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]

Any idea how many people D&D Beyond have in their QA department? Or if they even have a QA department?

And then again... even if something broke that wasn't supposed to... so what? Whose nose is the skin off of? Those that already have D&D Beyond for the other functionality aren't going to suddenly drop the service cause this new thing they made caused an issue for a couple hours. And those that don't already have it probably aren't checking in on this combat tracker to begin with (or using it as their decision point.)

So again... yeah something broke and they are fixing it, and yeah maybe it "shouldn't have happened". I still don't see what is the big deal and why we should care or be upset with the folks at D&DB for it.

How many people (customers) use D&D beyond? Tens of thousands? More? They are the digital face of D&D. So yeah, they absolutely should have a QA team if they do software development. The fact that you don't see what the big deal is just reaffirms you really don't know that much about quality assurance testing and why it's a big deal. For example, if I'm Hasbro and a third party company has displayed they don't know what they are doing when it comes to Quality Assurance methodology, that gives me pause to work with them. Because since they are the digital face of MY product, it makes me look bad when mistakes happen that never should have.

So far you've got a few people in the industry like myself and others who have said why this is a bad thing. And then you've got others like yourself with no experience in this field telling us that we're overreacting and it's no big deal.

Maybe, just maybe, when it comes to the topic of quality assurance testing and why it's important, you should listen to the people who actually work in the industry because they probably know more than everyone else on that topic.

It's like doctors telling you that taking vitamin C won't help the Corona virus so don't bother, but other people with no medical background telling them, "No, it totally works". People who work in the field generally have more subject matter expertise on the matter than Joe Blow. Telling those subject matter experts that they are just looking to get worked up is dismissive and counter productive.

 

[Oofta]

How many people (customers) use D&D beyond? Tens of thousands? More? They are the digital face of D&D. So yeah, they absolutely should have a QA team if they do software development. The fact that you don't see what the big deal is just reaffirms you really don't know that much about quality assurance testing and why it's a big deal. For example, if I'm Hasbro and a third party company has displayed they don't know what they are doing when it comes to Quality Assurance methodology, that gives me pause to work with them. Because since they are the digital face of MY product, it makes me look bad when mistakes happen that never should have.

So far you've got a few people in the industry like myself and others who have said why this is a bad thing. And then you've got others like yourself with no experience in this field telling us that we're overreacting and it's no big deal.

Maybe, just maybe, when it comes to the topic of quality assurance testing and why it's important, you should listen to the people who actually work in the industry because they probably know more than everyone else on that topic.

It's like doctors telling you that taking vitamin C won't help the Corona virus so don't bother, but other people with no medical background telling them, "No, it totally works". People who work in the field generally have more subject matter expertise on the matter than Joe Blow. Telling those subject matter experts that they are just looking to get worked up is dismissive and counter productive.

Speaking as a software developer who has worked for multiple companies large and small for decades ... you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

It's alpha software that broke beta software. It's not the end of the world, it's certainly not worth the condescending attitude.

 

[slobster]

Disclaimer: I don't work in software and I have trouble properly downloading updates for my graphics card sometimes.

That said, I do play vidyah games from time to time. In common usage, among gamers and games companies, especially small ones, a "beta release" refers to a build of a game that is known to have a few issues, but is released to a subset of the public (or less often just to the public itself) to play, with the understanding that there will be issues to work through and that the play experience isn't guaranteed to be bug free. But part of the arrangement is that players who experience the bugs will report them, and the developers will take that feedback into account when refining and patching the product for eventual complete release.

Often beta releases are free but for a short period, but there have been games that sit out in wide release for literal years as a "beta", with the player base eventually joking about the fact that the game "isn't technically released yet".

Is the term "beta test" abused by lazy video game companies who just want the excuse to make players be their unpaid quality testers and bug finders? 100% yes. But not every beta release is so cynical, and on a small project like this from a company whose primary business isn't even software (yet), it's easy for me to be more charitable.

All that isn't to say that the people here who are actually programmers are wrong. Obviously y'all are way more qualified to talk industry stuff than I am. But I just wanted to mention that the term "beta test" has a different connotation, apparently, for games than it does for serious software development, and WotC was likely using the term in that colloquial manner and not in the finance/safety/nuclear football level of standards.

Just my 2 cp! Don't murder me!

 

[LordEntrails]

It still amazes me that DDB is the digital face of D&D. (I'm not saying it isn't, because it is.) These things like the encounter builder and now combat tracker are so inferior to the other D&D digital platforms that I continue to be baffled by people being so interested in DDB.

I'm glad they "are getting there". But these are functions that FG has had working an ironed out for YEARS.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Maybe, just maybe, when it comes to the topic of quality assurance testing and why it's important, you should listen to the people who actually work in the industry because they probably know more than everyone else on that topic.

I of course realize that QA is important, because obviously it gets programming correct for when it goes out the door.

But in this case, it ain't the QA department that appears the issue here... its more like the marketing department that should be up in arms, cause it's the people reacting to the fact that the program broke for a little while that seems to be the concern. You seem to think that this program being broken is "unacceptable". Well... unless you immediately cancelled your D&DB subscription, then it was acceptable, because you accepted it. Yeah, you complained about it (which is you're right), but if you didn't actually do anything then there's nothing to take from it as far as I can tell.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Speaking as a software developer who has worked for multiple companies large and small for decades ... you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

Developers always say this for every defect found, regardless of severity. Sorta in self interest

 

[ART!]

It still amazes me that DDB is the digital face of D&D. (I'm not saying it isn't, because it is.) These things like the encounter builder and now combat tracker are so inferior to the other D&D digital platforms that I continue to be baffled by people being so interested in DDB.

I'm glad they "are getting there". But these are functions that FG has had working an ironed out for YEARS.

In my case, DDB does everything I need it to do. The Encounter Builder and this Combat Tracker are not things I need, but may find some use for once they're properly up and running. I'm happy to wait for that, since I don't need those features. My whole group feels the same way, and we've been using DDB since we started started our weekly 5E about 2.5 years ago.

Just for anecdotal/comparison purposes.

 

[Oofta]

Developers always say this for every defect found, regardless of severity. Sorta in self interest

It's been many years since "The Incident". No need to drag up the past!

 

[Sacrosanct]

I of course realize that QA is important, because obviously it gets programming correct for when it goes out the door.

But in this case, it ain't the QA department that appears the issue here... its more like the marketing department that should be up in arms, cause it's the people reacting to the fact that the program broke for a little while that seems to be the concern. You seem to think that this program being broken is "unacceptable". Well... unless you immediately cancelled your D&DB subscription, then it was acceptable, because you accepted it. Yeah, you complained about it (which is you're right), but if you didn't actually do anything then there's nothing to take from it as far as I can tell.

The QA team is responsible to signing off on the code before deployment. This would be entirely on them. And since my subscription is prepaid, it's kinda hard to cancel it and get my money back. That doesn't mean I find this error acceptable.

But more to the point, if I'm the owner of a billion dollar IP and a software company is wanting to establish a licensing partnership and they've shown that they have fundamental issues with quality assurance, it's going to create pause. Personally, if I were WoTC or Hasbro, the first question I'd ask is to know what kind of QA methodology they follow. From everything I've seen, it seems like they are just doing an in house willy nilly version and not really following any established quality assurance methodology (this error not being found, sending alpha code to the public when alpha testing is always done in house, using incorrect designations of beta testing, etc). And there are other companies out there that manage to not have these issues. All of those things are important, and don't look good for D&D Beyond. This is not an indictment on the character of anyone working for D&D Beyond, but rather only on their QA processes.

A lot of folks can't seem to get past how this error just affects them personally, without seeing the larger picture and impacts and implications of what such a error like this means.

 

[ART!]

The QA team is responsible to signing off on the code before deployment. This would be entirely on them. And since my subscription is prepaid, it's kinda hard to cancel it and get my money back. That doesn't mean I find this error acceptable.

But more to the point, if I'm the owner of a billion dollar IP and a software company is wanting to establish a licensing partnership and they've shown that they have fundamental issues with quality assurance, it's going to create pause. Personally, if I were WoTC or Hasbro, the first question I'd ask is to know what kind of QA methodology they follow. From everything I've seen, it seems like they are just doing an in house willy nilly version and not really following any established quality assurance methodology (this error not being found, sending alpha code to the public when alpha testing is always done in house, using incorrect designations of beta testing, etc). And there are other companies out there that manage to not have these issues. All of those things are important, and don't look good for D&D Beyond. This is not an indictment on the character of anyone working for D&D Beyond, but rather only on their QA processes.

A lot of folks can't seem to get past how this error just affects them personally, without seeing the larger picture and impacts and implications of what such a error like this means.

It could be that Hasbro is thinking longer-term, wants it done by DDB rather than contracting yet another company to do things, and is prepared for the hiccups.