That's going to make playtesting UA material awkward, since the homebrew handler is so limited. I didn't watch the video - is this being paired with upgrades to the homebrew handler to make it more versatile?
That's going to make playtesting UA material awkward, since the homebrew handler is so limited. I didn't watch the video - is this being paired with upgrades to the homebrew handler to make it more versatile?
There was zero mention of updating the homebrew side of it. They stated it was to prevent allocation of resources on the dev side from limiting future releases of other content.
I know I may be in the minority here, but I really don't use D&D beyond's character building tool and the groups I play in dont use UA content either. For me, it seems like a net positive for the dev team to focus on things other than trying to write up new UA content every time WotC releases it. Now (hopefully) some of the other site improvements people have been waiting on can get done. I still enjoy reading over the UA every time it comes out and if I wanted to make a character using it, I would probably just write it up the old fashioned way.
That being said, I do of course understand how this can be very frustrating for groups (especially those that play exclusively online) that use D&D Beyond's character tool, so I am a little torn. Its upsetting, but I do not think it is a major loss
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I love UA, but I agree with this change. I didn't create characters as often for UA on the system, but I do love reading the concepts.
I do hope they revisit homebrew to increase versatility though so classes can be replicated. I wonder if the changes they had to make to implement Tasha's would lead to an easier system. Essentially an ability system that lets you assign it as a feature or feat, etc with access to any variable as a modifier would do the trick, I'd think. Obviously, it's more difficult than that, but I think the difficulty is just working around some of the rigidity of the original framework.
I used the UA content on here a lot, but as a web app developer I absolutely understand and support the reasoning.
As an aside, I'm trying to think what UA is still out there not archived yet. Just the feywild and draconic stuff? (5 races/lineages, couple subclasses) Or am I forgetting anything?
While I understand this from a resources standpoint, I find this extraordinarily disappointing. I DM online exclusively, require my players to make character sheets using DDB (or Roll20 on the rare case where we're doing a homebrew class, which isn't supported by DDB yet/if ever), and a lot of my players utilize UA content. Having to make it through the homebrew tool myself is going to take up a lot of time, even if I only do it as-needed.
I also imagine that this will drastically reduce the number of people who playtest UA.
Included in the draconic stuff are 7 spells and 7 feats. I just made copies of all of them. Easy to find them all by filtering for playtest in the source category.
Fantastic those of us who don’t use UA at all, who stick to the books this is great news. As someone who works in application development as a product owner I can understand that the effort of trying to actually improve DnD beyond and add all the features we all want is hamstrung by then trying to unpick and deliver UA content, which isn’t just a case of copy paste but requires development time to actually automate all the new rules. And then as WOTC update and tweak those rules have to go back and reupdate those rules. Or remove them if they get removed. All to keep mechanics that are not true RAW and many DMs ban from their tables.
Maybe we will get them back on bored later but I doubt it and we just all have to individually reinvent the wheel to make up for subpar developers
To be fair, UA material is nightmare fuel for any developer - WOTC could at any time release content without absolutely no precedent in the rules for ever having been a thing, like multiclass subclasses, and then after you put in all the work, WOTC might suddenly drop the whole thing from the game, like with multiclass subclasses, and now you're out all that effort for nothing at all. All developers have finite time in their schedules, and UA is clearly an inefficient allocation of resources.
The only recent UA that was nightmare fuel was the one they already refused to do. The other one that was comparatively difficult was class feature variants, which they also did not support. A good chunk of UA is regular spells, feats, and subclasses that require no new code.
I like UA and see UA support as a major benefit of the site. It takes some work, but work that provides sufficient value is profitable work. More and more it just sounds like the dev team is not getting the time and manpower investment required to provide a high quality product. They'd rather cut content than expand their team. As a dev myself, I used to think working for DDB would be like a dream job but more and more it just seems like it might not be what I was thinking.
I dunno, I usually try to be supportive with this kind of stuff, but this one hurts.
Maybe we will get them back on bored later but I doubt it and we just all have to individually reinvent the wheel to make up for subpar developers
To be fair, UA material is nightmare fuel for any developer - WOTC could at any time release content without absolutely no precedent in the rules for ever having been a thing, like multiclass subclasses, and then after you put in all the work, WOTC might suddenly drop the whole thing from the game, like with multiclass subclasses, and now you're out all that effort for nothing at all. All developers have finite time in their schedules, and UA is clearly an inefficient allocation of resources.
I don't know much about how ddb handles things on the backend but theoretically hear me out as depending on the foresight to make things modular. So say you have one table of classes and another table of subclasses with a key value pair that stipulates what class the subclass belongs too, a multi class subclass could have a wildcard value or even the value of any that would allow any class to it.
Now that is having foresight to keeping things modular in the first place and not taking shortcuts like having hardcoded options for each thing.
So I could see that future UA could force DDB to do a backend overhaul that would not seem profitable in the short term and seen as chasing an ever moving target.
I also imagine that this will drastically reduce the number of people who playtest UA.
I don't know if the reduction matters to WotC. I mean, the Strixhaven UA got scrapped as subclasses based on feedback, and that UA wasn't supported here.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I also imagine that this will drastically reduce the number of people who playtest UA.
I doubt it. Not many people actually playtest it, and even for those inclined, they close those surveys too fast for genuine feedback. And only a relatively small percentage of players actually use DDB.
I kind of believe that they have found out that future UA's will be filled with lots of random things as WotC scrambles to find more content to fill books for their increased print schedule.
Maybe we will get them back on bored later but I doubt it and we just all have to individually reinvent the wheel to make up for subpar developers
Ok if you have 1000 jobs and only 10 people to do them then you look at what the important jobs are. Improving the user experience and adding new features like the encounter builder are important. Allowing players easy access to experimental rules is not. I don’t think you have a clue about development and exactly what is involved in updating or changing a web app. Every new rule will probably require database updates, which will then require testing to ensure those updates don’t break other functionality. They will require UI updates and they will probably require API updates as well depending on the change. That could be anything up to several weeks worth of work for a set of rules that in 2 weeks time gets ripped
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1108951189
Starts at 9:50.
That's going to make playtesting UA material awkward, since the homebrew handler is so limited. I didn't watch the video - is this being paired with upgrades to the homebrew handler to make it more versatile?
There was zero mention of updating the homebrew side of it. They stated it was to prevent allocation of resources on the dev side from limiting future releases of other content.
[News] The Future of Unearthed Arcana & DDB
I know I may be in the minority here, but I really don't use D&D beyond's character building tool and the groups I play in dont use UA content either. For me, it seems like a net positive for the dev team to focus on things other than trying to write up new UA content every time WotC releases it. Now (hopefully) some of the other site improvements people have been waiting on can get done. I still enjoy reading over the UA every time it comes out and if I wanted to make a character using it, I would probably just write it up the old fashioned way.
That being said, I do of course understand how this can be very frustrating for groups (especially those that play exclusively online) that use D&D Beyond's character tool, so I am a little torn. Its upsetting, but I do not think it is a major loss
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I love UA, but I agree with this change. I didn't create characters as often for UA on the system, but I do love reading the concepts.
I do hope they revisit homebrew to increase versatility though so classes can be replicated. I wonder if the changes they had to make to implement Tasha's would lead to an easier system. Essentially an ability system that lets you assign it as a feature or feat, etc with access to any variable as a modifier would do the trick, I'd think. Obviously, it's more difficult than that, but I think the difficulty is just working around some of the rigidity of the original framework.
I used the UA content on here a lot, but as a web app developer I absolutely understand and support the reasoning.
As an aside, I'm trying to think what UA is still out there not archived yet. Just the feywild and draconic stuff? (5 races/lineages, couple subclasses) Or am I forgetting anything?
While I understand this from a resources standpoint, I find this extraordinarily disappointing. I DM online exclusively, require my players to make character sheets using DDB (or Roll20 on the rare case where we're doing a homebrew class, which isn't supported by DDB yet/if ever), and a lot of my players utilize UA content. Having to make it through the homebrew tool myself is going to take up a lot of time, even if I only do it as-needed.
I also imagine that this will drastically reduce the number of people who playtest UA.
Included in the draconic stuff are 7 spells and 7 feats. I just made copies of all of them. Easy to find them all by filtering for playtest in the source category.
Fantastic those of us who don’t use UA at all, who stick to the books this is great news. As someone who works in application development as a product owner I can understand that the effort of trying to actually improve DnD beyond and add all the features we all want is hamstrung by then trying to unpick and deliver UA content, which isn’t just a case of copy paste but requires development time to actually automate all the new rules. And then as WOTC update and tweak those rules have to go back and reupdate those rules. Or remove them if they get removed. All to keep mechanics that are not true RAW and many DMs ban from their tables.
Part of why I have a sub is for the UA support :/
Maybe we will get them back on bored later but I doubt it and we just all have to individually reinvent the wheel to make up for subpar developers
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
To be fair, UA material is nightmare fuel for any developer - WOTC could at any time release content without absolutely no precedent in the rules for ever having been a thing, like multiclass subclasses, and then after you put in all the work, WOTC might suddenly drop the whole thing from the game, like with multiclass subclasses, and now you're out all that effort for nothing at all. All developers have finite time in their schedules, and UA is clearly an inefficient allocation of resources.
The only recent UA that was nightmare fuel was the one they already refused to do. The other one that was comparatively difficult was class feature variants, which they also did not support. A good chunk of UA is regular spells, feats, and subclasses that require no new code.
I like UA and see UA support as a major benefit of the site. It takes some work, but work that provides sufficient value is profitable work. More and more it just sounds like the dev team is not getting the time and manpower investment required to provide a high quality product. They'd rather cut content than expand their team. As a dev myself, I used to think working for DDB would be like a dream job but more and more it just seems like it might not be what I was thinking.
I dunno, I usually try to be supportive with this kind of stuff, but this one hurts.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I don't know much about how ddb handles things on the backend but theoretically hear me out as depending on the foresight to make things modular. So say you have one table of classes and another table of subclasses with a key value pair that stipulates what class the subclass belongs too, a multi class subclass could have a wildcard value or even the value of any that would allow any class to it.
Now that is having foresight to keeping things modular in the first place and not taking shortcuts like having hardcoded options for each thing.
So I could see that future UA could force DDB to do a backend overhaul that would not seem profitable in the short term and seen as chasing an ever moving target.
PR style responses are considered hostile intent.
I don't know if the reduction matters to WotC. I mean, the Strixhaven UA got scrapped as subclasses based on feedback, and that UA wasn't supported here.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I doubt it. Not many people actually playtest it, and even for those inclined, they close those surveys too fast for genuine feedback. And only a relatively small percentage of players actually use DDB.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Now, I don’t understand why they’re taking it down instead of letting it died out.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I kind of believe that they have found out that future UA's will be filled with lots of random things as WotC scrambles to find more content to fill books for their increased print schedule.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Ok if you have 1000 jobs and only 10 people to do them then you look at what the important jobs are. Improving the user experience and adding new features like the encounter builder are important. Allowing players easy access to experimental rules is not. I don’t think you have a clue about development and exactly what is involved in updating or changing a web app. Every new rule will probably require database updates, which will then require testing to ensure those updates don’t break other functionality. They will require UI updates and they will probably require API updates as well depending on the change. That could be anything up to several weeks worth of work for a set of rules that in 2 weeks time gets ripped
This will heavily impact future campaigns, but very little on my current one. I certainly can understand why though.