I really wish I could help DnDBeyond, D&D, and Hasbro with the pace of feature release for this site and the mobile apps. But this is not an open source project where I can create issues or contribute code changes (pull requests). The majority of my day job is in coaching & leading Agile software teams, in spreading know-how to colleagues and client, and advising companies in their digital strategies. I work in a global IT consultancy, and see many of same successes and concerns across many business domains.
Based on that experience, I see these credits & concerns with DnDBeyond:
The good: - User feedback is strong. You're built a community (through forums and other means). More companies should do this: feedback is a virtuous cycle - Many bugs get fixed relatively quickly. "Quick" is in the eye of the holder, so I expect you may get pushback from the community. Within 1-2 days is best practice depending on how good your "path to production" pipeline is - The website and phone apps are quite reliable. I have almost never seen downtime. Kudos to your devops teams! This is perhaps challenge #1 for consumer-facing software
The less good: - Feature improvements are slow to publish. New homebrew features are perhaps the slowest (excepting the next point which is even slower) - Support of UA lags well behind Crawford & crew publishing. Your Product Owner should consider giving these more priority in the team backlogs. Especially with the April buyout by WotC, I would expect one consumer benefit is closer timing between product & DnDBeyond production releases. Your strategy folks likely have a lot to say about this: listen to them - Website & app reliability at the top levels are high, less so for particular areas like searching. Thankfully you have a friendly, sensible page for backend failures, and retrying nearly always works (again, go buy your dev & devops teams pizza for this). Note I've noticed improvements on this throughout the year: clearly you are addressing reliability
Were DnDBeyond a client, I'd love to see and walk through your backlog, and find out more on "how the sausage is made" with your teams. Alas, I'm just another player
Capturing and realizing how D&D works is an incredibly complex business domain full of "general, then specific, then exception". I get funny looks from colleagues when holding up D&D as an example of complexity, but I think it merits some tech whitepapers. And I've tried my hand in personal projects at this -- not simple!
Would love it if character sheets showed long jump distance. High jump would be nice too, and could point users to the field to enter their height in a non-freeform fashion.
Would love it if character sheets showed long jump distance. High jump would be nice too, and could point users to the field to enter their height in a non-freeform fashion.
I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but I would love to be able to make my own notes in the form of Post-Its or text marks in my purchased digital books.
Maybe we could also create our own hyperlinks to other purchased or homemade content on D&D Beyond. Such as homemade monsters and the like....
This is something I do in my books as well, and something that is definitely missing here on D&D Beyond that I don't want to miss out on!
Ability to Homebrew Classes Ability to Homebrew Equipment More detail, or at least a guide for creating homebrew things, i.e. what commands to use. More options to "Copy" existing items when making a new Magic Item, Feat, etc.
Better organized Campaign Journal/Notes. Please! Especially if with One D&D you aim to be a single stop app.
Right now my group uses Roll20 virtual or in person. In part because we use it to organize information. Certainly their are better places to organize info, but we already use it for VTT, and we already use DNDBeyond we don't want another website in the mix.
I am looking forward to the day when there is a single marketplace for content and a single platform to share with my group but when that happens. I sincerely hope that campaign specific information is part of the mix.
Digital Dice. Please tie these in to character sheet customization.
The same way I pick different backgrounds, portraits and frames, I would like to equip different dice sets to my characters. Otherwise i have to change them as I swap between characters, or let so many of these wonderful dice gather dust...
Digital Dice. Please tie these in to character sheet customization.
The same way I pick different backgrounds, portraits and frames, I would like to equip different dice sets to my characters. Otherwise i have to change them as I swap between characters, or let so many of these wonderful dice gather dust...
Thats a great idea.
I would also like to be able to roll the dice from anywhere on the website rather then just my character sheet. Especially on the list of all the dice. To test each style, you have to navigate away from the My Dice page, goto a character sheet, roll, then come back change the dice....etc... etc
Digital Dice. Please tie these in to character sheet customization.
The same way I pick different backgrounds, portraits and frames, I would like to equip different dice sets to my characters. Otherwise i have to change them as I swap between characters, or let so many of these wonderful dice gather dust...
I would love if we were able to organise character sheets into categories. I pay for the Masters subscription so I have unlimited character slots. I have my player characters for other campaigns, but I also like to use the character builder for certain NPCs in my own campaigns as well as make up whacky characters that will likely never be assigned to real campaigns.
Having the ability to create custom categories and organise all my characters would be great! I think this would have a lot of potential.
Please add homebrew classes in the near future, there are so few classes in 5e compared to other editions as well as a multitude of homebrew created by individuals that add entire classes to 5e, the fact the site still doesnt have homebrew classes honestly surprises me.
When creating a homebrew magic weapon, there should be an option of "any weapon" or "any ranged weapon" or "any melee weapon" or "any thrown weapon", rather than having to pick one specific type of weapon.
I'm not sure if there is a mechanic for that. Although the Magic Weapon section in the game has things that say "Any Weapon" when you look into actual inventory options there are separate variations for each one. So...with the way the system currently works you'd have to create an instance of each. What you suggest does make sense, but would likely need a pretty big overhaul.
Something that would be useful would be to filter on owned material in the various tools, I realize that teasing unowned content is a sales driver, perhaps locking the filter as a master perk or something like that? It's a quality of life feature that would be of benefit.
Perhaps a way of filtering by rarities when it comes to adding inventory? I find myself consistently having to scroll through a giant list of common and uncommon just to get to rare magic items!
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There is a lot of 'legacy clean up' to be done on D&D Beyond, tis the nature of a site such as this one.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I feel a lot of confusion might have been averted had DDB respected WotC’s naming conventions.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I really wish I could help DnDBeyond, D&D, and Hasbro with the pace of feature release for this site and the mobile apps. But this is not an open source project where I can create issues or contribute code changes (pull requests).
The majority of my day job is in coaching & leading Agile software teams, in spreading know-how to colleagues and client, and advising companies in their digital strategies. I work in a global IT consultancy, and see many of same successes and concerns across many business domains.
Based on that experience, I see these credits & concerns with DnDBeyond:
The good:
- User feedback is strong. You're built a community (through forums and other means). More companies should do this: feedback is a virtuous cycle
- Many bugs get fixed relatively quickly. "Quick" is in the eye of the holder, so I expect you may get pushback from the community. Within 1-2 days is best practice depending on how good your "path to production" pipeline is
- The website and phone apps are quite reliable. I have almost never seen downtime. Kudos to your devops teams! This is perhaps challenge #1 for consumer-facing software
The less good:
- Feature improvements are slow to publish. New homebrew features are perhaps the slowest (excepting the next point which is even slower)
- Support of UA lags well behind Crawford & crew publishing. Your Product Owner should consider giving these more priority in the team backlogs. Especially with the April buyout by WotC, I would expect one consumer benefit is closer timing between product & DnDBeyond production releases. Your strategy folks likely have a lot to say about this: listen to them
- Website & app reliability at the top levels are high, less so for particular areas like searching. Thankfully you have a friendly, sensible page for backend failures, and retrying nearly always works (again, go buy your dev & devops teams pizza for this). Note I've noticed improvements on this throughout the year: clearly you are addressing reliability
Were DnDBeyond a client, I'd love to see and walk through your backlog, and find out more on "how the sausage is made" with your teams. Alas, I'm just another player
Capturing and realizing how D&D works is an incredibly complex business domain full of "general, then specific, then exception". I get funny looks from colleagues when holding up D&D as an example of complexity, but I think it merits some tech whitepapers. And I've tried my hand in personal projects at this -- not simple!
Warm regards, and 20 on d20 to you all
https://company.wizards.com/en/careers
Would love it if character sheets showed long jump distance. High jump would be nice too, and could point users to the field to enter their height in a non-freeform fashion.
Here, check this out: (https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/d-d-beyond-feedback/75562-any-chance-d-d-beyond-are-going-to-add-adventuring?comment=6).
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I'm not sure if this has already been posted, but I would love to be able to make my own notes in the form of Post-Its or text marks in my purchased digital books.
Maybe we could also create our own hyperlinks to other purchased or homemade content on D&D Beyond. Such as homemade monsters and the like....
This is something I do in my books as well, and something that is definitely missing here on D&D Beyond that I don't want to miss out on!
Ability to Homebrew Classes
Ability to Homebrew Equipment
More detail, or at least a guide for creating homebrew things, i.e. what commands to use.
More options to "Copy" existing items when making a new Magic Item, Feat, etc.
Better organized Campaign Journal/Notes. Please! Especially if with One D&D you aim to be a single stop app.
Right now my group uses Roll20 virtual or in person. In part because we use it to organize information. Certainly their are better places to organize info, but we already use it for VTT, and we already use DNDBeyond we don't want another website in the mix.
I am looking forward to the day when there is a single marketplace for content and a single platform to share with my group but when that happens. I sincerely hope that campaign specific information is part of the mix.
Digital Dice. Please tie these in to character sheet customization.
The same way I pick different backgrounds, portraits and frames, I would like to equip different dice sets to my characters. Otherwise i have to change them as I swap between characters, or let so many of these wonderful dice gather dust...
Bring out your inner chatacter class...
Thats a great idea.
I would also like to be able to roll the dice from anywhere on the website rather then just my character sheet.
Especially on the list of all the dice. To test each style, you have to navigate away from the My Dice page, goto a character sheet, roll, then come back change the dice....etc... etc
Love this!
Option to not show Legacy content while searching, especially if you don't own the Legacy content but own the normal content.
Check out my blog for homebrew D&D stuff and other projects!
I would love if we were able to organise character sheets into categories. I pay for the Masters subscription so I have unlimited character slots. I have my player characters for other campaigns, but I also like to use the character builder for certain NPCs in my own campaigns as well as make up whacky characters that will likely never be assigned to real campaigns.
Having the ability to create custom categories and organise all my characters would be great! I think this would have a lot of potential.
Please add homebrew classes in the near future, there are so few classes in 5e compared to other editions as well as a multitude of homebrew created by individuals that add entire classes to 5e, the fact the site still doesnt have homebrew classes honestly surprises me.
When creating a homebrew magic weapon, there should be an option of "any weapon" or "any ranged weapon" or "any melee weapon" or "any thrown weapon", rather than having to pick one specific type of weapon.
I'm not sure if there is a mechanic for that. Although the Magic Weapon section in the game has things that say "Any Weapon" when you look into actual inventory options there are separate variations for each one. So...with the way the system currently works you'd have to create an instance of each. What you suggest does make sense, but would likely need a pretty big overhaul.
An options to add Boons, Charms, Dark Gifts, etc.
These seem official but no option to add them other to setup in homebrew.
Something that would be useful would be to filter on owned material in the various tools, I realize that teasing unowned content is a sales driver, perhaps locking the filter as a master perk or something like that? It's a quality of life feature that would be of benefit.
Perhaps a way of filtering by rarities when it comes to adding inventory? I find myself consistently having to scroll through a giant list of common and uncommon just to get to rare magic items!