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]

Banking and Finance isn't entertainment-related and YOU made the admission the standards are not the same. "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. "

I am not telling you your job, I am repeating that you said your job isn't really about this kind of product it's about an entirely different level of industry. And now you appear to be back tracking on your own words for...reasons? And pretending I am telling you your job even though I clearly am not? Again, it's a reactionary response, and not persuasive.

Here is what they said their beta meant for the encounter builder (and by the way the encounter builder beta had it's last major update Jan 15, 2020]. "The BETA release is to stress test the environment and scale our data base to give users the best possible experience. After we have validated our testing, we will iterate on the existing Encounter Builder and future features to supplement this growing toolset."

That's it. Nothing about it being part of the core, testing has not been validated yet. In fact it's still missing a ton of features, and they list the features it's still missing, and isn't functional fully yet in beta. It's not a core release yet.

Finance and gaming are different, yes, and obviously gaming has lower standards, but testing methodology for software testing is the same, regardless of industry. It would be like me telling you that the laws are different if you're a family lawyer, vs a corporate lawyer. The laws are laws, regardless of what specialty lawyer is reading it. As a lawyer, I'd hope you to know that.

And what I'm saying is that by any method of software testing they are using, this should not have happened. At all.

Edit Also, just because something has updates, doesn't mean it's not core. Applications have updates all the time.

 

[Mistwell]

Finance and gaming are different, yes, and obviously gaming has lower standards

OK can you stop accusing me of trying to tell you your job then? You know I am not trying to do that and it's an accusation so easily seen-through by others that it damages your credibility on the rest of this.

but testing methodology for software testing is the same, regardless of industry

To quote an expert in your industry about your opinion on this, "my bias is a bit more strict."

It would be like me telling you that the laws are different if you're a family lawyer, vs a corporate lawyer. The laws are laws, regardless of what specialty lawyer is reading it. As a lawyer, I'd hope you to know that.

Please stop talking about my private life. I didn't bring it up, it's not applicable in any way to this discussion. I never brought your private life into this - you did. So I am asking you to stop. Please.

 

[R_J_K75]

John the rules lawyer gets super specific about how combat works and UH OH looks like the tracker crashed. the DM can't remember the exact initiative order what's this? John is punching the DM? now he's burning down the DM's house! they should've made sure the tracker was working correctly :/

I want to play with John the rules lawyer just so I can roll initiative to punch his face in. This sounds like a super app, Id pay $4.95/mo for him to show up at my games, unfortunately hes probably in jail for arson.

 

[Sacrosanct]

OK can you stop accusing me of trying to tell you your job then? You know I am not trying to do that and it's an accusation so easily seen-through by others that it damages your credibility on the rest of this.



To quote an expert in your industry about your opinion on this, "my bias is a bit more strict."



Please stop talking about my private life. I didn't bring it up, it's not applicable in any way to this discussion. I never brought your private life into this - you did. So I am asking you to stop. Please.

You're trying to tell me how my job works (in my private life), and when I use your job as an analogy, you refuse to accept it? Double standard much? And yes, when you're trying to tell me how phases of testing are defined, and how I'm wrong about what goes into the lifecycle of a project enhancement, that's telling me how my job works. You're arguing from a position of ignorance.

When I say my bias is a bit more strict, it means I probably am holding them to a high standard. However, regardless of my bias, having a core functionality break due to an alpha deploy is not acceptable. Not just by my bias, but by industry standard and their own words of what the scope of alpha testing is.

 

[Panda-s1]

I want to play with John the rules lawyer just so I can roll initiative to punch his face in. This sounds like a super app, Id pay $4.95/mo for him to show up at my games, unfortunately hes probably in jail for arson.

GOOD NEWS you too can go to jail and punch John in the face for the low low price of FREE O:

 

[Umbran]

Mod Note

@Sacrosanct and @Mistwell - Knock it off, please.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

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.

I'm a software developer working primarily in retail logistics. From my knowledge of the tech industry anything that touches banking, government systems, or anything related to keeping people from not dying has a reputation for being very strict. And probably rightfully so because the rest of the industry is surprisingly lax and full of people that just have no idea what they're talking about.

From what you described earlier my guess would be that someone botched the deployment. A lot of smaller shops don't fully automate their deploy processes and as they change out technologies they use things can get chaotic.

You're not wrong for being critical, it's obviously not a good thing. But these things tend to happen kinda frequently and no one got hurt so most people just give it a pass. Anyway relevant xkcd:

 

[ART!]

As a subscriber and frequent user, I'm looking forward to using this, but it sounds like I should hold off for a bit.

 

[Panda-s1]

I'm a software developer working primarily in retail logistics. From my knowledge of the tech industry anything that touches banking, government systems, or anything related to keeping people from not dying has a reputation for being very strict. And probably rightfully so because the rest of the industry is surprisingly lax and full of people that just have no idea what they're talking about.

From what you described earlier my guess would be that someone botched the deployment. A lot of smaller shops don't fully automate their deploy processes and as they change out technologies they use things can get chaotic.

You're not wrong for being critical, it's obviously not a good thing. But these things tend to happen kinda frequently and no one got hurt so most people just give it a pass. Anyway relevant xkcd:

...wait, isn't voting a government system?

(also inb4 some clever quip about governments and voting w/e)

 

[darjr]

It’s software. It can and will go south on you in weird ways. Sometimes even if you do everything correctly.