Okay, you know what, I'm bowing out now. Again, I'm not panicking or saying other people should panic; all I'm saying is, there'd be less people worried if DDB as a business had been more robust in providing relevent information.
I apologize if I have offended you, that was not my intention. As I stated in my last post, I had attributed what I perceived as a lack of transparency to occupational and/or nondisclosure obligations. Having worked in corporate environments, I find it very easy to believe “the home office” having made what appear to be utterly bass-ackworda decisions for no apparent reason, and then forcing those decisions on their VPs. Perhaps I have painted them with a brush stained from experiences with other corporations.
Perhaps what I had perceived as a lack of transparency was instead something else. Perhaps you were not fully aware of people’s frustration over not knowing why things developed slower than users’ expectations. Or maybe that level of frustration was miscalculated, or maybe you just underestimated how big of an impact your words would have on those discussions. Perhaps everyone was so busy actually doing the things that finding time to explain what all was going on. Maybe it was simply a matter of timing. Or maybe you were trying to avoid any appearance of self aggrandizement and/or asking for a break. Maybe I had simply misinterpreted humility as opacity. Heck, maybe it was the hand of fate stepping in because it wasn’t the right time until a couple of Forum Loudmouths would come along... I mean, I’ve written worse DEMs than that for campaigns. (Considering how the world has been developing over the last several years, I’m starting to wonder if the Myans weren’t onto something after all. 🤔 So why not accept the possibility of fate or divine intervention?) For all I know, maybe you were just unsure how to explain it in a way that wouldn’t make the task seem undoable, and were trying to find the right wast to break the ice, after all the fear of rejection leads to more people being single than actual rejection does.
I could keep listening plausible explanations for my misinterpretation until the automatic spam filter kicks in from the character count. Whatever the reasons, my point is that what I had perceived as forced opacity was a general confusion as to why the information you shared in that other thread was not already more widely known. it lends a sense of scale to the genuinely impressive job of work your Dev team has done untying their proverbial Gordon knot, especially without a sword.* It doesn’t matter how irate someone may be about their perceptions about the pace of development on DDB, once I share the condensed version of what I am assuming was an abridged explanation of a larger struggle your team had been facing, their ire quickly fades and some folks even occasionally share a kind word for your team. I can practically perceive their mental paradigms shift over the airwaves. It’s like they suddenly came to the realization that it wasn’t some lady named Ruth who had signed their stepdad’s baseball. Heck, as one of those formerly irate users, I can personally attest to how genuinely nice it was to learn the answer to the most common question in the world: “Why?” As soon as I had a better understanding of the situation, I did a 180 from being a fairly vocal detracted myself to generally lining up to be one of the first people to answer that question for anyone who asked thereafter. As they say, “knowing is half the battle.”
*
Compared to how it might have gone, folks barely noticed the lights flicker during the framework update, and I think separating the the content from the creator was so smooth many users probably are still unaware that it happened at all. 👍Since then the rate of patch and update releases has exceeded my expectations based on before.
Between the Feedback and B&S you have two forums that I guesstimate at roughly 3 parts people who just misunderstood something or who posted in the wrong forum, 2 parts folks repeating the same issues as one another, and 1 part genuinely new new/newly relevant. At least half of those folks were all some variation of “why?” Considering that the Internet’s default setting is 3 seconds to pitchforks and torches, when I learned that you had the key to the Magic Cupboard to enlighten in your back pocket the whole time, and hadn’t unleashed the kraken information prior, the only logical explanation was that decision was intentional, and the only reason I could imagine was not that you wouldn’t, but that you couldn’t. Like you were under a geas, or one of the Muggle-Magic equivalents like someone you were answerable to had said not to disclose.
Whatever series of unfortunate events culminated in the the timing of that situation, please don’t et it create an illusion of opacity. The comunity should know that you personally went to WotC and fought for our right to Homebrew for a year and a half, and have continued fighting to expand those rights into things such as HomebrewIng basic equipment. You got that for us, and since Homebrew is kinda my thing, I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for all you have done for us. And next time some writers or corporate suits try to insist on tell your team of web developers how to build software, hopefully it won’t result in all of the additional work you and your team have had to do to make it more like the system you had originally planned. (This is me saying that I think you were right, and that your original idea as you described it would have been better before those meddling kids and their dog corpo execs and their writers interfered.) I’m sure the comunity would have been better served by something more like you had initially conceived it, and I’m also sure you and the Devs would have had an easier time of things for the last couple of years too.
I specifically included some of those details in part so so that you would know that I learned those facts and how much i appreciate everything you have done for us, as well as having some notion of what the Devs have been dealing with. The other reason is because everyone should be aware of what you have personally done for us too, and how much thanks we all owe to the Devs for the job the do. if my suspicions about contract negotiations are even in the ballpark of correct, they should have matched the other offer, and it’s Fandom’s loss. If you apply that same level of insight, dedication, and tenacity to your next endeavor, it will also likely succeed in spite of any potential barriers, just like DDB has. Let’s just hope this wasn’t a Concentration Effect on your part or that if it is they can find someone as Proficient as yourself to take up the task of maintaining it.
I genuinely wish you and the others the best of fortunes on the roads ahead. And I apologize for being a general pain in the neck at times, I mean that. If it helps, much of that neck pain I may hav caused was my reacting to what I saw as comunity issues, and rarely if ever personal ones. The DDB comunity had you to fight for us in regards to issues stemming from WotC’s side of things. Whenever I have been at my prickliest ‘round these parts, I was usually reacting to something I registered as a company-customer interaction issue. Like the thing with not recieving any notifications that one time one of the Mods/Staff had done a cleanup of the spell list, or raising awareness of users who hadn’t yet received resolution about entitlements that ultimately took meet hours to address once a Staffer was able to get an answer, but the verbiage in the message they received was perceived as unclear and the tone of the statements was perceived as formulaic which had made them feel unheard. Considering part of my job is to help future medical doctors to recognize potential disconnects between what they say and how, and understand why those things were perceived as they were, I tend to notice those things. But here I’m not an employee, I’m a paying customer, so I am not obliged to find neutral ways to convey such things, that luxury is part of what my $65/year purchases IMO.
Anyway, I hope I have in some way clarified why I had perceived things the ways I had. I also hope I have conveyed how much I genuinely value DDB. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t keep choosing to spend my money here. In fact, I value DDB to the point where I only spend my hobby budget on D&D exclusively here. I’m an East Coaster, we may not always be nice, but we are generally kind. I may be an obnoxious laudmouth on a semi regular basis, but I do support your work here, and endeavor to try to always net more good than harm in the comunity. And again, I meant no disrespect, and offer my sincerest apologies for having offended you.
Sincerely and best Regards, Sposta
PS- One does kinda gotta admit that phrases like “the have offers ahead that they couldn’t pass up and we wish them the best” are frequently corpo speak proxy/euphemisms for “they got another offer and/or asked for raises and we are either unwilling or unable to oblige their request. Hopefully one can understand then why it seems the way it does from the outside looking in upon the situation. Especially with such little news, and particularly since half that information seems to directly contradict the other half. (Yea, I recognize that you each made individual statements, but since you all said the same thing it ends up getting processed as a single pice of that info pie.
In my experience, whenever people don’t understand something we always fall back on the oldest question in the world. A question so ingrained into human nature that it is the first question almost every child ever born has asked since the dawn of language, and the question most people are statistically likely to ask more than any other over the course of a lifetime: “Why?” Telling people to not ask why is like telling the tides not to flow, or fire to not burn. The day people stop asking why will be the day the last human dies.
I mean, to be fair, DDB as an entity could have handled this a bit better...
Well, as long as we're being fair - this community could have handled this a bit better too.
The comunity reacted in much the same way investors react to a sudden shift in a company they have invested in, and for the same reasons. News suddenly came out that affected people’s perceptions about the potential loss of value in their investments here, and they wanted assurances that they weren’t wrong to trust DDB with our money.
I have spent $325.59 (USD) at this digital bookstore, despite the fact that I am receiving no actual physical products or services. I did that because I perceived a commensurate value in the products and services I was receiving for that investment. That much money may or may not seem like a significant amount to some folks, but to offer some perspective, for me that much money roughly represents 2/3 of a month’s mortgage payment on my house, a one month supply of essential food stores for my household, or one month’s payment on my wife’s car. For me, that was a significant investment for what is a nonessential entertainment hobby that I chose to make instead of using that money to pay for things I consider to be much more essential, such as having a roof over my head, food to eat, or a tool that is essential to my family’s ability to continue paying for those things.
Every dollar I spend with DDB is a personal endorsement of this company based solely on a perception I have as to the cost:value ratio. That perception was formed at least in part on the faith i placed in DDB’s sales and customer service persons who’s jobs it was to convince me that . Oh look, every one of those people quit on the same day, and the company line was a variation on “everything is fine, nothing to see here, move along.”
I spent over a decade paying my bills as a commissioned salesperson by developing that same type of trust in my customers, only cars and houses cost more than D&D. As the saying goes, “I ain’t no rube.” I don’t choose to trust the word of a salesperson lightly, and am even less likely to trust anything a salesperson tells me when they’re not in handshake range so I can size them up properly and find out if my spider sense horse poi detector starts tingling. Despite all of those cards being stacked against DDB, which imposed Disadvantage on their Persuasion Checks to convincing me to sign on the line, I decided to spend my money here. I made that decision because I have determined that Adam Bradford is an honest person, because I trusted OboeLauren to treat me fairly and with respect, even when I’m a pain in the neck, and because I trusted DDB to fill their other staffing positions with people of equal character.
Now, the honest salesperson I trusted, the equitable comunity organizer I trusted, and a couple of other folks that I have had little to no interactions with have all announced they are leaving the company at the same time. And my trust in the company was based on my trust in them. (I write this with absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever, If StormKnight had also left DDB, then the remaining staff would all have to re-earn my trust from scratch. And since it’s way harder to regain trust that has been lost than it is to earn trust in the first place, the DC would have been much higher the second time round in addition to their disadvantages on that check. I certainly hope for DDB’s sake that when the day comes that Stormknight receives an offer, that they choose to pony up to keep her, and that between now and then that the other staffers will have sufficient opportunity to replace the “trust by association” that I placed in them with reasons for me to trust them as well. Because without such an opportunity, it’s just another company trying to convince me to give them my money when I can’t even look them in the eyes and shake their hands.
The comunity reacted in much the same way investors react to a sudden shift in a company they have invested in, and for the same reasons. News suddenly came out that affected people’s perceptions about the potential loss of value in their investments here, and they wanted assurances that they weren’t wrong to trust DDB with our money.
I don't have any issues with wanting reassurances. My issue is with insinuations and outright claims that a handful of people leaving a company at the same time is always a sign of something being wrong with the company (never mind insinuations DDB is going to fold because of whatever it is that's wrong). People can certainly have concerns and they are absolutely allowed to voice those concerns, but these doomsdag allegations take it a bit further than that.
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Man oh man, I hope I'm not partially responsible for setting off this fire storm from my post early in this thread saying I was concerned about whether this signaled issues at DDB. If so, I am deeply sorry. I took Stormknight and OboeLauren at their word in their responses, but I feel bad if people are still struggling or worrying about deeper meanings here. Like many others here I'm sure, I love (love, love!) DDB, and while yes I've put a lot of money in I'd hate to lose, I'm much more connected to the truly amazing toolset that has been developed here. Pardon the pun, but it is truly a game changer (so literally and figuratively I guess).
I am sad to see Todd, Lauren, James and Adam leaving for sure, but given the fanaticism so many of us around the world have for this game, I am confident that DDB will continue to find passionate, committed people to keep carrying the torch.
The comunity reacted in much the same way investors react to a sudden shift in a company they have invested in, and for the same reasons. News suddenly came out that affected people’s perceptions about the potential loss of value in their investments here, and they wanted assurances that they weren’t wrong to trust DDB with our money.
I don't have any issues with wanting reassurances. My issue is with insinuations and outright claims that a handful of people leaving a company at the same time is always a sign of something being wrong with the company (never mind insinuations DDB is going to fold because of whatever it is that's wrong). People can certainly have concerns and they are absolutely allowed to voice those concerns, but these doomsdag allegations take it a bit further than that.
I dunno, maybe you haven’t heard, but the entire global economy only functions because people believe that it does. Everyone has made an unspoken agreement to believe that money has value, so it does. When people lose faith in the value of a nation’s currency, that currency ceases to have value. (That happened to Russia not too long ago.It happened to the USA less than a century ago.) When enough people all agreed to belong the value of a currency not backed by any government, they successfully created independent currency. (Bitcoin only exists through the power of shared belief.) If entire national economies can rise and fall based on pleople’s faith (or lack thereof) in a system of agreeable fiction, what makes you think it cannot happen to a single company player hat serves a niche market with a limited supply of customers and active competitors?
I dunno, maybe you haven’t heard, but the entire global economy only functions because people believe that it does. Everyone has made an unspoken agreement to believe that money has value, so it does. When people lose faith in the value of a nation’s currency, that currency ceases to have value. (That happened to Russia not too long ago.It happened to the USA less than a century ago.) When enough people all agreed to belong the value of a currency not backed by any government, they successfully created independent currency. (Bitcoin only exists through the power of shared belief.) If entire national economies can rise and fall based on pleople’s faith (or lack thereof) in a system of agreeable fiction, what makes you think it cannot happen to a single company player hat serves a niche market with a limited supply of customers and active competitors?
It's not a matter of what can be, it's a matter of what should be.
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I really don't mean to insult anyone here, especially not the authors, but let's be honest - there are many blogs and YT channels do that much better job when it comes to creating interesting and useful articles and videos than DDB does. Part of the reason is that they are usually more specialized - everyone can find a blog or YT channel that suits their tastes - and that makes DDB less interesting as it is forced to cater to literally everyone. Which usually means that very casual players and new DMs find articles here most useful, while everyone else not really, unless they are very slow learners and after years of playing need to read articles about how to DM or introduce character relationships.
Which is fine, BTW, but I don't need any of that. I would be worried if the whole dev team was to jump ships, but as long as content is rolled out at its regular pace and by that I mean books and VTT features, then I'm satisifed. Roll20, VTTs and other online services don't really have a public face and they are doing great. So I hope that DDBeyond will turn into dedicated D&D VTT service sooner than later (game log is fantastic feature, keep it up!), because pandemic only accelerated the need and development of such services, which are the future of roleplaying games.
Without hestitation I would trade that over articles and videos that are posted here.
Yeah honestly if they can use that space in the salary to hire on some more devs then I would say its something for them to think about.
I honestly never watched/read the material myself but if that marketing survey they sent out showed that not many users valued the addition of the articles and such then it would likely be better to spend that money else where. I hope its on development of some of the features as I really would like to see the combat tracker updated....its been a very long time since its had any attention.
Just to chip in here. Should some changes (e.g. the departure of James) stem from the fact that poll results indicated his work is no longer needed, this is sad for him as an individual but probably good for the site as a whole (resources can be funneled elsewhere). I liked his craftsmanship in the articles yet found the content often questionable to sometimes objectionable (e.g. plot spoilers for newly released campaigns).
When it comes to the others leaving... I do agree that this could have been handled a bit better. While I understand that there was a posting on twitter, a simple news post with a few kind words and a heads up on e.g. who will replace or how the restructure is planned, and everyone would have been less scared. Keep in mind that when you have several communication channels, you need to make sure you fire a proper spread. Main site first, then other channels, imho.
Like stated often, and much more elaborate than I can, some of us have invested a pretty penny in this site and would really really hate to see all of it go to crap just after they have convinced their significant others that a legendary bundle is indeed the thing to go for! :)
It's not a matter of what can be, it's a matter of what should be.
Ah, but you see, in all of human history that has never once been true.
Out of curiosity, are you aware of my screen name’s origin? Another and at of saying “what should be,” is often “what is supposed to be.” Only, around where I love, we have have a fairly recognizable regional accent. Perhaps most famously we are known to pronounce “water” as “wooder,” and if you’ve ever drank our local “punch,” you know why..Well, we also speak rather quickly and the end of one word and the beginning of the next frequently blend together, likely due to the heavy Italian influence in the region.
Every day, thousands of things that are “supposed to happen” don’t. Thousands of things that are never supposed to happen happen to good people every day. People have been killing each other because of arguments over what is or isn’t “sposta” happen. The very concept of “sposta” has claimed a higher body count on humanity than natural causes. In the time it took me to type this response, probably no fewer than 3 people have been killed over what one person or another decided was or wasn’t sposta be happening.
Governments, religions, and ethnic groups are all actively trying to remove each other from this world on a constant basis over disagreements about that he very notion of sposta, always have, and likely always will.
Ultimately, debating a concept like what is/isn’t sposta happen is irrelevant, futile, and often dangerous.
“Sposta” is, IMO, and he single most dangerous concept humanity has ever discovered. 😙
What is relevant is this:
Something happened that caused some folks to question the value of a company.
If enough people start to question the value of something, it starts to lose value.
If enough value is lost, people who are completely unaware of the initial incident will start to notice that decrease in value, and will also start to question said value.
The more people question that value, the lower the value goes.
The lower the value goes, the more people will notice it.
The whole cycle can form a feedback loop that inevitably leads to that initial perception of a loss in value becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. There doesn’t actually even need to be any initial decrease in actual intrinsic value, merely a strong enough perception of an otherwise nonexistent decrease in value can sometimes be enough to spark that cycle. The cycle also works going the other way too.which sometimes leads to an artificial inflation of value. And when a perceived value of something is generally on par with some level of supposed intrinsic value, things are considered as stable and sustainable. When a value gets artificially inflated by perceptions it creates a “market bubble,” and when enough people start to notice that happening, perceived values suddenly plummet to below intrinsic value and markets fail.
The international markets (stocks, bonds, commodities, currency, etc.) are all entirely dependent on people placing bets on people trying to predict what future perceptions will be, and how those perceptions will impact value. And then everybody plays the worlds biggest game of chicken with their money because the trick is to buy when perceptions have lowered values, keeping those investments until perceptions have raised values, staying icycool until the last possible second, and then pulling the cord before things go back down. Side bets get places so people can hedge in case they predict wrong. It’s a rather convoluted masterpiece of metaphorical plates all kept spinning all around the world. It’s rather pretty if one can step back and see it from a distance. (Like impressionist art, only with math instead or light.)
I mentioned folks were spooked and talking about holding onto their ducats until they felt more confident that their perceived value for their investment was likely to be matched by what stands-in for “intrinsic value” when its all based on nothing more than an ephemeral string of 1s and 0s. The reason I did that was because I noticed the plate here start to wobble a bit because a few folks had noticed a thing that made them question the value of something. Those questions were affecting their purchasing decisions. Those purchasing decisions could have possibly lead to a dip in earnings this quarter. A dip in earnings could have possibly cost the artist some folks, which may have made them start to question things, etc., etc. Now, a little dip after a corporate shakeup is to be expected. But if that starts to stretch into the next quarter....
And what spreads uncertainty faster than an accelerant spreads fire? When people start asking “why, why, why,” and the only answers the receive are some variation on “everything is fine, nothing to see here folks.” When someone in charge of something says that, often enough it means the exact opposite is true. (Like when the doctor says something like “you might feel a bit of a pinch,” or my personal favorite “just try to relax,” and you know the next several seconds are going to be less than pleasant.)
So, the reason I mentioned something was so someone in charge of something could flip the record from “nothing to see here” and start playing the B side. Because, unless the B side is a DDB cover of “just try to relax,” it has to have a better tune than what is currently on. Ne? Perhaps something with an upbeat toon that folks can dance to. Now, DDB has both kinds of music, country and western products and services. But they can’t write a new tune in the products line, at least not one that can help. Dice skins would just seem like a bad magician trying to distract a crowd with the worlds worst assistant. (You, know, the one with the terrible smokers’ cough so you can tell they’re just behind the curtain.) And the cant release a new book. And WotC just dropped a nut recently, so they won’t be coming out with another hit single this week to razzledazzle us. So that just leaves the other genre, services. If they announced that the increase to the content sharing limit was being made permanent, or that they were introducing a new mid-tier subscription package or something, anything that would get folks dancing again.
Yes, I did all of that, frankly the only thing I could do, just to protect my $325.59..... And, you know, everyone else’s investments too. Because, as I said, I do genuinely care about this comunity. Remember, us East-coasters are kind, not nice. Well cuss you out for not avoiding the pothole while we help you change your tire. Or in this case, a more apt metaphor might be that well let someone know that the record is skipping and needs to be flipped before people leave the dance floor, and we’ll tell them precisely why they shoulda known better than to play that record because it skipped for over 10 months the last time it was on.
So come on Mr. DJ, the record’s skipping, let’s change the tune to something a little upbeat in the hopes that it’ll be better than the Gregorian Chant of “Why, why, why....” Wadaya say, one last time for the crowd before you head out to your next gig. Yeah?
Wow, this place got toxic... at first i too was a little worried that one day i'll lose access to my content, but then I realize that it definitely will not be an over-night thing. I predict DNDBeyond to remain my most used tool throughout 5E's (and beyond?) lifespan. I wish Adam and the gang all the best. It does make me worried that the visionary behind it all has left (like from a company perspective, what did they do to cause that?), because i don't like to see people mistreated. But i don't have any ill feelings toward any of them. My perspective is that management has decided to cut excess forward facing entertainment and focus only on the technical aspect of the tool.
Wow, this place got toxic... at first i too was a little worried that one day i'll lose access to my content, but then I realize that it definitely will not be an over-night thing. I predict DNDBeyond to remain my most used tool throughout 5E's (and beyond?) lifespan. I wish Adam and the gang all the best. It does make me worried that the visionary behind it all has left (like from a company perspective, what did they do to cause that?), because i don't like to see people mistreated. But i don't have any ill feelings toward any of them. My perspective is that management has decided to cut excess forward facing entertainment and focus only on the technical aspect of the tool.
Some people are also entrepreneurs and will start a company but move on once it gets past the start up phase. That might just be Adam, for example the same thing just happened over at Wyrmwood. Doug the CEO and founder just stepped down because the company needs to move in a direction he cannot do, for he doesn't like corporate world and just wants to do start up stuff. So now someone who can make WW into a corporation has stepped in and Doug has the freedom to continue making new avenues for income Vs having to handle the transition.
If nothing else I suddenly feel better knowing I'm not the most longwinded poster anymore.
Holy crapfluff, Sposta! You're making some big wall o' texts in this thread. And they're very interesting too, well written and make sense. Credit where its due.
And I agree with you.
--
There's a lot of people slamming on people who are raising their concerns. We're not fear-mongering, we're just showing our concern for something we have heavily invested in. Also note some of us are not basing our concerns purely on these people leaving, we've had many reasons over the last few months and this is just adding to the pile.
Also, we're providing the feedback on how to handle this in future. Part of our concerns were caused by the poor way this was handled.
This site is the primary hub of information - the direct portal with the customer base. It is this site where the customers will most interact with the company for it is here where we use tools and make purchases. So big announcements like several people leaving at once, especially those with a strong media presence, should be made on here and clearly detailed. I see no such announcement here. No banner. No dedicated thread in the News & Announcement forum. Nothing. Not everyone uses Twitter or Youtube - these are extended social media avenues and should not be primary method of communication - this website should be.
An announcement by the team should have been made here first.
Then it got further compounded because there's mixed messages - like we're being told they've left because they had opportunities they couldn't turn down so needed to resign, and yet also posts on social media saying they're seeking to be employed. This is a massive red flag since it's very easy to see one of them as a lie (which is more likely but it could just be extremely poor choice of wording, which doesn't help either way).
So if everything is OK, then great and maybe D&D Beyond will learn how to approach this better in future. And if it isn't OK - then our worries were true. So in either case our posts are justified.
Now, I don't believe D&D Beyond is in dire straights or at risk of closing. But my concerns (none of which have been addressed by the team) are still valid - I still worry about what way forward D&D Beyond are taking now and whether I need to be careful about my future purchases. The pandering and attempts to 'silence the naysayers' are not helpful and labelling us fearmongers is completely disrespectful. The genuine concerns being raised are useful for a company - it is valuable feedback in how to address the concerns and manage big announcements in future to secure the confidence from their paying customers. More confidence from customers leads to more customer retention and loyalty - so taking our fears on board and recognising the mistakes made in optics (for, yes, there were some) is an investment for the company.
Don't belittle us for trying to help the company we're invested in. We're saying what we're saying because we want to help it succeed.
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There is some talk about heavy Dev turnover for the last year but I am not in a place to confirm or deny that. Only hearsay for the moment but if true would be another rationale for the moves being made. Maybe moving directions is in the cards.
As much as people have talked about this being a fear mongering thread, I have to say this discussion has released some of my anxiety about this change.
when I saw the video on Thursday about everyone leaving my first thought was based on my experience, that ddb was going down, but hearing others thoughts about it now makes me think that this an attempt to allocate more resources to developing the platform.
My reason for being uncertain was the lack of indication of what was being done with Todd and James’ resources. I have loved the live streams and I have used multiple encounters of the week in the game I dm.
This site is the primary hub of information - the direct portal with the customer base. It is this site where the customers will most interact with the company for it is here where we use tools and make purchases. So big announcements like several people leaving at once, especially those with a strong media presence, should be made on here and clearly detailed. I see no such announcement here. No banner. No dedicated thread in the News & Announcement forum. Nothing. Not everyone uses Twitter or Youtube - these are extended social media avenues and should not be primary method of communication - this website should be.
An announcement by the team should have been made here first.
James got to write an epic farewell post. Adam made an announcement over video as part of the regular business of the Dev Talk. Todd made his video good bye. All on this platform. Sounds like everyone was going out on the terms they probably preferred, that is their primary modes of communication.
There was a survey about the specific sort of content that is evidently on pause or being reworked. Adam himself made mention of that content being reevaluated when James' departure was first brought up in a Dev update. I guess I'm confused as to why folks who make this plugged in claim reacted as if they were blindsided.
If by "here first" you mean this forum? Yes portions of the forum are dedicated to customer service; but the bulk of the traffic is a laissez faire situation of customers serving each other (or sometimes just themselves). I can totally appreciate and understand the announcements being done on other parts of the platform, in fact those spaces where the particular personality had their most interaction with the community (articles and videos), instead of this forum. It makes more sense to do it through the staff members main platforms rather than dropping in and making sure the folks whose persistent trash talking of each other is alienating to the forum Forum Loudmouths Clubs or the cults are directly noticed.
I dunno, maybe you haven’t heard, but the entire global economy only functions because people believe that it does. Everyone has made an unspoken agreement to believe that money has value, so it does. When people lose faith in the value of a nation’s currency, that currency ceases to have value. (That happened to Russia not too long ago.It happened to the USA less than a century ago.) When enough people all agreed to belong the value of a currency not backed by any government, they successfully created independent currency. (Bitcoin only exists through the power of shared belief.) If entire national economies can rise and fall based on pleople’s faith (or lack thereof) in a system of agreeable fiction, what makes you think it cannot happen to a single company player hat serves a niche market with a limited supply of customers and active competitors?
I dunno, comparing the forum panick to how markets collapse through crisis in confidence ... I mean, it's like you're claiming the EU would fail if all the monarchs associated with the member states officially abdicated their thrones and granted full governance to the governing institutions (Adam leaving) and the Eurovision Song Contest was permanently canceled (everyone else). It's been great to have Adam be lead evangelizer for the product, and its been neat to have some entertaining content put on here too. I'm curious what may come in its aftermath, but I never saw either really impacting my use of what brought my money to the counter.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I think the problem is people are acting like telling us BEFORE they left was the wrong move, and DDB should have told us like 6 months ago. Everyone one who is/was leaving literally told us DAYS before they left. In America at least, the general consensus is you only need to tell your employer 2 weeks before the date you plan on leaving. So how could DDB tell us "in advance" when by general terms they might not have even known themselves.
To address the "They got better offers" and those people then asking to be hired on twitter. To my knowledge all of them said themselves they have announcements coming on new projects. The only post I saw about asking to be hired was Todd asking for other to be hired, who they themselves said has plans and were going to announce it later. So it is hard to pretend that DDB lied when it seems the friends themselves are either lying or being lied to. So lets not pretend that it is also all possible that DDB was told one thing but that was not the case. Hell, I've done it, when I've left jobs in the past I told them I had an opportunity when it either A) fell through after leaving, or B) was just a way to get out.
I think Fandom believes they are well enough known that they can scale down on D&D related content creation and either improve profitability, or redirect the money that was once directed there to development efforts. I do remember a survey they sent out awhile back asking the community how much they used various aspects of the site. Hard to say if this is all from a belt tightening, a content change, a focus change, or a just natural turnover.
This site is the primary hub of information - the direct portal with the customer base. It is this site where the customers will most interact with the company for it is here where we use tools and make purchases. So big announcements like several people leaving at once, especially those with a strong media presence, should be made on here and clearly detailed. I see no such announcement here. No banner. No dedicated thread in the News & Announcement forum. Nothing. Not everyone uses Twitter or Youtube - these are extended social media avenues and should not be primary method of communication - this website should be.
An announcement by the team should have been made here first.
James got to write an epic farewell post. Adam made an announcement over video as part of the regular business of the Dev Talk. Todd made his video good bye. All on this platform. Sounds like everyone was going out on the terms they probably preferred, that is their primary modes of communication.
There was a survey about the specific sort of content that is evidently on pause or being reworked. Adam himself made mention of that content being reevaluated when James' departure was first brought up in a Dev update. I guess I'm confused as to why folks who make this plugged in claim reacted as if they were blindsided.
If by "here first" you mean this forum? Yes portions of the forum are dedicated to customer service; but the bulk of the traffic is a laissez faire situation of customers serving each other (or sometimes just themselves). I can totally appreciate and understand the announcements being done on other parts of the platform, in fact those spaces where the particular personality had their most interaction with the community (articles and videos), instead of this forum. It makes more sense to do it through the staff members main platforms rather than dropping in and making sure the folks whose persistent trash talking of each other is alienating to the forum Forum Loudmouths Clubs or the cults are directly noticed.
For me a Dev Update is an update on tool developments because that's what it has always been. And for that reason, I ignore many of them. I don't like video updates, it's such a poor way to communicate important things for me - most of it is irrelevant to me, and spending 30+ minutes to find out a few things of relevance when a 1-2 minutes of reading a post or article would have done that better. This is why for dev updates I wait for the summaries that get posted in the News & Announcements forum - not only does this make it easier for me to be updated on things relevant to what I use this service for but it also means my sub to forum gives me a notification email whenever there is an update. There wasn't one this time.
An announcement of this nature should have been its own thing - something added statically to the front page, a banner at the top, an e-mail, etc. There wasn't anything. This is a really big announcement for managing optics and keeping everything clear and assured - it shouldn't have been some thing lumped in with a rule clarification and the latest minor tweaks to side-use player tools. It should have been separate and clear to indicate importance and ensure visibility.
James' farewell post was a while ago and frankly not something I'm bothered by. He was a good writer, but he was partly freelance anyway - most writers like this are. He wasn't the VP of the company. And that was weeks ago, a single change. Adam, Todd and Lauren are basically all at once and that's the difference, with Lauren and especially Todd being major "faces" of the company and Adam is not only a face but VP, lead dev and if memory serves a co-founder. His leaving, in of itself, is a big deal.
I am not saying it was blindsided. I'm saying there were ways they could have communicated this much better.
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Okay, you know what, I'm bowing out now. Again, I'm not panicking or saying other people should panic; all I'm saying is, there'd be less people worried if DDB as a business had been more robust in providing relevent information.
BadEye,
I apologize if I have offended you, that was not my intention. As I stated in my last post, I had attributed what I perceived as a lack of transparency to occupational and/or nondisclosure obligations. Having worked in corporate environments, I find it very easy to believe “the home office” having made what appear to be utterly bass-ackworda decisions for no apparent reason, and then forcing those decisions on their VPs. Perhaps I have painted them with a brush stained from experiences with other corporations.
Perhaps what I had perceived as a lack of transparency was instead something else. Perhaps you were not fully aware of people’s frustration over not knowing why things developed slower than users’ expectations. Or maybe that level of frustration was miscalculated, or maybe you just underestimated how big of an impact your words would have on those discussions. Perhaps everyone was so busy actually doing the things that finding time to explain what all was going on. Maybe it was simply a matter of timing. Or maybe you were trying to avoid any appearance of self aggrandizement and/or asking for a break. Maybe I had simply misinterpreted humility as opacity. Heck, maybe it was the hand of fate stepping in because it wasn’t the right time until a couple of Forum Loudmouths would come along... I mean, I’ve written worse DEMs than that for campaigns. (Considering how the world has been developing over the last several years, I’m starting to wonder if the Myans weren’t onto something after all. 🤔 So why not accept the possibility of fate or divine intervention?) For all I know, maybe you were just unsure how to explain it in a way that wouldn’t make the task seem undoable, and were trying to find the right wast to break the ice, after all the fear of rejection leads to more people being single than actual rejection does.
I could keep listening plausible explanations for my misinterpretation until the automatic spam filter kicks in from the character count. Whatever the reasons, my point is that what I had perceived as forced opacity was a general confusion as to why the information you shared in that other thread was not already more widely known. it lends a sense of scale to the genuinely impressive job of work your Dev team has done untying their proverbial Gordon knot, especially without a sword.* It doesn’t matter how irate someone may be about their perceptions about the pace of development on DDB, once I share the condensed version of what I am assuming was an abridged explanation of a larger struggle your team had been facing, their ire quickly fades and some folks even occasionally share a kind word for your team. I can practically perceive their mental paradigms shift over the airwaves. It’s like they suddenly came to the realization that it wasn’t some lady named Ruth who had signed their stepdad’s baseball. Heck, as one of those formerly irate users, I can personally attest to how genuinely nice it was to learn the answer to the most common question in the world: “Why?” As soon as I had a better understanding of the situation, I did a 180 from being a fairly vocal detracted myself to generally lining up to be one of the first people to answer that question for anyone who asked thereafter. As they say, “knowing is half the battle.”
*
Compared to how it might have gone, folks barely noticed the lights flicker during the framework update, and I think separating the the content from the creator was so smooth many users probably are still unaware that it happened at all. 👍Since then the rate of patch and update releases has exceeded my expectations based on before.
Between the Feedback and B&S you have two forums that I guesstimate at roughly 3 parts people who just misunderstood something or who posted in the wrong forum, 2 parts folks repeating the same issues as one another, and 1 part genuinely new new/newly relevant. At least half of those folks were all some variation of “why?” Considering that the Internet’s default setting is 3 seconds to pitchforks and torches, when I learned that you had the key to the Magic Cupboard to enlighten in your back pocket the whole time, and hadn’t unleashed the kraken information prior, the only logical explanation was that decision was intentional, and the only reason I could imagine was not that you wouldn’t, but that you couldn’t. Like you were under a geas, or one of the Muggle-Magic equivalents like someone you were answerable to had said not to disclose.
Whatever series of unfortunate events culminated in the the timing of that situation, please don’t et it create an illusion of opacity. The comunity should know that you personally went to WotC and fought for our right to Homebrew for a year and a half, and have continued fighting to expand those rights into things such as HomebrewIng basic equipment. You got that for us, and since Homebrew is kinda my thing, I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for all you have done for us. And next time some writers or corporate suits try to insist on tell your team of web developers how to build software, hopefully it won’t result in all of the additional work you and your team have had to do to make it more like the system you had originally planned. (This is me saying that I think you were right, and that your original idea as you described it would have been better before those meddling
kids and their dogcorpo execs and their writers interfered.) I’m sure the comunity would have been better served by something more like you had initially conceived it, and I’m also sure you and the Devs would have had an easier time of things for the last couple of years too.I specifically included some of those details in part so so that you would know that I learned those facts and how much i appreciate everything you have done for us, as well as having some notion of what the Devs have been dealing with. The other reason is because everyone should be aware of what you have personally done for us too, and how much thanks we all owe to the Devs for the job the do. if my suspicions about contract negotiations are even in the ballpark of correct, they should have matched the other offer, and it’s Fandom’s loss. If you apply that same level of insight, dedication, and tenacity to your next endeavor, it will also likely succeed in spite of any potential barriers, just like DDB has. Let’s just hope this wasn’t a Concentration Effect on your part or that if it is they can find someone as Proficient as yourself to take up the task of maintaining it.
I genuinely wish you and the others the best of fortunes on the roads ahead. And I apologize for being a general pain in the neck at times, I mean that. If it helps, much of that neck pain I may hav caused was my reacting to what I saw as comunity issues, and rarely if ever personal ones. The DDB comunity had you to fight for us in regards to issues stemming from WotC’s side of things. Whenever I have been at my prickliest ‘round these parts, I was usually reacting to something I registered as a company-customer interaction issue. Like the thing with not recieving any notifications that one time one of the Mods/Staff had done a cleanup of the spell list, or raising awareness of users who hadn’t yet received resolution about entitlements that ultimately took meet hours to address once a Staffer was able to get an answer, but the verbiage in the message they received was perceived as unclear and the tone of the statements was perceived as formulaic which had made them feel unheard. Considering part of my job is to help future medical doctors to recognize potential disconnects between what they say and how, and understand why those things were perceived as they were, I tend to notice those things. But here I’m not an employee, I’m a paying customer, so I am not obliged to find neutral ways to convey such things, that luxury is part of what my $65/year purchases IMO.
Anyway, I hope I have in some way clarified why I had perceived things the ways I had. I also hope I have conveyed how much I genuinely value DDB. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t keep choosing to spend my money here. In fact, I value DDB to the point where I only spend my hobby budget on D&D exclusively here. I’m an East Coaster, we may not always be nice, but we are generally kind. I may be an obnoxious laudmouth on a semi regular basis, but I do support your work here, and endeavor to try to always net more good than harm in the comunity. And again, I meant no disrespect, and offer my sincerest apologies for having offended you.
Sincerely and best Regards,
Sposta
PS- One does kinda gotta admit that phrases like “the have offers ahead that they couldn’t pass up and we wish them the best” are frequently corpo speak proxy/euphemisms for “they got another offer and/or asked for raises and we are either unwilling or unable to oblige their request. Hopefully one can understand then why it seems the way it does from the outside looking in upon the situation. Especially with such little news, and particularly since half that information seems to directly contradict the other half. (Yea, I recognize that you each made individual statements, but since you all said the same thing it ends up getting processed as a single pice of that info pie.
In my experience, whenever people don’t understand something we always fall back on the oldest question in the world. A question so ingrained into human nature that it is the first question almost every child ever born has asked since the dawn of language, and the question most people are statistically likely to ask more than any other over the course of a lifetime: “Why?” Telling people to not ask why is like telling the tides not to flow, or fire to not burn. The day people stop asking why will be the day the last human dies.
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The comunity reacted in much the same way investors react to a sudden shift in a company they have invested in, and for the same reasons. News suddenly came out that affected people’s perceptions about the potential loss of value in their investments here, and they wanted assurances that they weren’t wrong to trust DDB with our money.
I have spent $325.59 (USD) at this digital bookstore, despite the fact that I am receiving no actual physical products or services. I did that because I perceived a commensurate value in the products and services I was receiving for that investment. That much money may or may not seem like a significant amount to some folks, but to offer some perspective, for me that much money roughly represents 2/3 of a month’s mortgage payment on my house, a one month supply of essential food stores for my household, or one month’s payment on my wife’s car. For me, that was a significant investment for what is a nonessential entertainment hobby that I chose to make instead of using that money to pay for things I consider to be much more essential, such as having a roof over my head, food to eat, or a tool that is essential to my family’s ability to continue paying for those things.
Every dollar I spend with DDB is a personal endorsement of this company based solely on a perception I have as to the cost:value ratio. That perception was formed at least in part on the faith i placed in DDB’s sales and customer service persons who’s jobs it was to convince me that . Oh look, every one of those people quit on the same day, and the company line was a variation on “everything is fine, nothing to see here, move along.”
I spent over a decade paying my bills as a commissioned salesperson by developing that same type of trust in my customers, only cars and houses cost more than D&D. As the saying goes, “I ain’t no rube.” I don’t choose to trust the word of a salesperson lightly, and am even less likely to trust anything a salesperson tells me when they’re not in handshake range so I can size them up properly and find out if my
spider sensehorse poi detector starts tingling. Despite all of those cards being stacked against DDB, which imposed Disadvantage on their Persuasion Checks to convincing me to sign on the line, I decided to spend my money here. I made that decision because I have determined that Adam Bradford is an honest person, because I trusted OboeLauren to treat me fairly and with respect, even when I’m a pain in the neck, and because I trusted DDB to fill their other staffing positions with people of equal character.Now, the honest salesperson I trusted, the equitable comunity organizer I trusted, and a couple of other folks that I have had little to no interactions with have all announced they are leaving the company at the same time. And my trust in the company was based on my trust in them. (I write this with absolutely no exaggeration whatsoever, If StormKnight had also left DDB, then the remaining staff would all have to re-earn my trust from scratch. And since it’s way harder to regain trust that has been lost than it is to earn trust in the first place, the DC would have been much higher the second time round in addition to their disadvantages on that check. I certainly hope for DDB’s sake that when the day comes that Stormknight receives an offer, that they choose to pony up to keep her, and that between now and then that the other staffers will have sufficient opportunity to replace the “trust by association” that I placed in them with reasons for me to trust them as well. Because without such an opportunity, it’s just another company trying to convince me to give them my money when I can’t even look them in the eyes and shake their hands.
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I don't have any issues with wanting reassurances. My issue is with insinuations and outright claims that a handful of people leaving a company at the same time is always a sign of something being wrong with the company (never mind insinuations DDB is going to fold because of whatever it is that's wrong). People can certainly have concerns and they are absolutely allowed to voice those concerns, but these doomsdag allegations take it a bit further than that.
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Man oh man, I hope I'm not partially responsible for setting off this fire storm from my post early in this thread saying I was concerned about whether this signaled issues at DDB. If so, I am deeply sorry. I took Stormknight and OboeLauren at their word in their responses, but I feel bad if people are still struggling or worrying about deeper meanings here. Like many others here I'm sure, I love (love, love!) DDB, and while yes I've put a lot of money in I'd hate to lose, I'm much more connected to the truly amazing toolset that has been developed here. Pardon the pun, but it is truly a game changer (so literally and figuratively I guess).
I am sad to see Todd, Lauren, James and Adam leaving for sure, but given the fanaticism so many of us around the world have for this game, I am confident that DDB will continue to find passionate, committed people to keep carrying the torch.
I dunno, maybe you haven’t heard, but the entire global economy only functions because people believe that it does. Everyone has made an unspoken agreement to believe that money has value, so it does. When people lose faith in the value of a nation’s currency, that currency ceases to have value. (That happened to Russia not too long ago.It happened to the USA less than a century ago.) When enough people all agreed to belong the value of a currency not backed by any government, they successfully created independent currency. (Bitcoin only exists through the power of shared belief.) If entire national economies can rise and fall based on pleople’s faith (or lack thereof) in a system of agreeable fiction, what makes you think it cannot happen to a single company player hat serves a niche market with a limited supply of customers and active competitors?
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It's not a matter of what can be, it's a matter of what should be.
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Yeah honestly if they can use that space in the salary to hire on some more devs then I would say its something for them to think about.
I honestly never watched/read the material myself but if that marketing survey they sent out showed that not many users valued the addition of the articles and such then it would likely be better to spend that money else where. I hope its on development of some of the features as I really would like to see the combat tracker updated....its been a very long time since its had any attention.
Just to chip in here. Should some changes (e.g. the departure of James) stem from the fact that poll results indicated his work is no longer needed, this is sad for him as an individual but probably good for the site as a whole (resources can be funneled elsewhere). I liked his craftsmanship in the articles yet found the content often questionable to sometimes objectionable (e.g. plot spoilers for newly released campaigns).
When it comes to the others leaving... I do agree that this could have been handled a bit better. While I understand that there was a posting on twitter, a simple news post with a few kind words and a heads up on e.g. who will replace or how the restructure is planned, and everyone would have been less scared. Keep in mind that when you have several communication channels, you need to make sure you fire a proper spread. Main site first, then other channels, imho.
Like stated often, and much more elaborate than I can, some of us have invested a pretty penny in this site and would really really hate to see all of it go to crap just after they have convinced their significant others that a legendary bundle is indeed the thing to go for! :)
Ah, but you see, in all of human history that has never once been true.
Out of curiosity, are you aware of my screen name’s origin? Another and at of saying “what should be,” is often “what is supposed to be.” Only, around where I love, we have have a fairly recognizable regional accent. Perhaps most famously we are known to pronounce “water” as “wooder,” and if you’ve ever drank our local “punch,” you know why..Well, we also speak rather quickly and the end of one word and the beginning of the next frequently blend together, likely due to the heavy Italian influence in the region.
Every day, thousands of things that are “supposed to happen” don’t. Thousands of things that are never supposed to happen happen to good people every day. People have been killing each other because of arguments over what is or isn’t “sposta” happen. The very concept of “sposta” has claimed a higher body count on humanity than natural causes. In the time it took me to type this response, probably no fewer than 3 people have been killed over what one person or another decided was or wasn’t sposta be happening.
Governments, religions, and ethnic groups are all actively trying to remove each other from this world on a constant basis over disagreements about that he very notion of sposta, always have, and likely always will.
Ultimately, debating a concept like what is/isn’t sposta happen is irrelevant, futile, and often dangerous.
“Sposta” is, IMO, and he single most dangerous concept humanity has ever discovered. 😙
What is relevant is this:
The whole cycle can form a feedback loop that inevitably leads to that initial perception of a loss in value becoming a self fulfilling prophecy. There doesn’t actually even need to be any initial decrease in actual intrinsic value, merely a strong enough perception of an otherwise nonexistent decrease in value can sometimes be enough to spark that cycle. The cycle also works going the other way too.which sometimes leads to an artificial inflation of value. And when a perceived value of something is generally on par with some level of supposed intrinsic value, things are considered as stable and sustainable. When a value gets artificially inflated by perceptions it creates a “market bubble,” and when enough people start to notice that happening, perceived values suddenly plummet to below intrinsic value and markets fail.
The international markets (stocks, bonds, commodities, currency, etc.) are all entirely dependent on people placing bets on people trying to predict what future perceptions will be, and how those perceptions will impact value. And then everybody plays the worlds biggest game of chicken with their money because the trick is to buy when perceptions have lowered values, keeping those investments until perceptions have raised values, staying icycool until the last possible second, and then pulling the cord before things go back down. Side bets get places so people can hedge in case they predict wrong. It’s a rather convoluted masterpiece of metaphorical plates all kept spinning all around the world. It’s rather pretty if one can step back and see it from a distance. (Like impressionist art, only with math instead or light.)
I mentioned folks were spooked and talking about holding onto their ducats until they felt more confident that their perceived value for their investment was likely to be matched by what stands-in for “intrinsic value” when its all based on nothing more than an ephemeral string of 1s and 0s. The reason I did that was because I noticed the plate here start to wobble a bit because a few folks had noticed a thing that made them question the value of something. Those questions were affecting their purchasing decisions. Those purchasing decisions could have possibly lead to a dip in earnings this quarter. A dip in earnings could have possibly cost the artist some folks, which may have made them start to question things, etc., etc. Now, a little dip after a corporate shakeup is to be expected. But if that starts to stretch into the next quarter....
And what spreads uncertainty faster than an accelerant spreads fire? When people start asking “why, why, why,” and the only answers the receive are some variation on “everything is fine, nothing to see here folks.” When someone in charge of something says that, often enough it means the exact opposite is true. (Like when the doctor says something like “you might feel a bit of a pinch,” or my personal favorite “just try to relax,” and you know the next several seconds are going to be less than pleasant.)
So, the reason I mentioned something was so someone in charge of something could flip the record from “nothing to see here” and start playing the B side. Because, unless the B side is a DDB cover of “just try to relax,” it has to have a better tune than what is currently on. Ne? Perhaps something with an upbeat toon that folks can dance to. Now, DDB has both kinds of music,
country and westernproducts and services. But they can’t write a new tune in the products line, at least not one that can help. Dice skins would just seem like a bad magician trying to distract a crowd with the worlds worst assistant. (You, know, the one with the terrible smokers’ cough so you can tell they’re just behind the curtain.) And the cant release a new book. And WotC just dropped a nut recently, so they won’t be coming out with another hit single this week to razzledazzle us. So that just leaves the other genre, services. If they announced that the increase to the content sharing limit was being made permanent, or that they were introducing a new mid-tier subscription package or something, anything that would get folks dancing again.Yes, I did all of that, frankly the only thing I could do, just to protect my $325.59..... And, you know, everyone else’s investments too. Because, as I said, I do genuinely care about this comunity. Remember, us East-coasters are kind, not nice. Well cuss you out for not avoiding the pothole while we help you change your tire. Or in this case, a more apt metaphor might be that well let someone know that the record is skipping and needs to be flipped before people leave the dance floor, and we’ll tell them precisely why they shoulda known better than to play that record because it skipped for over 10 months the last time it was on.
So come on Mr. DJ, the record’s skipping, let’s change the tune to something a little upbeat in the hopes that it’ll be better than the Gregorian Chant of “Why, why, why....” Wadaya say, one last time for the crowd before you head out to your next gig. Yeah?
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Wow, this place got toxic... at first i too was a little worried that one day i'll lose access to my content, but then I realize that it definitely will not be an over-night thing. I predict DNDBeyond to remain my most used tool throughout 5E's (and beyond?) lifespan. I wish Adam and the gang all the best. It does make me worried that the visionary behind it all has left (like from a company perspective, what did they do to cause that?), because i don't like to see people mistreated. But i don't have any ill feelings toward any of them. My perspective is that management has decided to cut excess forward facing entertainment and focus only on the technical aspect of the tool.
Some people are also entrepreneurs and will start a company but move on once it gets past the start up phase. That might just be Adam, for example the same thing just happened over at Wyrmwood. Doug the CEO and founder just stepped down because the company needs to move in a direction he cannot do, for he doesn't like corporate world and just wants to do start up stuff. So now someone who can make WW into a corporation has stepped in and Doug has the freedom to continue making new avenues for income Vs having to handle the transition.
If nothing else I suddenly feel better knowing I'm not the most longwinded poster anymore.
Holy crapfluff, Sposta! You're making some big wall o' texts in this thread. And they're very interesting too, well written and make sense. Credit where its due.
And I agree with you.
--
There's a lot of people slamming on people who are raising their concerns. We're not fear-mongering, we're just showing our concern for something we have heavily invested in. Also note some of us are not basing our concerns purely on these people leaving, we've had many reasons over the last few months and this is just adding to the pile.
Also, we're providing the feedback on how to handle this in future. Part of our concerns were caused by the poor way this was handled.
This site is the primary hub of information - the direct portal with the customer base. It is this site where the customers will most interact with the company for it is here where we use tools and make purchases. So big announcements like several people leaving at once, especially those with a strong media presence, should be made on here and clearly detailed. I see no such announcement here. No banner. No dedicated thread in the News & Announcement forum. Nothing. Not everyone uses Twitter or Youtube - these are extended social media avenues and should not be primary method of communication - this website should be.
An announcement by the team should have been made here first.
Then it got further compounded because there's mixed messages - like we're being told they've left because they had opportunities they couldn't turn down so needed to resign, and yet also posts on social media saying they're seeking to be employed. This is a massive red flag since it's very easy to see one of them as a lie (which is more likely but it could just be extremely poor choice of wording, which doesn't help either way).
So if everything is OK, then great and maybe D&D Beyond will learn how to approach this better in future. And if it isn't OK - then our worries were true. So in either case our posts are justified.
Now, I don't believe D&D Beyond is in dire straights or at risk of closing. But my concerns (none of which have been addressed by the team) are still valid - I still worry about what way forward D&D Beyond are taking now and whether I need to be careful about my future purchases. The pandering and attempts to 'silence the naysayers' are not helpful and labelling us fearmongers is completely disrespectful. The genuine concerns being raised are useful for a company - it is valuable feedback in how to address the concerns and manage big announcements in future to secure the confidence from their paying customers. More confidence from customers leads to more customer retention and loyalty - so taking our fears on board and recognising the mistakes made in optics (for, yes, there were some) is an investment for the company.
Don't belittle us for trying to help the company we're invested in. We're saying what we're saying because we want to help it succeed.
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There is some talk about heavy Dev turnover for the last year but I am not in a place to confirm or deny that. Only hearsay for the moment but if true would be another rationale for the moves being made. Maybe moving directions is in the cards.
As much as people have talked about this being a fear mongering thread, I have to say this discussion has released some of my anxiety about this change.
when I saw the video on Thursday about everyone leaving my first thought was based on my experience, that ddb was going down, but hearing others thoughts about it now makes me think that this an attempt to allocate more resources to developing the platform.
My reason for being uncertain was the lack of indication of what was being done with Todd and James’ resources. I have loved the live streams and I have used multiple encounters of the week in the game I dm.
James got to write an epic farewell post. Adam made an announcement over video as part of the regular business of the Dev Talk. Todd made his video good bye. All on this platform. Sounds like everyone was going out on the terms they probably preferred, that is their primary modes of communication.
There was a survey about the specific sort of content that is evidently on pause or being reworked. Adam himself made mention of that content being reevaluated when James' departure was first brought up in a Dev update. I guess I'm confused as to why folks who make this plugged in claim reacted as if they were blindsided.
If by "here first" you mean this forum? Yes portions of the forum are dedicated to customer service; but the bulk of the traffic is a laissez faire situation of customers serving each other (or sometimes just themselves). I can totally appreciate and understand the announcements being done on other parts of the platform, in fact those spaces where the particular personality had their most interaction with the community (articles and videos), instead of this forum. It makes more sense to do it through the staff members main platforms rather than dropping in and making sure the
folks whose persistent trash talking of each other is alienating to the forumForum Loudmouths Clubs or the cults are directly noticed.I dunno, comparing the forum panick to how markets collapse through crisis in confidence ... I mean, it's like you're claiming the EU would fail if all the monarchs associated with the member states officially abdicated their thrones and granted full governance to the governing institutions (Adam leaving) and the Eurovision Song Contest was permanently canceled (everyone else). It's been great to have Adam be lead evangelizer for the product, and its been neat to have some entertaining content put on here too. I'm curious what may come in its aftermath, but I never saw either really impacting my use of what brought my money to the counter.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I think the problem is people are acting like telling us BEFORE they left was the wrong move, and DDB should have told us like 6 months ago. Everyone one who is/was leaving literally told us DAYS before they left. In America at least, the general consensus is you only need to tell your employer 2 weeks before the date you plan on leaving. So how could DDB tell us "in advance" when by general terms they might not have even known themselves.
To address the "They got better offers" and those people then asking to be hired on twitter. To my knowledge all of them said themselves they have announcements coming on new projects. The only post I saw about asking to be hired was Todd asking for other to be hired, who they themselves said has plans and were going to announce it later. So it is hard to pretend that DDB lied when it seems the friends themselves are either lying or being lied to. So lets not pretend that it is also all possible that DDB was told one thing but that was not the case. Hell, I've done it, when I've left jobs in the past I told them I had an opportunity when it either A) fell through after leaving, or B) was just a way to get out.
I think Fandom believes they are well enough known that they can scale down on D&D related content creation and either improve profitability, or redirect the money that was once directed there to development efforts. I do remember a survey they sent out awhile back asking the community how much they used various aspects of the site. Hard to say if this is all from a belt tightening, a content change, a focus change, or a just natural turnover.
For me a Dev Update is an update on tool developments because that's what it has always been. And for that reason, I ignore many of them. I don't like video updates, it's such a poor way to communicate important things for me - most of it is irrelevant to me, and spending 30+ minutes to find out a few things of relevance when a 1-2 minutes of reading a post or article would have done that better. This is why for dev updates I wait for the summaries that get posted in the News & Announcements forum - not only does this make it easier for me to be updated on things relevant to what I use this service for but it also means my sub to forum gives me a notification email whenever there is an update. There wasn't one this time.
An announcement of this nature should have been its own thing - something added statically to the front page, a banner at the top, an e-mail, etc. There wasn't anything. This is a really big announcement for managing optics and keeping everything clear and assured - it shouldn't have been some thing lumped in with a rule clarification and the latest minor tweaks to side-use player tools. It should have been separate and clear to indicate importance and ensure visibility.
James' farewell post was a while ago and frankly not something I'm bothered by. He was a good writer, but he was partly freelance anyway - most writers like this are. He wasn't the VP of the company. And that was weeks ago, a single change. Adam, Todd and Lauren are basically all at once and that's the difference, with Lauren and especially Todd being major "faces" of the company and Adam is not only a face but VP, lead dev and if memory serves a co-founder. His leaving, in of itself, is a big deal.
I am not saying it was blindsided. I'm saying there were ways they could have communicated this much better.
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