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."

 

[R_J_K75]

this is really unacceptable

Seems par for the course since the 3e character gen.

 

[OB1]

Bandwidth would affect the entire page, not just the monster database. They broke something when they installed the alpha combat tracker build. As someone who does software testing as my day job, this is really unacceptable to not have done basic regression on their existing code before deployment.

Seems like they're working on it:

Can't Add Monsters to Encounters - (Discontinued) Encounters Feedback Portal - D&D Beyond Feedback - D&D Beyond General - D&D Beyond Forums - D&D Beyond

I'm trying to set up a new encounter and when I load it up it won't show any monsters. With no filters applied, same thing. With filters applied,...

www.dndbeyond.com

What would have caused it to be working at 9:15pst when I tested it and then not 30 min later?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Seems par for the course since the 3e character gen.

Disclaimer: I don't work in video gaming or entertainment. I work in corporate finance. So if there are any defects going to production, head's roll in my world. Can you imagine if millions of customers all the sudden couldn't access their online banking features? So maybe my bias is a bit more strict.

That said. I have noticed this trend where video game/entertainment companies are just skipping any sort of robust testing at all, and relying on users to do it for them by calling it "alpha". IMO, that's lazy. And makes your company look bad.

In my world, we have DEVS do the coding, and QA/UAT (Quality assurance/User acceptance testing) does the testing. Then we go to pilot, with a handful of production folks to try to find things we couldn't find in testing for one reason or another (usually due to environmental limitations in the test environment). Then, after robust testing in pilot, it gets deployed to production.

As an alpha build, I fully expect bugs here and there. But to completely lose functionality of one of your key and critical areas? That should have been worked out long before it went to alpha. I'm not a DEV, so I don't know the exact coding, but access to the site with apparently no linkage to the database tables tells me that I'm guessing when they deployed code, something got overwritten or deleted or something that broke that link to the monster database

 

[R_J_K75]

Disclaimer: I don't work in video gaming or entertainment. I work in corporate finance. So if there are any defects going to production, head's roll in my world. Can you imagine if millions of customers all the sudden couldn't access their online banking features? So maybe my bias is a bit more strict.

That said. I have noticed this trend where video game/entertainment companies are just skipping any sort of robust testing at all, and relying on users to do it for them by calling it "alpha". IMO, that's lazy. And makes your company look bad.

In my world, we have DEVS do the coding, and QA/UAT (Quality assurance/User acceptance testing) does the testing. Then we go to pilot, with a handful of production folks to try to find things we couldn't find in testing for one reason or another (usually due to environmental limitations in the test environment). Then, after robust testing in pilot, it gets deployed to production.

As an alpha build, I fully expect bugs here and there. But to completely lose functionality of one of your key and critical areas? That should have been worked out long before it went to alpha. I'm not a DEV, so I don't know the exact coding, but access to the site with apparently no linkage to the database tables tells me that I'm guessing when they deployed code, something got overwritten or deleted or something that broke that link to the monster database

Does seem lazy and doesnt leave a good impression on potential future paying customers of D&DB.

 

[MNblockhead]

Well, there is an important difference with software developed for the corporate world and those for entertainment. No company relying on software to run its business is going to want to be an alpha or beta tester and customers of, say, a bank, or on-line retailer are not interested in alpha or beta testing. They just want to pay their bills, check their balance, and make their purchases.

Many gamers, however, are more than happy to put up with buggy or unreliable software to get earlier access to new features and to help test it so that those features can be released sooner than they would be able to relying only on formal QA/UAT resources.

I do, however, think that alpha/beta features should be opt in and hidden from those who haven't opted in. Personally, I'm happy to have alpha access to the new combat tracker and am happy to give constructive feedback and report issues. But I can see many subscribers getting excited about a newly "released" feature only to be upset when they encounter things that don't work well. I suppose Fandom/Curse have made the calculation that any short term erosion of goodwill is offset by not having to manage and alpha/beta tester program and getting a larger number of people providing feedback.

 

[robus]

I'll stick with my trusty Pathfinder combat pad.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Well, there is an important difference with software developed for the corporate world and those for entertainment. No company relying on software to run its business is going to want to be an alpha or beta tester and customers of, say, a bank, or on-line retailer are not interested in alpha or beta testing. They just want to pay their bills, check their balance, and make their purchases.

Many gamers, however, are more than happy to put up with buggy or unreliable software to get earlier access to new features and to help test it so that those features can be released sooner than they would be able to relying only on formal QA/UAT resources.

I do, however, think that alpha/beta features should be opt in and hidden from those who haven't opted in. Personally, I'm happy to have alpha access to the new combat tracker and am happy to give constructive feedback and report issues. But I can see many subscribers getting excited about a newly "released" feature only to be upset when they encounter things that don't work well. I suppose Fandom/Curse have made the calculation that any short term erosion of goodwill is offset by not having to manage and alpha/beta tester program and getting a larger number of people providing feedback.

That's the thing though. I can't be hidden. Not unless the alpha or beta users all agree to use a different link to a different build. This is a perfect example. The encounter builder wasn't supposed to really be touched, right? combat tracker was a completely different enhancement. However, it obviously ties to the encounter builder, so everyone who isn't a subscriber and doesn't have access to the combat tracker is still impacted by the encounter builder because they are linked. And God knows what else is linked. So the only way to do that is to have completely different builds at different URL locations.

 

[cbwjm]

Sweet. I've been waiting for this. Might give it a try this Friday.

 

[Fenris447]

I still use Hero Lab for running my games, mainly because its Tactical Console already does all this and way more. But since that program is slowly dying, a comparable feature at D&DB will be one more reason for me to make the switch. I hope they can do it.

 

[Retreater]

Clothespins posted at the top of my DM Screen. Best initiative system I've ever used.