As a good example of this: I'm sure Spelljammer is great, but I have heard far more about the races it introduced than I have about anything to do with the actual setting or anything else in it.
The only other thing I've heard about it is that even for a DnD book it's extremely pricey.
I think if you couldn't buy the races separately, next to nobody would have them.
Just think of how much less money it would have brought in if that hadn't been possible before now, this is just hoping for whales and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.
Literally just bought Plasmoid because a player wanted it, days before tis happened. Now they get zero dollars next time that happens.
Same thing here for my friend and the Astral Elf. She was more than willing to buy it but it was too late, and now she has to buy the entire book just for ONE race. Except she didn't because I just homebrewed it in for her instead. Neither of us wanted to but one race isn't worth the pricetag of a whole book.
As a good example of this: I'm sure Spelljammer is great, but I have heard far more about the races it introduced than I have about anything to do with the actual setting or anything else in it.
The only other thing I've heard about it is that even for a DnD book it's extremely pricey.
I think if you couldn't buy the races separately, next to nobody would have them.
Just think of how much less money it would have brought in if that hadn't been possible before now, this is just hoping for whales and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.
Literally just bought Plasmoid because a player wanted it, days before tis happened. Now they get zero dollars next time that happens.
Same thing here for my friend and the Astral Elf. She was more than willing to buy it but it was too late, and now she has to buy the entire book just for ONE race. Except she didn't because I just homebrewed it in for her instead. Neither of us wanted to but one race isn't worth the pricetag of a whole book.
That's exactly what I'm saying, I've seen plenty of Plasmoids, a few Thri-Kreen, even an Astral Elf or two. Player creation options are fun, but not $70+ fun.
I think it would be better for them to learn this lesson now than it would be if they release a similar situation but without ala carte.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
Just the opposite for me, subscription canceled, and no new purchases, between what they did and how they are dealing with it, I can not support this place. Enjoy those new books.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
There's an easy answer to why people want this: A lot of people play but don't DM, and so don't need a good half of the full books. They just want new options for character creation such as races and subclasses, and it was nice to have the flexibility to just get what you needed for your sheet on Beyond.
Also would you are to share what those 'various reasons' are, exactly? If you can you'd be being more forthcoming than WoTC is being at least.
Nothing to add…just one more post to agree that removing the a carte system was such a bad and greedy move that as a result ended in my canceling any future dnd beyond purchasing plans … DndBeyond has been a great tool…has been
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
There's an easy answer to why people want this: A lot of people play but don't DM, and so don't need a good half of the full books. They just want new options for character creation such as races and subclasses, and it was nice to have the flexibility to just get what you needed for your sheet on Beyond.
Also would you are to share what those 'various reasons' are, exactly? If you can you'd be being more forthcoming than WoTC is being at least.
take monsters of the multiverse: it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents) 12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options) 8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond) to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
some of the various reasons: assume with wotc taking over dndbeyond that they can no longer afford to offer piece-meal without impacting revenue for future content (quality and quantity) they were spoiling their customer base with an option found no where else, which seems to of influenced people against purchasing complete works/books
customers cherry-picking contents via piece-meal seem to be the same people suggesting: *going elsewhere - even though price is the same and that they will be purchasing books, along with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh *finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents *recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it *cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing but either way ive gave my last opinion on the matter and ill leave it at that
take monsters of the multiverse: it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents)
Why would you assume any given person needs everything from Monsters of the Multiverse? Especially given there is already the Monster Manual?
And with the new PHB, again you are comparing a core book with setting books, where any given player and even most DM's will not need the majority of the book at all, with a Player's Handbook, which is pretty much 100% useful to both players and DM's.
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents) 12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options) 8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond) to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
And how many of those will a player actually need? You can only play one race and one sub-class per character (even if you multi-class you can't do more than an absolute maximum of 6 sub-classes), so if your group has a physical copy of the book, but you'd like to use D&D Beyond on a tablet rather than pen and paper, suddenly you have to buy a whole extra copy of the book rather than just spending $4 for the two things you need.
It's a massive barrier to entry for new players using D&D Beyond just to manage their first character sheet, and a burden to anyone who doesn't want or need the entire book but might gain use out of a handful of sub-classes and/or races.
Not everyone has a DM willing to pay for digital copies of all of their physical books, plus a subscription, just so everyone else in the group can use D&D Beyond for free. Many groups may not even use D&D Beyond consistently; some players may prefer to use devices, while others use pen and paper, and that is – and should be – perfectly fine. Piecemeal purchasing supported that, forcing everyone to buy an entire book or nothing at all does not.
*finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents
If a business does something that isn't customer-friendly, they lose any right to complain about customers doing something that isn't business-friendly. If D&D Beyond tells us to pay more money or **** off, they don't get to complain if we choose to **** off.
*recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it
People recreating stuff via homebrew will only prove the need to allow them to buy it piecemeal, because every sub-class recreated in homebrew is a potential sale lost. Nobody wants to spend a load of their time trying to recreate something in homebrew, as even simple homebrew can take a while to make, and needs to be tested and tweaked. But they'll do it if they're given no other choice (except to not use D&D Beyond at all).
This is the same lesson the music industry had to learn about piracy; when people can buy what they want, how they want, they will, because it's more convenient than digging around on pirate websites for a half-decent copy from a source that might be trustworthy enough to risk it.
However the difference here is that D&D Beyond already had the correct payment model, and they're throwing it away like idiots. And if they try to clamp down on recreation in homebrew they're going to be crippling yet another feature that kept people on the site.
Funnily enough, making a service progressively worse is not going to buy customer loyalty.
*cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
Do you not understand how subscriptions work? They're not a single up-front payment and you're a subscriber for life – cancelling the subscription saves the customer money (all future payments) and costs D&D Beyond the same amount of future revenue.
If people no longer have any reason to trust a company, why should keep giving it money? I'll answer that for; they shouldn't.
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing
If you think being robbed of our preferred means of buying content is "essentially nothing" then you haven't been paying attention at all. When the price goes from $4 to $30+, D&D Beyond is going to find a lot of people are not willing to pay 8 times the price they used to.
And it's such a blatant misunderstanding of what D&D is or how it's played. In groups that play/played without digital tools, it's not uncommon for the group as a whole to only own one copy of most books, including the Player's Handbook (though the more keen players might buy their own). Often it's just the DM who buys most of the books, and lends them to people so they can look at the options and make their characters.
While D&D Beyond is capable of simulating that with DM's purchasing full books and sharing them via a subscription and a campaign, this is a) more costly long term than physical (as it requires an ongoing subscription) and b) is forcing a DM to pay twice for everything if they already have physical copies of everything. But it's also incompatible with other forms of ownership that piecemeal purchases opened up. With piecemeal purchasing it's possible for players to buy what they need for themselves, or buy a race pack for everyone in the group to use from a book that the DM doesn't necessarily want to buy in its entirety, such as Monsters of the Multiverse, or a campaign setting they don't intend to use (like Spelljammer) and so-on. It enabled people to buy more content, not less.
I've no idea why you'd defend such a customer hostile move, or seek to victim blame into the bargain, or why you think it's appropriate to reply to me via private messages where I won't respond. I'm not afraid to make my arguments in the open where they belong.
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.
*cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
Do you not understand how subscriptions work? They're not a single up-front payment and you're a subscriber for life – cancelling the subscription saves the customer money (all future payments) and costs D&D Beyond the same amount of future revenue.
currently, one doesn't need a subscription to keep accessing the books one has already purchased.
that "currently" is the reason i've halted new spending. how are we supposed to be confident in their respect for customers when they aren't communicating respect for customers through their actions? we want to support a good product, sure. i really like new content! but, the game is in the playing, not the purchasing.
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
currently, one doesn't need a subscription to keep accessing the books one has already purchased.
that "currently" is the reason i've halted new spending. how are we supposed to be confident in their respect for customers when they aren't communicating respect for customers through their actions? we want to support a good product, sure. i really like new content! but, the game is in the playing, not the purchasing.
Sure, but at least one person in a group needs a subscription for content sharing to work. That's the only reason I haven't already cancelled mine, as I don't give a shit about subscriber perks, and while I have a lot of characters I've already exported most of them as PDFs already.
But we are very much looking at alternative platforms, and if there aren't any we can use, we'll look at leaving D&D entirely; while switching will take work, thanks to the OGL scandal there is no shortage of options to switch to that are highly compatible with 5th edition, so porting characters and homebrew shouldn't be that difficult, it's just a case of finding one that has a decent digital toolset to use. I expect we'll be seeing more of those cropping up soon too.
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 will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
There's an easy answer to why people want this: A lot of people play but don't DM, and so don't need a good half of the full books. They just want new options for character creation such as races and subclasses, and it was nice to have the flexibility to just get what you needed for your sheet on Beyond.
Also would you are to share what those 'various reasons' are, exactly? If you can you'd be being more forthcoming than WoTC is being at least.
take monsters of the multiverse: it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents) 12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options) 8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond) to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
some of the various reasons: assume with wotc taking over dndbeyond that they can no longer afford to offer piece-meal without impacting revenue for future content (quality and quantity) they were spoiling their customer base with an option found no where else, which seems to of influenced people against purchasing complete works/books
customers cherry-picking contents via piece-meal seem to be the same people suggesting: *going elsewhere - even though price is the same and that they will be purchasing books, along with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh *finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents *recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it *cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing but either way ive gave my last opinion on the matter and ill leave it at that
Yeah, you do not understand how the site worked before the marketplace changed, or how it works now.
Any piece meal purchases made were deducted from the price of the books, so at some point you could buy the book cheaper than the next few purchases.
Inputting directly from physical books via homebrew was and is(though for how long is anyone's guess) encouraged by DDB if you don't want to buy a digital copy.
"free" copies online are pirated and there are many reasons for piracy, a leading cause is service issues from the IP holder.
Going somewhere else with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh is not needed as you can use the site for free just limited characters and no sharing though as long as anyone in the campaign has a master sub then sharing can still work.
Even annual subscriptions when canceled still run till the renewal date as WotC doesn't give refunds they just don't renew, so there is no loss there nothing changes until then.
As to "spoiling their customers" LOL the only thing DDB does better than the other options is the character creator tool, and if you have to homebrew everything there are plenty of other options that can be self hosted so you are not tied to the whims of DDB being up when you want to use your characters.
With all of the bugs and broken things like say the search feature, a book shelf with owned content on it, and the fact that other than the appearance the market place is a significant down grade, you can't tell if you own a book until it is in your cart, and the piecemeal credits made before the change are only available if you go through customer service which is constantly overwhelmed on a normal day let alone with a book rolling out and all of this craziness over the marketplace changes it is no knee jerk reaction, is is people getting tired of nothing being fixed, and WotC constantly taking things away, yet not fixing any of the broken parts of the site.
There are other things, but voicing them is verboten here.
TLDR, DDB has gone down hill since WotC purchased it, and they seem to be intent on sacrificing it to build the wall around the upcoming 3d vvt.
This is is a terrible decision that is tantamount to flushing money down the toilet. I literally logged on with the express purpose of buying a couple of different subclasses (from different books) to test them out and realized that instead of spending a 5ish dollars I would need to spend 60, and now am not going to buy anything.
Hasbro/WotC really have been working hard on destroying this service, haven't they? Between the Homebrew system (the main reason I bought into it as a DM) never getting the so desperately needed updates DnDBeyond promised half a decade ago and this new move that will cripple the player's possibilities for the character creator, pretty much the only tool DDB is commonly used for, coupled with the severe lack of quality in several of the latest products published, there is no reason to pay for any more content on this side. I will keep my subscription until our campaign is over (unless they also cancel content sharing when their greed strikes again), but afterwards I see no reason to keep supporting them. There are better systems with better support services out there. Too bad they will only understand that DDB was crucial to DnD's success when both are dead...
take monsters of the multiverse: it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
Your understanding continues to be incomplete. I know you're trying to endeavor piecemeal purchases as absurd with 30 species available in MMM, but what you're making that claim without awareness that in addition to individual races being available, a DDB user could buy all the races as a bundle for less than the price of the full book. I believing the MMM races was something like $10.99, I believe I bought the VGtR Gothic lineages for $1.99, but that might have been a sale. Same with monsters and magic items, there were bundles within books.
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents) 12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options) 8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond) to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
I don't know why you're using the forthcoming PHB in comparison to the present MMM, what's the point? Whatever it is, it's further muddied because you don't seem to fully understand what's in the PHB. The Artificer will not be in the PHB, that's known. Having 4 options for each of the core classes is fine, but if you're a player of 2014 expression of the rules and want say all the Wizard subclasses and only that, this isn't helpful. Not recognizing the difference between the PHB "core species" and the species present in MMM and speculate you'll have MMM numbering options in the PHB just speaks to a lack of understanding the D&D product line which undercuts any sort of credibility for the argument you're trying to make, whatever it is. Yes, WotC is trying to make the 2024 PHB a good buy by putting in arguably "more bang for your buck" than the 2014 version, because they really want existing 5e players to buy into it. No one knows how much that book's being priced at in print or digital yet. A lot of DDB users who are familiar with WotC's practice of putting old content into "legacy" (the species in MMM were consolidated with some changes from two prior books that are no longer available in the marketplace, but owners of them still maintain "legacy" access). The PHB is not such a consolidation. There are in the 2014 rules, 8-18 subclasses (excepting the Artificer's which gets short shrift and likely will in the future being left out of the core again) for each of the classes ... those won't be showing up again, if they do show up, until well after the new core is published. It seems entirely reasonable for players to want to collect those character options if they have the capacity to do so to avoid missing out on them before another unannounced closure of some books. Like, the Psi Knight and Soul Knife are both available in Tasha's, as are some other classes that won't be in the new PHB. Can we trust WotC to keep Tasha's available when the PHB comes out despite the "conflict overlap" of the old book and the new book in which WotC is invested in seeing strong sales? I don't know, but WotC has had a number of moves over the past two years where its most invested community members simply doesn't trust them.
some of the various reasons: assume with wotc taking over dndbeyond that they can no longer afford to offer piece-meal without impacting revenue for future content (quality and quantity) they were spoiling their customer base with an option found no where else, which seems to of influenced people against purchasing complete works/books
customers cherry-picking contents via piece-meal seem to be the same people suggesting: *going elsewhere - even though price is the same and that they will be purchasing books, along with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh *finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents *recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it *cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing but either way ive gave my last opinion on the matter and ill leave it at that
I discussed earlier in this thread, with you, that people don't know the best way to express the frustration of having an attractive menu feature taken away from them. Sometimes an effective tactic will take hold, as the subscriber walk off did during the OGL mess. Your 'analysis,' which again seems to be based on a at best "incomplete" understanding of what users of DDB feel are at stake seems invested in dismissing those community members feelings.
It would be very easy for me to say "this is no big deal" too. I'm fortunate enough that the elimination of piecemeal options won't phase my ability to grab any DDB content I want. However, what drew me to DDB, made me an advocate for DDB, over its competitors in the digital space was how the Basic Rules and piecemeal purchases increased access to the game. Rather than dismiss a community's reaction to this change on the basis of a poor conception of the matter at hand, it would have probably done you better to read the community curated https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/13989-a-buyers-guide-for-d-d-beyond and maybe through that foundation and documentation of prior community practice, you'd have understood what has been lost and is arguably being grieved here, rather than invalidate that segment of the community because you don't understand the stakes as well as you think you do.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I have a question for everybody who has posted in one of the complaint threads.
Why are you here as in DDB and not off at Roll20 or some pace else?
I will not say why I am here so as not to sway any answers.
I came to DDB because it had the bundles and their discounts on future books, constant sales or coupon codes, a very easy-to-use character creator and the Beyond20 extenion for using it in Roll20. DDB seemed to be a good choice to havein combination with VTTs.
Since I DM, i prefer buying whole books but have occassionally used the a la carte buying option.
The pretty cheap Master subscription also made it very easy and convenient for me to introduce my friends to D&D have them play with me.
I have a question for everybody who has posted in one of the complaint threads.
Why are you here as in DDB and not off at Roll20 or some pace else?
I will not say why I am here so as not to sway any answers.
I came to DDB because it had the bundles and their discounts on future books, constant sales or coupon codes, a very easy-to-use character creator and the Beyond20 extenion for using it in Roll20. DDB seemed to be a good choice to havein combination with VTTs.
Since I DM, i prefer buying whole books but have occassionally used the a la carte buying option.
The pretty cheap Master subscription also made it very easy and convenient for me to introduce my friends to D&D have them play with me.
Same here, I play with lots of people new to the game, own both physical and digital and share to make it easy for people to get into the game. I loan or give them a few sets of dice, they download an app, nice way to start a session 0.
I bought the legendary bundle early, right after I bought the PHB, and the discount on future books was a big part of that purchase.
I dumped my ddb subscription soon after the first OGL shenanigans, and I'd love to see ddb/wotc give me a good reason to trust them again. This ain't it. In fact it's one more tick in the "reasons to never give them a cent again" column.
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Same thing here for my friend and the Astral Elf. She was more than willing to buy it but it was too late, and now she has to buy the entire book just for ONE race.
Except she didn't because I just homebrewed it in for her instead. Neither of us wanted to but one race isn't worth the pricetag of a whole book.
That's exactly what I'm saying, I've seen plenty of Plasmoids, a few Thri-Kreen, even an Astral Elf or two. Player creation options are fun, but not $70+ fun.
I think it would be better for them to learn this lesson now than it would be if they release a similar situation but without ala carte.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
Just the opposite for me, subscription canceled, and no new purchases, between what they did and how they are dealing with it, I can not support this place. Enjoy those new books.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
There's an easy answer to why people want this: A lot of people play but don't DM, and so don't need a good half of the full books. They just want new options for character creation such as races and subclasses, and it was nice to have the flexibility to just get what you needed for your sheet on Beyond.
Also would you are to share what those 'various reasons' are, exactly? If you can you'd be being more forthcoming than WoTC is being at least.
Nothing to add…just one more post to agree that removing the a carte system was such a bad and greedy move that as a result ended in my canceling any future dnd beyond purchasing plans … DndBeyond has been a great tool…has been
take monsters of the multiverse:
it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents)
12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options)
8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond)
to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
some of the various reasons:
assume with wotc taking over dndbeyond that they can no longer afford to offer piece-meal without impacting revenue for future content (quality and quantity)
they were spoiling their customer base with an option found no where else, which seems to of influenced people against purchasing complete works/books
customers cherry-picking contents via piece-meal seem to be the same people suggesting:
*going elsewhere - even though price is the same and that they will be purchasing books, along with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh
*finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents
*recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it
*cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing
but either way ive gave my last opinion on the matter and ill leave it at that
Why would you assume any given person needs everything from Monsters of the Multiverse? Especially given there is already the Monster Manual?
And with the new PHB, again you are comparing a core book with setting books, where any given player and even most DM's will not need the majority of the book at all, with a Player's Handbook, which is pretty much 100% useful to both players and DM's.
These are not equivalent.
And how many of those will a player actually need? You can only play one race and one sub-class per character (even if you multi-class you can't do more than an absolute maximum of 6 sub-classes), so if your group has a physical copy of the book, but you'd like to use D&D Beyond on a tablet rather than pen and paper, suddenly you have to buy a whole extra copy of the book rather than just spending $4 for the two things you need.
It's a massive barrier to entry for new players using D&D Beyond just to manage their first character sheet, and a burden to anyone who doesn't want or need the entire book but might gain use out of a handful of sub-classes and/or races.
Not everyone has a DM willing to pay for digital copies of all of their physical books, plus a subscription, just so everyone else in the group can use D&D Beyond for free. Many groups may not even use D&D Beyond consistently; some players may prefer to use devices, while others use pen and paper, and that is – and should be – perfectly fine. Piecemeal purchasing supported that, forcing everyone to buy an entire book or nothing at all does not.
If a business does something that isn't customer-friendly, they lose any right to complain about customers doing something that isn't business-friendly. If D&D Beyond tells us to pay more money or **** off, they don't get to complain if we choose to **** off.
People recreating stuff via homebrew will only prove the need to allow them to buy it piecemeal, because every sub-class recreated in homebrew is a potential sale lost. Nobody wants to spend a load of their time trying to recreate something in homebrew, as even simple homebrew can take a while to make, and needs to be tested and tweaked. But they'll do it if they're given no other choice (except to not use D&D Beyond at all).
This is the same lesson the music industry had to learn about piracy; when people can buy what they want, how they want, they will, because it's more convenient than digging around on pirate websites for a half-decent copy from a source that might be trustworthy enough to risk it.
However the difference here is that D&D Beyond already had the correct payment model, and they're throwing it away like idiots. And if they try to clamp down on recreation in homebrew they're going to be crippling yet another feature that kept people on the site.
Funnily enough, making a service progressively worse is not going to buy customer loyalty.
Do you not understand how subscriptions work? They're not a single up-front payment and you're a subscriber for life – cancelling the subscription saves the customer money (all future payments) and costs D&D Beyond the same amount of future revenue.
If people no longer have any reason to trust a company, why should keep giving it money? I'll answer that for; they shouldn't.
If you think being robbed of our preferred means of buying content is "essentially nothing" then you haven't been paying attention at all. When the price goes from $4 to $30+, D&D Beyond is going to find a lot of people are not willing to pay 8 times the price they used to.
And it's such a blatant misunderstanding of what D&D is or how it's played. In groups that play/played without digital tools, it's not uncommon for the group as a whole to only own one copy of most books, including the Player's Handbook (though the more keen players might buy their own). Often it's just the DM who buys most of the books, and lends them to people so they can look at the options and make their characters.
While D&D Beyond is capable of simulating that with DM's purchasing full books and sharing them via a subscription and a campaign, this is a) more costly long term than physical (as it requires an ongoing subscription) and b) is forcing a DM to pay twice for everything if they already have physical copies of everything. But it's also incompatible with other forms of ownership that piecemeal purchases opened up. With piecemeal purchasing it's possible for players to buy what they need for themselves, or buy a race pack for everyone in the group to use from a book that the DM doesn't necessarily want to buy in its entirety, such as Monsters of the Multiverse, or a campaign setting they don't intend to use (like Spelljammer) and so-on. It enabled people to buy more content, not less.
I've no idea why you'd defend such a customer hostile move, or seek to victim blame into the bargain, or why you think it's appropriate to reply to me via private messages where I won't respond. I'm not afraid to make my arguments in the open where they belong.
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.
currently, one doesn't need a subscription to keep accessing the books one has already purchased.
that "currently" is the reason i've halted new spending. how are we supposed to be confident in their respect for customers when they aren't communicating respect for customers through their actions? we want to support a good product, sure. i really like new content! but, the game is in the playing, not the purchasing.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Sure, but at least one person in a group needs a subscription for content sharing to work. That's the only reason I haven't already cancelled mine, as I don't give a shit about subscriber perks, and while I have a lot of characters I've already exported most of them as PDFs already.
But we are very much looking at alternative platforms, and if there aren't any we can use, we'll look at leaving D&D entirely; while switching will take work, thanks to the OGL scandal there is no shortage of options to switch to that are highly compatible with 5th edition, so porting characters and homebrew shouldn't be that difficult, it's just a case of finding one that has a decent digital toolset to use. I expect we'll be seeing more of those cropping up soon too.
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.
Yeah, you do not understand how the site worked before the marketplace changed, or how it works now.
Any piece meal purchases made were deducted from the price of the books, so at some point you could buy the book cheaper than the next few purchases.
Inputting directly from physical books via homebrew was and is(though for how long is anyone's guess) encouraged by DDB if you don't want to buy a digital copy.
"free" copies online are pirated and there are many reasons for piracy, a leading cause is service issues from the IP holder.
Going somewhere else with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh is not needed as you can use the site for free just limited characters and no sharing though as long as anyone in the campaign has a master sub then sharing can still work.
Even annual subscriptions when canceled still run till the renewal date as WotC doesn't give refunds they just don't renew, so there is no loss there nothing changes until then.
As to "spoiling their customers" LOL the only thing DDB does better than the other options is the character creator tool, and if you have to homebrew everything there are plenty of other options that can be self hosted so you are not tied to the whims of DDB being up when you want to use your characters.
With all of the bugs and broken things like say the search feature, a book shelf with owned content on it, and the fact that other than the appearance the market place is a significant down grade, you can't tell if you own a book until it is in your cart, and the piecemeal credits made before the change are only available if you go through customer service which is constantly overwhelmed on a normal day let alone with a book rolling out and all of this craziness over the marketplace changes it is no knee jerk reaction, is is people getting tired of nothing being fixed, and WotC constantly taking things away, yet not fixing any of the broken parts of the site.
There are other things, but voicing them is verboten here.
TLDR, DDB has gone down hill since WotC purchased it, and they seem to be intent on sacrificing it to build the wall around the upcoming 3d vvt.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Five days and seven pages since the last staff post. No change in policy or any announcement of an impending change.
DDB doesn't care about this feedback any more than they pretend to care about the rest.
This is is a terrible decision that is tantamount to flushing money down the toilet.
I literally logged on with the express purpose of buying a couple of different subclasses (from different books) to test them out and realized that instead of spending a 5ish dollars I would need to spend 60, and now am not going to buy anything.
Hasbro/WotC really have been working hard on destroying this service, haven't they? Between the Homebrew system (the main reason I bought into it as a DM) never getting the so desperately needed updates DnDBeyond promised half a decade ago and this new move that will cripple the player's possibilities for the character creator, pretty much the only tool DDB is commonly used for, coupled with the severe lack of quality in several of the latest products published, there is no reason to pay for any more content on this side. I will keep my subscription until our campaign is over (unless they also cancel content sharing when their greed strikes again), but afterwards I see no reason to keep supporting them. There are better systems with better support services out there. Too bad they will only understand that DDB was crucial to DnD's success when both are dead...
Your understanding continues to be incomplete. I know you're trying to endeavor piecemeal purchases as absurd with 30 species available in MMM, but what you're making that claim without awareness that in addition to individual races being available, a DDB user could buy all the races as a bundle for less than the price of the full book. I believing the MMM races was something like $10.99, I believe I bought the VGtR Gothic lineages for $1.99, but that might have been a sale. Same with monsters and magic items, there were bundles within books.
I don't know why you're using the forthcoming PHB in comparison to the present MMM, what's the point? Whatever it is, it's further muddied because you don't seem to fully understand what's in the PHB. The Artificer will not be in the PHB, that's known. Having 4 options for each of the core classes is fine, but if you're a player of 2014 expression of the rules and want say all the Wizard subclasses and only that, this isn't helpful. Not recognizing the difference between the PHB "core species" and the species present in MMM and speculate you'll have MMM numbering options in the PHB just speaks to a lack of understanding the D&D product line which undercuts any sort of credibility for the argument you're trying to make, whatever it is. Yes, WotC is trying to make the 2024 PHB a good buy by putting in arguably "more bang for your buck" than the 2014 version, because they really want existing 5e players to buy into it. No one knows how much that book's being priced at in print or digital yet. A lot of DDB users who are familiar with WotC's practice of putting old content into "legacy" (the species in MMM were consolidated with some changes from two prior books that are no longer available in the marketplace, but owners of them still maintain "legacy" access). The PHB is not such a consolidation. There are in the 2014 rules, 8-18 subclasses (excepting the Artificer's which gets short shrift and likely will in the future being left out of the core again) for each of the classes ... those won't be showing up again, if they do show up, until well after the new core is published. It seems entirely reasonable for players to want to collect those character options if they have the capacity to do so to avoid missing out on them before another unannounced closure of some books. Like, the Psi Knight and Soul Knife are both available in Tasha's, as are some other classes that won't be in the new PHB. Can we trust WotC to keep Tasha's available when the PHB comes out despite the "conflict overlap" of the old book and the new book in which WotC is invested in seeing strong sales? I don't know, but WotC has had a number of moves over the past two years where its most invested community members simply doesn't trust them.
I discussed earlier in this thread, with you, that people don't know the best way to express the frustration of having an attractive menu feature taken away from them. Sometimes an effective tactic will take hold, as the subscriber walk off did during the OGL mess. Your 'analysis,' which again seems to be based on a at best "incomplete" understanding of what users of DDB feel are at stake seems invested in dismissing those community members feelings.
It would be very easy for me to say "this is no big deal" too. I'm fortunate enough that the elimination of piecemeal options won't phase my ability to grab any DDB content I want. However, what drew me to DDB, made me an advocate for DDB, over its competitors in the digital space was how the Basic Rules and piecemeal purchases increased access to the game. Rather than dismiss a community's reaction to this change on the basis of a poor conception of the matter at hand, it would have probably done you better to read the community curated https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/13989-a-buyers-guide-for-d-d-beyond and maybe through that foundation and documentation of prior community practice, you'd have understood what has been lost and is arguably being grieved here, rather than invalidate that segment of the community because you don't understand the stakes as well as you think you do.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I have a question for everybody who has posted in one of the complaint threads.
Why are you here as in DDB and not off at Roll20 or some pace else?
I will not say why I am here so as not to sway any answers.
I came to DDB because it had the bundles and their discounts on future books, constant sales or coupon codes, a very easy-to-use character creator and the Beyond20 extenion for using it in Roll20. DDB seemed to be a good choice to havein combination with VTTs.
Since I DM, i prefer buying whole books but have occassionally used the a la carte buying option.
The pretty cheap Master subscription also made it very easy and convenient for me to introduce my friends to D&D have them play with me.
Same here, I play with lots of people new to the game, own both physical and digital and share to make it easy for people to get into the game. I loan or give them a few sets of dice, they download an app, nice way to start a session 0.
I bought the legendary bundle early, right after I bought the PHB, and the discount on future books was a big part of that purchase.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I dumped my ddb subscription soon after the first OGL shenanigans, and I'd love to see ddb/wotc give me a good reason to trust them again. This ain't it. In fact it's one more tick in the "reasons to never give them a cent again" column.