I have read the other comments, and it seems I am not the only long winded alpha tester here, so I apologize in advance.
A word on performance: I know you mentioned that it is nowhere near where it needs to be, but it is bad enough that I can in no way send invites out to my group at this time. I have convinced them to switch to PF2 from 5e, and they will not have the patience I have and will say “Screw that, lets just go back to dndbeyond.” Also, the performance is such that at multiple stages in character creation, I could not tell whether it was going to eventually load something (sometimes taking 30 seconds or more – didn’t time) or the feature was unavailable at this time. Similar issue but to a lesser extent on the character page. I btw, tested performance it on firefox, vivaldi, and two iphone browsers. (I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t something with a particular browser. It is not, which is good.)
- I am actually going through the creation process again, and the speed is improved. The first time was at 1:30 AM eastern, when I woke up in feverish chills and could not get back to sleep (its been a fun few days). Perhaps the server was getting flooded by all those eastern Europeans (darn you)?
builder notes:
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When you complete a section, it sometimes says “1 selection” or something. This is a bit ambiguous at first glance. Does that mean I need to make 1 more selection? Perhaps just “complete” or a green checkmark or something.
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When you select a background, it will say something like (ex. for acrobat) free, Int, Wis. This tells me that if I select acrobat, I will get a free boost, a boost to Int, and a boost to Wisdom. That is of course not what happens. it should be changed to free, int / wis or free, int or wis.
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Also, upon clicking acrobat, it is not obvious on the right side (the left side looks good in this regard) that I need to click on the boxes to add the desired boosts. need some kind of visual “your not done till you click me” thing. I guess this is true of all of these kind of steps. the “0/12” box just isn’t enough for my old eyes.
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It is really nice how you see the stats change in real time at the top.
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Someone else made this comment and I agree: The visuals of the trained etc skills in the builder is really nice, and should be brought into to the character sheet.
- In general, I think the design is very nice. There are visuals mostly that need tweaking.
Character Sheet
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Before I forget and start nitpicking, I think this is really nice.
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I know dark mode is the new black (har har), but I am one of those people whose eyes get tired if I am staring at a black screen. I hope there will be an option for a light mode.
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Those little arrows in the boxes are pointing down when it is closed, and to the left when it is open. Is this normal? It feels backwards to me. (perhaps it is the metric system – darn Europeans!)
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It’s really nice that the actions associated with the attribute are right there.
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I really like the simple dice roller. I am sure that there is more to come here (weapon damage, etc) but its really nice and quick. It also gives me hope that the eventual goal is NOT to try and sell a bunch of silly dice that roll around and land behind dialogue boxes and stuff.
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The actions filter is great, and I particularly like the ability to hide things that you don’t want to see. Nice touch.
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I also like the tabs used for the different sections. Good design. Having said that, there is not enough padding at the bottom of the equipment section. It bumps right up to the bottom of the screen, and I keep trying to scroll down to see the rest of it. I guess this is true of all of them, but I noticed it first on equipment.
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I really, really like the details section. It is very simple, and it also encourages the player to think about things (ex. catchphrase).
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My first interaction with the HP section showed current HP at 0. I had to click full rest for it to show the correct amount. I also think the up down buttons for damage / heal are too small / close together.
Final thoughts
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I can see the potential in this setup, and it has me excited for what it will become.
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Adam, this is a little off topic, but I know that the general field of software tech is not known for its great work / life balance. I get the impression that it is important to you that people DO get some of this. So, for example, I think it is great that you guys go skeleton crew for a couple of weeks here. It will break my heart if I am wrong on this, and you start the new year bringing a sink into the office or something, but I don;t think that is the case. Anyway, this is something that I really appreciate about you.
EDIT: I almost forgot: I like the my characters page. It’s setup kinda like a showcase, which is cool. One suggestion is when you filter it by the game, a submenu appears allowing you to filter it by class (or class equivalent for the other games). On the old site, I had around 50 characters. I definitely see something similar happening here.