some context. My group and I are pretty new to this. We have very little experience dealing with character sheets and the like. Some of the people at the table find the character sheet confusing - it's full of boxes and sections and the writing on them is less clear and obvious. D&D Beyond, in it's old incarnation felt more familiar to us; it operated like other programs we are familiar with. It actually made getting into D&D easier for everyone. I'm going to assume that we will not have the option to choose our preferred layout but I'd really like that.
Maybe we just need a 'less hardcore' option because we are new.
That would be great. The advantage icon is a nice addition.
I really do not like the new changes. I understand a lot of people do like them but it just seemed way more convenient to have everything on one page, I would love if there was an option to use the old character sheet instead. Right now it feels like I'm just using this new sheet to keep track of exp and gold, whereas I actually used the old sheet to play. I use this on a tablet device and being able to just scroll down and have everything right there was so nice on the old sheet, now I'm constantly having to go back and forth between different pages. D&D Beyond has just become really annoying to use and I will probably just switch to using actual paper character sheets since using your website has just become a nuisance.
I have to agree with many of the comments on the mobile interface. I really am not a fan of the click menu -> click menu item -> lose context to view the requested info, repeat to go back. Personally on a phone I'd rather scroll. Muscle memory can be very effective at knowing how fast to scroll down and how long, etc. you could of course still keep the menu for those who want to jump to the info, but have it be optional. Just a thought.
Playtesting Fugare Draconis, an epic tale of adventure, loss, and redemption
Just a thought based off of a bit of play - could the feats and combat tabs be combined to share a page? That would alleviate the most switching in combat, when many feats are used.
Thanks, I hate it!
This is a really good post that helped me better understand some of the sticking points people are having.
I think a couple things on the new sheet should help clear some of this up, one of the biggest being putting labels on top of the boxes instead of underneath them! I do like this idea of a "less hardcore" mode, though--something that still has the functionality of the new sheet, using its logic, but is organized in a more familiar manner for those who came to the game with DDB and really clicked with the old sheet. Even if there were just more theme/skinning options for the sheet--maybe one that makes the more well-defined boxes with clear, bold text headings organized in a similar manner as the old sheet. There are some things that I think definitely should not go back to the old ways--the "features" box was a clustercuss of collapsables that made it frankly impossible to find much of what you needed at any given time--but I think a "DDB Classic" (or whatever) theme could work. Obviously I don't know how the programming side of it works but it seems like that'd be pretty feasible. Would that help to address some of those concerns, do you think?
It also seems super clear at this point that the mobile version is a huge sticking point for folks, and, from what it seems to me, the main way that most of the folks who do not like the new sheet seem to engage with the sheet at the table. Hopefully the dev team can come up with a solution that works for folks!
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
My players all use the proficiency dice variant rule, is there a way to update proficiency to use this rule instead? I guess the same question goes for other variant rules in the different books. I bought the legendary bundle and whatever the highest tier subscription is today, but first session this caused a lot of confusion for players to remember to remove their proficiency modifier and add the appropriate dice roll.