TOPIC: App Troubleshooting Idea

One thing I've noticed in my runs is that there is usually a fair amount of app troubleshooting that happens during coaching.

I think this is unfortunate as:

a. Hard to troubleshoot without a shared screen / being able to see what the other person is doing.

b. It centers the coaching experience around stressful problems and challenges rather than getting psyched up, chit chatting, etc. for everyone - even people whose apps are working fine.

I do not know if this is feasible with volunteers, but I think having break-out Zooms with 1:1 app troubleshooting during coaching would be an immense help in both getting things fixed (e.g. the helper could have one android and one iPhone, and show the person screen by screen what they need to do), and with keeping the focus of coaching on TD, not app mishaps.

Today my party had a lot of app trouble:

2 people were not able to open / load files
4 people were not able to join the event. It turns out the event problem was due to a misspelling in the event code.

It was enough of a bother that one of my longtime player friends, who wasn't having trouble, said he'll never play VTD again, which sort of broke my heart. He's the one who got me into TD. But sitting for 24 minutes as people struggle with the basics of loading a character or getting a roll off is very unpleasant.

As a follow on thought, I think a few changes could make the app experience a lot easier:

1. There should be one form that takes both the two codes at once, rather than two forms. People get mixed up on which value goes into which form.

2. Across all apps, websites, and the TD screen there should be a standard name for each of the two codes needed to join the event.

I am not certain, but I feel like these two codes are referred to with different names in the app, and on the VTD coaching screen.

For example, the iOS app refers to the first code you have to enter as an "Key Word", and that label is buried in the middle of the message:

Enhance your event experience Enter the event Key Word provided by your DM

This message should be much more to the point, saying something like:

Enter your Event Code:


And the second needed value should be named something distinct and similarly to the point:

Enter your Party ID:


3. Even better, there should only be one code the user needs to enter.

Matthew Hayward wrote: As a follow on thought, I think a few changes could make the app experience a lot easier:

1. There should be one form that takes both the two codes at once, rather than two forms. People get mixed up on which value goes into which form.

2. Across all apps, websites, and the TD screen there should be a standard name for each of the two codes needed to join the event.

I am not certain, but I feel like these two codes are referred to with different names in the app, and on the VTD coaching screen.

For example, the iOS app refers to the first code you have to enter as an "Key Word", and that label is buried in the middle of the message:

Enhance your event experience Enter the event Key Word provided by your DM

This message should be much more to the point, saying something like:

Enter your Event Code:


And the second needed value should be named something distinct and similarly to the point:

Enter your Party ID:


3. Even better, there should only be one code the user needs to enter.

+1 to these ideas.

I think that expecting there to be a second volunteer in coaching for every single run just to provide IT help seems like a HUGE ask. I run fairly often, usually 3-4 times per VTD weekend, and I can say that I've only ever had one instance of tech issues eating up all 24 minutes of coaching.

This is the first dungeon in the series. There are very likely going to be a bunch of new people who are figuring it out this time. We want that! It behooves all of us as players to have patience for that because new people are what is going to keep the game growing and thriving. Could some things be simplified a little? Sure! I think the various interfaces are all created by volunteers, a different one for each piece. Maybe it's time for TD to hire one person to oversee some kind of continuity. That could be great! But I hope we can all understand that there might be a few growing pains this weekend and they aren't indicative of what every run will always be like.

Hallie Smith wrote: I think that expecting there to be a second volunteer in coaching for every single run just to provide IT help seems like a HUGE ask. I run fairly often, usually 3-4 times per VTD weekend, and I can say that I've only ever had one instance of tech issues eating up all 24 minutes of coaching.

This is the first dungeon in the series. There are very likely going to be a bunch of new people who are figuring it out this time. We want that! It behooves all of us as players to have patience for that because new people are what is going to keep the game growing and thriving. Could some things be simplified a little? Sure! I think the various interfaces are all created by volunteers, a different one for each piece. Maybe it's time for TD to hire one person to oversee some kind of continuity. That could be great! But I hope we can all understand that there might be a few growing pains this weekend and they aren't indicative of what every run will always be like.

I'm not proposing a 2nd person for every coaching staff, I'm proposing a separate troubleshooting zoom and troubleshooter(s).

If tech issues are rare, then perhaps single on duty person could handle it for all runs.

In any case, VTD isn't free, at $74 a ticket I don't feel it's asking a lot to consider ways to make the app onboarding experience better. If it's not feasible, then it's not.

For what it's worth, I would have mentioned this during epilogue but our epilogue didn't happen due to short staffing. We were given some emails we could send feedback to, but I forgot them before this idea occurred to me.

I don’t know maybe create a character on both.
So as a player you have a back up. One on app and one on the website.

Just in case you are having issues in one.
The people that made

So I can weigh in on why certain things work the way they do. I do ask though when discussions like this come up that you keep in mind that the current VTD framework was developed by volunteers that wanted to keep TD alive through COVID and not paid employees. Please don't expect the same level of experience and quality that a AAA video game release would have.

Matthew Hayward wrote: 1. There should be one form that takes both the two codes at once, rather than two forms. People get mixed up on which value goes into which form.

The reason why they are entered separate is so if the roller interface is down we can have player revert back to reporting there number manually. There are other ways we could have handled the scenario but that solution was the least amount of development effort.

Matthew Hayward wrote: 2. Across all apps, websites, and the TD screen there should be a standard name for each of the two codes needed to join the event.

Fair point

Matthew Hayward wrote: 3. Even better, there should only be one code the user needs to enter.

So we thought of that when we were implementing the new roller. The issue is that means a minimum we would need 4 codes per DM one for each difficulty and then you have the issue that if a player from a earlier run doesn't clear their character state they could technically interfere with the next groups run.
The way the apps work currently they need to know of the difficulty codes ahead of time so we don't have the option to generate the adventure code in real time. And yes I know we could make it so procedurally generated codes work with enough time and effort but again I'll stress Volunteers

This can't be done nearly as well if everyone is new to VTD.

But, if you actually try to do as much stuff as possible before a run, it makes a massive difference.

It's possible to "play" VTD without entering anything. People can learn the interface days in advance or earlier. Sure, that doesn't address difficulty and dice roller, but our players have never had any significant issues with those, it's things like buffs or bardsong or other aspects of playing that our folks have had to learn. Or, sometimes builds weirdness, like forgetting that monk bracers are garbage for stealing a useful slot from builds.

Matthew Hayward wrote: I do not know if this is feasible with volunteers, but I think having break-out Zooms with 1:1 app troubleshooting during coaching would be an immense help in both getting things fixed (e.g. the helper could have one android and one iPhone, and show the person screen by screen what they need to do), and with keeping the focus of coaching on TD, not app mishaps.

I realize you said "app", but FWIW the TDCC website has a pair of awesome step-by-step How To videos (also created by volunteers) at tdcharactercreator.com/#/help which do a great job meeting this need without requiring a dedicated live person during crunch time.

These videos predate the roller interface, but once you know where to enter the first code it's obvious where to put the second one. Also TDCC is 100% usable from a mobile browser on a phone (this is how I play); the layout is different, but you can still follow along with the video and practice finding each thing.

If nobody has yet created similar videos for the app, maybe someone could?

There is a slightly older video for the app.