Any idea when this is planned more or less? Thank you.

Quote from fratzolitsas >>

Any idea when this is planned more or less? Thank you.

 The alpha has been out since this announcement (back in February) as an alpha it is only available to subscribers.  No word on when it will shift to Beta, and there’s not likely to be until it’s really close, as they don’t give timetables or etas. 

First of all love the work DnDBeyond is doing. And what I would love to see in the near future is the option to click on skills/attacks like on the charactersheets. Instead of rolling it seperatly.

Love the combat tracker so far. I just wanted to confirm that the plan is to have the numbers and relevant stats from the character sheets in the tracker, much like the monster page that pops up when clicking on them. 

Also, when the player clicks on their initiative to roll for it, will it then auto-populate to the combat tracker as well? Im hoping that this tool will end up cutting down on clicking back and forth between the tracker and the player character sheets.

When are you putting Combat Tracker into Beta?

Has this received any updates beyond the three listed here? Is there a roadmap of some sort?

Wish it had a cheat sheet for effects and spells so I did not have to open a new tab.

Add NPC that are friendly and have some go dormant for moments they are hiding and not see able yet

Also an end encounter button.

Is there any idea of when the combat tracker will release to beta?

They never give ETAs. So while no doubt they have an internal goal, it won’t be shared publicly because it will almost certainly slip. 

Given the cost of the material and the official backing by Wizards, the progress rate of this tool is rather disappointing to be honest. I wonder if the team is understaffed and why

Yeah it feels like DNDBeyond is in a weird inflection point.  They've had a spate of recent high profile departures, and there really is no end of new work to be done.  

<begin rant mode>

The biggest issue is that with every new WOTC release, that brings a ton of internal work for them to implement all of the new classes, feats, features, modules, rules updates, etc.  Some of which requires extending their base system to handle these new offshoots which can create massive recursive refactoring.  That alone is a pretty large lift to digitally convert all of that analog content. But in addition to that day to day work is the development side of things that a huge part of their audience wants, which is more consistent progress to the actually handy tools like the encounter and combat trackers, and campaign features.   Fleshing out tools that help manage your campaigns, your NPCs, your world-building are what we want them to build, and yet, the thing thats mainly paying their bills is getting digital purchases for new WOTC content.  So it would seem they indeed have a development staffing and prioritization issue. 

There should be a dedicated team for the day to day content implementation, and then another team thats devoted to creating the campaign management and support tools.  (Honestly they should apportion it based off the content purchase stream vs the subscription purchase stream. Percentage off of those dollars and fit out proportionate staffed teams to answer both needs).

It's extra disappointing, because their UX team is pretty great, possibly the best out of all of the RPG digital tool makers out there.  And so it's natural to want them to be more successful, so that they can create even more tools with their signature polish.  But with their failed attempts at producing media (a totally unnecessary business diversion), and the recent staff departures, and the VERY unfocused commitment to finishing their current roadmap projects, I worry very much about where the direction of the company is going to go, and if they have a competent leader steering the ship and prioritizing sound goals.  

The endless focus on developing something as banal as new dice, a paid extra, is a common example of icing a cake before its cooked.  I think moving forward it would behoove DNDB to focus less on these ad hoc money grabs, and instead focus a dedicated portion of the team to continue to not be reactive to new content, but proactive in completing and embellishing the languishing tools they've started.  Then continue to dialog with the customers to allow them to help direct and influence the roadmap.  Currently even that once-public roadmap has been shuttered.  Understandably, as Trello is a poor tool for that job, but still, there are trend lines forming that don't bode well.  Increased departures, languishing features, priority on short term transactions rather than long term tools for the users, etc. 

But whatever, I'm suckered in, I've got many hundreds of dollars invested in their non-transferable platform, so I'll just make myself comfortable over this barrel.  Hey look, new dice!!  oooooh. 

There are different teams, working on different things.  Admittedly, the HUGE mechanical content in Tasha's was "all hands on deck."  Keep in mind that none of the recent announced departures were developers: they were some of the public faces of the DDB, but they were not the folks working on the code.  And the team has been expanding literally from the beginning: they went from a team of 5 to a team of 50 or more. (Not all of those team members are developers).  But doubling the team size does not double the work output, as it requires more coordination, etc. 

One of the things that has slowed down the publicly visible development of the encounter builder and combat track is that they are having to build an all new simplified character data structure.  They were all set up to pull character data like HP, AC, etc. into the system, but when the tested/modeled that, they discovered that doing so involved so many data calls that implementing it would have crashed the entire database.  So now they are working on this new system.  None of that is work we can see, so it looks like nothing is happening on it, but that's not in fact the case.

And this is not the first time they've had to do something like that.  They had to completely re-write/restructure the character sheet engine/code, removing it from the "monolith" architecture they started with and turning it into mini-services.  (That project took a year and a half) When first working on the encounter builder, they had to do work to remove the monster part of the database from the "monolith" and set it up as a separate system.  They still need to do that with homebrew and probably a lot of other parts of the system as well. 

I understand the frustration with the pace of development; I'm often frustrated myself.  i have felt, however, that they have been much more communicative about what is and isn't done on Tasha's, and they've been constantly updating the second post of that thread as they check things that weren't done at release off the list.  This is the first time I remember them doing so with a published book, and items are added nearly every week, and often times more frequently than that.  The pace of those updates has slowed a bit, but I'm guessing that's because the "low hanging fruit" was addressed first and that the remaining items (like sidekicks) take a lot more development work. 

I think where the frustration is coming from is while they don't seem to work on useful and meaningful parts like the encounter builder, they still seem to spew out dice noone was asking for. I, for one, will never spend money on the digital dice because I find them slow and cumbersome to use on any platform I've tried (frankly, rolling my own dice and doing the math works faster for me). In short, it's not like there doesn't seem to be any work, rather it seems like the work goes on microtransactions people didn't ask for.

Note emphasis on seems. I am aware how programming is like an iceberg.

Quote from Edem >>

I think where the frustration is coming from is while they don't seem to work on useful and meaningful parts like the encounter builder, they still seem to spew out dice noone was asking for. I, for one, will never spend money on the digital dice because I find them slow and cumbersome to use on any platform I've tried (frankly, rolling my own dice and doing the math works faster for me). In short, it's not like there doesn't seem to be any work, rather it seems like the work goes on microtransactions people didn't ask for.

Note emphasis on seems. I am aware how programming is like an iceberg.

 I wouldn’t say nobody asked for the digital dice, even though I don’t see a lot of point in paying for the various dice at the prices they charge. I saw lots of requests for dice rolling. Furthermore, clearly enough people are buying them that they are a good return on investment. If that weren’t the case, they wouldn’t continue to make more. But I can certainly see how for the many folks who aren’t interested in the dice, it can look as though much of DDBs energy is going in that direction. I don’t think that’s actually the case. I’m guessing that after the big lift of working out the physics and the like that creating new skins is relatively trivial. Certainly it takes far less developer time than most other projects here. 

Quote from ArwensDaughter >>

Quote from Edem >>

I think where the frustration is coming from is while they don't seem to work on useful and meaningful parts like the encounter builder, they still seem to spew out dice noone was asking for. I, for one, will never spend money on the digital dice because I find them slow and cumbersome to use on any platform I've tried (frankly, rolling my own dice and doing the math works faster for me). In short, it's not like there doesn't seem to be any work, rather it seems like the work goes on microtransactions people didn't ask for.

Note emphasis on seems. I am aware how programming is like an iceberg.

 I wouldn’t say nobody asked for the digital dice, even though I don’t see a lot of point in paying for the various dice at the prices they charge. I saw lots of requests for dice rolling. Furthermore, clearly enough people are buying them that they are a good return on investment. If that weren’t the case, they wouldn’t continue to make more. But I can certainly see how for the many folks who aren’t interested in the dice, it can look as though much of DDBs energy is going in that direction. I don’t think that’s actually the case. I’m guessing that after the big lift of working out the physics and the like that creating new skins is relatively trivial. Certainly it takes far less developer time than most other projects here. 

 People asked for generating random values as if dice were rolled. I don't think anyone was asking for "let me buy digital dice that takes ages to roll". At least when I mean dice rolling I mean "I click on it and I see the result", not "I buy some shiny animation that covers over stuff on my screen and I have to wait for it to roll and wait again to disappear".

Meanwhile I can't use the mobile player app for more than 4-5 minutes because the current dark background (especially with the current font colours) starts to hurt my eye, and I don't think it is much more complicated to design a colour set for the UI than to come up with more and more animated dice. So it definitely seems like instead of addressing usability issues, they focus on microtransactions, and while there are comments saying "please allow me to see the app", I don't remember comments requesting "a dice set that covers the screen with confetti on a natural 20".

Quote from ArwensDaughter >>

There are different teams, working on different things.  Admittedly, the HUGE mechanical content in Tasha's was "all hands on deck."  Keep in mind that none of the recent announced departures were developers: they were some of the public faces of the DDB, but they were not the folks working on the code.  And the team has been expanding literally from the beginning: they went from a team of 5 to a team of 50 or more. (Not all of those team members are developers).  But doubling the team size does not double the work output, as it requires more coordination, etc. 

One of the things that has slowed down the publicly visible development of the encounter builder and combat track is that they are having to build an all new simplified character data structure.  They were all set up to pull character data like HP, AC, etc. into the system, but when the tested/modeled that, they discovered that doing so involved so many data calls that implementing it would have crashed the entire database.  So now they are working on this new system.  None of that is work we can see, so it looks like nothing is happening on it, but that's not in fact the case.

And this is not the first time they've had to do something like that.  They had to completely re-write/restructure the character sheet engine/code, removing it from the "monolith" architecture they started with and turning it into mini-services.  (That project took a year and a half) When first working on the encounter builder, they had to do work to remove the monster part of the database from the "monolith" and set it up as a separate system.  They still need to do that with homebrew and probably a lot of other parts of the system as well. 

I understand the frustration with the pace of development; I'm often frustrated myself.  i have felt, however, that they have been much more communicative about what is and isn't done on Tasha's, and they've been constantly updating the second post of that thread as they check things that weren't done at release off the list.  This is the first time I remember them doing so with a published book, and items are added nearly every week, and often times more frequently than that.  The pace of those updates has slowed a bit, but I'm guessing that's because the "low hanging fruit" was addressed first and that the remaining items (like sidekicks) take a lot more development work. 

 That's a very fair point, I was unaware of these changes. In fact you seem to have a lot of information that I didn't know about! Where do you get these updates? I'd love to follow that - my personal frustration came indeed form the apparent lack of changes coupled to the (mostly) cosmetic updates like dice. If I had known they were working on changing the way their back-end is organized I probably would not have posted

Quote from ArwensDaughter >>

There are different teams, working on different things.  Admittedly, the HUGE mechanical content in Tasha's was "all hands on deck."  Keep in mind that none of the recent announced departures were developers: they were some of the public faces of the DDB, but they were not the folks working on the code.  And the team has been expanding literally from the beginning: they went from a team of 5 to a team of 50 or more. (Not all of those team members are developers).  But doubling the team size does not double the work output, as it requires more coordination, etc. 

One of the things that has slowed down the publicly visible development of the encounter builder and combat track is that they are having to build an all new simplified character data structure.  They were all set up to pull character data like HP, AC, etc. into the system, but when the tested/modeled that, they discovered that doing so involved so many data calls that implementing it would have crashed the entire database.  So now they are working on this new system.  None of that is work we can see, so it looks like nothing is happening on it, but that's not in fact the case.

And this is not the first time they've had to do something like that.  They had to completely re-write/restructure the character sheet engine/code, removing it from the "monolith" architecture they started with and turning it into mini-services.  (That project took a year and a half) When first working on the encounter builder, they had to do work to remove the monster part of the database from the "monolith" and set it up as a separate system.  They still need to do that with homebrew and probably a lot of other parts of the system as well. 

I understand the frustration with the pace of development; I'm often frustrated myself.  i have felt, however, that they have been much more communicative about what is and isn't done on Tasha's, and they've been constantly updating the second post of that thread as they check things that weren't done at release off the list.  This is the first time I remember them doing so with a published book, and items are added nearly every week, and often times more frequently than that.  The pace of those updates has slowed a bit, but I'm guessing that's because the "low hanging fruit" was addressed first and that the remaining items (like sidekicks) take a lot more development work. 

I appreciate the direct reply.  And again, not sure how many people share my feelings, clearly Edem shares my raised eyebrow about a constant stream of tamagotchi Dice, and yeah we get it, its not the focus of a major force of developers, but it is a distraction from the core utilities.  

I also appreciate the need to refactor and restructure the data infrastructure in order to efficiently feed these new features.  Like you said they just went through a massive rewrite, and now you're implying they need to potentially re-architect again, based on these relatively simple encounter features.  I'm not trying to minimize the data problems that need to be solved.  But again, my main tack was that DDB made huge ripples in the community because of its character generator.  You won your audience because of the incredible usefulness of that.  Clearly a massive effort-sink is in trying to continue to digitize and the algorithmization of so many of the rules that span SO MANY rule books.  It's a noble pursuit, and clearly the priority needs to be to structure the data and tech stack to be as portable, modular, and efficient as possible, because that is the foundation ALL new features will be fed from. And when the handle is finally put on that, the things your teams will be able to create from that will be spectacular. 

But I don't think there is as much communication as you think.  And at least, as it pertains to the 1yr old Alpha of the Combat tracker, there hasn't been as much legit details about the underlying struggles, the feature details, the planned feature roadmap, etc.  I'm not trying to be overly pessimistic, but I am in a cautious period with my DDB attitude.  Growing from 5 to 50 is great and all, but like you said, how many are devs, and how many are new content produces, blog writers, video bloggers, admins, HR staff, inheritance from Fandom, etc.  These positions seems like fluff, I don't need streams of videos from DDB personalities talking about D&D related esoterica.  I don't need DDB to be a media company at all.  What I want is for them to be a hardcore nerd-filled development company making insanely great tools to help me and my players streamline the ugly D&D mechanics so we can focus on cooperatively telling our stories together. 

I'm not trying to imply that isn't your goal, but from far outside, there seems to be a lack of focus on the core promise, and un-publishing the high level Dev Roadmap (once in Trello) is a step backwards from the very communicative nature the small 5 person company had.  I get it too, publishing those types of things is almost always bound to create issues, as timelines slip, people get butthurt over changes in priorities, etc.  But IMO hiring less media producers and more customer communication team members or scrum managers would be a better focus, you're a good example of that, thanks for jumping in here.  Further, the first re-architecting of the data structures makes sense.  V1 was a proof of concept, and you can generally only extend that so far until it breaks to the needs of scaling.  But i would have assumed that during the eval for the rebuild, that a cogent set of long term goals and features were placed on the roadmap to get a better understanding of how all of these rule sets, and data sets might be used and extended into the future.  But it sounds like it didn't fully happen, or it was myopic in its scope as its already getting a revise so close to its initial refactor.  

I would have expected a full set of objectives on a vague timeline, so that the dev teams could estimate and mull over tech blockers to achieving the future features.  So again, it doesn't seem like there is a cogent roadmap of major features like:  Direct VTT support or API, NPC generation, Town/City generators which tie into your campaign, FInal Combat tracker feature list, Encounter generator feature path, Campaign management improvements and new features, additional world building/tracking features, etc.  In two days of dedicated workshopping  the team could have a deep roadmap with clear goals that they could build to, and from out here, it doesn't seem like there is this level of focus or promise.  It seems like there are new sets of teams, new silos, new internal pet projects, and lagging refactoring that is slowing feature releases, as the team struggles to keep up with converting existing content from WOTC, and looking at ways to further monetize from their captive customers.  It is also telling that this lag has specifically happened after the Fandom Acquisition (could be coincidence, could also be the normal malaise that hits acquired companies).  It's rare an acquisition like that is a net benefit, so I hope this isn't a poison pill like most acquisitions are. 

My hope is, it's not what it looks like.  The hope is, the high level departures are an attempt or inflection moment where the teams are starting to focus a bit more on the core, that the stall in progress of obvious outward tools is because the above i describe has happened, and the now-optimized team is about to put final touches on an insanely performant data model that allows all of the exampled features above to spring forth in a more timely manner.  

Thanks for watching, please like and subscribe to my newsletter below. 

Also hit me up when you need a new CEO haha. 

To be clear, I don't work here; I'm just a happy customer who likes being helpful and has both the time and interest in following the weekly dev update streams and the like.  Those updates are one of the places the "legit details about the underlying struggles, the feature details, the planned feature roadmap, etc." are shared, and that's the primary source of my information.

Apropos dev update streams: I would prefer written articles. I can read the articles; I can skim parts that are not interesting for me, and I won't have to spend up to 40 minutes watching a video in the hope that there will be at least one minute that covers what I am interested in. And no, I cannot listen to a video while doing something else, so that's up to 40 minutes just watching a video instead of skimming through an article in a couple minutes. Not to mention, not being a native English speaker, written text is way easier to understand for me.

Quote from Edem >>

Apropos dev update streams: I would prefer written articles. I can read the articles; I can skim parts that are not interesting for me, and I won't have to spend up to 40 minutes watching a video in the hope that there will be at least one minute that covers what I am interested in. And no, I cannot listen to a video while doing something else, so that's up to 40 minutes just watching a video instead of skimming through an article in a couple minutes. Not to mention, not being a native English speaker, written text is way easier to understand for me.

 I can understand that; there are lots of arenas (i.e. news reports) where I prefer written articles as well.  What I appreciate about the dev updates is the Q&A, which would be harder to do in a written format.  This week I really liked how Mellie was able to inject with questions that were pertinent to the topic being discussed, in stead of them all being handled at the end.  That said I'm a native English speaker, so I'm privileged in that respect, and in the respect that I have time to watch them (not usually live; I usually watch the VOD on Twitch later in the day or the next day)

Fortunately, they've been posting summaries and transcripts of the dev updates in the News and announcements forum.  The most recent is here.  The transcript is "hidden" behind a spoiler tag/button. Top pinned post in that forum is a master list of this year's updates.  I realize that's not quite what you are asking for, and you may already know about it given that you are a forum "regular," but I thought I'd mention it just in case you didn't, and for the benefit of others.

In the Feb 25th update, they specifically address the combat tracker.  Rollable monster attacks and damage are coming soon.  (In the livestream, Joe erroneously had it listed on the slides as live, but it isn't yet.  He acknowledged his error in the video. 

In the twitch VOD, the discussion of the  combat tracker begins at or around 19:15.  I believe the summary/transcript links to youtube, and in all likelihood, they chopped off the "dev stream is starting soon" section at the beginning, so if 19:15 doesn't get you there, so for anyone who chooses to watch the video on youtube, try taking 10-15 minutes off that "timestamp" to get to it.