I mean, do any of the other digital "competitors" Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, deliver UA to its users? I'm not trying to sound antagonistic, I really don't know the answer to that.
I'm not sure, but there might be something about this in the licencing agreement for 'the official toolset of D&D' requiring DDB to make playtest content available insofar as possible within reasonable limits.
Adam actually had to fight to be allowed to implement UA on DDB. Wizards didn't want to let him do it, for the same reason Wizards originally wanted the DDB toolset to be strictly RAW ONLY with absolutely no flex, give, or customization allowed - Wizards is mordibly terrified of new people bouncing off of the least tiniest bit of complexity and assumes everyone who plays TTRPGs is the next best thing to functionally braindead. They didn't want anything that wasn't Completely Official Content on the toolset, and only after years of operation after Adam fought for homebrew inclusion in the first place have people realized that Making Your Own Shit is kinda at the heart of D&D.
I believe you, but it's really weird they chose to make UA public in the first place then.
It was a brilliant move on Adam's part as UA is a GREAT way to market content before its release and gauge interest.
This is an EXCELLENT way to present UA and I do greatly appreciate their efforts to be transparent about issues with UA and how they look in the sheet. Its progress and I appreciate it.
1. I never claimed to know any data...in fact my point was that your data is severely flawed and we learn nothing from it. This is still true.
2. Yes my original post about PF2e spoke about the Herolab comparison and was very applicable. Your post was not. It was not in any way relevant to the discussion or even to DnD Beyond at all.
3. This is my point...there is no statistics so you posting the data is completely irrelevant and not at all applicable here.
4. Adam specifically states that is what they are using to drive changes....so yeah its completely applicable and relevant despite your thoughts. I do not agree either and I think the VTT is a terrible idea for DnD Beyond but its obvious they had intent on working on it as Adam's comments stated. It was on the roadmap for over a year as were the combat tracker and encounter builder but they were removed...which only further proves my point the tools are likely going to be shelved for a while which is disappointing to many as it was a requested feature. The developers mentioned it was a goal of theirs and they are using the linked feature requests to drive content as Adam stated. This is not up for debate as Adam states this directly.
5. I do not need to be a chef to know a chicken is undercooked. Your logical fallacy that I have to be an expert in a field to criticize it is just that....a fallacy.
6. I am not even sure what you mean by this? I expressed my concerns in the relevant forums yes? Also I do not have to as they are more timely with updates and have not promised any feature that they haven't fully implemented so its not been needed....
7. Using language like "Whining" and the like is not contributing to the discussion in a productive way. The way you choose to communicate is important and if you choose to be intentionally aggressive and dismissing you will alienate people.
8. You went into a paragraph long rant about not adding new features which is what I was addressing....not the technical aspects behind adding new features but instead the "flaws" of adding new rules/features and how it doesnt align with your philosphy. which is indeed off topic. "We don't care about new classes and powers because we play long campaigns, so we don't need new characters and archetypes and "races", having them from day 1 has zero attractiveness to us" This is off-topic as it doesn't relate to any technical aspect and is instead talking about the desire for new content. So yes I was on topic an you were in fact off topic.
9. Don't apologize just do better and do not use intentionally inflammatory language.
1. I never claimed to know any data...in fact my point was that your data is severely flawed and we learn nothing from it. This is still true.
You learn nothing from it. I learn that the D&D community based on 5e was 10 times as big as the one from any other TTRPG.
3. This is my point...there is no statistics so you posting the data is completely irrelevant and not at all applicable here.
It's better to have stats, even a bit old, than what you have, which is basically nothing. At all.
4. Adam specifically states that is what they are using to drive changes....so yeah its completely applicable and relevant despite your thoughts.
And you really think that this is the only or even the most important driver ? Honestly ?
5. I do not need to be a chef to know a chicken is undercooked. Your logical fallacy that I have to be an expert in a field to criticize it is just that....a fallacy.
Of course, being anything but an expert, it's easier to claim this. But guess where people who actually take decisions and make choice turn to ?
6. I am not even sure what you mean by this? I expressed my concerns in the relevant forums yes? Also I do not have to as they are more timely with updates and have not promised any feature that they haven't fully implemented so its not been needed....
But what about the 10% which are missing ? How is it that 0.1% of features missing in DDB is a catastrophy and an outrage but that 10% elsewhere is acceptable because they don't promise anything ?
If I was DDB, I would just stop promising anything, a much simpler solution.
7. Using language like "Whining" and the like is not contributing to the discussion in a productive way. The way you choose to communicate is important and if you choose to be intentionally aggressive and dismissing you will alienate people.
And this is in response to you considering that people are idiots for not seeing that game designers are lazy, that DDB is disappointing for not providing all features at publication date, etc.
8. You went into a paragraph long rant about not adding new features which is what I was addressing....not the technical aspects behind adding new features but instead the "flaws" of adding new rules/features and how it doesnt align with your philosphy. which is indeed off topic. "We don't care about new classes and powers because we play long campaigns, so we don't need new characters and archetypes and "races", having them from day 1 has zero attractiveness to us" This is off-topic as it doesn't relate to any technical aspect and is instead talking about the desire for new content. So yes I was on topic an you were in fact off topic.
The topic was alternatives, and my point of view is that I do not need alternatives because I have all I need in DDB. Just as valid as your point that there are still missing feature in DDB that were promised and it's not normal...
9. Don't apologize just do better and do not use intentionally inflammatory language.
I'll stop when you stop calling hard working people who provide you with the hobby that you love "lazy", deal ?
1. No it provides no meaning lessons here and even to your point it provides no real proof that 5e is "ten times bigger" as the data is not at all representative of the entire TTRPG community. So no you cannot even draw that conclusion from the data so no its not meaningful in really any way besides what games are available on roll20. Thats it.
2. No bad data is inherently worse than no data. As you have already done you draw false conclusions from bad data and its better to just say "We do not have the data" then to make bad interpretations and present false information.
3. Yes? I mean he was who was deciding how they implemented what tools/features on the site so his direct communication on how they deem what drives the features matters much much more than you or I...In fact its 100% how it will be done regardless of our opinions. Its fact they want these tools to be implemented and are using this data as their driver. So yeah it matters.
4. No as a consumer of the product you have a right to air your disagreements with said products. You do not need to be an expert to know that something is not meeting your expectations. If they are not meeting expectations then something should change. How they choose to address it is their concern.
5. Yes that would be one way to fix it....it would be bad PR but it would technically work. Managing expectations is a much better approach and they have been doing better about that (see my UA forum post).
6. "Laziness is disinclination to activity or exertion despite having the ability to act or to exert oneself" If they have the ability to provide more meaningful insight into design processes (See DMG and creating spells) but choose not to (See Custom Lineage) then yes it is laziness and should be addressed as such.
7. No your rant was completely off topic as it was in relation to your groups personal opinion of adding alternative features to the system. This is in no way related to the topic at hand as you did not tie it to any technical aspect but simply wanted to rant about it for no real discernable reason.
Well, this escalated quickly. All I really wanted to know if there is a better alternative out there that does character sheet and inventory management better than DDB.
To be fair, when you go to a website and start a thread saying "this website is absolutely awful, who knows where a better one is?", you're kinda inviting 'escalated quickly'.
Well, this escalated quickly. All I really wanted to know if there is a better alternative out there that does character sheet and inventory management better than DDB.
Your original question was quite understandable, and I'm sorry the discourse devolved the way it did. There are certainly those here who brook no contrary opinion concerning the pace of dndbeyond's development. But it's not hard to understand how many would look at the state of a product line that is five years old and feel disappointment.
The fact is that any real discourse on the needs of the service devolves into this the people who want to "defend' the brand will always derail the conversation with off topic discussions in an attempt to sidetrack the conversation.
Its really hurts good discussion IMO and I am glad that the staff came in to ask for feedback directly as that is the type of experience I think people want so kudos for that.
Sigh....the data you posted is meaningless overall...you didn't post anything about DnD Beyond so using it as an example is pretty funny overall. You used Roll20 data which is...just Roll20 data and has no real insight into the actual state of TTRPGs....just Roll20. If the conversation was about roll20 I would say its good data. If you are trying to prove the overall state of TTRPG then you are VASTLY overestimating the data and what it can tell you.
They have goals for what they want to do....some take longer than others. They want the things to come out right so they take the time to work on them...which is the part I appreciate....but ultimately they are slower than average at completing their goals. This does not mean they will abandon any of these things but if you are saying they are not using their own prioritization voting to work on what the community wants then that's just an example of them not listening to feedback and instead pushing something that nobody desires. That is a separate problem but still an issue.
Soooo....either they are working on these things but taking a long time to complete them (not good) or they are NOT working these things despite saying they are a priority for them (also not good).
Either case is not good so I guess pick your poison.
My "rant" about CFV was related to the tech stuff....yours wasn't. I wont touch this again as its obvious the distinction between the two but you are for some reason choosing to ignore it.
There's a site change log, where we post about any major functionality updates to the site.
The Support forum has a thread for each book release, where we state any issues we are aware of and respond to feedback.
Active responses from moderators and staff via our Discord.
I watch the weekly dev updates because I have a feature that I am excited for.
The general features system.
I feel the dev updates could be much more transparent. All I ever get from the updates are "this is what we are working on" (general features), and "it will be coming soon". Never any specific details.
For example:
is progress going well?
Which parts of Current Thing is working and what's next before it rolls out?
are we gonna be able to homebrew boons/general features?
How is it going to work, in great detail?
I don't ever expect a release date, but something like "hopefully within the next three months" I would die for.
and if time frames aren't possible, how come? What's holding up the development?
Essentially: Details. Details. Details. When all we get is "we're working on it. Soon." for a year, development looks slow to an outsider. We obviously don't know the actual pace.
And in the previous post in this thread, it was said "this year", which doesn't inspire great confidence in the dev speed.
For what it's worth, I'm alright with the pace of the stuff in Tasha's, in hindsight, cus I can see that it did a lot of new things that the site wasn't built for.
The issue with that, Zhell - and I bring this up not as an excuse, but simply as clarification you may not be aware of - is that often, the answers to the questions you ask are deeply technical and essentially meaningless to the average user. Not only is an engineer coming onto a dev stream to talk about specific under-the-hood backend improvements to data management generally Deep Speech to the average user, but that information can be proprietary to the business. DDB's choices are, essentially, "we promise you we're making progress, honest!" as they rapidly overhaul their entire data handling system to no visible effect and catch shit for it, or to go completely dark.
Software engineering isn't like building an office complex or a warehouse. You can't see the construction in progress. Features generally only become visible to end users when they're finished, at which point the status update is 'Finished!' Tasha's Cauldron, and the CFVs UA that prefaced it, crippled the dev team for months and occupied every last waking moment of their time. And is, in many cases, still doing so.
Should this all have been sorted better before ever DDB went live? Yes. Absolutely. But I was not privy to the discussions between DDB and Wizards which mandated the design goals for the original software, and neither was anyone else here (except maybe Stormknight). We are all absolutely free to voice our discontent, but it would be nice if Other Folks would improve their understanding of how these things worked.
The issue with that, Zhell - and I bring this up not as an excuse, but simply as clarification you may not be aware of - is that often, the answers to the questions you ask are deeply technical and essentially meaningless to the average user. Not only is an engineer coming onto a dev stream to talk about specific under-the-hood backend improvements to data management generally Deep Speech to the average user, but that information can be proprietary to the business. DDB's choices are, essentially, "we promise you we're making progress, honest!" as they rapidly overhaul their entire data handling system to no visible effect and catch shit for it, or to go completely dark.
Not at all. This same conversation occurs around the world, countless times per week/month with IT managers and corporate leadership. There is no need to delve into deeply technical speak when attempting to relay project details to those who may not entirely grasp the technical aspects of the project fully. Project updates need to be couched to the audience. No IT staff is unaware of this fact, and they deal with it on a constant basis.
Sure. Corporate leadership is also famous for ignoring, overriding, or otherwise refusing to tolerate their technical people's opinions or explanations, often for the same exact reasons general users do - "I don't understand why this is so hard, therefor I refuse to accept it is hard." Seven Red Lines is a modern classic for a reason.
DDB has told us what the hold-up is - they need to scrap their entire codebase and rewrite it from scratch to handle the agility and flexibility required of modern books and the desires of homebrew users. Doing so without also scrapping everyone's character/campaign/homebrew data takes time. That much is well understood. I'm not sure what folks are expecting beyond "Yup, we're still plugging away at the huge overhaul we've told you we're doing."
Now, I'm of the opinion that DDB is making a mistake with their permanent state of All Hands On Deck and neglecting older releases in favor of trying to get the New Hotness out as swiftly as possible. Somebody needs to be catching up with older content that hasn't been implemented yet. They like to meme on Life Domain clerics as the poster child for 'old rules we haven't done yet', but even General Exceptions won't allow someone to use Slow Natural Healing, or add new ability scores to their sheet, or run any of the DMG's Initiative variants, or decide they want their game to run on spell points instead of spell slots. There's lots to do. I don't need them to hold my hand through every step of doing it. I'd prefer they simply do it, and in a manner more timely than not.
Sure. Corporate leadership is also famous for ignoring, overriding, or otherwise refusing to tolerate their technical people's opinions or explanations, often for the same exact reasons general users do - "I don't understand why this is so hard, therefor I refuse to accept it is hard." Seven Red Lines is a modern classic for a reason.
You're debating two separate, and distinct points. You were saying, as a reason why DNDBeyond shouldn't give more detailed updates, that the consumer audience won't understand the details. To which I replied that the "message" simply needs to be couched to the audience. Something every IT staff does as a matter of course, in those instances where they're briefing corporate management. I'm going to stick directly to this specific point of conversation.
Every single corporate IT project that has ever existed, or ever will exist, is measured against expectation. To include schedule. IT staffs are regularly reporting status to successive levels of management. Updates ranging from extremely technically detailed when being briefed within the IT department, to more high level milestone related when being briefed to corporate leadership. Mileage varies depending on how many levels we're dealing with, specific company, etc.
The point is, the same messaging that occurs for corporate leadership is largely the messaging that I think most who bring this topic up here, are asking for. I wouldn't think this to be greatly difficult to manage this. I'm very familiar with the "translations", doing this myself for every one of my projects quite regularly.
Hm. I suppose my question is how DDB has been doing anything but what you suggest. Each dev update includes a list of features being worked on, features which have been completed, and features which are in the pipeline for consideration. A "Done/Doing/Will Do" approach.
They've explained why 'Doing/Will Do' takes as long as it does. What confuses me is the folks who think they're lying, simply because another software team builds their unrelated software much more quickly. When they're given an explanation as to why the Thing is taking so long - i.e. the I.T. guy saying to Corpo Leadership "We're working on this task, for this goal, in accordance with Project Plan Sissyphus, but it is going to take a shitload of time and effort - this is a matter of simply putting in the man-hours and letting the codemonkeys do their thing", consumers tend to screech and caterwaul because they don't have any scope for the project.
Someone could say "It took twelve thousand man-hours to build the D&D Beyond service as it existed on launch. We estimate it will take between forty to sixty thousand man-hours to scrap that code and rebuild it in a modular configuration for improved scalability without damaging user content or significantly affecting the user experience", and I imagine the average DDB forumite would flipp schittes and accuse DDB of lying outright. As they often do. I'm fairly sure I'm lowballing those numbers though, probably pretty hard.
I suppose the real question is what sort of milestones you expect them to report on? As well, what's worse - a feature that's released "when it's ready", or a bunch of line-in-the-sand dates that constantly slip? Having played MechWarrior Online for quite a bit back in the day, I can tell you that "Ninety Days(TM)" became a meme very quickly, and one a lot more savage than people tend to be here, even at their worst.
There's nothing even close that I've found unfortunately. I have bought all the books and subscribe. I run a couple campaigns and playin a couple and we've tried using D&D Beyond at the table and virtually.
Just a few examples of things that have frustrated my players (and me on some occasions):
Inventory management, as someone else mentioned, is a problem. Have a Bag of Holding? Sure would be nice to be able to put things in it so you don't show as encumbered.
Dice rolls seem only half done. Opportunity attack has no way to link to a weapon, so the bonuses are wrong (e.g., take polearm mastery and Pact of the Blade). No way to select advantage/disadvantage for rolling dice.
Short rests don't seem to do anything when you use Hit Dice (or we haven't figured out how to make that work).
When you use the character builder, it often shows that you haven't selected an ASI option even though you did levels ago (and it DOES show on the character sheet).
Here's the bottom line: no system I've used (e.g., Fantasy Grounds, Hero Labs, etc.) even comes close to helping a new player create a character. The wizard (heh) like approach works really well - not perfect, but far better than someone trying to read the Player's Handbook and figure out what order to do things in, etc.
However, there are so many problems with using the character sheet at the table that every time we try to switch to using the app or web site, we run into places where abilities and modifies are just not included in the rule (e.g., evocation wizard's bonus not added to their damage roles with evocation spells, elemental adapt feet doesn't convert 1's to 2's, etc. etc.). This leads to a lack of trust for most rolls and we wend up switching back to physical dice rolling.
Again, I am VERY GLAD to have D&D Beyond as a resource, but there is a lot of room for improvement so it's understandable why someone might question if there's anything better. I think pretty clearly there isn't. It is an invaluable but flawed resource for players and DM's - it is, however, a little frustrating to see so many things not getting fixed while things like new dice are added (I get it - different teams/people working on them - but that doesn't keep my eyes from "rolling").
Oddly enough, Yurei mentioned how coding isn't like building construction, and here I go saying its kind of like building construction (except not like Yurei thinks). A building might take 16 months to complete. the first 6 months of that, nobody walking by sees anything yet. People in the know might realize the contractor has been working for 6 months with nothing visible yet, but the average passerby might not think anything is happening at all. Then, the whole building structure, walls and roof goes up in like 1-2 months. This is because in that six months, they were preparing the ground, running the piping under the slab, pouring foundations, testing them for stability, and then finally, they call in a crane and erect all that stuff in a short amount of time. (then there's another 8 months where it looks like nothing is happening because their working inside...you have 6 months of "nothing", 2 months of "everything" and 8 months of "nothing" even though consistent progress is being made the whole time).
Also, like a building, what you see and what is working behind the scenes are very different things. You see a ceiling, maybe with some tile and lights, but above that there are ducts forcing air around, electrical circuits, cold water lines, hot water lines, fire sprinkler lines, AV cables, IT lines, conduits, Insulation, structural beams, sound batting, fire caulking, etc you get the drift. The user sees a ceiling with lights, the builders (and designers) see the massive set of systems that support it all behind the scenes, hidden from the general users eyes.
Finally, If you have a building that is outdated, and you want to install a new system, you don't necessarily tear it down. especially if people still use it, so you have to come in behind the scenes, working a little bit at a time to fix what is needed. In my professional life I oversaw a systems replacement and renovation in a hospital. Hospitals have to keep running, but we needed to replace ductwork in a massive area, that included things like ORs, recovery units, labs and imaging rooms, etc. we wound up doing the work in over 20 different phases, some on weekends, some overnight, some that only included 6 feet of hallway and some that included 2000 SF recovery suites and took months. That project, because it had to "keep the lights on" took 18 months total when the same project would normally take 4 if we could shut things down. All of that to make sure the hospital didn't lose critical functions while it went on. That is what it is like to go in after the fact and rework a system, and its a similar process no matter what you are doing, if you have to keep the lights on if you are doing it.
All of this is to say that coding is a lot of work (like a lot of professions) and just because the general user doesn't see the results (or the progress) over time doesn't mean that progress isn't being made.
I only use DDB as a source for online formatted rules, and it does a good job at those things. How many people actually use it to run campaigns?
Insofar as using DDB in my game, it's a rules library for my group and "character binder" for the characters in my campaigns. When I'm running the game, I track combat etc. in a pencil and paper journal. If I could click something in a digital edition of an adventure that plops that scenes participants into a combat builder, I might be more likely to use that, but as is hashing down notes into the physical journal has worked better to date for me. If campaign notes were something more than a simple text field, I could migrate, but not necessary for me.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I use it as a rules, spell, monster, and item reference while I play (DM). I also use the homebrew creator for custom items, spells and monsters and vet encounters using the encounter builder (prior to sessions). I also keep my characters on there for the much rarer times I’m a player
It was a brilliant move on Adam's part as UA is a GREAT way to market content before its release and gauge interest.
Its been a huge satisfier for people and they have progressively gotten better about support and transparency of it as evidenced by the latest UA forum posts: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/unearthed-arcana/101915-ua-folk-of-the-feywild
This is an EXCELLENT way to present UA and I do greatly appreciate their efforts to be transparent about issues with UA and how they look in the sheet. Its progress and I appreciate it.
1. I never claimed to know any data...in fact my point was that your data is severely flawed and we learn nothing from it. This is still true.
2. Yes my original post about PF2e spoke about the Herolab comparison and was very applicable. Your post was not. It was not in any way relevant to the discussion or even to DnD Beyond at all.
3. This is my point...there is no statistics so you posting the data is completely irrelevant and not at all applicable here.
4. Adam specifically states that is what they are using to drive changes....so yeah its completely applicable and relevant despite your thoughts. I do not agree either and I think the VTT is a terrible idea for DnD Beyond but its obvious they had intent on working on it as Adam's comments stated. It was on the roadmap for over a year as were the combat tracker and encounter builder but they were removed...which only further proves my point the tools are likely going to be shelved for a while which is disappointing to many as it was a requested feature. The developers mentioned it was a goal of theirs and they are using the linked feature requests to drive content as Adam stated. This is not up for debate as Adam states this directly.
5. I do not need to be a chef to know a chicken is undercooked. Your logical fallacy that I have to be an expert in a field to criticize it is just that....a fallacy.
6. I am not even sure what you mean by this? I expressed my concerns in the relevant forums yes? Also I do not have to as they are more timely with updates and have not promised any feature that they haven't fully implemented so its not been needed....
7. Using language like "Whining" and the like is not contributing to the discussion in a productive way. The way you choose to communicate is important and if you choose to be intentionally aggressive and dismissing you will alienate people.
8. You went into a paragraph long rant about not adding new features which is what I was addressing....not the technical aspects behind adding new features but instead the "flaws" of adding new rules/features and how it doesnt align with your philosphy. which is indeed off topic. "We don't care about new classes and powers because we play long campaigns, so we don't need new characters and archetypes and "races", having them from day 1 has zero attractiveness to us" This is off-topic as it doesn't relate to any technical aspect and is instead talking about the desire for new content. So yes I was on topic an you were in fact off topic.
9. Don't apologize just do better and do not use intentionally inflammatory language.
1. No it provides no meaning lessons here and even to your point it provides no real proof that 5e is "ten times bigger" as the data is not at all representative of the entire TTRPG community. So no you cannot even draw that conclusion from the data so no its not meaningful in really any way besides what games are available on roll20. Thats it.
2. No bad data is inherently worse than no data. As you have already done you draw false conclusions from bad data and its better to just say "We do not have the data" then to make bad interpretations and present false information.
3. Yes? I mean he was who was deciding how they implemented what tools/features on the site so his direct communication on how they deem what drives the features matters much much more than you or I...In fact its 100% how it will be done regardless of our opinions. Its fact they want these tools to be implemented and are using this data as their driver. So yeah it matters.
4. No as a consumer of the product you have a right to air your disagreements with said products. You do not need to be an expert to know that something is not meeting your expectations. If they are not meeting expectations then something should change. How they choose to address it is their concern.
5. Yes that would be one way to fix it....it would be bad PR but it would technically work. Managing expectations is a much better approach and they have been doing better about that (see my UA forum post).
6. "Laziness is disinclination to activity or exertion despite having the ability to act or to exert oneself" If they have the ability to provide more meaningful insight into design processes (See DMG and creating spells) but choose not to (See Custom Lineage) then yes it is laziness and should be addressed as such.
7. No your rant was completely off topic as it was in relation to your groups personal opinion of adding alternative features to the system. This is in no way related to the topic at hand as you did not tie it to any technical aspect but simply wanted to rant about it for no real discernable reason.
8. See 6.
Well, this escalated quickly.
All I really wanted to know if there is a better alternative out there that does character sheet and inventory management better than DDB.
To be fair, when you go to a website and start a thread saying "this website is absolutely awful, who knows where a better one is?", you're kinda inviting 'escalated quickly'.
Please do not contact or message me.
Your original question was quite understandable, and I'm sorry the discourse devolved the way it did. There are certainly those here who brook no contrary opinion concerning the pace of dndbeyond's development. But it's not hard to understand how many would look at the state of a product line that is five years old and feel disappointment.
The fact is that any real discourse on the needs of the service devolves into this the people who want to "defend' the brand will always derail the conversation with off topic discussions in an attempt to sidetrack the conversation.
Its really hurts good discussion IMO and I am glad that the staff came in to ask for feedback directly as that is the type of experience I think people want so kudos for that.
Sigh....the data you posted is meaningless overall...you didn't post anything about DnD Beyond so using it as an example is pretty funny overall. You used Roll20 data which is...just Roll20 data and has no real insight into the actual state of TTRPGs....just Roll20. If the conversation was about roll20 I would say its good data. If you are trying to prove the overall state of TTRPG then you are VASTLY overestimating the data and what it can tell you.
They have goals for what they want to do....some take longer than others. They want the things to come out right so they take the time to work on them...which is the part I appreciate....but ultimately they are slower than average at completing their goals. This does not mean they will abandon any of these things but if you are saying they are not using their own prioritization voting to work on what the community wants then that's just an example of them not listening to feedback and instead pushing something that nobody desires. That is a separate problem but still an issue.
Soooo....either they are working on these things but taking a long time to complete them (not good) or they are NOT working these things despite saying they are a priority for them (also not good).
Either case is not good so I guess pick your poison.
My "rant" about CFV was related to the tech stuff....yours wasn't. I wont touch this again as its obvious the distinction between the two but you are for some reason choosing to ignore it.
I watch the weekly dev updates because I have a feature that I am excited for.
The general features system.
I feel the dev updates could be much more transparent. All I ever get from the updates are "this is what we are working on" (general features), and "it will be coming soon". Never any specific details.
For example:
And in the previous post in this thread, it was said "this year", which doesn't inspire great confidence in the dev speed.
For what it's worth, I'm alright with the pace of the stuff in Tasha's, in hindsight, cus I can see that it did a lot of new things that the site wasn't built for.
The issue with that, Zhell - and I bring this up not as an excuse, but simply as clarification you may not be aware of - is that often, the answers to the questions you ask are deeply technical and essentially meaningless to the average user. Not only is an engineer coming onto a dev stream to talk about specific under-the-hood backend improvements to data management generally Deep Speech to the average user, but that information can be proprietary to the business. DDB's choices are, essentially, "we promise you we're making progress, honest!" as they rapidly overhaul their entire data handling system to no visible effect and catch shit for it, or to go completely dark.
Software engineering isn't like building an office complex or a warehouse. You can't see the construction in progress. Features generally only become visible to end users when they're finished, at which point the status update is 'Finished!' Tasha's Cauldron, and the CFVs UA that prefaced it, crippled the dev team for months and occupied every last waking moment of their time. And is, in many cases, still doing so.
Should this all have been sorted better before ever DDB went live? Yes. Absolutely. But I was not privy to the discussions between DDB and Wizards which mandated the design goals for the original software, and neither was anyone else here (except maybe Stormknight). We are all absolutely free to voice our discontent, but it would be nice if Other Folks would improve their understanding of how these things worked.
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Not at all. This same conversation occurs around the world, countless times per week/month with IT managers and corporate leadership. There is no need to delve into deeply technical speak when attempting to relay project details to those who may not entirely grasp the technical aspects of the project fully. Project updates need to be couched to the audience. No IT staff is unaware of this fact, and they deal with it on a constant basis.
Sure. Corporate leadership is also famous for ignoring, overriding, or otherwise refusing to tolerate their technical people's opinions or explanations, often for the same exact reasons general users do - "I don't understand why this is so hard, therefor I refuse to accept it is hard." Seven Red Lines is a modern classic for a reason.
DDB has told us what the hold-up is - they need to scrap their entire codebase and rewrite it from scratch to handle the agility and flexibility required of modern books and the desires of homebrew users. Doing so without also scrapping everyone's character/campaign/homebrew data takes time. That much is well understood. I'm not sure what folks are expecting beyond "Yup, we're still plugging away at the huge overhaul we've told you we're doing."
Now, I'm of the opinion that DDB is making a mistake with their permanent state of All Hands On Deck and neglecting older releases in favor of trying to get the New Hotness out as swiftly as possible. Somebody needs to be catching up with older content that hasn't been implemented yet. They like to meme on Life Domain clerics as the poster child for 'old rules we haven't done yet', but even General Exceptions won't allow someone to use Slow Natural Healing, or add new ability scores to their sheet, or run any of the DMG's Initiative variants, or decide they want their game to run on spell points instead of spell slots. There's lots to do. I don't need them to hold my hand through every step of doing it. I'd prefer they simply do it, and in a manner more timely than not.
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You're debating two separate, and distinct points. You were saying, as a reason why DNDBeyond shouldn't give more detailed updates, that the consumer audience won't understand the details. To which I replied that the "message" simply needs to be couched to the audience. Something every IT staff does as a matter of course, in those instances where they're briefing corporate management. I'm going to stick directly to this specific point of conversation.
Every single corporate IT project that has ever existed, or ever will exist, is measured against expectation. To include schedule. IT staffs are regularly reporting status to successive levels of management. Updates ranging from extremely technically detailed when being briefed within the IT department, to more high level milestone related when being briefed to corporate leadership. Mileage varies depending on how many levels we're dealing with, specific company, etc.
The point is, the same messaging that occurs for corporate leadership is largely the messaging that I think most who bring this topic up here, are asking for. I wouldn't think this to be greatly difficult to manage this. I'm very familiar with the "translations", doing this myself for every one of my projects quite regularly.
Hm. I suppose my question is how DDB has been doing anything but what you suggest. Each dev update includes a list of features being worked on, features which have been completed, and features which are in the pipeline for consideration. A "Done/Doing/Will Do" approach.
They've explained why 'Doing/Will Do' takes as long as it does. What confuses me is the folks who think they're lying, simply because another software team builds their unrelated software much more quickly. When they're given an explanation as to why the Thing is taking so long - i.e. the I.T. guy saying to Corpo Leadership "We're working on this task, for this goal, in accordance with Project Plan Sissyphus, but it is going to take a shitload of time and effort - this is a matter of simply putting in the man-hours and letting the codemonkeys do their thing", consumers tend to screech and caterwaul because they don't have any scope for the project.
Someone could say "It took twelve thousand man-hours to build the D&D Beyond service as it existed on launch. We estimate it will take between forty to sixty thousand man-hours to scrap that code and rebuild it in a modular configuration for improved scalability without damaging user content or significantly affecting the user experience", and I imagine the average DDB forumite would flipp schittes and accuse DDB of lying outright. As they often do. I'm fairly sure I'm lowballing those numbers though, probably pretty hard.
I suppose the real question is what sort of milestones you expect them to report on? As well, what's worse - a feature that's released "when it's ready", or a bunch of line-in-the-sand dates that constantly slip? Having played MechWarrior Online for quite a bit back in the day, I can tell you that "Ninety Days(TM)" became a meme very quickly, and one a lot more savage than people tend to be here, even at their worst.
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There's nothing even close that I've found unfortunately. I have bought all the books and subscribe. I run a couple campaigns and playin a couple and we've tried using D&D Beyond at the table and virtually.
Just a few examples of things that have frustrated my players (and me on some occasions):
Here's the bottom line: no system I've used (e.g., Fantasy Grounds, Hero Labs, etc.) even comes close to helping a new player create a character. The wizard (heh) like approach works really well - not perfect, but far better than someone trying to read the Player's Handbook and figure out what order to do things in, etc.
However, there are so many problems with using the character sheet at the table that every time we try to switch to using the app or web site, we run into places where abilities and modifies are just not included in the rule (e.g., evocation wizard's bonus not added to their damage roles with evocation spells, elemental adapt feet doesn't convert 1's to 2's, etc. etc.). This leads to a lack of trust for most rolls and we wend up switching back to physical dice rolling.
Again, I am VERY GLAD to have D&D Beyond as a resource, but there is a lot of room for improvement so it's understandable why someone might question if there's anything better. I think pretty clearly there isn't. It is an invaluable but flawed resource for players and DM's - it is, however, a little frustrating to see so many things not getting fixed while things like new dice are added (I get it - different teams/people working on them - but that doesn't keep my eyes from "rolling").
Oddly enough, Yurei mentioned how coding isn't like building construction, and here I go saying its kind of like building construction (except not like Yurei thinks). A building might take 16 months to complete. the first 6 months of that, nobody walking by sees anything yet. People in the know might realize the contractor has been working for 6 months with nothing visible yet, but the average passerby might not think anything is happening at all. Then, the whole building structure, walls and roof goes up in like 1-2 months. This is because in that six months, they were preparing the ground, running the piping under the slab, pouring foundations, testing them for stability, and then finally, they call in a crane and erect all that stuff in a short amount of time. (then there's another 8 months where it looks like nothing is happening because their working inside...you have 6 months of "nothing", 2 months of "everything" and 8 months of "nothing" even though consistent progress is being made the whole time).
Also, like a building, what you see and what is working behind the scenes are very different things. You see a ceiling, maybe with some tile and lights, but above that there are ducts forcing air around, electrical circuits, cold water lines, hot water lines, fire sprinkler lines, AV cables, IT lines, conduits, Insulation, structural beams, sound batting, fire caulking, etc you get the drift. The user sees a ceiling with lights, the builders (and designers) see the massive set of systems that support it all behind the scenes, hidden from the general users eyes.
Finally, If you have a building that is outdated, and you want to install a new system, you don't necessarily tear it down. especially if people still use it, so you have to come in behind the scenes, working a little bit at a time to fix what is needed. In my professional life I oversaw a systems replacement and renovation in a hospital. Hospitals have to keep running, but we needed to replace ductwork in a massive area, that included things like ORs, recovery units, labs and imaging rooms, etc. we wound up doing the work in over 20 different phases, some on weekends, some overnight, some that only included 6 feet of hallway and some that included 2000 SF recovery suites and took months. That project, because it had to "keep the lights on" took 18 months total when the same project would normally take 4 if we could shut things down. All of that to make sure the hospital didn't lose critical functions while it went on. That is what it is like to go in after the fact and rework a system, and its a similar process no matter what you are doing, if you have to keep the lights on if you are doing it.
All of this is to say that coding is a lot of work (like a lot of professions) and just because the general user doesn't see the results (or the progress) over time doesn't mean that progress isn't being made.
The development of spell points has really bugged me. And at this point I'm pretty sure they will not be added in 5e's lifetime.
It's over 6 years since the release of the DMG, and it's one of the three 'core' books for the game. And yet it's still not here.
I only use DDB as a source for online formatted rules, and it does a good job at those things. How many people actually use it to run campaigns?
Insofar as using DDB in my game, it's a rules library for my group and "character binder" for the characters in my campaigns. When I'm running the game, I track combat etc. in a pencil and paper journal. If I could click something in a digital edition of an adventure that plops that scenes participants into a combat builder, I might be more likely to use that, but as is hashing down notes into the physical journal has worked better to date for me. If campaign notes were something more than a simple text field, I could migrate, but not necessary for me.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I use it as a rules, spell, monster, and item reference while I play (DM). I also use the homebrew creator for custom items, spells and monsters and vet encounters using the encounter builder (prior to sessions). I also keep my characters on there for the much rarer times I’m a player
and honestly all that works just fine for me.