March subscriber perks are set to be available on Tuesday March 8!
Know what? I know it's easy to complain and community managers get a lot of crap from people, but I honestly wanted to express some praise here and give you and the team a pat on the back, Mellie.
The fuzzy-dice-perk-thing for January as well as December not being communicated was kind of a NAT 1, people were pissed (myself included), you and the team saw that, and here you are keeping us posted. I don't want this to sound patronizing because I'm being completely serious: Great job for looking at the forums, saying "Yeah, our bad." and doing things differently and informing your players about stuff. That's all we ever wanted and I wish all game devs were like that. <3
March subscriber perks are set to be available on Tuesday March 8!
Know what? I know it's easy to complain and community managers get a lot of crap from people, but I honestly wanted to express some praise here and give you and the team a pat on the back, Mellie.
The fuzzy-dice-perk-thing for January as well as December not being communicated was kind of a NAT 1, people were pissed (myself included), you and the team saw that, and here you are keeping us posted. I don't want this to sound patronizing because I'm being completely serious: Great job for looking at the forums, saying "Yeah, our bad." and doing things differently and informing your players about stuff. That's all we ever wanted and I wish all game devs were like that. <3
Gotta give credit where credit is due. ^_^
Dndbeyond has definitely not said "Yeah, our bad" ever. They ignore things. What Mellie just did was say we have a date without any acknowledgement of it being late or otherwise. I really don't care about these being late because I don't use these perks anyways, but it irritates me that their explanation of them dropping the ball with the fuzzy dice was saying it was miscommunicated, like it was literally everyone on the forums fault that we thought there would be a separate perk, and then for them to post saying "We have a late date of release set" is NOT the same thing as saying, "Hey guys, I know we've hit the release schedule literally never, apologies, but we have a date set for this month's perk and we're actively working on getting these set on time." Nowhere near the same thing, and definitely not a "Our bad" post.
Have to say: as someone who IS a subscriber mainly for teh character slots... D&DBeyond is really sort of awful about this whole subscriber bonus thing; incredibly opaque in terms of what they are/were and when they are supposed to show up. I mean: there isn't even a page to go to where you could view past months and what those perks were/when they were released... The cynical part of me says "because that would make them look bad"... but I don't WANT to think that; it's just sort of hard not to at this point.
March subscriber perks are set to be available on Tuesday March 8!
Know what? I know it's easy to complain and community managers get a lot of crap from people, but I honestly wanted to express some praise here and give you and the team a pat on the back, Mellie.
The fuzzy-dice-perk-thing for January as well as December not being communicated was kind of a NAT 1, people were pissed (myself included), you and the team saw that, and here you are keeping us posted. I don't want this to sound patronizing because I'm being completely serious: Great job for looking at the forums, saying "Yeah, our bad." and doing things differently and informing your players about stuff. That's all we ever wanted and I wish all game devs were like that. <3
Gotta give credit where credit is due. ^_^
Dndbeyond has definitely not said "Yeah, our bad" ever. They ignore things. What Mellie just did was say we have a date without any acknowledgement of it being late or otherwise. I really don't care about these being late because I don't use these perks anyways, but it irritates me that their explanation of them dropping the ball with the fuzzy dice was saying it was miscommunicated, like it was literally everyone on the forums fault that we thought there would be a separate perk, and then for them to post saying "We have a late date of release set" is NOT the same thing as saying, "Hey guys, I know we've hit the release schedule literally never, apologies, but we have a date set for this month's perk and we're actively working on getting these set on time." Nowhere near the same thing, and definitely not a "Our bad" post.
Not in a written sense no. But they have said "Our bad" in a live (recorded now) video. The main issue on my behalf is that their apology was 10% off a book that.. was available to the world! Not just subscribers. So it wasn't an apology it was a regular sale. Then the next month was 4 backgrounds of which they didn't actually create. Which isn't bad, it was just super low effort and coulda been done in the chaos of the previous month and fixed everything.
I know it has been said and discussed but allowing the subscriber to actual add their own Frame color, Background, and Theme color is the best solution. They already allow it for character Portrait. Keep the animated Frames and animated Dice for them to sell or release whatever they choose. This would alleviate most of the issues I think. I'm sure it's not that easy but once you state this is the path and implement this you are off the hook and have more time for the backlog of implementing class features.
Or Dndbeyond could just focus your efforts on the incredible and increasingly long list of non functional aspects of your core business. Dozens of items on your "roadmap" have been issues for 3 or more years, unchanged, while your organization takes these detours into fuzzy dice to try and boost your bottom line. You want to know how to boost your bottom line? Convince people that you are better at implementing character sheets so that they use you instead of roll20. That isn't even a really high bar. But it's easier for management to "innovate" instead of delivering on what was already purchased but never fully delivered: a website for making and tracking character sheets
Or Dndbeyond could just focus your efforts on the incredible and increasingly long list of non functional aspects of your core business. Dozens of items on your "roadmap" have been issues for 3 or more years, unchanged, while your organization takes these detours into fuzzy dice to try and boost your bottom line. You want to know how to boost your bottom line? Convince people that you are better at implementing character sheets so that they use you instead of roll20. That isn't even a really high bar. But it's easier for management to "innovate" instead of delivering on what was already purchased but never fully delivered: a website for making and tracking character sheets
Important note of clarification; the people who work on fuzzy dice, character frames, and sheet backgrounds aren't the people who if they weren't doing that, would be resolving the backlog of features not yet implemented. Those two things are handled by different teams and so the process of making perks doesn't pull person-hours from the process of working on things like character sheet services, backend, etc.
It's actually come up a lot on the Dev Update about the team structure at DDB; you have teams such as Challenges and Lorekeepers that have different roles within DDB. So don't worry, these perks don't come at the expense the things you mentioned.
One not familiar with (web)development might not be familiar with how different these skillsets are and would presume people who spend time creating these perks could just easily be reassigned to work on the features.
While it is possible that those people do have both skillsets, it would be the equivalent of asking someone who specialises in building exterior decoration to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
--[ Natural 20 - that's how I roll! ]-- We've stopped this OGL madness, but stay vigilant, they tried it once, they can try it again.
One not familiar with (web)development might not be familiar with how different these skillsets are and would presume people who spend time creating these perks could just easily be reassigned to work on the features.
While it is possible that those people do have both skillsets, it would be the equivalent of asking someone who specializes in building exterior decoration to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
Skills sets aren't fungible, but the budget is. The counter to "People who do X aren't the people who do Y." is "Then stop hiring people to do X, please hire people who do Y." Stop hiring more people who specialize in building exterior decoration, and instead hire people to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
The people who work on fuzzy dice, character frames, and sheet backgrounds are working on bells & whistles while the core functionality is still lacking, on items that have been known issues for years. These things absolutely come at the expense of solving actual technical challenges, because the budget for hiring software devs is lowered to make room for hiring artists.
One not familiar with (web)development might not be familiar with how different these skillsets are and would presume people who spend time creating these perks could just easily be reassigned to work on the features.
While it is possible that those people do have both skillsets, it would be the equivalent of asking someone who specializes in building exterior decoration to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
Skills sets aren't fungible, but the budget is. The counter to "People who do X aren't the people who do Y." is "Then stop hiring people to do X, please hire people who do Y." Stop hiring more people who specialize in building exterior decoration, and instead hire people to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
The people who work on fuzzy dice, character frames, and sheet backgrounds are working on bells & whistles while the core functionality is still lacking, on items that have been known issues for years. These things absolutely come at the expense of solving actual technical challenges, because the budget for hiring software devs is lowered to make room for hiring artists.
I'm glad you found a way to say this because I typed out a few different messages to say exactly what you're saying, but it all came off as what I perceived as being too harsh or mean-spirited. It just seems like dndbeyond is focusing on the bells and whistles just like you said, to bring new subscribers in or something, but then the ones like myself that have the legendary bundle and been subscribing for almost 5 years, is just left to feel forgotten honestly.
One not familiar with (web)development might not be familiar with how different these skillsets are and would presume people who spend time creating these perks could just easily be reassigned to work on the features.
While it is possible that those people do have both skillsets, it would be the equivalent of asking someone who specializes in building exterior decoration to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
Skills sets aren't fungible, but the budget is. The counter to "People who do X aren't the people who do Y." is "Then stop hiring people to do X, please hire people who do Y." Stop hiring more people who specialize in building exterior decoration, and instead hire people to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
The people who work on fuzzy dice, character frames, and sheet backgrounds are working on bells & whistles while the core functionality is still lacking, on items that have been known issues for years. These things absolutely come at the expense of solving actual technical challenges, because the budget for hiring software devs is lowered to make room for hiring artists.
I'm glad you found a way to say this because I typed out a few different messages to say exactly what you're saying, but it all came off as what I perceived as being too harsh or mean-spirited. It just seems like dndbeyond is focusing on the bells and whistles just like you said, to bring new subscribers in or something, but then the ones like myself that have the legendary bundle and been subscribing for almost 5 years, is just left to feel forgotten honestly.
I did the same, but after a few too-angry versions, got it down to more fact based. It really bugs me when people use the truth of "different skill sets" to cover for "same budget" when users are asking for less X & more Y. We aren't asking DDB to assign artists / video producers / community managers to do software dev jobs (I think we all agree that would quickly lead to a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day for everyone). We are asking for more budget to be assigned to what should be the meat & potatos of this site, book & character sheet functionality.
Since D&D Beyond actually ran a survey recently (about removing information from the Homebrew section for some reason), it would probably be worthwhile to run a survey of users to find out how many subscribers continue their subscriptions due to perks, and how many users would be tempted to subscribe if perks were better/more regular.
Personally I'm subscribed in Hero tier because I have 50 characters and fully expect to create more, and because I want to be able to import public homebrew into my collection; if I actually get around to running the campaign I'm thinking of doing this year then I'll probably jump up to master tier. For me the subscriber perks never enter into the equation; I wouldn't subscribe because of them, and I wouldn't cancel my subscription for the lack of them.
To be honest though, I don't really care about getting special monthly frames/backgrounds or such; I'd much rather just get one or more from each preorder release, as I tend not to preorder books unless I know a lot about them before they drop. I know that might not suit users who do preorder a lot on top of being subscribers, but then really if they're preordering that much I feel like their subscription should be free or at least cheaper (e.g- get a month's free subscription for each book you preorder).
This way you'd eliminate the work required for extra perks (which clearly isn't going well as a regular venture) and would give more tangible incentive to preordering more books? Maybe a month free per book is too much, but some kind of discount or something would make me more likely to actually consider preordering rather than just doing what I normally do and waiting for leaks/reviews then usually just buying only what I need when I need it.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Since D&D Beyond actually ran a survey recently (about removing information from the Homebrew section for some reason), it would probably be worthwhile to run a survey of users to find out how many subscribers continue their subscriptions due to perks, and how many users would be tempted to subscribe if perks were better/more regular.
Honestly, from a database perspective? I am sure more resources are spent maintaining the actual catalogue of homebrew items than official content. Sure, official content is the reason people are here and active resources are spent inputting, developing etc but if this website were to say "Hey, all homebrew got deleted, have to remake it all HAVE FUN" people would lose their shit. Making the homebrew sections easier to search and trying to see what users will/will not want to see displayed means that it won't get displayed hundreds of thousands of times, which saves on page loads, database references, etc.
That being said, I do agree with your general point that I don't subscribe for free frames. I subscribe to share my content with my table.
Since D&D Beyond actually ran a survey recently (about removing information from the Homebrew section for some reason), it would probably be worthwhile to run a survey of users to find out how many subscribers continue their subscriptions due to perks, and how many users would be tempted to subscribe if perks were better/more regular.
I think they did just that, like a few days before the "should we get rid of upvote down vote on homebrew" survey.... At least I remember typing into a form how I'm generally "meh" about perks and they're not why I'm a master tier subscriber recently and I don't know what other context in which I'd do that. Definitely subscribe to grant my players "library privileges" without having to worry about never seeing the loaned book again.
I guess it was foolish of me to hope for the best 😞
Katy Perry wrote a song about subscriber perks who knew!
'Cause you're hot then you're cold
You're "Yes" then you're "No"
You're in then you're out
You're up then you're down
You're wrong when it's right
It's black and it's white
We fight, we break up
We kiss, we make up
March subscriber perks are set to be available on Tuesday March 8!
Know what? I know it's easy to complain and community managers get a lot of crap from people, but I honestly wanted to express some praise here and give you and the team a pat on the back, Mellie.
The fuzzy-dice-perk-thing for January as well as December not being communicated was kind of a NAT 1, people were pissed (myself included), you and the team saw that, and here you are keeping us posted. I don't want this to sound patronizing because I'm being completely serious: Great job for looking at the forums, saying "Yeah, our bad." and doing things differently and informing your players about stuff. That's all we ever wanted and I wish all game devs were like that. <3
Gotta give credit where credit is due. ^_^
Dndbeyond has definitely not said "Yeah, our bad" ever. They ignore things. What Mellie just did was say we have a date without any acknowledgement of it being late or otherwise. I really don't care about these being late because I don't use these perks anyways, but it irritates me that their explanation of them dropping the ball with the fuzzy dice was saying it was miscommunicated, like it was literally everyone on the forums fault that we thought there would be a separate perk, and then for them to post saying "We have a late date of release set" is NOT the same thing as saying, "Hey guys, I know we've hit the release schedule literally never, apologies, but we have a date set for this month's perk and we're actively working on getting these set on time." Nowhere near the same thing, and definitely not a "Our bad" post.
Published Subclasses
Have to say: as someone who IS a subscriber mainly for teh character slots... D&DBeyond is really sort of awful about this whole subscriber bonus thing; incredibly opaque in terms of what they are/were and when they are supposed to show up. I mean: there isn't even a page to go to where you could view past months and what those perks were/when they were released... The cynical part of me says "because that would make them look bad"... but I don't WANT to think that; it's just sort of hard not to at this point.
The pink fuzzy dice were a let down :/
Not in a written sense no. But they have said "Our bad" in a live (recorded now) video. The main issue on my behalf is that their apology was 10% off a book that.. was available to the world! Not just subscribers. So it wasn't an apology it was a regular sale. Then the next month was 4 backgrounds of which they didn't actually create. Which isn't bad, it was just super low effort and coulda been done in the chaos of the previous month and fixed everything.
yeah lmao and all of the backgrounds are poorly cropped as well
I know it has been said and discussed but allowing the subscriber to actual add their own Frame color, Background, and Theme color is the best solution. They already allow it for character Portrait. Keep the animated Frames and animated Dice for them to sell or release whatever they choose. This would alleviate most of the issues I think. I'm sure it's not that easy but once you state this is the path and implement this you are off the hook and have more time for the backlog of implementing class features.
Looking Good
Or Dndbeyond could just focus your efforts on the incredible and increasingly long list of non functional aspects of your core business. Dozens of items on your "roadmap" have been issues for 3 or more years, unchanged, while your organization takes these detours into fuzzy dice to try and boost your bottom line. You want to know how to boost your bottom line? Convince people that you are better at implementing character sheets so that they use you instead of roll20. That isn't even a really high bar. But it's easier for management to "innovate" instead of delivering on what was already purchased but never fully delivered: a website for making and tracking character sheets
Important note of clarification; the people who work on fuzzy dice, character frames, and sheet backgrounds aren't the people who if they weren't doing that, would be resolving the backlog of features not yet implemented. Those two things are handled by different teams and so the process of making perks doesn't pull person-hours from the process of working on things like character sheet services, backend, etc.
It's actually come up a lot on the Dev Update about the team structure at DDB; you have teams such as Challenges and Lorekeepers that have different roles within DDB. So don't worry, these perks don't come at the expense the things you mentioned.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
One not familiar with (web)development might not be familiar with how different these skillsets are and would presume people who spend time creating these perks could just easily be reassigned to work on the features.
While it is possible that those people do have both skillsets, it would be the equivalent of asking someone who specialises in building exterior decoration to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
--[ Natural 20 - that's how I roll! ]--
We've stopped this OGL madness, but stay vigilant, they tried it once, they can try it again.
Skills sets aren't fungible, but the budget is. The counter to "People who do X aren't the people who do Y." is "Then stop hiring people to do X, please hire people who do Y." Stop hiring more people who specialize in building exterior decoration, and instead hire people to install the internal electric wiring and plumbing.
The people who work on fuzzy dice, character frames, and sheet backgrounds are working on bells & whistles while the core functionality is still lacking, on items that have been known issues for years. These things absolutely come at the expense of solving actual technical challenges, because the budget for hiring software devs is lowered to make room for hiring artists.
I'm glad you found a way to say this because I typed out a few different messages to say exactly what you're saying, but it all came off as what I perceived as being too harsh or mean-spirited. It just seems like dndbeyond is focusing on the bells and whistles just like you said, to bring new subscribers in or something, but then the ones like myself that have the legendary bundle and been subscribing for almost 5 years, is just left to feel forgotten honestly.
Published Subclasses
I did the same, but after a few too-angry versions, got it down to more fact based. It really bugs me when people use the truth of "different skill sets" to cover for "same budget" when users are asking for less X & more Y. We aren't asking DDB to assign artists / video producers / community managers to do software dev jobs (I think we all agree that would quickly lead to a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day for everyone). We are asking for more budget to be assigned to what should be the meat & potatos of this site, book & character sheet functionality.
Since D&D Beyond actually ran a survey recently (about removing information from the Homebrew section for some reason), it would probably be worthwhile to run a survey of users to find out how many subscribers continue their subscriptions due to perks, and how many users would be tempted to subscribe if perks were better/more regular.
Personally I'm subscribed in Hero tier because I have 50 characters and fully expect to create more, and because I want to be able to import public homebrew into my collection; if I actually get around to running the campaign I'm thinking of doing this year then I'll probably jump up to master tier. For me the subscriber perks never enter into the equation; I wouldn't subscribe because of them, and I wouldn't cancel my subscription for the lack of them.
To be honest though, I don't really care about getting special monthly frames/backgrounds or such; I'd much rather just get one or more from each preorder release, as I tend not to preorder books unless I know a lot about them before they drop. I know that might not suit users who do preorder a lot on top of being subscribers, but then really if they're preordering that much I feel like their subscription should be free or at least cheaper (e.g- get a month's free subscription for each book you preorder).
This way you'd eliminate the work required for extra perks (which clearly isn't going well as a regular venture) and would give more tangible incentive to preordering more books? Maybe a month free per book is too much, but some kind of discount or something would make me more likely to actually consider preordering rather than just doing what I normally do and waiting for leaks/reviews then usually just buying only what I need when I need it.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Honestly, from a database perspective? I am sure more resources are spent maintaining the actual catalogue of homebrew items than official content. Sure, official content is the reason people are here and active resources are spent inputting, developing etc but if this website were to say "Hey, all homebrew got deleted, have to remake it all HAVE FUN" people would lose their shit. Making the homebrew sections easier to search and trying to see what users will/will not want to see displayed means that it won't get displayed hundreds of thousands of times, which saves on page loads, database references, etc.
That being said, I do agree with your general point that I don't subscribe for free frames. I subscribe to share my content with my table.
I think they did just that, like a few days before the "should we get rid of upvote down vote on homebrew" survey.... At least I remember typing into a form how I'm generally "meh" about perks and they're not why I'm a master tier subscriber recently and I don't know what other context in which I'd do that. Definitely subscribe to grant my players "library privileges" without having to worry about never seeing the loaned book again.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.