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.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
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?'
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."
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.
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.
Stock market analysis is not a profession where being wrong a lot seems to matter much.
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Admission of guilt"? They did it; everyone knows they did it. There is no statement they could make, aside from "we're putting it back", which ain't happening so quickly if it ever happens, that will make anybody angry or disappointed about this go "well, that's OK then". It's a business decision. It may be a stupid business decision, but that's another matter, and it's probably hard to judge it even with all their internal analytics.
I really don't understand what you're expecting of them.
They should've communicated better (or at all) beforehand, but that horse has flown.
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.
"Admission of guilt"? They did it; everyone knows they did it. There is no statement they could make, aside from "we're putting it back", which ain't happening so quickly if it ever happens, that will make anybody angry or disappointed about this go "well, that's OK then". It's a business decision. It may be a stupid business decision, but that's another matter, and it's probably hard to judge it even with all their internal analytics.
I really don't understand what you're expecting of them.
They should've communicated better (or at all) beforehand, but that horse has flown.
they could admit to dropping the ball and roll out some bread and circus poll to position themselves as communication havers. it's not rationally enough but it is the correct tone. nobody there is even going through the motions to suggest the player has a say, unless I've missed it. as a customer who enjoys the thin veneer of community participation, i don't appreciate the silence.
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.
"Admission of guilt"? They did it; everyone knows they did it. There is no statement they could make, aside from "we're putting it back", which ain't happening so quickly if it ever happens, that will make anybody angry or disappointed about this go "well, that's OK then". It's a business decision. It may be a stupid business decision, but that's another matter, and it's probably hard to judge it even with all their internal analytics.
I really don't understand what you're expecting of them.
They should've communicated better (or at all) beforehand, but that horse has flown.
they could admit to dropping the ball and roll out some bread and circus poll to position themselves as communication havers. it's not rationally enough but it is the correct tone. nobody there is even going through the motions to suggest the player has a say, unless I've missed it. as a customer who enjoys the thin veneer of community participation, i don't appreciate the silence.
Look at wotc's past performance when it comes to PR. Look at the community manager's own statements, where she either was not informed of this change, or her complaints were ignored, and wotc still rolled it out without notice. Past behaviour predicts future behaviour. I would not be holding my breath on any official announcement on this topic.
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.
"Admission of guilt"? They did it; everyone knows they did it. There is no statement they could make, aside from "we're putting it back", which ain't happening so quickly if it ever happens, that will make anybody angry or disappointed about this go "well, that's OK then". It's a business decision. It may be a stupid business decision, but that's another matter, and it's probably hard to judge it even with all their internal analytics.
I really don't understand what you're expecting of them.
They should've communicated better (or at all) beforehand, but that horse has flown.
they could admit to dropping the ball and roll out some bread and circus poll to position themselves as communication havers. it's not rationally enough but it is the correct tone. nobody there is even going through the motions to suggest the player has a say, unless I've missed it. as a customer who enjoys the thin veneer of community participation, i don't appreciate the silence.
Look at wotc's past performance when it comes to PR. Look at the community manager's own statements, where she either was not informed of this change, or her complaints were ignored, and wotc still rolled it out without notice. Past behaviour predicts future behaviour. I would not be holding my breath on any official announcement on this topic.
past behavior predicting future behavior is my entire worry.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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!
I was going to give them 10 bucks, for a few backgrounds. Then later, I would give them another 10, for a few subclasses, then maybe another 20 for all the spells out of Tasha's.
Now I will not buy any of the books and have a harder time running my small-time campaign using D&D beyond, decreasing my all around experience with your game. And you will have no more money out of my wallet.
I was going to give them 10 bucks, for a few backgrounds. Then later, I would give them another 10, for a few subclasses, then maybe another 20 for all the spells out of Tasha's.
Now I will not buy any of the books and have a harder time running my small-time campaign using D&D beyond, decreasing my all around experience with your game. And you will have no more money out of my wallet.
Everybody loses,
Good day.
There are many many 3rd party creators who are actual stewards of D&D. Some are better than others, but most are committed to adding to the richness of the D&D universe in some manner. I would suggest giving your money to them. Hunt around on forums not controlled by wotc to gain ideas and information.
If piecemeal comes back I expect it will be behind 2 walls, the walled garden and a paywall, by then I plan to have everything entered in one of the many spreadsheet character builders for me and my groups, sad to see this site ruined by the new owners and in just 2 short years. Pre wotc DDB you paid for the convenience of the site, post wotc you just pay for them to remove the convenience.
Back to the physical books and a spreadsheet/pencil and paper for us.
If piecemeal comes back I expect it will be behind 2 walls, the walled garden and a paywall, by then I plan to have everything entered in one of the many spreadsheet character builders for me and my groups, sad to see this site ruined by the new owners and in just 2 short years. Pre wotc DDB you paid for the convenience of the site, post wotc you just pay for them to remove the convenience.
Back to the physical books and a spreadsheet/pencil and paper for us.
On the plus side, I have seen that paper and pencil creates better players, as they have to actually read the rules to build their paper char sheets. I have see it numerous times when players rely on some computer app to build their PC, and have no real understanding of the mechanics that drive the stats read from a cell phone, or tablet.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Stock market analysis is not a profession where being wrong a lot seems to matter much.
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
Insisting that silence is an admission of guilt is a rather problematic concept. If nothing else, it implies there is some actual crime involved.
"Admission of guilt"? They did it; everyone knows they did it. There is no statement they could make, aside from "we're putting it back", which ain't happening so quickly if it ever happens, that will make anybody angry or disappointed about this go "well, that's OK then". It's a business decision. It may be a stupid business decision, but that's another matter, and it's probably hard to judge it even with all their internal analytics.
I really don't understand what you're expecting of them.
They should've communicated better (or at all) beforehand, but that horse has flown.
they could admit to dropping the ball and roll out some bread and circus poll to position themselves as communication havers. it's not rationally enough but it is the correct tone. nobody there is even going through the motions to suggest the player has a say, unless I've missed it. as a customer who enjoys the thin veneer of community participation, i don't appreciate the silence.
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!
Look at wotc's past performance when it comes to PR. Look at the community manager's own statements, where she either was not informed of this change, or her complaints were ignored, and wotc still rolled it out without notice. Past behaviour predicts future behaviour. I would not be holding my breath on any official announcement on this topic.
past behavior predicting future behavior is my entire worry.
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!
I was going to give them 10 bucks, for a few backgrounds. Then later, I would give them another 10, for a few subclasses, then maybe another 20 for all the spells out of Tasha's.
Now I will not buy any of the books and have a harder time running my small-time campaign using D&D beyond, decreasing my all around experience with your game. And you will have no more money out of my wallet.
Everybody loses,
Good day.
There are many many 3rd party creators who are actual stewards of D&D. Some are better than others, but most are committed to adding to the richness of the D&D universe in some manner. I would suggest giving your money to them. Hunt around on forums not controlled by wotc to gain ideas and information.
If piecemeal comes back I expect it will be behind 2 walls, the walled garden and a paywall, by then I plan to have everything entered in one of the many spreadsheet character builders for me and my groups, sad to see this site ruined by the new owners and in just 2 short years. Pre wotc DDB you paid for the convenience of the site, post wotc you just pay for them to remove the convenience.
Back to the physical books and a spreadsheet/pencil and paper for us.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
What a stupid decision.
On the plus side, I have seen that paper and pencil creates better players, as they have to actually read the rules to build their paper char sheets. I have see it numerous times when players rely on some computer app to build their PC, and have no real understanding of the mechanics that drive the stats read from a cell phone, or tablet.