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This makes this tool almost unusable for me and my friends. I have more friends asking me about DND than ever, and I've always been able to tell them that the barrier to entry is a lot less than they expect because tools like DND beyond. Until now. One of the most attractive aspects of the game is the ability to craft interesting and engaging characters. This change severely limits the ability of new players to explore the world of DND which will further raise the barrier to entry which is already exclusionary to new players.  

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

Quote from Mitchsteamy >>

This makes this tool almost unusable for me and my friends. I have more friends asking me about DND than ever, and I've always been able to tell them that the barrier to entry is a lot less than they expect because tools like DND beyond. Until now. One of the most attractive aspects of the game is the ability to craft interesting and engaging characters. This change severely limits the ability of new players to explore the world of DND which will further raise the barrier to entry which is already exclusionary to new players.  

Actually, that is not true. And trust me, look at my posts. I am no white knight of wotc. My opinion of the competency and honesty of the leaders of that corporate group are loud and clear.

But it is an undisputed fact that ANYONE can get into D&D (and it is D&D, not DnD), without buying a single wotc product. The SRD is free and covers all the mechanics, the main classes, and a very select few subclasses. To learn the game, and to have a great time, that is all anyone needs. Oh, and I guess 10 bucks for a set of dice, a pencil, and some paper. 

You are right that anyone who has a strong desire to get involved with D&D can do so without the use of tools that make it more approachable. Whether or not they can is not the same as whether or not they will. 

My point is that there are lots of potential players who are not as dedicated and who might be overwhelmed by or disinterested in the prospect of playing without tools that make it more accessible. Playing that way requires a larger investment of time, for an arguably less robust player experience. Some people don't even care enough to spell the name of the game correctly :), let alone take hours reading books and building out paper character sheets. Of course, these people could do these things, but they don't want to. Some people are simply open to a means of entertainment when it is approachable and less open when it is less approachable. I believe this change makes D&D Beyond the tool and therefore the game less approachable to some potential players. I think this will create a barrier to entry for some. 

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr>>

I think all the people who use the maps system would deny this claim.  I think all the people who like the addition of third party content to Beyond would deny this claim. 

As someone who uses Maps, and has bought third party (Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated) content in the past I would dispute this; the Maps feature is nice, but it's not something I can't manage without as there are plenty of other options.

And on third party content, I own Critical Role and Acq. Inc. books as a result of piecemeal purchasing; I would have pounced on the Humblewood races and sub-classes in a heartbeat, but because D&D Beyond is demanding the full piece of the book I haven't and won't, because I own a physical copy.

Access to content is the primary feature of this site, and they have made it harder to access content. I don't care about anything else the site offers as long as that remains the case, as everything else was a secondary benefit.

Quote from Haravikk >>

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr>>

I think all the people who use the maps system would deny this claim.  I think all the people who like the addition of third party content to Beyond would deny this claim. 

As someone who uses Maps, and has bought third party (Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated) content in the past I would dispute this; the Maps feature is nice, but it's not something I can manage without as there are plenty of other options.

And on third party content, I own Critical Role and Acq. Inc. books as a result of piecemeal purchasing; I would have pounced on the Humblewood races and sub-classes in a heartbeat, but because D&D Beyond is demanding the full piece of the book I haven't and won't, because I own a physical copy.

Access to content is the primary feature of this site, and they have made it harder to access content. I don't care about anything else the site offers as long as that remains the case, as everything else was a secondary benefit.

 This exactly, there are several bits of Humblewood I would have purchased if I could do so on a piecemeal basis, but I can't and I'm not going to buy the parts of the book I don't really need to get to the bits I want.

The entire point of using this site over just having a physical sheet is convenience, and they've made the active choice to be a less convenient option without making it up in other areas. (The new marketplace in and of itself does not make up for it.)

Quote from Karmattack >>

Quote from Haravikk >>

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr>>

I think all the people who use the maps system would deny this claim.  I think all the people who like the addition of third party content to Beyond would deny this claim. 

As someone who uses Maps, and has bought third party (Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated) content in the past I would dispute this; the Maps feature is nice, but it's not something I can manage without as there are plenty of other options.

And on third party content, I own Critical Role and Acq. Inc. books as a result of piecemeal purchasing; I would have pounced on the Humblewood races and sub-classes in a heartbeat, but because D&D Beyond is demanding the full piece of the book I haven't and won't, because I own a physical copy.

Access to content is the primary feature of this site, and they have made it harder to access content. I don't care about anything else the site offers as long as that remains the case, as everything else was a secondary benefit.

 This exactly, there are several bits of Humblewood I would have purchased if I could do so on a piecemeal basis, but I can't and I'm not going to buy the parts of the book I don't really need to get to the bits I want.

The entire point of using this site over just having a physical sheet is convenience, and they've made the active choice to be a less convenient option without making it up in other areas. (The new marketplace in and of itself does not make up for it.)

Humblewood, being 3rd party, was never available a la carte. If it had been I would already have at least some of it. 

Quote from Mitchsteamy >>

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

Quote from Mitchsteamy >>

This makes this tool almost unusable for me and my friends. I have more friends asking me about DND than ever, and I've always been able to tell them that the barrier to entry is a lot less than they expect because tools like DND beyond. Until now. One of the most attractive aspects of the game is the ability to craft interesting and engaging characters. This change severely limits the ability of new players to explore the world of DND which will further raise the barrier to entry which is already exclusionary to new players.  

Actually, that is not true. And trust me, look at my posts. I am no white knight of wotc. My opinion of the competency and honesty of the leaders of that corporate group are loud and clear.

But it is an undisputed fact that ANYONE can get into D&D (and it is D&D, not DnD), without buying a single wotc product. The SRD is free and covers all the mechanics, the main classes, and a very select few subclasses. To learn the game, and to have a great time, that is all anyone needs. Oh, and I guess 10 bucks for a set of dice, a pencil, and some paper. 

You are right that anyone who has a strong desire to get involved with D&D can do so without the use of tools that make it more approachable. Whether or not they can is not the same as whether or not they will. 

My point is that there are lots of potential players who are not as dedicated and who might be overwhelmed by or disinterested in the prospect of playing without tools that make it more accessible. Playing that way requires a larger investment of time, for an arguably less robust player experience. Some people don't even care enough to spell the name of the game correctly :), let alone take hours reading books and building out paper character sheets. Of course, these people could do these things, but they don't want to. Some people are simply open to a means of entertainment when it is approachable and less open when it is less approachable. I believe this change makes D&D Beyond the tool and therefore the game less approachable to some potential players. I think this will create a barrier to entry for some. 

I think this is the thing for me.

Beyond isn't necessary to play D&D, it's just a tool that makes it more accessible for players and GMs. Personally, all Beyond does is save me the time I'd have spent making a Google sheet for my character (if I didn't find one already available online). 

I know I wouldn't have spent any money on Beyond if it wasn't for the à la carte purchases because I'm not spending potentially hundreds of dollars on a character sheet tool, especially given I'd have to consider if that'd be the only character I play using Beyond. I'm also certain that none of the people I've played with who use it would be either if they were starting now, we'd have just used the content we could access. But over time I spent more and more money, I've got a couple of full books now but those piecemeal/microtransaction purchases also add up to a few extra full books on their own. 

Which is where this decision gets so weird for me, WOTC found a way to get me to give them money because it was more convenient than a free option and now they've made the free option better because the cost is too high. And yeah, free, there's content I paid for so I could use it on Beyond that I could have just borrowed a book from a friend for instead where Beyond meant needing to pay for that content. The GM wasn't paying for Master tier because he'd bought books and didn't want to pay twice just to unlock the content in beyond. Really feels like if they're thinking about profit the question should be more "how can we get more people using beyond?"

I bought a few options piecemeal, and was planning to accumulate more - until I might as well buy the whole book, and would do. Seems bizarre that they'd give up a good micro-transaction model that had a built-in pipeline to whole-book purchases. A couple of items here, a feat or subclass there - it was affordable and enjoyable. Fingers crossed they reinstate it.

Quote from Kotath>>

Humblewood, being 3rd party, was never available a la carte. If it had been I would already have at least some of it. 

This was never a rule specific to third party content; Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated are also third party content, and both fully supported piecemeal purchasing.

The lack of piecemeal purchasing on some recent third party content isn't specific to third party content, because piecemeal purchasing also wasn't available on several first party releases as well (Book of Many Things etc.).

This is what makes it so obvious that dropping the feature was entirely planned and fully 100% intentional – because the new storefront wasn't when it actually happened, we just didn't realise because we could still buy piecemeal from older books. I never really wanted anything from the Book of Many Things, I was interested by Planescape but hadn't got around to thinking about anything I would do using it yet etc., Humblewood was the only book I noticed I couldn't buy from, so I too thought it was just third party content, but it really, really, wasn't.

They knew they were doing this, and they knew months in advance, because they'd planned it, and they didn't give two shits about talking to their customers about it – they just expect us to roll over and take it. But we don't have to.

Quote from jl8e >>

Quote from JustaFarmer >>

 Do some googling on the financial results of the app Monopoly Go, with obviously the rights to Monopoly owned by Hasbro. To suggest it is a game of Monopoly, is well, just silly. But Hasbro has generated literally billions in revenue from it. There is no doubt that wotc is eyeing the D&D IP and wondering if an app called D&D Go would have the same results. Remember, the ex-head of wotc stated many many times that she and her boss thought that the D&D IP was under-monetized and it should be a billion dollar brand, just like its stablemate, Magic the Gathering. The only way that is going to happen is license, license, license, and of course, digital apps.

 Sure, they're probably looking at that. But it's a side business; they're no more going to turn D&D into that than they turned Monopoly into Monopoly Go.

Expanding a brand still requires the core thing to exist. This is especially true of D&D. With something like Transformers, they could stop making the toys, and keep the characters going as a media franchise. D&D hasn't got that. If you don't have the core experience of D&D to keep people interested in it, the brand will fade. And you can't give people anything like the core D&D experience in a mobile game.

Quote from ZestandXaxe >>

 Probably so. It will be the digital results that interest them though. They're not as interested in publishing (market observers have said) just digital.
So a clear signal will be subs lapsing and drop in digital sales at DDB. 
In a game of dense wordy texts, a la carte was the core of the DDB onboarding experience.

I'm sure some market observers have said such. They are not to be trusted as analysts.

Print is by far the lion's share of WotC's business, both D&D and Magic. Digital is getting attention because it's a place they can grow more easily, but I find it hard to believe they don't think print is a big deal for them.

 With respect, 
your "I find it hard to believe" in no way trumps actual analysis by people who trade on their reputation.
As far as **Hasbros" interest in print (that's what we're talking about here), actions speak louder than your words. I suggest anyone interested in this point go do some browsing, make up their own mind whether they bought dndbeyond for it to come second to paper.

Quote from Haravikk >>

Quote from Kotath>>

Humblewood, being 3rd party, was never available a la carte. If it had been I would already have at least some of it. 

This was never a rule specific to third party content; Critical Role and Acquisitions Incorporated are also third party content, and both fully supported piecemeal purchasing.

The lack of piecemeal purchasing on some recent third party content isn't specific to third party content, because piecemeal purchasing also wasn't available on several first party releases as well (Book of Many Things etc.).

This is what makes it so obvious that dropping the feature was entirely planned and fully 100% intentional – because the new storefront wasn't when it actually happened, we just didn't realise because we could still buy piecemeal from older books. I never really wanted anything from the Book of Many Things, I was interested by Planescape but hadn't got around to thinking about anything I would do using it yet etc., Humblewood was the only book I noticed I couldn't buy from, so I too thought it was just third party content, but it really, really, wasn't.

They knew they were doing this, and they knew months in advance, because they'd planned it, and they didn't give two shits about talking to their customers about it – they just expect us to roll over and take it. But we don't have to.

Nah, because as you say, other third party content is available piecemeal and this was before the new store interface so it makes far more sense to be something regarding that 3rd party specific publisher.

Having access to the book through another DM, I am tempted to pick it up regardless. It seems pretty much entirely useful, in contrast to pretty much every recent WotC publication. Not for everyone though. If you are not into animal based races, it is likely not much for you.

Quote from Kotath>>

Nah, because as you say, other third party content is available piecemeal and this was before the new store interface so it makes far more sense to be something regarding that 3rd party specific publisher.

But it's not specific to third party in the first place, several of the more recent first party books didn't have piecemeal purchasing either. It doesn't matter what the third parties may or may not have asked for, WotC have known they were getting rid of the feature for months.

Quote from Haravikk >>

Quote from Kotath>>

Nah, because as you say, other third party content is available piecemeal and this was before the new store interface so it makes far more sense to be something regarding that 3rd party specific publisher.

But it's not specific to third party in the first place, several of the more recent first party books didn't have piecemeal purchasing either. It doesn't matter what the third parties may or may not have asked for, WotC have known they were getting rid of the feature for months.

Which WotC books didn't? Book of Many Things did. I was considering picking up the feats from it. Planescape certainly allowed a la carte. I am grumpy because I picked up the backgrounds from it but did not realize until after the change that since I had not picked up the related feats, the backgrounds are pretty much useless to me. 

And why not everything at once, if they really were 'planning this for months?'

Quote from Kotath>>

Quote from Haravikk>>

Quote from Kotath>>

Nah, because as you say, other third party content is available piecemeal and this was before the new store interface so it makes far more sense to be something regarding that 3rd party specific publisher.

But it's not specific to third party in the first place, several of the more recent first party books didn't have piecemeal purchasing either. It doesn't matter what the third parties may or may not have asked for, WotC have known they were getting rid of the feature for months.

Which WotC books didn't? Book of Many Things did. I was considering picking up the feats from it.

Planescape certainly allowed a la carte. I am grumpy because I picked up the backgrounds from it but did not realize until after the change that since I had not picked up the related feats, the backgrounds are pretty much useless to me. 

And why not everything at once, if they really were 'planning this for months?'

It may have been a trial, to see how it affected revenue.

Or it may have been "the new marketplace is dropping a la carte, so it's not worth doing for this book". Of course they knew it was going away; these are not decisions that are made on a whim. With the necessary lead time for development, I think it probably wasn't a trial run, because if it went badly, they had no time to change course, except by leaving the old marketplace, and I don't believe that was on the table.

I'm still of the belief that it's just "a la carte is a tiny amount of revenue, it's expensive and time consuming to put it in the new marketplace, and we want physical bundles in front of our customers before the new PHB comes out."

Quote from jl8e >>

Quote from Kotath>>

Quote from Haravikk>>

Quote from Kotath>>

Nah, because as you say, other third party content is available piecemeal and this was before the new store interface so it makes far more sense to be something regarding that 3rd party specific publisher.

But it's not specific to third party in the first place, several of the more recent first party books didn't have piecemeal purchasing either. It doesn't matter what the third parties may or may not have asked for, WotC have known they were getting rid of the feature for months.

Which WotC books didn't? Book of Many Things did. I was considering picking up the feats from it.

It didn't, but it was the only one.

And the third-party content that was available piecemeal was published by WotC, so it was impossible to tell whether there was a change in policy around that.

Planescape certainly allowed a la carte. I am grumpy because I picked up the backgrounds from it but did not realize until after the change that since I had not picked up the related feats, the backgrounds are pretty much useless to me. 

And why not everything at once, if they really were 'planning this for months?'

It may have been a trial, to see how it affected revenue.

Or it may have been "the new marketplace is dropping a la carte, so it's not worth doing for this book". Of course they knew it was going away; these are not decisions that are made on a whim. With the necessary lead time for development, I think it probably wasn't a trial run, because if it went badly, they had no time to change course, except by leaving the old marketplace, and I don't believe that was on the table.

I'm still of the belief that it's just "a la carte is a tiny amount of revenue, it's expensive and time consuming to put it in the new marketplace, and we want physical bundles in front of our customers before the new PHB comes out."

 

Well it is clear that they had been planning the change for some time, since it takes time to develop a new store front like that. However if they used a pretty uniformly good book like Humblewood as an indicator that they could make more money selling just complete books, they seem to have missed the overall book quality as a factor. I am really skeptical that Book of Many Things outsold anything. 

Bye bye market.

Quote from ZestandXaxe>>

Quote from jl8e>>

Quote from ZestandXaxe>>

 Probably so. It will be the digital results that interest them though. They're not as interested in publishing (market observers have said) just digital.
So a clear signal will be subs lapsing and drop in digital sales at DDB. 
In a game of dense wordy texts, a la carte was the core of the DDB onboarding experience.

I'm sure some market observers have said such. They are not to be trusted as analysts.

Print is by far the lion's share of WotC's business, both D&D and Magic. Digital is getting attention because it's a place they can grow more easily, but I find it hard to believe they don't think print is a big deal for them.

your "I find it hard to believe" in no way trumps actual analysis by people who trade on their reputation.

As far as **Hasbros" interest in print (that's what we're talking about here), actions speak louder than your words. I suggest anyone interested in this point go do some browsing, make up their own mind whether they bought dndbeyond for it to come second to paper.

 Their actions are not subtle. They're still heavily pushing print. They just rebuilt the DDB marketplace to make it easier to sell print books to DDB users. They discarded a digital-only feature as part of making it happen.

Yeah, they're trying to expand their digital sales and are throwing resources at that. That's because it's a less-mature market, so has room for growth. They very clearly would like people to buy both, but they're giving no signs that they expect the ratio of print-only to digital-only players to flip. (One sign would be devoting more than two moths and a washer to DDB's development budget. :)

Quote from Kotath >>

Quote from jl8e >>

Quote from Kotath>>

And why not everything at once, if they really were 'planning this for months?'

It may have been a trial, to see how it affected revenue.

Or it may have been "the new marketplace is dropping a la carte, so it's not worth doing for this book". Of course they knew it was going away; these are not decisions that are made on a whim. With the necessary lead time for development, I think it probably wasn't a trial run, because if it went badly, they had no time to change course, except by leaving the old marketplace, and I don't believe that was on the table.

I'm still of the belief that it's just "a la carte is a tiny amount of revenue, it's expensive and time consuming to put it in the new marketplace, and we want physical bundles in front of our customers before the new PHB comes out."  

Well it is clear that they had been planning the change for some time, since it takes time to develop a new store front like that. However if they used a pretty uniformly good book like Humblewood as an indicator that they could make more money selling just complete books, they seem to have missed the overall book quality as a factor. I am really skeptical that Book of Many Things outsold anything. 

 If it was a trial run, which I doubt because I don't think the timeline works, and also it's got confounding factors that make it atypical, what they'd be looking at is how it sells in relation to their projections, and to the physical book, and how those compare to previous books. It doesn't matter if it sells half of Bigby's, as long as it sells half of Bigby's in both digital and print.

The third party books are useless for those purposes, because those are a new thing with no comparisons available.

Quote from jl8e >>

It may have been a trial, to see how it affected revenue.

Or it may have been "the new marketplace is dropping a la carte, so it's not worth doing for this book". Of course they knew it was going away; these are not decisions that are made on a whim.

I wouldn't say 'of course', corporations can be startlingly bad at internal communications, but it's fairly likely they knew. The problem with it being a trial for how it affects revenue is that you don't have a baseline for how it would have performed without the change, though it could be a "how much will people complain" trial balloon.

As I've already said, the longer they wait to make a public response the worse this will get.

"Riding it out" is an admission of guilt.

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

Quote from Karmattack >>

This is why I just don't get the people saying it couldn't possibly be financially motivated and that we don't understand because they have the numbers in front of them and we don't.

Companies are near universally motivated by finance, it's not a "conspiracy theory" to know this and speculate based off of it especially since there's no other inherent benefit to them for removing this option.

Again, they didn't remove the option. They didn't implement the option, and the inherent benefit is "didn't need to spend money and development resources on implementing it"; their win isn't increasing sales, it's reducing expenses. Now, I wouldn't be shocked if someone is hostile to the option, but if that was a major motivating factor, they wouldn't have waited until the new store came online.

 At the end of the day a corporation's goal is quite simple...profit.  There are two means to this end, selling more and spending less.  We don't know which of those was the motivator behind this decision, nor does it matter, the result is the same.  If it plays out as WotC expects, they win; if it doesn't, they'll regroup and make a new plan.  The market will decide this. Bickering over semantics is fruitless.