D&D (2024) WotC should have stuck to it's guns with the 2024 Beyond Update

[kigmatzomat]

WotC owned DDB for 2+ years at the time 5e 2024 (edit) was released and had plenty of opportunity prior to the purchase to perform due diligence on the code base. They no longer get passes on past design decisions as they have had time to do refactoring.

They either intentionally intended to use this as a club to force upgrades, had lost/laid off the knowledgeable people who would have told them what to expect and/or simply decided that the expense wasn't worth it.

I actually think the answer is "all of the above." I suspect they've lost developers with institutional knowledge, tasked the new devs with new projects like Maps so they didn't develop knowledge, and when the customer-centric types started making noises were told "It's a win-win, we save money and drive new ebook sales."

An experienced developer would have planned ahead, an intermediate could figure it out with time and even a junior dev should be able to brute force "run both systems at once and add a new layer to route to the right system".

That they haven't yet after realizing "oops, players mad! Numbers go down!" implies they either can't because they don't have the skills or won't because they don't want to spend the money on dev-time or server expenses.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

@OB1 @Clint_L @UngeheuerLich @Oofta There are toggles for the 2014 content. Have you guys not noticed them?

If you look at the Home tab in the character builder, there is a toggle for “2014 core rules” (along with homebrew, expanded rules, and legacy rules). You can just turn them off entirely with this.

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If you leave them on, you can still filter spells by 2024 core rules, 2014 core rules, expanded rules, and homebrew. These filters are available via both the spell selection section of the Class tab in the character builder and the Manage Spells sidebar on the character sheet.

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Sadly those toggles don't do what I want. I did not speak about the chatracter builder.

 

[Staffan]

I don't see how the issue can be a problem with the database design. Each rules element (spell, feat, monster, item) is already tagged with its source. It should be trivial to limit searches and other lookups to elements from certain sources.

 

[OB1]

@pukunui thank you for that breakdown! That will def help, though I still want the ability to do that by campaign as well. I'll admit I may have gone a bit overboard with my rant (and that the original WotC solution would be bad for some players).

Pls tell me more about this. I've been debating biting the bullet and paying a sub to access Maps. I wasn't impressed when I tried Maps on a trial basis in September.

It was definitely after September that they added the latest set of features that makes Maps sing for me.

Now when you are on a map, you go to the token browser, add the monster to the board, then click to add it to combat. If you're not in combat already, it adds all the monsters (that aren't hidden) and PCs to an initiative tracker on the left side of the tab the map is open in. PCs can roll initiative and the DM can auto roll initiative for all the monsters. Everything stays on the left screen, you have quick access to all of the abilities and saves of the monsters, and of course it shows HP as well. If you add a monster into the combat later (by placing it on the board) it integrates right into the current encounter tracker. Previously, I had one tab open for maps and one open for the old Encounter Builder in DDB. This new method let's me do everything I need on one tab (though I can open up monster details in another tab if I need to) and is way easier both creating encounters and modifying them mid combat.

My one quibble (which I've noted in feedback on the site) is that when you add tokens it places them automatically on the map (instead of clicking where you want it to show up) and you have to go searching across the map for where it went. It's easy to move, but on a big map with fog of war up, it can be a bit of a pain.

 

[Oofta]

WotC owned DDB for 2+ years at the time 5e was released and had plenty of opportunity prior to the purchase to perform due diligence on the code base. They no longer get passes on past design decisions as they have had time to do refactoring.

Have you ever done application development and redesign on a (somewhat) complex code base? While keeping the system up and running? Been there, done that. It's not easy. Convincing management at any company I've ever worked at that it's worth the cost is even more difficult because developers always think we can do it better. Sometimes we're right sometimes we aren't.

They either intentionally intended to use this as a club to force upgrades, had lost/laid off the knowledgeable people who would have told them what to expect and/or simply decided that the expense wasn't worth it.


I actually think the answer is "all of the above." I suspect they've lost developers with institutional knowledge, tasked the new devs with new projects like Maps so they didn't develop knowledge, and when the customer-centric types started making noises were told "It's a win-win, we save money and drive new ebook sales."

An experienced developer would have planned ahead, an intermediate could figure it out with time and even a junior dev should be able to brute force "run both systems at once and add a new layer to route to the right system".

That they haven't yet after realizing "oops, players mad! Numbers go down!" implies they either can't because they don't have the skills or won't because they don't want to spend the money on dev-time or server expenses.

A lot of people that work on new development/startup don't want to stick around after the product has been sold. After all it's more fun to write new stuff than to try to fix the crap you threw together in the first place.

 

[ECMO3]

WotC owned DDB for 2+ years at the time 5e was released and had plenty of opportunity prior to the purchase to perform due diligence on the code base. They no longer get passes on past design decisions as they have had time to do refactoring.

This is not true. 5e was released in 2014. DDB was started several years later (2017?) by a different company and sold to WOTC around 2022.

One problem IMO is WOTC orginally brought onboard all the DNDB developers, but ended up purging most (all?) of them before the 2024 release.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Rant/ Had an otherwise fantastic session last night that was marred by WotC's caving to a small but loud segment of the fanbase who pushed back

What evidence do you have that only a small segment of the fanbase wanted 2014 content to be easily usable?

 

[cbwjm]

I'd like there to be a toggle to turn off the 2024 content since my group doesn't use it and I'm glad that they've kept in the 2014 content since otherwise, it'd make everything that I've bought next to useless for play.

 

[kigmatzomat]

This is not true. 5e was released in 2014. DDB was started several years later (2017?) by a different company and sold to WOTC around 2022.

One problem IMO is WOTC orginally brought onboard all the DNDB developers, but ended up purging most (all?) of them before the 2024 release.

I meant 2024, which is where the problem is.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Have you ever done application development and redesign on a (somewhat) complex code base? While keeping the system up and running? Been there, done that. It's not easy. Convincing management at any company I've ever worked at that it's worth the cost is even more difficult because developers always think we can do it better. Sometimes we're right sometimes we aren't.

Yep. several times. A couple at a Fortune 100, the last one wrapped up last month. One particular process I shepherded from paper, to MSAccess (budget denied for 12+ months), to MSAccess + MS SQL (web developer budget denied, db budget approved) to IIS+MSQL ("why is this risk-management process not in a proper application?!?") then from ugly IIS vb to c#. That one was for government audits.

The last one was a migration from MSSQL to Snowflake.

There were also a few that didn't happen that should have and were the triggers for me to look for other employment. ("It's perfectly fine for multi-million dollar engineering contracts to be dependent on a set of XLS macros hacked together by a college intern to drive hydraulic simulations that could result in billions of dollars of damages, why should we spent $5k on a software license for a vetted application?")

A lot of people that work on new development/startup don't want to stick around after the product has been sold. After all it's more fun to write new stuff than to try to fix the crap you threw together in the first place.

Again, that's what due diligence and retention bonuses are for. Been through acqui-hires from both sides.

We don't know how hard it would be. I mean, if it was designed in accordance with "D&D One" concepts of modular rules, it would be easy peasy.

WotC decided to buy DDB while simultaneously putting 5e 2024 in development. That was the ideal time to do a code freeze and do the necessary refactoring.

WotC's gets all the credit and all the blame for DDBs (in)ability to support 2014 and 2024.