Hello everyone!
We really appreciate everyone that has jumped into the choppy waters of the alpha so far. I’ll keep saying it - we can’t make these tools all we want them to be without your feedback and support.
We have a new release that just went live. We will have many of these in the next several weeks. The patch notes for today are:
Update Notes 12/9/2022
- Resolved an issue where Heritages were not displaying for selection in the Character Builder.
- Heritages now sort based on the specific ancestry first, followed by Versatile Heritages. We will likely make this distinction clearer in a future update as well.
- Resolved issue where certain Heritages’ resistances were not carried through to the Character Sheet correctly.
- Clicking on options in the center column will no longer duplicate choices in the right column display.
- Demiplane Members should not be prompted to delete characters after they have 7 or more.
- Forwarded demiplane.com/characters to the My Characters page
- Character Delete Confirmation correctly checks against character name
- Added Class to container in Element Display section
I’ll share a few more reflections from our first day of the alpha:
Wait, I Thought That Was Working…
After we got all the code deployed into our production environment where all our alpha testers could access it for the first time (a massive effort that took a few days), there were some circumstances where things that were working in our development environments were not working properly in the Closed Alpha.
This would include things like:
- Center Row selections are duplicating right display
- Cannot Reverse Class Feature selections after they are made
- ‘Change Background’ missing from Background Options section
- Cannot Change Ancestry/Background/Classes
- Changing A/B/C while selections were previously made in A/B/C is causing major issues
- No Details for Game Elements available on Sheet
- Leveling Up grants two levels instead of one
- Leveling Up on Sheet does not pass benefits of new level to Builder
- No way to return to builder from Sheet
We’ll be focused on fixes for the list above in the next few days, as for the most part, those are things that already work in one of our environments but we need to get them properly set up and configured in the live environment. We’ll share updates as we have them on this list.
Yeah, We Know That’s Not Ready Yet…But We’re on It
We are (very) aware that the tools are not performant enough right now. Part of most development is “get it working, and then get it working right.” We’re still in the get it working part, so the getting it to work right will come in the near future. You’ll magically start to see those load times melt away until things are right where we need them to be. Feel free to save yourself the time to post if it involves things being slow right now. Once we are at a place where we feel like performance is in the right place, we’ll put out a call for feedback to confirm it is indeed there.
Additionally, we’re seeing posts along the lines of “I can’t select a deity for my cleric or champion” or “I can’t select a familiar or companion,” or “Option [X] is not available for me to select.”
Feel free to share those posts, but I will say again here that we both 1) are fully aware that options are missing throughout and 2) have adding all those options on our list. So, if you want to hold off on sharing any feedback along those lines for now, you can rest assured that we’re tracking it already. We will reach a point in the alpha phase where we will explicitly share “We believe we have all the options in there - let us know if we’re missing anything,” but we’re not there yet.
Noted - We’ll Review Alongside All the Feedback
We’re seeing feedback along the lines of “Button [X] should be centered instead of left-aligned” or “the spacing in this area and font sizes should be larger.” While I’ll reiterate that we have not done a styling polish pass as of yet (and much will tighten up in the next few weeks), I will confirm this type of feedback is still useful at this phase - so keep it coming.
I’ll also share that this kind of feedback is naturally subjective and often based on preferences. That doesn’t make it any less important to us, but I want to emphasize that we will be reviewing all of this feedback comprehensively across all our feedback inputs to make sure if and when we make changes that the outcome is the best for as many fans as possible. So don’t get too mad at us if we don’t change “the thing” you posted about that we should change. 
Know that we are taking it all into consideration and are committed to making the moves that make the tools the best they can be!
Smells Like Potential
Lastly for today, I mention in our “welcome screen” that the type of feedback we care about most here in the first couple of weeks is related to overall impressions and general direction.
We are really pleased to see the initial response with impressions and overall “feel” feedback. It’s energizing for our team to hear the feedback that even though this is super-early and definitely not polished or finished yet, there is excitement over the potential for how it can end up once it is finished.
Getting this early impression feedback allows us to validate our approach in order to crank things into high gear to complete development on the character tools in the coming weeks. It’s tough to do that before when we’re wondering “Is anyone going to actually like using this?” We’ve got what we need now to forge ahead.
Thanks again for all the engagement and participation. Keep the feedback coming. Even if we don’t reply individually to everything you post, please know that we are tracking, reviewing, and considering it all as we move forward to get ready for the Open Beta.
Have a good weekend!
