WoTC D&D 5e Elements Survey 8

[MNBlockHead]

The new WoTC Survey is available:

http://sgiz.mobi/s3/D-D-5e-Elements-Survey-8

I've been using the optional comments section of the surveys to beg WoTC to license content for RW and HL. Of course I make sure to provide thoughtful feedback on the main topic of the survey itself, but hopefully, if they keep seeing their customers ask for it they will work something out.

 

[Gord]

Thanks for posting these reminders. I would never think to do the survey otherwise.

 

[MNBlockHead]

Thanks for posting these reminders. I would never think to do the survey otherwise.

You're welcome. With WoTC closing down their community forums, it is one of the few ways to still give regular (monthly) direct feedback to them that someone is likely to actually ready.

Don't know if it makes a jot of difference, but I'd complete the surveys anyway, so I make sure I keep harping on the need for more licensing of content to developers of game-aid software.

 

[Parody]

I haven't followed the Ranger so I have nothing to say on this one.

I do think it's interesting that the tiny report on the last survey said nothing about how people responded to the questions on the summer conventions.

I also think closing their forums is a bad idea. Paizo's forums lack a bunch of useful features, but they use them to coordinate rules info, PFS (Organized Play) for both their RPG and Card Game lines, playtests, and a bunch of other things. No clue how WotC is planning to do that on a bunch of social networks. Oh, well.

 

[kbs666]

I do think it's interesting that the tiny report on the last survey said nothing about how people responded to the questions on the summer conventions.

I also think closing their forums is a bad idea. Paizo's forums lack a bunch of useful features, but they use them to coordinate rules info, PFS (Organized Play) for both their RPG and Card Game lines, playtests, and a bunch of other things. No clue how WotC is planning to do that on a bunch of social networks. Oh, well.

They probably got overwhelmingly bad responses on leaving GenCon and didn't want to say so.

Closing the public forums is really dumb. Yes, it gets rid of the negativity associated with any big public forum but it also cuts down on the free flow of communication between fans, and devs, that the social networks don't handle so well when it isn't one on one. The reality is that this isn't 1999 any more every one has been on the net for a while and most of their target market has been using the net their whole lives so negativity and trolling shouldn't shock anyone anymore.

 

[MNBlockHead]

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that they are closing down their forums in favor of social media sites like Tumbler, Facebook, etc. Maybe it is us who are getting old, I see discussion forums like these becoming as passe as e-mail discussion groups.

 

[Parody]

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that they are closing down their forums in favor of social media sites like Tumbler, Facebook, etc.

No need to be unsure: Wizards said it in their announcement.

Maybe it is us who are getting old, I see discussion forums like these becoming as passe as e-mail discussion groups.

Perhaps, but the social networks are a big step backwards in many areas, notably finding old discussions. It could be worse, though; they could have chosen Discourse.

 

[Gord]

It could be worse, though; they could have chosen Discourse.

Interesting comment since I literally just heard about Discourse this morning and was going to check it out as a possible forum alternative for my store.

 

[Lexin]

they could have chosen Discourse.

What's Discourse? I googled it, but it didn't come up with anything useful.

 

[Gord]

I believe it is just another type of forum/social media but more mobile friendly. You can check it out at https://www.discourse.org/. So far, I have heard one positive and one negative opinion but I knew nothing about it before the other day.

 

[davidp]

What I know about discourse is that the development has been led by the same guy who led the development of http://stackoverflow.com/ and http://stackexchange.com/, Jeff Atwood. I, as a programmer, love stackoverflow and use it practically every day.

 

[Parody]

Discourse is a forum software, as Gord mentioned.

Where more "traditional" forum software like vBulletin (used here) is based on static web pages and paging longer threads, Discourse is based on dynamic web pages that load and remove posts as you scroll through a thread.

When I visit a forum, I like to load up a bunch of threads with new posts in the background. Then I can switch through them without waiting for anything to load; if I need to change pages, I can either wait or switch to a different thread while the old one loads. While this is a habit held over from the dialup days it's still a very efficient way to read forums.

You can't do that with Discourse. It only loads (by default, controlled by the server) a very small number of posts. When you reach the bottom it loads a few more; eventually it starts removing ones from earlier, so if you scroll up it has to reload them.

A side effect of "Infiniscroll" is that your browser's built-in navigation controls (like the scroll bar and search-in-page) are broken. Discourse ended up implementing widget replacements to give you such useful information as (very approximately) how far you were into the thread and a way to jump back or forward. It also hijacks Ctrl-F to search the whole site, unless you notice each time and check the checkbox for "just this thread". (Or use your browser features to not let it hijack keyboard shortcuts.)

Another "feature" I don't like is how the default is to mark all threads and posts read a day or two after they were made, whether or not you've read them. You can change this in user settings, but it seems pretty bad at remembering what you've read. I've gotten used to being dumped at the top of the thread each time and jumping down to about where I think I left off.

There are other things (like how it burns through mobile data and battery, or how it spams your browser history if you let it) but I think you get the idea. The practical upshot is that I don't like their design choices or how they ended up implementing them.

All of that is based on Discourse's features. I also don't recommend Discourse because Jeff Atwood's response to no longer wanting to hear bug reports and feature requests from one of Discourse's more active installations was to ban all active users from that site from meta.discourse.org (which is where you report problems with Discourse), delete their posts, and tell them they should move to some other software.

If you're picking a forum software, I highly recommend anything else. My choice would be something more traditional, but style is something for you to decide.

Good luck finding something you and your users find helpful!

 

[Lexin]

I believe it is just another type of forum/social media but more mobile friendly.

Oh, I see. I've had a look at it, and it reminds me very much of Livejournal and it's cousins Dreamwidth and Insanejournal. I don't believe that Discourse can get rid of the trolls, as LJ, DW and IJ have failed to do that with what are on the surface fairly similar formats.

However, I've joined, at least partly to ensure that no-one else gets my preferred username. I'm like that.

 

[Talerass]

They are probably downsizing is all because of Hasbro policy. Hasbro has a minimum amount of money any independent product line must produce. If it does not meet the minimum it gets a probation then axed. Dungeons and Dragons has not been meeting that target number and hence 5th edition was born to generate revenue.