Then maybe focus on one thing at a time or pair down what you are working on so you can at least do one thing really good and not 12 things just ok?
Then you only appeal to a narrow range of people. You'll appeal a lot to them, but you only get their subs once, so not much more profitable. Do a dozen different things? You'll appeal to a dozen times more people which gives you more money in subs. It makes good business sense.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I've definitely noticed the number of posters has been going down; I've been assuming people are tired of how poorly moderated the forums are. For one thing, it's extremely tiring dealing with the constant deluge of thread necromancy.
They don't seem poorly moderated to me. There isn't a reason to prohibit thread revivals. It does occur with some frequency, and it can be bizarre what people dredge back up, but it's far from a constant 'deluge'. Some revivals do make sense as an alternative to starting a new thread. The others can be pretty easily avoided. They aren't frequent enough that they bury new content. Not by a long shot.
You can unsubscribe which helps.
For me its the lack of communication around tool/book implementation that gets to me.
We have had Tasha's for a year and there is still a fair amount in the book that does not work properly and the combat tracker has been pretty much abandoned.
Ok I think an understanding of how Web App development is important here. I work for a tech company in the dev team, we have 2 scrum teams (12 devs) and something like the Encounter Builder would be estimated at about 6 months to develop to a basic level, thats 12 sprints to anyone that does Agile. Now add in updating the site with all the new races and rules from various other sources, all of which requires Dev time, as well as the normal bug fixing etc. I don't know how many Devs DnD beyond has but I imagine it is 6 or fewer. So yes things take time to implement. I mean developing a whole new app on it's own takes significant dev effort, and more so depending if it is built natively (using Kotlin and Swift) or using a shared language like react native.
Then maybe focus on one thing at a time or pair down what you are working on so you can at least do one thing really good and not 12 things just ok?
You are talking about waterfall development vs the very key thing of an agile developmental system which allows you to work on multiple things, the focus is on getting small iterations out to stakeholders often, gaining feedback and then looping that back into the next iteration. If the team did what you suggested parts of the site would feel stale and old, instead the team focus on making small improvements across the whole site to ensure everyone is getting small improvements. The Combat tracker for instance is getting small updates probably on a monthly basis and recently I was asked to complete a survey giving feedback on how it had been implemented so far. If I was the Product Owner for DnD beyond I would run the roadmap in exactly the same way, small tickets, spanning the app making tiny improvements everywhere.
I've definitely noticed the number of posters has been going down; I've been assuming people are tired of how poorly moderated the forums are.
As someone who has moderated several other sites and live chats over the course of a couple of decades, I absolutely agree that the moderation here is beyond atrocious. If people are leaving due to the moderation, DDB has earned it.
If you think back to a year ago, you might realize that about 30% of the posts here were 1-2 extremely opinionated users arguing with everyone else. We had more quantity, but the quality was not great.
As for the state of the DDB product, it does feel to be lagging a bit. The excuse used to be that they needed to completely overhaul the code to deal with things like Class Feature Variants, but once that was done it would be easier to add new features moving forward. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case, and they've even stopped supporting UA which had a lot of value for the site (and for UA itself as it made playtesting much easier).
I admittedly don't know anything about their dev team or what else may be going on in the company, but I think it's safe to say that the site would benefit a lot from investing more in development. I think if the user base didn't already have so much invested here, they would be in trouble because their dev cycle is so sluggish lately. But we're not going to walk away after sinking hundreds of dollars into the books, so it is what it is I guess.
The platform is not losing members, the forum most likely is.
And it's not because of moderation nor problems with services, is just that, as some already point out, this is a forum on 2021.
Most social medias essentially replaced this medium. It's old school. The people that kept around (consistently) are those who have been here for a while or the ones who do not enjoy social media.
I am no developer but i also think that a lot of time goes into all the new books.
i would think WOTC gives DNDBEYOND a new book a month before the release or so.. probably in a PDF… which all have to be programmed into Beyonds system… that will cost a lot of tile and effort as well…
Most social medias essentially replaced this medium. It's old school. The people that kept around (consistently) are those who have been here for a while or the ones who do not enjoy social media.
I was surprised to see this forum was active as it was when I actually checked it out. The heyday of the internet for me was in the early to mid 00s when this style of bulletin board was the norm, but I find these days the forums I come across are faint echoes of their past selves.
Back then, it felt like you could both reach outside of your immediate geographical circle and like you could step into a small, localized space where you could actually get to know people as more than a name on a screen and a handful of comments. Maybe people still find that on the dominant platforms of the day, but to me they feel like worlds of Jell-o; it's fun for a bit, but after awhile I don't know how to create anything substantial after the rush of sugar and vibrant artificial colours wears off. It's likely more to do with me than the platforms themselves. Interesting things happen in these spaces; I just can't seem to navigate the signal in the noise.
I feel you. I think that the fact that today's platforms are build with a clear monetary goal (with a established business plan and devs focusing specifically on that), the features are more optimized to that than to the content itself - infinite scrolling just annoys me, but it's important to keep users a long time on the platform
I've definitely noticed the number of posters has been going down; I've been assuming people are tired of how poorly moderated the forums are.
As someone who has moderated several other sites and live chats over the course of a couple of decades, I absolutely agree that the moderation here is beyond atrocious. If people are leaving due to the moderation, DDB has earned it.
I believe the Moderation here is actually quite good, threads get closed when fighting/insulting starts up and thread necromancy does occur but if you don't like those skip over them as I and others do. I like that we are allowed a voice here, I know I do not want to be censored.
Some observations from the peanut gallery 1) most folks here seem to fall into a few categories - A: old line members of DDB and gaming B: old line gamers new/relatively new to DDB (me) C: newbies to both gaming and DDB Group A has already hashed out their positions on most topics and don’t have a lot to say except in response to questions from groups B & C. Group C has lots of questions but many have been covered in older threads so they end up doing a certain amount of necromancy as well as being the source for many new threads. Group B does some of the same as group C but they also have opinions on lots of topics and that leads to a certain amount of necromancy as we want to add our voice. 2) it’s been a year since Tasha and Fizban is right around the corner so I’m not really surprised the level of discussion has dropped off - we’ve hashed poor Tasha to death and haven’t seen Fizban except for teasers so we are all sitting around with not much to say. 3) with Covid semi under control a lot of us are back to in person gaming and our focus has shifted to in person interactions and away from online/ isolated interactions. Folks are going back to in person/in office work, commuting etc and that means less potential time for forums. 4) moderation isn’t a real problem, it’s there pretty much when it needs to be but isn’t oppressive. I’ve been spanked and probably will be again sometime for blunt speech or replies to off limits posts but it was done politely and equitable. 5) Necromancy is going to happen as I described above, sorry if group A hates it but it’s a part of life, and sometimes it’s useful. I realized yesterday that I was a part of a new necromantic revival of a thread that died back in feb. so I tried to close it down but offered the OP a chance to comment. Turns out they were back to needing info on the thread as they had had to take a detour for a while but were ready to get the thread revived. So at least sometimes necromancy is needed.
Then maybe focus on one thing at a time or pair down what you are working on so you can at least do one thing really good and not 12 things just ok?
I would argue this is exactly what has happened, and looking at the changelog for the past year it is the mobile app (and a lesser extent player tools) that is the focus now. The other tools have, for all appearances, been essentially abandoned. It appears (to me) the target consumer for DnDBeyond is the mobile using player. I get it, there is big money in mobile and players vastly outnumber DMs.
I would like to active development in the tools on the website that make DM'ing easier rather than enhancements in the mobile app. But that no longer appears to be the direction of the service.
If that is the case then it has had 0 impact on rollout....nothing has changed in the cadence of release. The app is bit more functional I guess but that still took a long time to accomplish.
I am no developer but i also think that a lot of time goes into all the new books.
i would think WOTC gives DNDBEYOND a new book a month before the release or so.. probably in a PDF… which all have to be programmed into Beyonds system… that will cost a lot of tile and effort as well…
At one point BadEye says they get the book in roughly the same time frame as everyone else....which surprised me. They get little to no warning of what will be in the final book for prep.
Seeing as how it took them so long to implement portions of the Eberron, Theros, and Tasha's book it seems they struggle with adaptability. If something changes the way a core class works (new fighting style for example) that throws everything off and they have a long wait time for implementation.
We are very close to 1 year post Tasha's and the Sorcerer subclasses still do not function correctly.
A lot of people say this is normal but I compare to HeroLab and how quickly they can turn content around in their system for new releases and frankly its not even close.
HeroLab just does a better job as they have 100% support a day or at worst a week after the product drops.
They focus on just making the sheet work...and you can pull it directly into Foundry for ease of use with no hassle. PF2e is also inherently more complicated than DnD 5e so its not a matter of complication.
And this is why I think dropping UA is somewhat of a big deal even for those who didn't use UA. That material is basically a preview of what's coming in the next few books, and building it out early means they only need to make a few tweaks when the real deal comes out. It's true that you can end up doing work on material that never sees the light of day, but for a case like Strixhaven WotC was very upfront about that UA not passing muster through the playtest. I would hope that they are still using UA to prep for book releases, but if not we could see increasing lag times between book releases and DDB support.
I am no developer but i also think that a lot of time goes into all the new books.
i would think WOTC gives DNDBEYOND a new book a month before the release or so.. probably in a PDF… which all have to be programmed into Beyonds system… that will cost a lot of tile and effort as well…
At one point BadEye says they get the book in roughly the same time frame as everyone else....which surprised me. They get little to no warning of what will be in the final book for prep.
Seeing as how it took them so long to implement portions of the Eberron, Theros, and Tasha's book it seems they struggle with adaptability. If something changes the way a core class works (new fighting style for example) that throws everything off and they have a long wait time for implementation.
We are very close to 1 year post Tasha's and the Sorcerer subclasses still do not function correctly.
A lot of people say this is normal but I compare to HeroLab and how quickly they can turn content around in their system for new releases and frankly its not even close.
HeroLab just does a better job as they have 100% support a day or at worst a week after the product drops.
They focus on just making the sheet work...and you can pull it directly into Foundry for ease of use with no hassle. PF2e is also inherently more complicated than DnD 5e so its not a matter of complication.
I am not surprised that WOTC don't give a company that is in no way linked to them early access to a book that they want to release in a big bang. I mean there is no possibility of leaks, or early news of the content beyond what Wizards have control of.
HeroLab from my understanding is a different kind of product although I have never used it myself, do they have all the subclasses, spells and rules programmed in with no direct intervention from the user needed?
I am no developer but i also think that a lot of time goes into all the new books.
i would think WOTC gives DNDBEYOND a new book a month before the release or so.. probably in a PDF… which all have to be programmed into Beyonds system… that will cost a lot of tile and effort as well…
At one point BadEye says they get the book in roughly the same time frame as everyone else....which surprised me. They get little to no warning of what will be in the final book for prep.
Seeing as how it took them so long to implement portions of the Eberron, Theros, and Tasha's book it seems they struggle with adaptability. If something changes the way a core class works (new fighting style for example) that throws everything off and they have a long wait time for implementation.
We are very close to 1 year post Tasha's and the Sorcerer subclasses still do not function correctly.
A lot of people say this is normal but I compare to HeroLab and how quickly they can turn content around in their system for new releases and frankly its not even close.
HeroLab just does a better job as they have 100% support a day or at worst a week after the product drops.
They focus on just making the sheet work...and you can pull it directly into Foundry for ease of use with no hassle. PF2e is also inherently more complicated than DnD 5e so its not a matter of complication.
I am not surprised that WOTC don't give a company that is in no way linked to them early access to a book that they want to release in a big bang. I mean there is no possibility of leaks, or early news of the content beyond what Wizards have control of.
HeroLab from my understanding is a different kind of product although I have never used it myself, do they have all the subclasses, spells and rules programmed in with no direct intervention from the user needed?
Yup it's all in there for you.
You can even activate "stances" for monks that automatically effect stats where needed.
For example I have a STR monk (something 5e can't do but that's an aside) and I have a Gorilla stance that gives me +2 to athletics checks to climb. It factors that in and adds +2 to my ath.
Also if I had a barbarian and was raging you could click a selection and my weapons would get rage damage, my AC would change, and any other feats would activate associated with Rage.
It's very nice and they get it done within a week of the book being out.
I am no developer but i also think that a lot of time goes into all the new books.
i would think WOTC gives DNDBEYOND a new book a month before the release or so.. probably in a PDF… which all have to be programmed into Beyonds system… that will cost a lot of tile and effort as well…
At one point BadEye says they get the book in roughly the same time frame as everyone else....which surprised me. They get little to no warning of what will be in the final book for prep.
Seeing as how it took them so long to implement portions of the Eberron, Theros, and Tasha's book it seems they struggle with adaptability. If something changes the way a core class works (new fighting style for example) that throws everything off and they have a long wait time for implementation.
We are very close to 1 year post Tasha's and the Sorcerer subclasses still do not function correctly.
A lot of people say this is normal but I compare to HeroLab and how quickly they can turn content around in their system for new releases and frankly its not even close.
HeroLab just does a better job as they have 100% support a day or at worst a week after the product drops.
They focus on just making the sheet work...and you can pull it directly into Foundry for ease of use with no hassle. PF2e is also inherently more complicated than DnD 5e so its not a matter of complication.
I am not surprised that WOTC don't give a company that is in no way linked to them early access to a book that they want to release in a big bang. I mean there is no possibility of leaks, or early news of the content beyond what Wizards have control of.
HeroLab from my understanding is a different kind of product although I have never used it myself, do they have all the subclasses, spells and rules programmed in with no direct intervention from the user needed?
Yup it's all in there for you.
You can even activate "stances" for monks that automatically effect stats where needed.
For example I have a STR monk (something 5e can't do but that's an aside) and I have a Gorilla stance that gives me +2 to athletics checks to climb. It factors that in and adds +2 to my ath.
Also if I had a barbarian and was raging you could click a selection and my weapons would get rage damage, my AC would change, and any other feats would activate associated with Rage.
It's very nice and they get it done within a week of the book being out.
That's correct. There's actually a current thread on Paizo's General Discussion forum about trying to give Foundry early reviewer access to new material, with a Paizo rep explaining why that's not as straightforward as it may sound, that gives a tiny bit of insight in how it's entirely a volunteer effort.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
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Then you only appeal to a narrow range of people. You'll appeal a lot to them, but you only get their subs once, so not much more profitable. Do a dozen different things? You'll appeal to a dozen times more people which gives you more money in subs. It makes good business sense.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
You are talking about waterfall development vs the very key thing of an agile developmental system which allows you to work on multiple things, the focus is on getting small iterations out to stakeholders often, gaining feedback and then looping that back into the next iteration. If the team did what you suggested parts of the site would feel stale and old, instead the team focus on making small improvements across the whole site to ensure everyone is getting small improvements. The Combat tracker for instance is getting small updates probably on a monthly basis and recently I was asked to complete a survey giving feedback on how it had been implemented so far. If I was the Product Owner for DnD beyond I would run the roadmap in exactly the same way, small tickets, spanning the app making tiny improvements everywhere.
As someone who has moderated several other sites and live chats over the course of a couple of decades, I absolutely agree that the moderation here is beyond atrocious. If people are leaving due to the moderation, DDB has earned it.
If you think back to a year ago, you might realize that about 30% of the posts here were 1-2 extremely opinionated users arguing with everyone else. We had more quantity, but the quality was not great.
As for the state of the DDB product, it does feel to be lagging a bit. The excuse used to be that they needed to completely overhaul the code to deal with things like Class Feature Variants, but once that was done it would be easier to add new features moving forward. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case, and they've even stopped supporting UA which had a lot of value for the site (and for UA itself as it made playtesting much easier).
I admittedly don't know anything about their dev team or what else may be going on in the company, but I think it's safe to say that the site would benefit a lot from investing more in development. I think if the user base didn't already have so much invested here, they would be in trouble because their dev cycle is so sluggish lately. But we're not going to walk away after sinking hundreds of dollars into the books, so it is what it is I guess.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
The platform is not losing members, the forum most likely is.
And it's not because of moderation nor problems with services, is just that, as some already point out, this is a forum on 2021.
Most social medias essentially replaced this medium. It's old school. The people that kept around (consistently) are those who have been here for a while or the ones who do not enjoy social media.
I am no developer but i also think that a lot of time goes into all the new books.
i would think WOTC gives DNDBEYOND a new book a month before the release or so.. probably in a PDF… which all have to be programmed into Beyonds system… that will cost a lot of tile and effort as well…
I feel you. I think that the fact that today's platforms are build with a clear monetary goal (with a established business plan and devs focusing specifically on that), the features are more optimized to that than to the content itself - infinite scrolling just annoys me, but it's important to keep users a long time on the platform
I believe the Moderation here is actually quite good, threads get closed when fighting/insulting starts up and thread necromancy does occur but if you don't like those skip over them as I and others do. I like that we are allowed a voice here, I know I do not want to be censored.
Some observations from the peanut gallery
1) most folks here seem to fall into a few categories - A: old line members of DDB and gaming B: old line gamers new/relatively new to DDB (me) C: newbies to both gaming and DDB
Group A has already hashed out their positions on most topics and don’t have a lot to say except in response to questions from groups B & C. Group C has lots of questions but many have been covered in older threads so they end up doing a certain amount of necromancy as well as being the source for many new threads. Group B does some of the same as group C but they also have opinions on lots of topics and that leads to a certain amount of necromancy as we want to add our voice.
2) it’s been a year since Tasha and Fizban is right around the corner so I’m not really surprised the level of discussion has dropped off - we’ve hashed poor Tasha to death and haven’t seen Fizban except for teasers so we are all sitting around with not much to say.
3) with Covid semi under control a lot of us are back to in person gaming and our focus has shifted to in person interactions and away from online/ isolated interactions. Folks are going back to in person/in office work, commuting etc and that means less potential time for forums.
4) moderation isn’t a real problem, it’s there pretty much when it needs to be but isn’t oppressive. I’ve been spanked and probably will be again sometime for blunt speech or replies to off limits posts but it was done politely and equitable.
5) Necromancy is going to happen as I described above, sorry if group A hates it but it’s a part of life, and sometimes it’s useful. I realized yesterday that I was a part of a new necromantic revival of a thread that died back in feb. so I tried to close it down but offered the OP a chance to comment. Turns out they were back to needing info on the thread as they had had to take a detour for a while but were ready to get the thread revived. So at least sometimes necromancy is needed.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
If that is the case then it has had 0 impact on rollout....nothing has changed in the cadence of release. The app is bit more functional I guess but that still took a long time to accomplish.
At one point BadEye says they get the book in roughly the same time frame as everyone else....which surprised me. They get little to no warning of what will be in the final book for prep.
Seeing as how it took them so long to implement portions of the Eberron, Theros, and Tasha's book it seems they struggle with adaptability. If something changes the way a core class works (new fighting style for example) that throws everything off and they have a long wait time for implementation.
We are very close to 1 year post Tasha's and the Sorcerer subclasses still do not function correctly.
A lot of people say this is normal but I compare to HeroLab and how quickly they can turn content around in their system for new releases and frankly its not even close.
HeroLab just does a better job as they have 100% support a day or at worst a week after the product drops.
They focus on just making the sheet work...and you can pull it directly into Foundry for ease of use with no hassle. PF2e is also inherently more complicated than DnD 5e so its not a matter of complication.
And this is why I think dropping UA is somewhat of a big deal even for those who didn't use UA. That material is basically a preview of what's coming in the next few books, and building it out early means they only need to make a few tweaks when the real deal comes out. It's true that you can end up doing work on material that never sees the light of day, but for a case like Strixhaven WotC was very upfront about that UA not passing muster through the playtest. I would hope that they are still using UA to prep for book releases, but if not we could see increasing lag times between book releases and DDB support.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I am not surprised that WOTC don't give a company that is in no way linked to them early access to a book that they want to release in a big bang. I mean there is no possibility of leaks, or early news of the content beyond what Wizards have control of.
HeroLab from my understanding is a different kind of product although I have never used it myself, do they have all the subclasses, spells and rules programmed in with no direct intervention from the user needed?
Yup it's all in there for you.
You can even activate "stances" for monks that automatically effect stats where needed.
For example I have a STR monk (something 5e can't do but that's an aside) and I have a Gorilla stance that gives me +2 to athletics checks to climb. It factors that in and adds +2 to my ath.
Also if I had a barbarian and was raging you could click a selection and my weapons would get rage damage, my AC would change, and any other feats would activate associated with Rage.
It's very nice and they get it done within a week of the book being out.
So it is a pathfinder assistant not DnD 5e then?
That's correct. There's actually a current thread on Paizo's General Discussion forum about trying to give Foundry early reviewer access to new material, with a Paizo rep explaining why that's not as straightforward as it may sound, that gives a tiny bit of insight in how it's entirely a volunteer effort.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].