Well, there may be a major difference between active posters in the Forums and active users of the actual product. You shouldn't confuse those two things.
That said, participation in forums is sort of declining anyway as things like Discord or Reddit or any other social media system surges in popularity. But things seem about as they ever were around here, so it is hard to say if things are much different.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
I think a lot of people still use the site and it is only growing… but not everyone discusses D&D daily or has a necessity for a community.
When i look at my table, 5 people, all have an account for sheets, books and all… but i am the only one active on the forums… but i also check reddit and the likes..
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.
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.
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.
I mean there is a weekly Q&A where they have laid out the road map for the year..... plu there HAVE been updated to the tracker recently but okay.
Seconding my campaign has created 4 new members of D&D Beyond, none of whom use the forum, but do use the site at least weekly.
It could very well be that the forum is less active than a year ago. Folks were a lot more confined and/or hunkered down than they were this time last year. So I wouldn't be that surprised.
I think some, not all, of the more bellicose voices may have moved on or maybe they're taking a break.
As someone who in real life used to map and sometimes game social/interactive networks/communities as part of an old job and now guide investment toward establishing and supporting detoxified virtual spaces communities, I'd put DDB efforts at fostering community somewhere below fair to middling ... it's sort of strange since "community" seems to be treated as ancillary in terms of evident resources spent on it, yet simultaneously DDB seems to rely on said spaces in place of more robust in house product support at the customer service and product documentation level. But that I often feel is more an "industry standard" than a specific flaw of DDB. One might assume an entity under Fandom's umbrella would know better; but I don't know how much Fandom's broader standards inform the administration of DDB community despite expressed curiosity.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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.
I mean there is a weekly Q&A where they have laid out the road map for the year..... plu there HAVE been updated to the tracker recently but okay.
Cool does that actually show any work on the projects I mentioned or "We are working on it?"
I seriously cannot think of another software based service that has been given such a pass from its community like Beyond has...if someone didn't update a new game every month or so it would die on Steam and get the fanbase angry.
But for some reason we can get 8 months of nothing for updates on a book and that's fine? Its just a weird circumstance I don't even have another example for. The only reason things like this happen is lack of competition I think...if there was pressure to outperform another platform then it would happen faster but being the only "Official" site makes that not an issue so things can take that long and we really have no choice but to keep using the service we already poured money into.
They changed the rules so that necromancy so it's not a punishable infraction. I'm not sure why it's a problem though, while sometimes it can be really random (probably they found it via a Google and didn't realise that it was 5 years old), it doesn't really affect much. It's frequent, but it's notndrowning out the active discussions.
I find the mods are pretty active here. There have been quite a few instances where someone crossed the line and the mods always dealt with it very quickly, an hour or so. I don't think poor moderation is a factor.
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.
I think the moderation of the forum has improved significantly of late but it feels like closing the barn door after the horse has already left.
I too love the Combat Tracker.... but it's honestly far from finished (still waiting on trackable Spell Slots / Abilities)
On topic, I don't know about fewer members - DnD is only growing, it just might be that as restrictions from Covid ease (country dependant), there's the possibility that people are spending less time hanging around online and in forums.
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#Open D&D
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
I think it is just that there is not anything noteworthy to talk about lately, so the more active forumites have not felt the need to say anything. There is not much discussions that piqued my interest the past few days, so I have not said anything.
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.
I too love the Combat Tracker.... but it's honestly far from finished (still waiting on trackable Spell Slots / Abilities)
On topic, I don't know about fewer members - DnD is only growing, it just might be that as restrictions from Covid ease (country dependant), there's the possibility that people are spending less time hanging around online and in forums.
It is still in Beta and while it may seem that features are coming slowly understand there is only so much bandwidth in a dev team to deliver new features. Also I imagine DnD beyond has ways of tracking how many people are using it vs other features which then feeds into there ROI (return on investment) calculations when prioritising work.
They changed the rules so that necromancy so it's not a punishable infraction. I'm not sure why it's a problem though, while sometimes it can be really random (probably they found it via a Google and didn't realise that it was 5 years old), it doesn't really affect much. It's frequent, but it's notndrowning out the active discussions.
I find the mods are pretty active here. There have been quite a few instances where someone crossed the line and the mods always dealt with it very quickly, an hour or so. I don't think poor moderation is a factor.
I am torn on this, part of me thinks that posts should have the ability of being "closed" to further comment if they are x months old, but there is also a part of me that knows that sometimes the same questions come up over and over on the forums and resurrecting an old post and all the answers can be useful to people looking for answers to a question. Maybe an improvement would be closing a forum post but then when typing out a question have an auto search happen to find similar questions that have been asked before. The Stack exchange do this and while it can be hit and miss as to the relevance of the matching questions I have sometimes found a question I was about to ask has already been answered.
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?
Also I imagine DnD beyond has ways of tracking how many people are using it vs other features which then feeds into there ROI (return on investment) calculations when prioritising work.
That's kind of circular though, since I don't really want to use it as long as it doesn't have any advantage over simply using scrips of paper.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
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 everybody who thinks one of the other 11 things should be the priority is even more upset than people are now
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
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Am I wrong or are there a lot fewer people on DND beyond than there was a year ago?
Well, there may be a major difference between active posters in the Forums and active users of the actual product. You shouldn't confuse those two things.
That said, participation in forums is sort of declining anyway as things like Discord or Reddit or any other social media system surges in popularity. But things seem about as they ever were around here, so it is hard to say if things are much different.
I think a lot of people still use the site and it is only growing… but not everyone discusses D&D daily or has a necessity for a community.
When i look at my table, 5 people, all have an account for sheets, books and all… but i am the only one active on the forums… but i also check reddit and the likes..
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.
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.
I mean there is a weekly Q&A where they have laid out the road map for the year..... plu there HAVE been updated to the tracker recently but okay.
Seconding my campaign has created 4 new members of D&D Beyond, none of whom use the forum, but do use the site at least weekly.
It could very well be that the forum is less active than a year ago. Folks were a lot more confined and/or hunkered down than they were this time last year. So I wouldn't be that surprised.
I think some, not all, of the more bellicose voices may have moved on or maybe they're taking a break.
As someone who in real life used to map and sometimes game social/interactive networks/communities as part of an old job and now guide investment toward establishing and supporting detoxified virtual spaces communities, I'd put DDB efforts at fostering community somewhere below fair to middling ... it's sort of strange since "community" seems to be treated as ancillary in terms of evident resources spent on it, yet simultaneously DDB seems to rely on said spaces in place of more robust in house product support at the customer service and product documentation level. But that I often feel is more an "industry standard" than a specific flaw of DDB. One might assume an entity under Fandom's umbrella would know better; but I don't know how much Fandom's broader standards inform the administration of DDB community despite expressed curiosity.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Cool does that actually show any work on the projects I mentioned or "We are working on it?"
I seriously cannot think of another software based service that has been given such a pass from its community like Beyond has...if someone didn't update a new game every month or so it would die on Steam and get the fanbase angry.
But for some reason we can get 8 months of nothing for updates on a book and that's fine? Its just a weird circumstance I don't even have another example for. The only reason things like this happen is lack of competition I think...if there was pressure to outperform another platform then it would happen faster but being the only "Official" site makes that not an issue so things can take that long and we really have no choice but to keep using the service we already poured money into.
They changed the rules so that necromancy so it's not a punishable infraction. I'm not sure why it's a problem though, while sometimes it can be really random (probably they found it via a Google and didn't realise that it was 5 years old), it doesn't really affect much. It's frequent, but it's notndrowning out the active discussions.
I find the mods are pretty active here. There have been quite a few instances where someone crossed the line and the mods always dealt with it very quickly, an hour or so. I don't think poor moderation is a factor.
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 think the moderation of the forum has improved significantly of late but it feels like closing the barn door after the horse has already left.
I love the combat tracker! And I’ve noticed that it is being updated regularly. I like the improvements.
Professional computer geek
It's not lol ...
They literally had a video addressing it and it's been in alpha for over a year.
I too love the Combat Tracker.... but it's honestly far from finished (still waiting on trackable Spell Slots / Abilities)
On topic, I don't know about fewer members - DnD is only growing, it just might be that as restrictions from Covid ease (country dependant), there's the possibility that people are spending less time hanging around online and in forums.
#Open D&D
Have the Physical Books? Confused as to why you're not allowed to redeem them for free on D&D Beyond? Questions answered here at the Hardcover Books, D&D Beyond and You FAQ
Looking to add mouse-over triggered tooltips to such things like magic items, monsters or combat actions? Then dash over to the How to Add Tooltips thread.
I think it is just that there is not anything noteworthy to talk about lately, so the more active forumites have not felt the need to say anything. There is not much discussions that piqued my interest the past few days, so I have not said anything.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
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.
It is still in Beta and while it may seem that features are coming slowly understand there is only so much bandwidth in a dev team to deliver new features. Also I imagine DnD beyond has ways of tracking how many people are using it vs other features which then feeds into there ROI (return on investment) calculations when prioritising work.
I am torn on this, part of me thinks that posts should have the ability of being "closed" to further comment if they are x months old, but there is also a part of me that knows that sometimes the same questions come up over and over on the forums and resurrecting an old post and all the answers can be useful to people looking for answers to a question. Maybe an improvement would be closing a forum post but then when typing out a question have an auto search happen to find similar questions that have been asked before. The Stack exchange do this and while it can be hit and miss as to the relevance of the matching questions I have sometimes found a question I was about to ask has already been answered.
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?
That's kind of circular though, since I don't really want to use it as long as it doesn't have any advantage over simply using scrips of paper.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Then everybody who thinks one of the other 11 things should be the priority is even more upset than people are now
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)