I think I am seeing the problem with A La Carte purchases.
DM's didn't use them as much since they wanted the whole of the books to make adventures with.
Players just didn't want to purchase the whole book but instead just wanted the little part that let them make or use the new character features in each book. (I can see why and understand) And for the most part did not have a DM who could share content with them.
This was a problem originating with the people who made it happen. WOTC. This whole argument would not be happening if they never made them available in the first place. But the cat is out of the bag now so they should stick to their end of the agreement. They need to keep A La Carte purchases open for the now legacy content.
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice. I am now thinking they under valued the A La Carte content. And i bet they think the same after looking through the numbers. In essence they figured out the secret. Especially after seeing this thread.
The next question is will they ever make the a la carte option available for the new content?
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice.
Except that this is still denying customers one of the most convenient ways to access new content. Forcing people to pay full price for an entire book when they only want a sub-class or feat is idiotic, because if the choice is between $2-3 purchase or $50+ purchase they won't purchase anything.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I think I am seeing the problem with A La Carte purchases.
DM's didn't use them as much since they wanted the whole of the books to make adventures with.
Players just didn't want to purchase the whole book but instead just wanted the little part that let them make or use the new character features in each book. (I can see why and understand) And for the most part did not have a DM who could share content with them.
This was a problem originating with the people who made it happen. WOTC. This whole argument would not be happening if they never made them available in the first place. But the cat is out of the bag now so they should stick to their end of the agreement. They need to keep A La Carte purchases open for the now legacy content.
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice. I am now thinking they under valued the A La Carte content. And i bet they think the same after looking through the numbers. In essence they figured out the secret. Especially after seeing this thread.
The next question is will they ever make the a la carte option available for the new content?
As a DM I did not, at the time, really need the digital fluff of a whole book until recently. Only thing that was really worth any value was the char gen aspects of the content.
The PHB back then had class and race single purchase options,( 1.99 a piece), or a sub bundle of all the classes. ( I believe it was $9.99 )
WotC is the ones removing the feature, but that feature was part of this site long before the acquisition, and is what caught WotC’s eye.
Now it is currently no longer offered. Okay, but will it return? Personally I don’t see them doing this till after the three book new rules are out, and the sales numbers back the need of a-la-carte return.
If the new rules flop, and yes at this point one does have to consider the possibility, how much worst will the D&D side of WotC/Hasbro become till the decision is made to ether scrap the site, ( I doubt it will just up and disappear, but then you never can know for sure till it happens ), or sale whatever is left of the corpse of what D&D was. ( I doubt this, the brand name alone is currently worth a pretty penny, and fairly well known)
WotC / Hasbro should be looking at the forums and be thinking, “Damn, maybe an announcement would have been better” but instead we got “Who cares, milk’em harder, and if we lose 20% of the community, milk the remaining even harder.”
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice.
Except that this is still denying customers one of the most convenient ways to access new content. Forcing people to pay full price for an entire book when they only want a sub-class or feat is idiotic, because if the choice is between $2-3 purchase or $50+ purchase they won't purchase anything.
This exactly. I'm not going to roll my eyes and go "Guess you got me, whatever" and buy the whole book the feature I want is in.
I'm just going to find it online and manually keep track of it myself instead.
I think I am seeing the problem with A La Carte purchases.
DM's didn't use them as much since they wanted the whole of the books to make adventures with.
Players just didn't want to purchase the whole book but instead just wanted the little part that let them make or use the new character features in each book. (I can see why and understand) And for the most part did not have a DM who could share content with them.
This was a problem originating with the people who made it happen. WOTC. This whole argument would not be happening if they never made them available in the first place. But the cat is out of the bag now so they should stick to their end of the agreement. They need to keep A La Carte purchases open for the now legacy content.
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice. I am now thinking they under valued the A La Carte content. And i bet they think the same after looking through the numbers. In essence they figured out the secret. Especially after seeing this thread.
The next question is will they ever make the a la carte option available for the new content?
Was it WotC that implemented piecemeal purchasing? Or was it an idea the original owners of dndbeyond had? I don’t know, but it’s not necessarily that WotC changed their mind. They may have never liked it, but originally didn’t care too much since it was someone else’s problem to figure out the coding and implementation, and credit card fees, while WotC just collected licensing fees. I’m not privy to the details of the license, or anything. Just kind of wondering aloud.
I’m no MBA, but from a business standpoint, the change can make some sense. If it was $2 for a subclass, and it’s $30 for the book, they only need to convince 1 of 15 (6.6%) people to buy the book instead and they about even out on the revenue side, even if the other 14 buy nothing. And then they save money on the expense side, for reasons lots of people have already mentioned. And of course, they have years of sales data to use when they run these numbers. Yeah, they piss some people off, but people have short memories, and even if 93% of people who’d been buying piecemeal stop buying, they come out ok.
I’m not saying I agree with the choice, to be clear. I’m looking at starting a campaign, and was considering picking up some feats and subclasses for my players, from books I have no interest in, so I’m with you all that this sucks. I’m just saying it kind of makes some sense as a business decision.
I think I am seeing the problem with A La Carte purchases.
DM's didn't use them as much since they wanted the whole of the books to make adventures with.
Players just didn't want to purchase the whole book but instead just wanted the little part that let them make or use the new character features in each book. (I can see why and understand) And for the most part did not have a DM who could share content with them.
This was a problem originating with the people who made it happen. WOTC. This whole argument would not be happening if they never made them available in the first place. But the cat is out of the bag now so they should stick to their end of the agreement. They need to keep A La Carte purchases open for the now legacy content.
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice. I am now thinking they under valued the A La Carte content. And i bet they think the same after looking through the numbers. In essence they figured out the secret. Especially after seeing this thread.
The next question is will they ever make the a la carte option available for the new content?
As a DM I did not, at the time, really need the digital fluff of a whole book until recently. Only thing that was really worth any value was the char gen aspects of the content.
The PHB back then had class and race single purchase options,( 1.99 a piece), or a sub bundle of all the classes. ( I believe it was $9.99 )
WotC is the ones removing the feature, but that feature was part of this site long before the acquisition, and is what caught WotC’s eye.
Now it is currently no longer offered. Okay, but will it return? Personally I don’t see them doing this till after the three book new rules are out, and the sales numbers back the need of a-la-carte return.
If the new rules flop, and yes at this point one does have to consider the possibility, how much worst will the D&D side of WotC/Hasbro become till the decision is made to ether scrap the site, ( I doubt it will just up and disappear, but then you never can know for sure till it happens ), or sale whatever is left of the corpse of what D&D was. ( I doubt this, the brand name alone is currently worth a pretty penny, and fairly well known)
WotC / Hasbro should be looking at the forums and be thinking, “Damn, maybe an announcement would have been better” but instead we got “Who cares, milk’em harder, and if we lose 20% of the community, milk the remaining even harder.”
You assume what you’re seeing here represents a sizable market segment, and that might very well not be the case. Look at the engagement with the significantly more publicized OGL issue vs the UA playtests in surveys, it was an order of magnitude smaller iirc. I can’t prove anything either way, of course, but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have assessed the size of the market segment affected by this change.
As someone new to the platform, I suffered upon seeing the removal of the option for piecemeal purchases.
I was VERY HAPPILY going to purchase many individual items like subraces, subclasses, spells and feats with the piecemeal option of buying individual items or parts of books. That was amazing as buying many whole books, priced in dollars, with our less valuable currency is prohibitively expensive.
In my estimations I was about to spend 20 to 40 dollars.
Sadly, that option was suddenly removed without warning, making it impossible to do as planned. Purchasing the whole books is not a viable option as it would amount to several months of living expenses in our currency. So I have to make do with the homebrew options, of course WITHOUT ever sharing any copyrighted material whatsoever.
It is not the end of the world and I admire all the work Wizards of the Coast does with their amazing system, with their solid rules and beautiful artwork. They should know, however, that by removing the piecemeal option for purchases many potential small buyers like me will be prevented from making their purchases.
You assume what you’re seeing here represents a sizable market segment, and that might very well not be the case. Look at the engagement with the significantly more publicized OGL issue vs the UA playtests in surveys, it was an order of magnitude smaller iirc. I can’t prove anything either way, of course, but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have assessed the size of the market segment affected by this change.
Building on the above, the loss could be a substantial portion of players and Wizards could still come out ahead. If a full book costs $30.00 and a piecemeal option costs $1.99, for ever fifteen people who purchased piecemeal, Wizards only needs one of them to purchase the whole book to break even. Converting 7% of purchasers is really not a high bar to clear, so folks should not really hang their hat on the “this will be a financial loss for Wizards” argument.
As I have said before, the real problem with removing piecemeal purchases is the fact it transforms what was once a player-level investment into a DM-level investment, as player facing options now come bundled with a whole lot of content that player will not use.
Wizards, and TSR before them, have long acknowledged one of the barriers to growth in the game was the DM shortage. They have acknowledged this is both a time commitment problem and a financial one. Piecemeal purchasing is not going to solve the time commitment problem of DMs, but it does help reduce some of the financial burden placed on DMs. Further, it makes the initial entry into the true strength of D&D - the plethora of options so you can be whatever your fantasy wants you to be - a lower barrier, so folks can experience some of the more fun aspects of the game which the basic rules do not cover.
The strict application of numbers almost certainly favor removing piecemeal options - those are fairly easy numbers to crunch and estimate, based on sales data from all the sites that do not use piecemeal purchasing. But the long-term growth potential piecemeal options might enable? That is something nearly impossible to quantify - both for us players and for those within Wizards. If folks want piecemeal options reinstated, trying to argue their removal is a financial mistake is not a winning argument. What might be a winning argument? Expressing how important they were to your enjoyment of D&D, how important they were to getting new players to fall in love with the game, and how instrumental they were in your decision to invest heavily in the system. Those are non-quantitative data points Wizards should be made aware of - no use trying to make a quantitative financial argument when they have the numbers and we do not.
I should note, this is not to discourage folks from sharing “I will not be buying I suppose” stories - those personal anecdotes are important so Wizards can see the metaphysical face of their decisions. What I take issue with is the folks who go beyond sharing their important personal anecdotes and are trying to extrapolate a financial disaster without any actual financial information.
I think I am seeing the problem with A La Carte purchases.
DM's didn't use them as much since they wanted the whole of the books to make adventures with.
Players just didn't want to purchase the whole book but instead just wanted the little part that let them make or use the new character features in each book. (I can see why and understand) And for the most part did not have a DM who could share content with them.
This was a problem originating with the people who made it happen. WOTC. This whole argument would not be happening if they never made them available in the first place. But the cat is out of the bag now so they should stick to their end of the agreement. They need to keep A La Carte purchases open for the now legacy content.
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice. I am now thinking they under valued the A La Carte content. And i bet they think the same after looking through the numbers. In essence they figured out the secret. Especially after seeing this thread.
The next question is will they ever make the a la carte option available for the new content?
As a DM I did not, at the time, really need the digital fluff of a whole book until recently. Only thing that was really worth any value was the char gen aspects of the content.
The PHB back then had class and race single purchase options,( 1.99 a piece), or a sub bundle of all the classes. ( I believe it was $9.99 )
WotC is the ones removing the feature, but that feature was part of this site long before the acquisition, and is what caught WotC’s eye.
Now it is currently no longer offered. Okay, but will it return? Personally I don’t see them doing this till after the three book new rules are out, and the sales numbers back the need of a-la-carte return.
If the new rules flop, and yes at this point one does have to consider the possibility, how much worst will the D&D side of WotC/Hasbro become till the decision is made to ether scrap the site, ( I doubt it will just up and disappear, but then you never can know for sure till it happens ), or sale whatever is left of the corpse of what D&D was. ( I doubt this, the brand name alone is currently worth a pretty penny, and fairly well known)
WotC / Hasbro should be looking at the forums and be thinking, “Damn, maybe an announcement would have been better” but instead we got “Who cares, milk’em harder, and if we lose 20% of the community, milk the remaining even harder.”
You assume what you’re seeing here represents a sizable market segment, and that might very well not be the case. Look at the engagement with the significantly more publicized OGL issue vs the UA playtests in surveys, it was an order of magnitude smaller iirc. I can’t prove anything either way, of course, but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have assessed the size of the market segment affected by this change.
You too are assuming, lest you have a source(s) others do not.
We often see the term gatekeeping thrown around on this site, isn't this just wizbro gatekeeping those with a small budget for entertainment out of lots of the game that has not been case historically on this site and add the fact it was done without notice and in the cover of night, with conflicting statements on the site that led to more anger and confusion. It is their property, and they can do what they want with it but if gatekeeping wrong this is too. It's like wizbro and kellog's hired classmates for the people coming up with these ideas.
For the record I only used the piece meal a few times so other than a poor PR move and yet another reason not to trust this company I am not affected unless I want the credit towards the books I bought parts of, unlikely as it is hidden behind too many hoops to jump through and those books are of little use to me.
You assume what you’re seeing here represents a sizable market segment, and that might very well not be the case. Look at the engagement with the significantly more publicized OGL issue vs the UA playtests in surveys, it was an order of magnitude smaller iirc. I can’t prove anything either way, of course, but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have assessed the size of the market segment affected by this change.
Building on the above, the loss could be a substantial portion of players and Wizards could still come out ahead. If a full book costs $30.00 and a piecemeal option costs $1.99, for ever fifteen people who purchased piecemeal, Wizards only needs one of them to purchase the whole book to break even. Converting 7% of purchasers is really not a high bar to clear, so folks should not really hang their hat on the “this will be a financial loss for Wizards” argument.
As I have said before, the real problem with removing piecemeal purchases is the fact it transforms what was once a player-level investment into a DM-level investment, as player facing options now come bundled with a whole lot of content that player will not use.
Wizards, and TSR before them, have long acknowledged one of the barriers to growth in the game was the DM shortage. They have acknowledged this is both a time commitment problem and a financial one. Piecemeal purchasing is not going to solve the time commitment problem of DMs, but it does help reduce some of the financial burden placed on DMs. Further, it makes the initial entry into the true strength of D&D - the plethora of options so you can be whatever your fantasy wants you to be - a lower barrier, so folks can experience some of the more fun aspects of the game which the basic rules do not cover.
The strict application of numbers almost certainly favor removing piecemeal options - those are fairly easy numbers to crunch and estimate, based on sales data from all the sites that do not use piecemeal purchasing. But the long-term growth potential piecemeal options might enable? That is something nearly impossible to quantify - both for us players and for those within Wizards. If folks want piecemeal options reinstated, trying to argue their removal is a financial mistake is not a winning argument. What might be a winning argument? Expressing how important they were to your enjoyment of D&D, how important they were to getting new players to fall in love with the game, and how instrumental they were in your decision to invest heavily in the system. Those are non-quantitative data points Wizards should be made aware of - no use trying to make a quantitative financial argument when they have the numbers and we do not.
I should note, this is not to discourage folks from sharing “I will not be buying I suppose” stories - those personal anecdotes are important so Wizards can see the metaphysical face of their decisions. What I take issue with is the folks who go beyond sharing their important personal anecdotes and are trying to extrapolate a financial disaster without any actual financial information.
You assume what you’re seeing here represents a sizable market segment, and that might very well not be the case. Look at the engagement with the significantly more publicized OGL issue vs the UA playtests in surveys, it was an order of magnitude smaller iirc. I can’t prove anything either way, of course, but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have assessed the size of the market segment affected by this change.
Building on the above, the loss could be a substantial portion of players and Wizards could still come out ahead. If a full book costs $30.00 and a piecemeal option costs $1.99, for ever fifteen people who purchased piecemeal, Wizards only needs one of them to purchase the whole book to break even. Converting 7% of purchasers is really not a high bar to clear, so folks should not really hang their hat on the “this will be a financial loss for Wizards” argument.
As I have said before, the real problem with removing piecemeal purchases is the fact it transforms what was once a player-level investment into a DM-level investment, as player facing options now come bundled with a whole lot of content that player will not use.
Wizards, and TSR before them, have long acknowledged one of the barriers to growth in the game was the DM shortage. They have acknowledged this is both a time commitment problem and a financial one. Piecemeal purchasing is not going to solve the time commitment problem of DMs, but it does help reduce some of the financial burden placed on DMs. Further, it makes the initial entry into the true strength of D&D - the plethora of options so you can be whatever your fantasy wants you to be - a lower barrier, so folks can experience some of the more fun aspects of the game which the basic rules do not cover.
The strict application of numbers almost certainly favor removing piecemeal options - those are fairly easy numbers to crunch and estimate, based on sales data from all the sites that do not use piecemeal purchasing. But the long-term growth potential piecemeal options might enable? That is something nearly impossible to quantify - both for us players and for those within Wizards. If folks want piecemeal options reinstated, trying to argue their removal is a financial mistake is not a winning argument. What might be a winning argument? Expressing how important they were to your enjoyment of D&D, how important they were to getting new players to fall in love with the game, and how instrumental they were in your decision to invest heavily in the system. Those are non-quantitative data points Wizards should be made aware of - no use trying to make a quantitative financial argument when they have the numbers and we do not.
I should note, this is not to discourage folks from sharing “I will not be buying I suppose” stories - those personal anecdotes are important so Wizards can see the metaphysical face of their decisions. What I take issue with is the folks who go beyond sharing their important personal anecdotes and are trying to extrapolate a financial disaster without any actual financial information.
In my mind, the financial impact comes if/when users start cancelling their subscriptions. There comes a point at which customers feel that they are suffering the death by a thousand cuts, and my feel that it's time to move on to other online resources.
Come to think of it, the idea of a sort of "strike" sounds interesting. If everyone cancelled their sub today the impact would not be immediate as renewal dates vary, but it would be noticed that the event happened. I'm not trying to lead the charge, mind you; I'm just musing, but I do wonder what that would look like.
great so were unsubscribing again. we showed them where we stand with the OGL we can show them again probably a lot of use just got done slapping sony for the helldivers issue the peoples power and protest has worked in the past and we should make that voice known again
You assume what you’re seeing here represents a sizable market segment, and that might very well not be the case. Look at the engagement with the significantly more publicized OGL issue vs the UA playtests in surveys, it was an order of magnitude smaller iirc. I can’t prove anything either way, of course, but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have assessed the size of the market segment affected by this change.
Building on the above, the loss could be a substantial portion of players and Wizards could still come out ahead. If a full book costs $30.00 and a piecemeal option costs $1.99, for ever fifteen people who purchased piecemeal, Wizards only needs one of them to purchase the whole book to break even. Converting 7% of purchasers is really not a high bar to clear, so folks should not really hang their hat on the “this will be a financial loss for Wizards” argument.
As I have said before, the real problem with removing piecemeal purchases is the fact it transforms what was once a player-level investment into a DM-level investment, as player facing options now come bundled with a whole lot of content that player will not use.
Wizards, and TSR before them, have long acknowledged one of the barriers to growth in the game was the DM shortage. They have acknowledged this is both a time commitment problem and a financial one. Piecemeal purchasing is not going to solve the time commitment problem of DMs, but it does help reduce some of the financial burden placed on DMs. Further, it makes the initial entry into the true strength of D&D - the plethora of options so you can be whatever your fantasy wants you to be - a lower barrier, so folks can experience some of the more fun aspects of the game which the basic rules do not cover.
The strict application of numbers almost certainly favor removing piecemeal options - those are fairly easy numbers to crunch and estimate, based on sales data from all the sites that do not use piecemeal purchasing. But the long-term growth potential piecemeal options might enable? That is something nearly impossible to quantify - both for us players and for those within Wizards. If folks want piecemeal options reinstated, trying to argue their removal is a financial mistake is not a winning argument. What might be a winning argument? Expressing how important they were to your enjoyment of D&D, how important they were to getting new players to fall in love with the game, and how instrumental they were in your decision to invest heavily in the system. Those are non-quantitative data points Wizards should be made aware of - no use trying to make a quantitative financial argument when they have the numbers and we do not.
I should note, this is not to discourage folks from sharing “I will not be buying I suppose” stories - those personal anecdotes are important so Wizards can see the metaphysical face of their decisions. What I take issue with is the folks who go beyond sharing their important personal anecdotes and are trying to extrapolate a financial disaster without any actual financial information.
I take issue with people who say those who speculate should not say anything till we know more.
So where’s the people that know better not here giving people answers?
Yea, more people have come into the game, and have loads of fun, but end of the day, someone has to pay the tab.
Now, sure we can split the bill, but we all know out of 5 only 1 usually covers the cost.
Removing a-la-carte is bad business, because if only half of the a-la-carte community bites the bullet on full commit, then sure you make prerelease sales numbers look pretty, but there bad that can easily be swept under the rug. And given the timing yea business wise it sounds good, execution wise it’s getting handled very very very poorly.
the only good WotC / Hasbro has seen from recent events has been the sale of eOne Entertainment for what $475Mill, before that the red in the ledger from D&D had gotten noticeable.
Why is a new DM going to full commit to a rules set that is just going to change in less than 6 months? What if you began like some do and begin that path to DM/GM by slowly and steadily increasing your skill at it piecemeal and was just starting?
This does more to discourage those people who have gotten no real communication on if this is just a temp thing, or permanent. It’s like your turning people away if they don’t walk into the place credit card in hand.
Does WotC / Hasbro’s D&D Road map include driving off a cliff? Who’s running this shit show?
The core thing that seems to have happened here is that Wizards decided to switch their store to a new tech stack. This is probably either because they want a unified system with the rest of their online ecosystem (D&D Beyond's current system predates the acquisition by Wizards), or because maintaining the current tech is problematic.
A side effect of this change is that a bunch of stuff is either broken, or not implemented. They appear to have decided not to implement individual purchases. There are several reasons why this could have happened, such as
They did analysis of what people actually buy and decided to kill the product.
They prioritized the features of the old interface and individual purchases didn't make the cutoff.
They've lost enough institutional knowledge that they didn't even know what the older interface did.
(1) is a business decision, (2) is a combination of business and resourcing, (3) is a resourcing issue. There's decent evidence for resourcing problems, there are other features that they presumably haven't deliberately killed that don't work right.
I will say that the goal of selling physical/digital bundles on DDB was never to jeopardize the FLGS. In fact, we've begun to incentivize shopping your FLGS by offering them the ability to sell physical copies early, similar to the digital early access program. I've always seen it as increasing the ways people can get their hands on D&D, but I agree that it can look differently from other perspectives.
I love having physical copies of the books, but the digital version of the books is indispensible. I hate to say it, but if I can't buy the digital version as part of the purchase of a physical book at my FLGS, I'm more likely to buy the digital version and skip the physical. At this point, every sale of a physical book should provide the digital copy, or at minimum allow stores to process an extra charge to bundle that digital version.
As an Australian, the only way to get the bundle is buy it online from the Wizards store, which is by extension, still killing FLGS's.
Huh, the only reason i had not resorted to piracy, since i don't care about buying whole books was the a la carte purchases, that allowed me to purchase what i wanted for my character in piecemeal... now i guess ill slowly start moving to other platforms for character creation....
I will say that the goal of selling physical/digital bundles on DDB was never to jeopardize the FLGS. In fact, we've begun to incentivize shopping your FLGS by offering them the ability to sell physical copies early, similar to the digital early access program. I've always seen it as increasing the ways people can get their hands on D&D, but I agree that it can look differently from other perspectives.
I love having physical copies of the books, but the digital version of the books is indispensible. I hate to say it, but if I can't buy the digital version as part of the purchase of a physical book at my FLGS, I'm more likely to buy the digital version and skip the physical. At this point, every sale of a physical book should provide the digital copy, or at minimum allow stores to process an extra charge to bundle that digital version.
As an Australian, the only way to get the bundle is buy it online from the Wizards store, which is by extension, still killing FLGS's.
I agree they could implement a digital version with every hard copy sale at your FLGS. Or at least a steep discount for the digital.
I just realized that the cost of one movie ticket was about the same cost as a digital copy of any of the books. And no one complained about going to see the movie just once, on the day it came out. Some even went a few times. Which cost them far more than a book in the end.
Another quick question. Is 5e the last rules book to go under the OGL? Will all new content be proprietary and require legal documents signed by all publishers to use?
Another quick question. Is 5e the last rules book to go under the OGL? Will all new content be proprietary and require legal documents signed by all publishers to use?
2014 5e is the last set of rules that will be released under OGL; the 2024 rules are being released under Creative Commons, which is a much, much stronger license that accomplishes everything the OGL does, but does it better and in a way that has successfully survived challenges. Creative Commons will not require individual contracts--you can just use the content released under its terms.
I think I am seeing the problem with A La Carte purchases.
DM's didn't use them as much since they wanted the whole of the books to make adventures with.
Players just didn't want to purchase the whole book but instead just wanted the little part that let them make or use the new character features in each book. (I can see why and understand) And for the most part did not have a DM who could share content with them.
This was a problem originating with the people who made it happen. WOTC. This whole argument would not be happening if they never made them available in the first place. But the cat is out of the bag now so they should stick to their end of the agreement. They need to keep A La Carte purchases open for the now legacy content.
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice. I am now thinking they under valued the A La Carte content. And i bet they think the same after looking through the numbers. In essence they figured out the secret. Especially after seeing this thread.
The next question is will they ever make the a la carte option available for the new content?
As a DM I did not, at the time, really need the digital fluff of a whole book until recently. Only thing that was really worth any value was the char gen aspects of the content.
The PHB back then had class and race single purchase options,( 1.99 a piece), or a sub bundle of all the classes. ( I believe it was $9.99 )
WotC is the ones removing the feature, but that feature was part of this site long before the acquisition, and is what caught WotC’s eye.
Now it is currently no longer offered. Okay, but will it return? Personally I don’t see them doing this till after the three book new rules are out, and the sales numbers back the need of a-la-carte return.
If the new rules flop, and yes at this point one does have to consider the possibility, how much worst will the D&D side of WotC/Hasbro become till the decision is made to ether scrap the site, ( I doubt it will just up and disappear, but then you never can know for sure till it happens ), or sale whatever is left of the corpse of what D&D was. ( I doubt this, the brand name alone is currently worth a pretty penny, and fairly well known)
WotC / Hasbro should be looking at the forums and be thinking, “Damn, maybe an announcement would have been better” but instead we got “Who cares, milk’em harder, and if we lose 20% of the community, milk the remaining even harder.”
You assume what you’re seeing here represents a sizable market segment, and that might very well not be the case. Look at the engagement with the significantly more publicized OGL issue vs the UA playtests in surveys, it was an order of magnitude smaller iirc. I can’t prove anything either way, of course, but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have assessed the size of the market segment affected by this change.
You too are assuming, lest you have a source(s) others do not.
We often see the term gatekeeping thrown around on this site, isn't this just wizbro gatekeeping those with a small budget for entertainment out of lots of the game that has not been case historically on this site and add the fact it was done without notice and in the cover of night, with conflicting statements on the site that led to more anger and confusion. It is their property, and they can do what they want with it but if gatekeeping wrong this is too. It's like wizbro and kellog's hired classmates for the people coming up with these ideas.
For the record I only used the piece meal a few times so other than a poor PR move and yet another reason not to trust this company I am not affected unless I want the credit towards the books I bought parts of, unlikely as it is hidden behind too many hoops to jump through and those books are of little use to me.
I am not assuming, I am inferring from the fact that WotC is a large publicly traded corporation that they will have done elementary market research ahead of making a significant change to their sales paradigm, given that they need to be able to explain the decision-making process to their stockholders. There's significantly less leaps and unknowns in that chain of logic than the "WotC is gonna get burned financially by this" assumptions. It is technically possible that WotC's executive body is comprised primarily of reckless buffoons and certainly suits the narrative of moral bankruptcy often associated with the position that this is some great sales blunder, but even weighed against the previous instances of questionable decision making, those aren't comparable scenarios. As has previously been said, it would not be hard for them to crunch the numbers on a la carte vs whole book and see what their margin was there and weigh how many additional sales of full books they'd need to offset the cost. And I'm not saying that they have absolute incontrovertible proof that it would be more profitable, just that they clearly and objectively have access to far more data on the topic than we do, and it is far more reasonable to posit that they did in fact review that data before making the decision rather than simply making a spontaneous change to their business model.
I will say that the goal of selling physical/digital bundles on DDB was never to jeopardize the FLGS. In fact, we've begun to incentivize shopping your FLGS by offering them the ability to sell physical copies early, similar to the digital early access program. I've always seen it as increasing the ways people can get their hands on D&D, but I agree that it can look differently from other perspectives.
I love having physical copies of the books, but the digital version of the books is indispensible. I hate to say it, but if I can't buy the digital version as part of the purchase of a physical book at my FLGS, I'm more likely to buy the digital version and skip the physical. At this point, every sale of a physical book should provide the digital copy, or at minimum allow stores to process an extra charge to bundle that digital version.
As an Australian, the only way to get the bundle is buy it online from the Wizards store, which is by extension, still killing FLGS's.
I agree they could implement a digital version with every hard copy sale at your FLGS. Or at least a steep discount for the digital.
I just realized that the cost of one movie ticket was about the same cost as a digital copy of any of the books. And no one complained about going to see the movie just once, on the day it came out. Some even went a few times. Which cost them far more than a book in the end.
Another quick question. Is 5e the last rules book to go under the OGL? Will all new content be proprietary and require legal documents signed by all publishers to use?
If they only release the new SRD under CC. The thing about the OGL was it actually defined what WotC declares as IP.
without it, we have have no way to know if we are breaking IP and or copyright laws.
and btw, Hasbro is a publicly traded company, one year subs came due, ouch
I think I am seeing the problem with A La Carte purchases.
DM's didn't use them as much since they wanted the whole of the books to make adventures with.
Players just didn't want to purchase the whole book but instead just wanted the little part that let them make or use the new character features in each book. (I can see why and understand) And for the most part did not have a DM who could share content with them.
This was a problem originating with the people who made it happen. WOTC. This whole argument would not be happening if they never made them available in the first place. But the cat is out of the bag now so they should stick to their end of the agreement. They need to keep A La Carte purchases open for the now legacy content.
They have no need to keep the practice going for the new content. Its their choice.
I am now thinking they under valued the A La Carte content. And i bet they think the same after looking through the numbers. In essence they figured out the secret. Especially after seeing this thread.
The next question is will they ever make the a la carte option available for the new content?
Except that this is still denying customers one of the most convenient ways to access new content. Forcing people to pay full price for an entire book when they only want a sub-class or feat is idiotic, because if the choice is between $2-3 purchase or $50+ purchase they won't purchase anything.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
As a DM I did not, at the time, really need the digital fluff of a whole book until recently. Only thing that was really worth any value was the char gen aspects of the content.
The PHB back then had class and race single purchase options,( 1.99 a piece), or a sub bundle of all the classes. ( I believe it was $9.99 )
WotC is the ones removing the feature, but that feature was part of this site long before the acquisition, and is what caught WotC’s eye.
Now it is currently no longer offered. Okay, but will it return? Personally I don’t see them doing this till after the three book new rules are out, and the sales numbers back the need of a-la-carte return.
If the new rules flop, and yes at this point one does have to consider the possibility, how much worst will the D&D side of WotC/Hasbro become till the decision is made to ether scrap the site, ( I doubt it will just up and disappear, but then you never can know for sure till it happens ), or sale whatever is left of the corpse of what D&D was. ( I doubt this, the brand name alone is currently worth a pretty penny, and fairly well known)
WotC / Hasbro should be looking at the forums and be thinking, “Damn, maybe an announcement would have been better” but instead we got “Who cares, milk’em harder, and if we lose 20% of the community, milk the remaining even harder.”
This exactly. I'm not going to roll my eyes and go "Guess you got me, whatever" and buy the whole book the feature I want is in.
I'm just going to find it online and manually keep track of it myself instead.
Was it WotC that implemented piecemeal purchasing? Or was it an idea the original owners of dndbeyond had? I don’t know, but it’s not necessarily that WotC changed their mind. They may have never liked it, but originally didn’t care too much since it was someone else’s problem to figure out the coding and implementation, and credit card fees, while WotC just collected licensing fees. I’m not privy to the details of the license, or anything. Just kind of wondering aloud.
I’m no MBA, but from a business standpoint, the change can make some sense. If it was $2 for a subclass, and it’s $30 for the book, they only need to convince 1 of 15 (6.6%) people to buy the book instead and they about even out on the revenue side, even if the other 14 buy nothing. And then they save money on the expense side, for reasons lots of people have already mentioned. And of course, they have years of sales data to use when they run these numbers. Yeah, they piss some people off, but people have short memories, and even if 93% of people who’d been buying piecemeal stop buying, they come out ok.
I’m not saying I agree with the choice, to be clear. I’m looking at starting a campaign, and was considering picking up some feats and subclasses for my players, from books I have no interest in, so I’m with you all that this sucks. I’m just saying it kind of makes some sense as a business decision.
You assume what you’re seeing here represents a sizable market segment, and that might very well not be the case. Look at the engagement with the significantly more publicized OGL issue vs the UA playtests in surveys, it was an order of magnitude smaller iirc. I can’t prove anything either way, of course, but it seems unlikely they wouldn’t have assessed the size of the market segment affected by this change.
As someone new to the platform, I suffered upon seeing the removal of the option for piecemeal purchases.
I was VERY HAPPILY going to purchase many individual items like subraces, subclasses, spells and feats with the piecemeal option of buying individual items or parts of books. That was amazing as buying many whole books, priced in dollars, with our less valuable currency is prohibitively expensive.
In my estimations I was about to spend 20 to 40 dollars.
Sadly, that option was suddenly removed without warning, making it impossible to do as planned. Purchasing the whole books is not a viable option as it would amount to several months of living expenses in our currency. So I have to make do with the homebrew options, of course WITHOUT ever sharing any copyrighted material whatsoever.
It is not the end of the world and I admire all the work Wizards of the Coast does with their amazing system, with their solid rules and beautiful artwork. They should know, however, that by removing the piecemeal option for purchases many potential small buyers like me will be prevented from making their purchases.
Building on the above, the loss could be a substantial portion of players and Wizards could still come out ahead. If a full book costs $30.00 and a piecemeal option costs $1.99, for ever fifteen people who purchased piecemeal, Wizards only needs one of them to purchase the whole book to break even. Converting 7% of purchasers is really not a high bar to clear, so folks should not really hang their hat on the “this will be a financial loss for Wizards” argument.
As I have said before, the real problem with removing piecemeal purchases is the fact it transforms what was once a player-level investment into a DM-level investment, as player facing options now come bundled with a whole lot of content that player will not use.
Wizards, and TSR before them, have long acknowledged one of the barriers to growth in the game was the DM shortage. They have acknowledged this is both a time commitment problem and a financial one. Piecemeal purchasing is not going to solve the time commitment problem of DMs, but it does help reduce some of the financial burden placed on DMs. Further, it makes the initial entry into the true strength of D&D - the plethora of options so you can be whatever your fantasy wants you to be - a lower barrier, so folks can experience some of the more fun aspects of the game which the basic rules do not cover.
The strict application of numbers almost certainly favor removing piecemeal options - those are fairly easy numbers to crunch and estimate, based on sales data from all the sites that do not use piecemeal purchasing. But the long-term growth potential piecemeal options might enable? That is something nearly impossible to quantify - both for us players and for those within Wizards. If folks want piecemeal options reinstated, trying to argue their removal is a financial mistake is not a winning argument. What might be a winning argument? Expressing how important they were to your enjoyment of D&D, how important they were to getting new players to fall in love with the game, and how instrumental they were in your decision to invest heavily in the system. Those are non-quantitative data points Wizards should be made aware of - no use trying to make a quantitative financial argument when they have the numbers and we do not.
I should note, this is not to discourage folks from sharing “I will not be buying I suppose” stories - those personal anecdotes are important so Wizards can see the metaphysical face of their decisions. What I take issue with is the folks who go beyond sharing their important personal anecdotes and are trying to extrapolate a financial disaster without any actual financial information.
You too are assuming, lest you have a source(s) others do not.
We often see the term gatekeeping thrown around on this site, isn't this just wizbro gatekeeping those with a small budget for entertainment out of lots of the game that has not been case historically on this site and add the fact it was done without notice and in the cover of night, with conflicting statements on the site that led to more anger and confusion. It is their property, and they can do what they want with it but if gatekeeping wrong this is too. It's like wizbro and kellog's hired classmates for the people coming up with these ideas.
For the record I only used the piece meal a few times so other than a poor PR move and yet another reason not to trust this company I am not affected unless I want the credit towards the books I bought parts of, unlikely as it is hidden behind too many hoops to jump through and those books are of little use to me.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
In my mind, the financial impact comes if/when users start cancelling their subscriptions. There comes a point at which customers feel that they are suffering the death by a thousand cuts, and my feel that it's time to move on to other online resources.
Come to think of it, the idea of a sort of "strike" sounds interesting. If everyone cancelled their sub today the impact would not be immediate as renewal dates vary, but it would be noticed that the event happened. I'm not trying to lead the charge, mind you; I'm just musing, but I do wonder what that would look like.
great so were unsubscribing again.
we showed them where we stand with the OGL we can show them again
probably a lot of use just got done slapping sony for the helldivers issue
the peoples power and protest has worked in the past and we should make that voice known again
This doesn't directly target the livelihood of homebrew makers like the OGL Incident did, so I fear it might not make as many waves.
I take issue with people who say those who speculate should not say anything till we know more.
So where’s the people that know better not here giving people answers?
Yea, more people have come into the game, and have loads of fun, but end of the day, someone has to pay the tab.
Now, sure we can split the bill, but we all know out of 5 only 1 usually covers the cost.
Removing a-la-carte is bad business, because if only half of the a-la-carte community bites the bullet on full commit, then sure you make prerelease sales numbers look pretty, but there bad that can easily be swept under the rug. And given the timing yea business wise it sounds good, execution wise it’s getting handled very very very poorly.
the only good WotC / Hasbro has seen from recent events has been the sale of eOne Entertainment for what $475Mill, before that the red in the ledger from D&D had gotten noticeable.
Why is a new DM going to full commit to a rules set that is just going to change in less than 6 months? What if you began like some do and begin that path to DM/GM by slowly and steadily increasing your skill at it piecemeal and was just starting?
This does more to discourage those people who have gotten no real communication on if this is just a temp thing, or permanent. It’s like your turning people away if they don’t walk into the place credit card in hand.
Does WotC / Hasbro’s D&D Road map include driving off a cliff? Who’s running this shit show?
The core thing that seems to have happened here is that Wizards decided to switch their store to a new tech stack. This is probably either because they want a unified system with the rest of their online ecosystem (D&D Beyond's current system predates the acquisition by Wizards), or because maintaining the current tech is problematic.
A side effect of this change is that a bunch of stuff is either broken, or not implemented. They appear to have decided not to implement individual purchases. There are several reasons why this could have happened, such as
(1) is a business decision, (2) is a combination of business and resourcing, (3) is a resourcing issue. There's decent evidence for resourcing problems, there are other features that they presumably haven't deliberately killed that don't work right.
I love having physical copies of the books, but the digital version of the books is indispensible. I hate to say it, but if I can't buy the digital version as part of the purchase of a physical book at my FLGS, I'm more likely to buy the digital version and skip the physical. At this point, every sale of a physical book should provide the digital copy, or at minimum allow stores to process an extra charge to bundle that digital version.
As an Australian, the only way to get the bundle is buy it online from the Wizards store, which is by extension, still killing FLGS's.
Huh, the only reason i had not resorted to piracy, since i don't care about buying whole books was the a la carte purchases, that allowed me to purchase what i wanted for my character in piecemeal... now i guess ill slowly start moving to other platforms for character creation....
I agree they could implement a digital version with every hard copy sale at your FLGS. Or at least a steep discount for the digital.
I just realized that the cost of one movie ticket was about the same cost as a digital copy of any of the books.
And no one complained about going to see the movie just once, on the day it came out. Some even went a few times. Which cost them far more than a book in the end.
Another quick question.
Is 5e the last rules book to go under the OGL? Will all new content be proprietary and require legal documents signed by all publishers to use?
2014 5e is the last set of rules that will be released under OGL; the 2024 rules are being released under Creative Commons, which is a much, much stronger license that accomplishes everything the OGL does, but does it better and in a way that has successfully survived challenges. Creative Commons will not require individual contracts--you can just use the content released under its terms.
I am not assuming, I am inferring from the fact that WotC is a large publicly traded corporation that they will have done elementary market research ahead of making a significant change to their sales paradigm, given that they need to be able to explain the decision-making process to their stockholders. There's significantly less leaps and unknowns in that chain of logic than the "WotC is gonna get burned financially by this" assumptions. It is technically possible that WotC's executive body is comprised primarily of reckless buffoons and certainly suits the narrative of moral bankruptcy often associated with the position that this is some great sales blunder, but even weighed against the previous instances of questionable decision making, those aren't comparable scenarios. As has previously been said, it would not be hard for them to crunch the numbers on a la carte vs whole book and see what their margin was there and weigh how many additional sales of full books they'd need to offset the cost. And I'm not saying that they have absolute incontrovertible proof that it would be more profitable, just that they clearly and objectively have access to far more data on the topic than we do, and it is far more reasonable to posit that they did in fact review that data before making the decision rather than simply making a spontaneous change to their business model.
If they only release the new SRD under CC. The thing about the OGL was it actually defined what WotC declares as IP.
without it, we have have no way to know if we are breaking IP and or copyright laws.
and btw, Hasbro is a publicly traded company, one year subs came due, ouch
Now , a-la-carte walked back at this time?