It's also probably a case of not letting the genie out of the bottle too early. They're already under a lot of pressure to get this coded in; if they released part of it, even with an explanation of why this little piece was easy enough to do, that pressure would spike hard and they'd see a LOT of discontent. Better for them to hold the entire update until they can get it done in one big lump.
It wouldn’t surprise me if other lumps happened around the same time like Spells of the Mark, etc. I think it might be a case of “never rains but it pours.”
It's also probably a case of not letting the genie out of the bottle too early. They're already under a lot of pressure to get this coded in; if they released part of it, even with an explanation of why this little piece was easy enough to do, that pressure would spike hard and they'd see a LOT of discontent. Better for them to hold the entire update until they can get it done in one big lump.
This depends entirely on the timescale. I don't say that out of ignorance, note, I have experience rolling out systems and new features for those systems which are not entirely dissimilar to Beyond, to businesses and users.
My experience is that, in most cases, releasing small, functional bits of the system, or doing what you can do now (i.e. putting the Fighting Styles would be the example here) tends to significantly alleviate pressure in the short-term and mid-term. People want to see some progress, and if they do, they're understanding (talking about paying customers here). If you have a big upgrade coming but people want a few features now, and you can put them out without disrupting their experience, that's often the right thing to do. And that definitely could have been done with elements of the CFV here, for example. Even non-ideal stopgap implementations tend to be accepted well. This is 2020. People get it.
The problem comes when the timescale gets longer. You can get away with the above for around six months or so, but once it goes over that, then yes, what you're saying does start to happen. People seize on the examples of the stuff you have implemented to suggest you can implement more, and start wanting you to basically implement each little feature of a coming update ahead of the entire update. Whereas if you'd implemented nothing, they'd be angry, but it'd be more a simmering resentment.
That they're taking the latter approach here is slightly worrying, because it raises the question of why? In my business, the why would typically be "because we aren't going to implement this for six+ months still". But it could also be down to simple management preference. Hopefully it is that.
It wouldn’t surprise me if other lumps happened around the same time like Spells of the Mark, etc. I think it might be a case of “never rains but it pours.”
I hope that this is correct. You are correct to suggest (as you did in your previous post) that they appear to have basically put everything they can't implement perfectly right now "on hold" with the core Beyond development team, even as the VTT/Dice team (allegedly the same team, according to Badeye) are taking the opposite approach, and implementing some very incomplete systems. Personally I'm not very impressed with this approach, but it does mean that one of two things is likely. Either they're still multiple months away from being able to actually put any of this stuff out, or they don't want to waste any time on "stopgap" solutions when the "real" solution is close at hand, at which point they should be able to implement a lot of stuff "properly" very quickly.
I think a lot of people who have worked with software/content providers in medium and large businesses may immediately spot a familiar problem with the latter approach though. That being that "close at hand" can sometimes be an extremely indefinite period. One product my business was dealing with acknowledged and fixed a major issue, but refused to release that as a hotfix (which they did normally do), because they were "really close" to a major patch, and it would be a lot of work to do as a hotfix. That major patch kept being "really close" to release for over six months.
Hopefully that doesn't happen here, and it rains content in the next two or thee months, because if it goes much longer than that we're going to see stuff approaching a year of not being properly implemented, or not implemented at all, which I think would be fair to call unacceptable in a paid product.
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Rage doesn't count. Temporary effects are on a different scale from static ones. The rest are valid.
Containers also probably could have been done earlier...
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Rage doesn't count. Temporary effects are on a different scale from static ones. The rest are valid.
Containers also probably could have been done earlier...
Hey, if it’s a class feature that doesn’t work properly it counts IMHO. Temporary effects were necessary when the site launched, it should have been considered then.
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Rage doesn't count. Temporary effects are on a different scale from static ones. The rest are valid.
Containers also probably could have been done earlier...
Hey, if it’s a class feature that doesn’t work properly it counts IMHO. Temporary effects were necessary when the site launched, it should have been considered then.
I agree that is should have been working from day 1, but I don't agree with how you would do the book-keeping. It shouldn't just start throwing numbers around directly. Instead, there should be a special condition for Barbarians, which is automagically applied to the Barbarian when they activate their Rage. Which you could then remove when your Rage ends, in the Conditions menu, just like if you are Poisoned or Charmed or whatever.
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Rage doesn't count. Temporary effects are on a different scale from static ones. The rest are valid.
Containers also probably could have been done earlier...
Hey, if it’s a class feature that doesn’t work properly it counts IMHO. Temporary effects were necessary when the site launched, it should have been considered then.
I agree that is should have been working from day 1, but I don't agree with how you would do the book-keeping. It shouldn't just start throwing numbers around directly. Instead, there should be a special condition for Barbarians, which is automagically applied to the Barbarian when they activate their Rage. Which you could then remove when your Rage ends, in the Conditions menu, just like if you are Poisoned or Charmed or whatever.
But it’s not a condition so it doesn’t really belong with conditions. Why should the toggle not be under actions where the actual action is?
There should be a separate Ongoing Temporary Effects section which spells and features can create and have modifiers assigned to them.
In a perfect system character sheets in a campaign could communicate with each other so the haste OTE can be activated on character sheets without that spell. (Infusions need this too).
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Rage doesn't count. Temporary effects are on a different scale from static ones. The rest are valid.
Containers also probably could have been done earlier...
Hey, if it’s a class feature that doesn’t work properly it counts IMHO. Temporary effects were necessary when the site launched, it should have been considered then.
I agree that is should have been working from day 1, but I don't agree with how you would do the book-keeping. It shouldn't just start throwing numbers around directly. Instead, there should be a special condition for Barbarians, which is automagically applied to the Barbarian when they activate their Rage. Which you could then remove when your Rage ends, in the Conditions menu, just like if you are Poisoned or Charmed or whatever.
But it’s not a condition so it doesn’t really belong with conditions. Why should the toggle not be under actions where the actual action is?
Tracking how many you have should be under Actions. What it is currently doing and it's remaining duration should be under Conditions. And I would argue that Rage is a positive condition, just like Haste or Enlarge/Reduce when used to enlarge.
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Rage doesn't count. Temporary effects are on a different scale from static ones. The rest are valid.
Containers also probably could have been done earlier...
Hey, if it’s a class feature that doesn’t work properly it counts IMHO. Temporary effects were necessary when the site launched, it should have been considered then.
I agree that is should have been working from day 1, but I don't agree with how you would do the book-keeping. It shouldn't just start throwing numbers around directly. Instead, there should be a special condition for Barbarians, which is automagically applied to the Barbarian when they activate their Rage. Which you could then remove when your Rage ends, in the Conditions menu, just like if you are Poisoned or Charmed or whatever.
But it’s not a condition so it doesn’t really belong with conditions. Why should the toggle not be under actions where the actual action is?
Tracking how many you have should be under Actions. What it is currently doing and it's remaining duration should be under Conditions. And I would argue that Rage is a positive condition, just like Haste or Enlarge/Reduce when used to enlarge.
A Toggle could also work, though.
Here is the list of Conditions: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#AppendixAConditions. "Raging” ain’t on that list. Neither is “Hasted,” “Enlarged,” “Reduced,” “Blessed,” “Guided,” or any other feature or spell effect. When Wizards of the Coast published D&D, they defined conditions. DDB, has to present WotC’s property correctly, or they could lose their license to sell WotC products. They can’t just change these things because they are under contract with the company that publishes the game. 🤷♂️
I guess they could rename “Conditions” to read as “Conditions and Effects” or something. But for something like rage I say leave rage all in the same spot on the character sheet, or else it would get annoying after a while to keep flipping back and forth because half of rage is in actions, and half is somewhere else. Or if it is under “Conditions & Effects” then it should also be with Rage too.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Tracking how many you have should be under Actions. What it is currently doing and it's remaining duration should be under Conditions. And I would argue that Rage is a positive condition, just like Haste or Enlarge/Reduce when used to enlarge.
A Toggle could also work, though.
It isn't a condition (per rules definition), so it should not be grouped with conditions. Ongoing Temporary Effects should be easily accessible from any part of character sheet like conditions are though. But not combined.
Also I just realized this conversation is off topic for this thread.
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Rage doesn't count. Temporary effects are on a different scale from static ones. The rest are valid.
Containers also probably could have been done earlier...
Hey, if it’s a class feature that doesn’t work properly it counts IMHO. Temporary effects were necessary when the site launched, it should have been considered then.
I agree that is should have been working from day 1, but I don't agree with how you would do the book-keeping. It shouldn't just start throwing numbers around directly. Instead, there should be a special condition for Barbarians, which is automagically applied to the Barbarian when they activate their Rage. Which you could then remove when your Rage ends, in the Conditions menu, just like if you are Poisoned or Charmed or whatever.
But it’s not a condition so it doesn’t really belong with conditions. Why should the toggle not be under actions where the actual action is?
Tracking how many you have should be under Actions. What it is currently doing and it's remaining duration should be under Conditions. And I would argue that Rage is a positive condition, just like Haste or Enlarge/Reduce when used to enlarge.
A Toggle could also work, though.
Here is the list of Conditions: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#AppendixAConditions. "Raging” ain’t on that list. Neither is “Hasted,” “Enlarged,” “Reduced,” “Blessed,” “Guided,” or any other feature or spell effect. When Wizards of the Coast published D&D, they defined conditions. DDB, has to present WotC’s property correctly, or they could lose their license to sell WotC products. They can’t just change these things because they are under contract with the company that publishes the game. 🤷♂️
Then I'm not sure why you suggested that DDB needs to have a way to track Rage effects at all, since the blank character sheet provided by WotC doesn't account for it in anyway beyond the number of remaining uses. The entire point of the discussion was about intended features that were not working, not about nice-to-have extras.
Isn't that kind of a Strawman Argument? Refuting a point your opponent was never making...
I agree, the updates really make me interested in trying the ranger class more. as it is, it just feels like to many basic abilities are too niche. that's fine in a subclass, like a clearly aquatic themed subclass that will definitely get played if you are doing a sea-based campaign, but the whole class feels like it loses so much when you take it out of it's very specific setting.
Welp, we might never see these variants on ddb. I feel like they work harder on the other stuff than UA content. All we can do is hope they go live before WOTC removes them...
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It's also probably a case of not letting the genie out of the bottle too early. They're already under a lot of pressure to get this coded in; if they released part of it, even with an explanation of why this little piece was easy enough to do, that pressure would spike hard and they'd see a LOT of discontent. Better for them to hold the entire update until they can get it done in one big lump.
Please do not contact or message me.
It wouldn’t surprise me if other lumps happened around the same time like Spells of the Mark, etc. I think it might be a case of “never rains but it pours.”
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
This depends entirely on the timescale. I don't say that out of ignorance, note, I have experience rolling out systems and new features for those systems which are not entirely dissimilar to Beyond, to businesses and users.
My experience is that, in most cases, releasing small, functional bits of the system, or doing what you can do now (i.e. putting the Fighting Styles would be the example here) tends to significantly alleviate pressure in the short-term and mid-term. People want to see some progress, and if they do, they're understanding (talking about paying customers here). If you have a big upgrade coming but people want a few features now, and you can put them out without disrupting their experience, that's often the right thing to do. And that definitely could have been done with elements of the CFV here, for example. Even non-ideal stopgap implementations tend to be accepted well. This is 2020. People get it.
The problem comes when the timescale gets longer. You can get away with the above for around six months or so, but once it goes over that, then yes, what you're saying does start to happen. People seize on the examples of the stuff you have implemented to suggest you can implement more, and start wanting you to basically implement each little feature of a coming update ahead of the entire update. Whereas if you'd implemented nothing, they'd be angry, but it'd be more a simmering resentment.
That they're taking the latter approach here is slightly worrying, because it raises the question of why? In my business, the why would typically be "because we aren't going to implement this for six+ months still". But it could also be down to simple management preference. Hopefully it is that.
I hope that this is correct. You are correct to suggest (as you did in your previous post) that they appear to have basically put everything they can't implement perfectly right now "on hold" with the core Beyond development team, even as the VTT/Dice team (allegedly the same team, according to Badeye) are taking the opposite approach, and implementing some very incomplete systems. Personally I'm not very impressed with this approach, but it does mean that one of two things is likely. Either they're still multiple months away from being able to actually put any of this stuff out, or they don't want to waste any time on "stopgap" solutions when the "real" solution is close at hand, at which point they should be able to implement a lot of stuff "properly" very quickly.
I think a lot of people who have worked with software/content providers in medium and large businesses may immediately spot a familiar problem with the latter approach though. That being that "close at hand" can sometimes be an extremely indefinite period. One product my business was dealing with acknowledged and fixed a major issue, but refused to release that as a hotfix (which they did normally do), because they were "really close" to a major patch, and it would be a lot of work to do as a hotfix. That major patch kept being "really close" to release for over six months.
Hopefully that doesn't happen here, and it rains content in the next two or thee months, because if it goes much longer than that we're going to see stuff approaching a year of not being properly implemented, or not implemented at all, which I think would be fair to call unacceptable in a paid product.
Some classes/subclasses/magic items have features that haven’t worked properly since the site launched more than three years ago.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I know there are quite a few Magic Items that don't work properly (or at all, like Bag of Holding contents management), but what class and subclass features aren't working properly?
Rage doesn’t actually adjust anything on the character sheet when the box is clicked, Life Domain’s Disciple of Life doesn’t automatically add healing, Whenever a Ranger gets their second Favored Enemy at 6th level the first one disappears from the character sheet, same problem with Rogue’s Expertise (although that still reflects in the Skills list), the Divine Soul’s extra spell granted by Divine Magic cannot be swapped properly.... The list goes on.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Rage doesn't count. Temporary effects are on a different scale from static ones. The rest are valid.
Containers also probably could have been done earlier...
Hey, if it’s a class feature that doesn’t work properly it counts IMHO. Temporary effects were necessary when the site launched, it should have been considered then.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I agree that is should have been working from day 1, but I don't agree with how you would do the book-keeping. It shouldn't just start throwing numbers around directly. Instead, there should be a special condition for Barbarians, which is automagically applied to the Barbarian when they activate their Rage. Which you could then remove when your Rage ends, in the Conditions menu, just like if you are Poisoned or Charmed or whatever.
But it’s not a condition so it doesn’t really belong with conditions. Why should the toggle not be under actions where the actual action is?
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
There should be a separate Ongoing Temporary Effects section which spells and features can create and have modifiers assigned to them.
In a perfect system character sheets in a campaign could communicate with each other so the haste OTE can be activated on character sheets without that spell. (Infusions need this too).
That's how I imagine it anyway.
Tracking how many you have should be under Actions. What it is currently doing and it's remaining duration should be under Conditions. And I would argue that Rage is a positive condition, just like Haste or Enlarge/Reduce when used to enlarge.
A Toggle could also work, though.
Here is the list of Conditions: https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/appendix-a-conditions#AppendixAConditions. "Raging” ain’t on that list. Neither is “Hasted,” “Enlarged,” “Reduced,” “Blessed,” “Guided,” or any other feature or spell effect. When Wizards of the Coast published D&D, they defined conditions. DDB, has to present WotC’s property correctly, or they could lose their license to sell WotC products. They can’t just change these things because they are under contract with the company that publishes the game. 🤷♂️
I guess they could rename “Conditions” to read as “Conditions and Effects” or something. But for something like rage I say leave rage all in the same spot on the character sheet, or else it would get annoying after a while to keep flipping back and forth because half of rage is in actions, and half is somewhere else. Or if it is under “Conditions & Effects” then it should also be with Rage too.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
It isn't a condition (per rules definition), so it should not be grouped with conditions. Ongoing Temporary Effects should be easily accessible from any part of character sheet like conditions are though. But not combined.
Also I just realized this conversation is off topic for this thread.
Then I'm not sure why you suggested that DDB needs to have a way to track Rage effects at all, since the blank character sheet provided by WotC doesn't account for it in anyway beyond the number of remaining uses. The entire point of the discussion was about intended features that were not working, not about nice-to-have extras.
Isn't that kind of a Strawman Argument? Refuting a point your opponent was never making...
Just as a friendly reminder to everyone, disrespecting another user is never tolerated. Please keep all posts respectful, constructive, and on-topic.
I can't wait for the Ranger class variant to be available. This will be great!
I agree, the updates really make me interested in trying the ranger class more. as it is, it just feels like to many basic abilities are too niche. that's fine in a subclass, like a clearly aquatic themed subclass that will definitely get played if you are doing a sea-based campaign, but the whole class feels like it loses so much when you take it out of it's very specific setting.
Apparently it is the only current WIP as of a few moments ago:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/news-announcements/74172-dev-update-7-9-2020#c1
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Welp, we might never see these variants on ddb. I feel like they work harder on the other stuff than UA content. All we can do is hope they go live before WOTC removes them...