D&D 5E D&D Beyond Announces Combat Tracker

"We're happy to announce the Alpha release of the Combat Tracker tool to subscribers of D&D Beyond! Try it out in your D&D games and your feedback will be used to make this the best it can be!"

D&D Beyond has just announced the alpha development version of a combat tracker. You can track monsters, initiative, and access quick reference information. This functionality is similar to that offered by Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds.

You can read more about the combat tracker here. The Alpha version is available to DDB subscribers.

"We have been using the Combat Tracker in our home games for a few weeks, and although it is certainly not in a finished state yet, we experienced enough value that we have decided to go ahead and release it now - even in its unfinished state - to both 1) let subscribers gain some of that value and 2) get feedback as early as possible.

Please keep in mind that this is not a finished product, and we invite subscribers to help us make it the best it can be!

Who can use the Combat Tracker?

All D&D Beyond Subscribers. The Combat Tracker is in full active development right now. We will be allowing early access to NEW Combat Tracker features to our Subscribers first, to prove out concepts and new functionality. We took the same approach with the Alpha version of the Encounter Builder with much success. This delivery method allows us to digest feedback in bite sized chunks and perform testing to figure out the best user experience possible.

What is a Development Alpha?

The Development Alpha of the Combat Tracker allows us to test features and user experience.

• Functional but expecting a lot of bugs
  • Should be no core functionality bugs
• Core functionality could change with feedback
• Functionality could appear or disappear at any time

We will be working on validating bug reports and cleaning up the Combat Tracker. Once these tasks have been completed we will release to Beta, essentially meaning the Combat Tracker tool is complete."

 

[Sacrosanct]

Okay, but you aren’t holding them to a standard, you’re misunderstanding the situation by applying the thinking of your industry to a different industry.

Early access to test the thing in alpha isn’t a release. The product has not been released. As a subscriber, you have the option to take part in a wide-net alpha test, or to ignore it until it is actually launched, or at least in open beta.

An alpha test will have major bugs. Individuals will have the entire thing crash on them. I have literally never alpha tested something where this wasn’t the case.

This is like criticizing the D&D team for their design mistakes during the Next playtest.
Reporting issues and bugs is good. Acting like they’re trying to “get away with” something really isn’t.

any time a build gets deployed, it’s called a release. And no one is saying there wouldn’t be major bugs in an alpha. But again, even by their own words, the alpha shouldn’t have had an impact to core functionality. And when code has been out there for several months to the general public, it is core functionality.

Look, I get how people who don’t work in quality assurance or software releases aren’t familiar with the terminology used. How would you? But when someone who is in the industry is telling you what terms are, why would you argue against that? You’re telling a subject matter expert they are wrong an you, who have no experience, is right. Especially when I’ve already linked to what those terms are defined at within the industry earlier

Beta is core functionality. A beta is a public release. Stability may be an issue. There may be some bugs. But it works.

Exactly. Beta is a pilot. There will be no new functionality in beta. It’s only purpose is to identify minor issues that may come up, as well as user interface feedback. It is, for all intents and purposes, finished code. Especially if it’s left out there for months (because normal betas only last a couple weeks)

 

[Sacrosanct]

If they're done testing, then why are they calling this a "test?"

This is the equivalent of Ubisoft releasing a beta test because they added a new specialty (class)” and when players booted up the game (even those that didn’t get the expansion), found out they couldn’t access any of the weapons on their characters.

I’m sure they did some testing, but it was woefully inadequate to have released this build without finding this error.

 

[Panda-s1]

If they're done testing, then why are they calling this a "test?"

ooookay are you honestly unfamiliar with different kinds of testing? they aren't having an open alpha to test functionality, they're having users test usability.

 

[Sacrosanct]

ooookay are you honestly unfamiliar with different kinds of testing? they aren't having an open alpha to test functionality, they're having users test usability.

Having users test usability is not alpha testing. It’s UAT (beta) testing. Which once again shows there is question as to what they are they doing if they keep mislabeling the phases of what they are doing.

Edit: well, let me amend just a bit. UAT can be both internal and external, technically. But UAT internal (which is what alpha is) is different. It’s basically what I do. Then after I give sign off, it goes to pilot where the actual users do UAT, which is what beta would be. And the pilot is a small group that lasts a couple weeks.

But to the point, I can’t find a single definition of alpha testing where the code has been deployed to the general public for validation. I have a mountain load of training sites and industry methodology sites that all have the same definitions. For the record, when I say “in the industry”, I mean professional quality assurance testing industry. Regardless of testing process (waterfall, AGILE, etc), definitions of alpha, beta, UAT, QA, etc are all pretty much the same

 

[JRedmond]

I'm torn on this one, I hate being critical. I've bought pretty much everything on D&D Beyond. I've noticed since the last major character sheet update and being purchased by Fandom that their release schedule is extremely slow. They used to release cool new things every month, now you're lucky to get anything good within a year.

 

[Mistwell]

I don't care what industry. It doesn't have to be software. You're building widgits. Or selling real estate. Or baking cakes.

You're telling me it's ok if the widgits aren't the right size? Or that it doesn't matter what property is listed on the county rolls that you've sold? Or that the cake can be made without, you know, cake ingredients?

At my company when someone accidentally makes the wrong size robes for a couple of hours (which happens because we're humans), it's a minor issue. We correct it and move on. Nobody makes a huge deal out of it. It's not that it "doesn't matter" it's that "it doesn't matter enough to make a deal out of it".

Different products and services involve different levels of tolerances for errors, depending on the risks involved with their usage. An alpha release for an entertainment piece of software which screws up a beta release for a few hours is not something worth making a deal out of and is roughly around the same level of issue as us making the wrong size robes for a few hours, because the risk of serious harm to people for both is extremely low. It's definitely not in the league of planes crashing or bank account software crashing which are extremely high and high (respectively) in terms of risk to humans. We also, as a society, tend to pay people a lot more money if their decisions concern extremely high risk products, and much lower if they concern extremely low risk products (on average, though there are of course exceptions like movie stars and athletes).

This variance in tolerance levels should be obvious. Your ability to pay attention to detail should have informed you about this tolerance level variance issue. You appear to be experiencing an error. Should we make a deal out of it? Should we compare your error to planes crashing because you seem to have glitched on noticing that tolerance levels vary by usage for high risk versus low risk products?

 

[Azzy]

So, um, yeah. How is it working now and what functionality does it have?

 

[cbwjm]

Many games nowadays are available in alpha builds for early access users so it isn't surprising the DnDBeyond has released this to subscribers only for testing. People are able to provide feedback and it likely gives the development team (which I feel for DnDBeyond would be relatively small) some good feedback. I don't really care what the definitions for alpha or beta builds were, since these definitions have clearly changed in the last few years and a small break in the system really isn't anything to get hung up on.

 

[cbwjm]

So, um, yeah. How is it working now and what functionality does it have?

1. You create an encounter in DnDBeyond.
2. You assign characters that belong to a campaign.
3. You click on run encounter, it has a button to auto-roll initiative for monsters (in the future, players will be able to roll initiative via their character sheet to populate their initiative).
4. You click on start and it automatically orders everyone into initiative order.
5. Click next to cycle through each turn.

If you have a monster written up in your notes that isn't on DnDBeyond, you can also manually add them to the initiative tracker by putting in their details which is pretty cool.

I would like there to be a condition tracker, essentially a free text field that you can write in details as a reminder but otherwise from playing around with it, it's nice addition to the encounter builder.

 

[Azzy]

details

Thank you for that.