PSA: The marketplace got rid of individual purchases! (Contact support to get discount on prior individual purchases.)

Again (since you've ignored this twice now), if they had a good reason, why not state it? Why not do that most basic of things and communicate with customers so we know what's coming and why? Why just drop a steaming pile of storefront on us and expect us to be happy about it?

They're very well documented as having awful communication policies, but also, if the answer was "this is penny-ante stuff, and it's not worth it to us to keep it", do you think the yelling would be better or worse? (And it's by far the most likely reason.)

 As I just said, I would respect that infinitely more than ignoring us. I still wouldn't be happy, and I still would likely stop purchasing their products, but at the very least it would be something. If they're going to be yelled at either way, they might as well take the option that at least has some integrity.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

 Adding to the above, Wizards does not owe us a reason why they made the change - we are really not entitled to know why they make financial decisions.  That is an internal decision - it is one that we can be upset about, but Wizards does not owe us any real explanation as to why the change was made.  That does not mean they did a good job at communicating and implementation - something like this should have been announced in advance and they really should have worked out some of the technical issues (no credit for past purchases without involving customer support, issues with PayPal, etc.).

Honestly, I get where Wizards is coming from.  The community manager was monitoring this thread and doing a good job responding to people… and then the usual suspects came out of the woodworks.  Those who try to turn every conversation into something about economic politics.  Those who spread conspiracies and engage in baseless speculation.  The racists who just want the game to fail because Wizards had the audacity to try and make it more welcoming, so they latch onto every controversy to fan flames of discontent.  All the entitled members of the community who demand things of Wizards far beyond what any company would do.

There has been lots of great discussion on this thread - and, I want to be clear, the overwhelming majority of users, based on both comments and the upvotes thereon, have been incredibly respectful in voicing their discontent.  But, that does not stop bad actors from being loud and trying to monopolize the conversation - and you’ll notice the shift away from polite dissent proceeded and, in all likelihood, precipitated, the reduction in staff interaction here.

Wizards should learn the lesson that better communication is desired by the majority of the community - but the lesson the community, or at least its loudest members, continues to teach Wizards is that, no matter how much Wizards tries to communicate, no matter what they do, they’ll get the same wrathful response. If we want Wizards to do better, we should stop providing them evidence to support a more fatalistic “why should we try communicating, it will end the same regardless” approach to public relations. 

 And the community does not owe them the benefit of the doubt either. The reason baseless speculation is rampant here is precisely because of the lack of communication on their end, and it can still be quelled should they communicate now. They choose not to, continuing to leave everyone in the dark to speculate. They forfeit the right to complain about customers reactions when they do nothing to engage with said customers. As far as I'm aware you're not a member of staff nor do you speak for the staff, so any reason you provide to defend their lack of engagement here is... baseless speculation.

Quote from ModoStark >>

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

 Adding to the above, Wizards does not owe us a reason why they made the change - we are really not entitled to know why they make financial decisions.  That is an internal decision - it is one that we can be upset about, but Wizards does not owe us any real explanation as to why the change was made.  That does not mean they did a good job at communicating and implementation - something like this should have been announced in advance and they really should have worked out some of the technical issues (no credit for past purchases without involving customer support, issues with PayPal, etc.).

Honestly, I get where Wizards is coming from.  The community manager was monitoring this thread and doing a good job responding to people… and then the usual suspects came out of the woodworks.  Those who try to turn every conversation into something about economic politics.  Those who spread conspiracies and engage in baseless speculation.  The racists who just want the game to fail because Wizards had the audacity to try and make it more welcoming, so they latch onto every controversy to fan flames of discontent.  All the entitled members of the community who demand things of Wizards far beyond what any company would do.

There has been lots of great discussion on this thread - and, I want to be clear, the overwhelming majority of users, based on both comments and the upvotes thereon, have been incredibly respectful in voicing their discontent.  But, that does not stop bad actors from being loud and trying to monopolize the conversation - and you’ll notice the shift away from polite dissent proceeded and, in all likelihood, precipitated, the reduction in staff interaction here.

Wizards should learn the lesson that better communication is desired by the majority of the community - but the lesson the community, or at least its loudest members, continues to teach Wizards is that, no matter how much Wizards tries to communicate, no matter what they do, they’ll get the same wrathful response. If we want Wizards to do better, we should stop providing them evidence to support a more fatalistic “why should we try communicating, it will end the same regardless” approach to public relations. 

 

 And the community does not owe them the benefit of the doubt either. The reason baseless speculation is rampant here is precisely because of the lack of communication on their end, and it can still be quelled should they communicate now. They choose not to, continuing to leave everyone in the dark to speculate. They forfeit the right to complain about customers reactions when they do nothing to engage with said customers. As far as I'm aware you're not a member of staff nor do you speak for the staff, so any reason you provide to defend their lack of engagement here is... baseless speculation.

The optics to admitting it was financially motivated would be very bad, but it's the only reasonable explanation for what they're up to given the refusal to properly communicate for this long. Hoping it will blow over is essentially admitting that this is the case, because otherwise they wouldn't need to do so.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from Haravikk >>

Now, it's important to note that they re-architected the store.

…and that reason is that there was absolutely zero reason to re-architect the store.

 If there was zero reason to re-architect the store... they wouldn't have done it. It costs resources that they could instead use on something they could sell. It certainly wasn't needed to get rid of individual purchasing, removing them from the existing store would almost certainly have been completely trivial.

Oh please... That was a marketing decision, the kind that happens all over the world every day of the year. Sometimes the decisions are good, sometimes not so good. There is always a reason but the reason is not always well reasoned. No matter how big or successful the company is otherwise. 

And marketing is always a separate budget from production in any company of that size. 

Quote from jl8e>>

Quote from Haravikk>>

And yet they made a point of getting rid of piecemeal purchases while doing it, while changing nothing of value to the storefront; it's not any easier to use, in fact it's arguably a worse storefront all around.

They didn't "make a point of" getting rid of them -- they didn't reimplement them. Having them is not just "put more items on sale". There's a hierarchy of things on sale, and buying things higher up the tree removes the lower items, while buying the lower items reduces the price of the higher ones. (The bundles present the same problems.) Whatever preexisting e-commerce package they're working with would require heavy customizing to make it work.

Except this excuse doesn't fly in the slightest.

They already had a working storefront with all the functionality, yet they chose to replace it; normally you do that in order to improve it. Instead they've released a storefront that is worse in every conceivably way and is lacking some of the most basic features upon which their customer base was built.

If they absolutely must move to some premade storefront for some reason, they had two very simple options:

1. Keep working on it until it was actually a replacement, instead of rushing out a half-assed botch job that doesn't replace what was there already.
2. Release without piecemeal purchases but with a clear announcement (in advance) making clear that the feature is coming later.

Two simple options, yet they chose option 3) get rid of piecemeal purchases and hope their customers will just accept it and hurl more money at them.

They knew full well they were axing a feature, because they released an article specifically mentioning how we now have to e-mail customer service just to get them to respect discounted prices from the old storefront. Oh and tough luck anyone who doesn't realise they could have paid less, they'll just be taking that money kthxbye.

And the difficulty of development is a piss-poor excuse too; piecemeal purchasing already works behind the scenes with the content unlocking, so all they needed to do for a premade storefront is list the items as products in their own right (categorised to avoid clutter) and buying them also buys a discount on the corresponding book product(s). If they've wasted our money on a storefront that can't handle per-product discounts then that's not our ******* fault now is it? If it does support discounts then it's dead easy, it only takes a little extra time, especially since it should be easy to automate the changeover (since the data they need to do-so was in the old system).

So either they're incompetent, lazy, greedy, or all of the above and worse. Which is it?

Quote from Kotath >>

Oh please... That was a marketing decision, the kind that happens all over the world every day of the year.

While marketing would normally be involved in prioritizing which features of the old store were to be re-implemented, the decision to have a new store is very unlikely to be a marketing decision, because marketing fundamentally does not care about the underlying tech. If it was just a marketing issue... they would have removed individual purchasing and kept the old store.

Honestly... the way this was rolled out suggests a security problem with the old store, because otherwise you would roll it out slowly, with a nice pretty announcement explaining how this new store is the greatest thing since sliced bread and we should be happy about the change.

Quote from Haravikk >>

Quote from jl8e>>

Quote from Haravikk>>

And yet they made a point of getting rid of piecemeal purchases while doing it, while changing nothing of value to the storefront; it's not any easier to use, in fact it's arguably a worse storefront all around.

They didn't "make a point of" getting rid of them -- they didn't reimplement them. Having them is not just "put more items on sale". There's a hierarchy of things on sale, and buying things higher up the tree removes the lower items, while buying the lower items reduces the price of the higher ones. (The bundles present the same problems.) Whatever preexisting e-commerce package they're working with would require heavy customizing to make it work.

Except this excuse doesn't fly in the slightest.

They already had a working storefront with all the functionality, yet they chose to replace it; normally you do that in order to improve it...

 it's not beyond the pale to imagine their main goal was just to add the "Physical" button so more wizard merch can be sold from here and to increase the quantity of pretty book art pictures. and they did that. once you realize the good information isn't missing just hidden under a clickable "PRODUCT DETAILS" bar, it's not so dysfunctional. storefront change pushed through with low resources (time, testing, communications, etc) yes. entirely unnecessary change, no. let's not get bogged down on the storefront.

Quote from Haravikk>>

Quote from jl8e>>

Quote from Haravikk>>

And yet they made a point of getting rid of piecemeal purchases while doing it, while changing nothing of value to the storefront; it's not any easier to use, in fact it's arguably a worse storefront all around.

They didn't "make a point of" getting rid of them -- they didn't reimplement them. Having them is not just "put more items on sale". There's a hierarchy of things on sale, and buying things higher up the tree removes the lower items, while buying the lower items reduces the price of the higher ones. (The bundles present the same problems.) Whatever preexisting e-commerce package they're working with would require heavy customizing to make it work.

Except this excuse doesn't fly in the slightest.

They already had a working storefront with all the functionality,

If they absolutely must move to some premade storefront for some reason, they had two very simple options:

1. Keep working on it until it was actually a replacement, instead of rushing out a half-assed botch job that doesn't replace what was there already.
2. Release without piecemeal purchases but with a clear announcement (in advance) making clear that the feature is coming later.

Two simple options, yet they chose option 3) get rid of piecemeal purchases and hope their customers will just accept it and hurl more money at them.

And the difficulty of development is a piss-poor excuse too; piecemeal purchasing already works behind the scenes with the content unlocking, so all they needed to do for a premade storefront is list the items as products in their own right (categorised to avoid clutter) and buying them also buys a discount on the corresponding book product(s). If they've wasted our money on a storefront that can't handle per-product discounts then that's not our ******* fault now is it? If it does support discounts then it's dead easy, it only takes a little extra time, especially since it should be easy to automate the changeover (since the data they need to do-so was in the old system).

So either they're incompetent, lazy, greedy, or all of the above and worse. Which is it?

 Given that the marketplace dropped without PayPal support, my guess is "on a tight deadline". It does, I admit, also seem to be kind of crap; very much built on a "all items for purchase are completely independent of each other" paradigm. Which is probably pretty normal for off-the-shelf e-commerce platforms, but it doesn't say great things about whoever scoped the project and chose the tooling.

But the whole "they dropped piecemeal to make us buy the whole books to extract more money!" thing just doesn't ring true to me.

Quote from Karmattack >>

The optics to admitting it was financially motivated would be very bad, but it's the only reasonable explanation for what they're up to given the refusal to properly communicate for this long. Hoping it will blow over is essentially admitting that this is the case, because otherwise they wouldn't need to do so.

To be fair on that, companies do not normally announce in advance if they are doing a new marketing campaign or simply changing the design of their website. 

This whole thing could still be an embarrassing oversight that they decided to pretend was deliberate or decided was too expensive to fix (which could also explain the lack of announcement and the lack of clear response). 

Quote from jl8e >>

You may not like option three, but it's totally a thing they can do.

 

It is their company. There is a long list of things they can 'totally do' completely legally. 

Simply being a thing that one can do in no way, in and of itself, makes that thing a wise thing to do.

Quote from kayakingpoodle >>

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Honestly... the way this was rolled out suggests a security problem with the old store, because otherwise you would roll it out slowly, with a nice pretty announcement explaining how this new store is the greatest thing since sliced bread and we should be happy about the change.

Then where are the details on a security issue where payment and personal information may be compromised?

 That's very speculative, and many, many, many companies keep quiet about security holes, especially those that haven't been exploited to the best of their knowledge. (And the laws that require disclosure of breaches are, IIRC, a state-by-state patchwork.)

Even if it's a security problem, which is still speculation, it might be:

• Something reported to them by somebody who found it
• Something they found internally
• The old code relied on some library that's no longer being supported, and thus won't get security fixes going forward
• The old code wasn't in compliance with the auditing requirements that the credit card companies require

I still think the most likely reason is "the old code was an unmaintainable mess, and digital-physical bundles are way more important to WotC than piecemeal purchases". Only the weirdness of the launch makes me wonder if it had to be pushed out the door before it was fully baked.

Quote from jl8e>>

Except digital-physical bundles, which are a much bigger deal to them, especially in the run-up to the new core books.

They've been selling digital physical bundles since soon after WotC bought them out, I forget which book was the first, but they were selling them for a while already.

You may not like option three, but it's totally a thing they can do.

And I doubt they expect to get more money by people buying whole books instead. I just suspect it's a small enough amount of money that it's not worth it in either time or cost to support it.

In which case they could have said so, e.g- "Unfortunately piecemeal purchasing only accounts for a fraction of sales on D&D Beyond so has not been prioritised at this time" blah blah blah. It's not hard to keep your customers informed.

Not a software developer, are you? I admit to not having any experience with e-commerce systems, but it sure doesn't look "dead easy, it only takes a little extra time" to me. (See previous post.)

I am a software developer, and the bulk of the work I do is in websites these days (mostly back-end stuff in PHP, SQL-ish databases, and increasingly clients wanting to integrate ChatGPT into everything because it's the latest fad).

Any decent off-the-shelf e-commerce software should support everything you'd need to do this as we're not talking anything overly fancy; it's just listing feats etc. as products under their own category/categories you can link from the books, and issuing product discounts to the customer who buys them (which again should be possible in any decent system, or can be issued separately if it doesn't support bundled items). Then it's a bit of automation to make it easier/port it across (any good e-commerce system should have an API, as these are intended to be integrated with existing systems).

It would still be worse than the old system (no pretty integrated single page where you can do everything) but it would mean the capability to buy what we want, how we want, and have it apply as a discount for completing books. Again, ditching the feature is a conscious choice, if it wasn't they would have told us why.

But the whole "they dropped piecemeal to make us buy the whole books to extract more money!" thing just doesn't ring true to me.

It's true until proven otherwise, because that's still exactly what they've done.

Paying customers are now forced to either pay full price, or not at all, as those are literally the only two choices left. I'm very much in the "not at all" bracket, and given the way they've handled this whole situation I frankly don't think them rolling back the change would even be good enough anymore – I no longer trust the service or company one bit.

I'll only be staying on the site until my groups have finished moving to another system; as much as I loved D&D, I don't give a shit about the actual rules system itself, and they can't stop me using the artwork I own and setting I started my campaigns in even if I move to another system. And as I've said before, there's no shortage of 5e compatible alternatives these days thanks to the OGL scandal, so their previous steps have only made it easier to switch.

Might not be any sites as accessible to use as D&D Beyond, but then that's now true of D&D.

Quote from Xalthu >

This is probably close to it. They have said something like 20% of the player base (DMs, usually) does the vast majority of the purchasing. 

 

 And many of those DMs are going to stop purchasing anything due to this insane change. You'd think it would be common sense that if you were going to pander to the playerbase that is doing the vast majority of the purchases then you shouldn't anger those players in the process.
Honestly they need to just... stop. Seriously, they need to stop trying to pull these changes out of nowhere. They have utterly destroyed the trust of the fanbase. Players purchased things for DnD because they LOVED it and wanted to support it, not because they had to. I will likely continue to play DnD with my friends, but not a single one of us will ever spend a penny on it.

I absolutely do not understand the people playing Devil's Advocate in favor of having less features.

Even if you personally didn't use the feature, you gain nothing by smugly talking down to the people who miss it.

A lot of the points being made by these people aren't even right, as customers for a product they absolutely do owe us an explanation.

Quote from Haravikk >>

I am a software developer, and the bulk of the work I do is in websites these days (mostly back-end stuff in PHP, SQL-ish databases, and increasingly clients wanting to integrate ChatGPT into everything because it's the latest fad).

 

 Ah, mind if I got a professional opinion from you then? I think what would DnDbeyond could have done to make more money is to set up essentially their own DnD-centered Etsy style marketplace. Sure a lot of art websites claim to make concept art for DnD characters, but then you ask them to make something like a simic hybrid and suddenly they have no idea what you're talking about. So, if DnDbeyond had it's own area for that, I would want to go there because it tells me the artists would KNOW DANG GOOD AND WELL what the style, theme, and topic was.
Dice. Minis. Digital models. Character concept art. All things DnD. And just like the other sites, DnDbeyond would get a small cut.

Do you think that would have been possible? Or perhaps at least a better idea than the nonsense they're doing now? 

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

The reality of a la carte purchasing is that a $1.99 purchase is not a big deal; Wizards probably looked at the amount of money they were getting off of a la carte purchase and the price to implement them in their new store and went "nah".

 

 Ever heard of micro-transactions? Wanna guess how well those models actually work? Well, there's a reason Fortnite stays in business.

Quote from kayakingpoodle >>

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from Karmattack >>

You say this as if whatever it would cost to implement it wouldn't pay for itself almost immediately. Clearly there's a market for this, look at the level of outcry when they took it away.

It takes a lot of small purchases to be significant, and it's not actually a small cost. Let's say that 95% of the people currently paying $1.99 for a single item instead buy nothing, and 5% will pay $29.99. That's a net loss of $0.50 per. Now, assume it takes $5,000 in developer time to add the feature. They need 10,000 sales to break even.

 If it was about money they could have simply raised the price for piece meal purchases, this is about control not money.

 Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."

Quote from CorpseCandle666 >>

Quote from erraticpaladin5 >>

 Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."

 

Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.

This is likely why the change was done so quickly and without a word beforehand: They didn't want to negotiate, they don't actually care what we think.

Quote from Xalthu >>

Quote from jl8e >>

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from TheGnome5786 >>

How much do you think they make in piecemeal purchases at DDB? I personally do not think they make a million a year in sales here.

 Wizards spend $143 million for D&D Beyond. They wouldn't have done that if it wasn't making at least multiple millions. However, I would not be surprised if D&D Beyond functions on a whales and minnows model and the people using the a la carte options are minnows.

 

Why are you assuming categories like that? This is not a CCG. It does not function on luck, lockboxes, or any of the things that usually fit with a whales and minnows model. 

Now, if you are arguing that their marketing department is looking at it that way, that is just another way of saying that they are making blind assumptions. 

 It probably does work on something close to a power-law distribution. You have the long tail who buy little or nothing, the people who buy one book, the people who buy a couple of books and a master subscription, all the way up to the ones who buy everything. Piecemeal buying probably smoothed out the graph some, but the bulk of it is whole-book purchases.

While it doesn't have the unlimited spend possibility of the typical "free" game, it's not dissimilar. (Though I bet "three books and a master subscription" is a significant bump in the graph.)

 This is probably close to it. They have said something like 20% of the player base (DMs, usually) does the vast majority of the purchasing. 

But this would be by design, no?  At a table, players and the DM, you cannot expect everyone to buy everything because that literally doesn't make sense?  If this was the case, hosting a game for just six people would cost hundreds of dollars of investment.  Which other game on earth costs hundreds of dollars to host six people?

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

I would note that another plausible cause for all of this is just staffing; the glacial pace of updates to the site strongly suggest that the development staff is quite small.

Now, it's important to note that they re-architected the store. That's not something you do to kill off an old product you don't like -- if you really object to a given product, you just stop selling it. It's also not something you do casually, because no matter how you do it, it's going to annoy your customers. Mostly, the reason you do something like that is because the old system needs some sort of update, and it's easier to write a new store than update the old one. Note that staffing comes into play here: if you've laid off the staff who understand how the old system worked, making those necessary updates on the old software may simply not be feasible. Another common trigger is that a key component is end-of-life and needs to be replaced.

Once you've decided that you're going to replace a component like that, you look at the features of the old store, prioritize them (based on how much you value them and how much work they are to implement), and implement as many of them as you can manage given your deadlines and available staff (if the deadline is sufficiently far in the future you may look at hiring new staff, that's generally not feasible in the near term). A la carte purchasing didn't make the cutoff. It's almost certainly not the only thing that didn't, it's just the one that the most people got upset about.

Now, does this mean that Wizards can be pressured into restoring the feature? In the short term, no: building and debugging a system like that takes time. On a longer time frame, maybe.

This is fine and would be legitimate if they simply explained it as such.  In fact, it would be beneficial for WoTC to telegraph this via announcement.  The lack of explanation reduces the likelihood of this scenario IMHO.