Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Exactly right, and it's even easier than that. You can find most any rule on dnd5e.*******.com but I usually just Google what I want to find, like a magic item or subclass preceded by 5e (EG; 5e path of the giants). To make matters worse for WotC you can then create a homebrew of that thing you just found online and still use your DDB character sheet. Thing is, I'd rather pay the two bucks to support the site and save time.
You know what they could try.
You could make a one time 10 dollar payment. You get to pick a race a feat and a class from any source. If you do not like them you can switch them out at will but only have one of each at a time.
Or a yearly subscription for access to more content.
Just an idea for something they could try in the future.
They could also try communicating with the community in a clear and consistent manner so that people have a better understanding what to expect moving forward. I am what is often referred to as "a whale" for WotC (I own all of the official content here as well as several third party books), and while I haven't bought anything a la cart since I first joined and started dipping my toe in the water, the manner in which this has all been handled has left me feeling very uneasy. I love this game and I truly want to support its ongoing development, but my growing fear of them suddenly ripping the carpet out from under me in some way I couldn't have seen coming is giving me serious pause about continuing to make purchases here.
I'm not quite ready to cancel my subscription as I have several groups of players who count on my content sharing, but at some point the radio silence from WotC might push me to move on. I just feel like professional, timely and ongoing communication with their user base [paying customers] really isn't too much to ask.
This is all as disappointing as the Monthly Freebies you get for subscribing.
Where have they said they're looking to make the process easier? I've not seen anything to suggest that they're working on a better system, and when I asked on the discord they were unaware of any plans to change things. The only change I'm aware of is a back-end change that makes things easier for customer support to grant the discount (which was mistakenly reported as an front-end improvement for customers to use). As far as I can tell contacting support will be the only way to get the discount going forward.
I asked about this on the discord too, they consider the one line hidden in the middle of the Marketplace FAQ to be adequate advertisement of the discounts. The fact that the FAQ is only linked in the site footer, rather than somewhere more prominent on the store page itself is apparently fine. Of course, everyone stops to find & read through store FAQ's before making a purchase so I'm sure this is fine 🙄.
Given how much they've tried to hide away the information I can only assume it's a deliberate attempt to get unsuspecting customers to pay full price, while avoiding any legal issues by still technically having the discounts available. Pretty shitty behaviour, but hardly out of character for them.
Or, you know, communicating at all. It's over a month and there's been nothing from DnDBeyond/WotC (other than the Community Support team saying they've passed feedback on, but even then they don't know or can't say whether anything's happening with it), they're clearly hoping that people will eventually give up an move on.
New to the party here....
Seriously disappointed in this decision.
I typically don't buy extra books. Yet.... I have purchased individual add-ons for both Character play and as a DM.
Not sure what executive thought this was a good decision, but now I will just make do with what limited books I buy. You basically lost some revenue from me, and I'm sure there has to be THOUSANDS of players and DMs that are similar to me. Why in the world would you not want ala carte. Every major game in PC/Console has this and generate millions of dollars in revenue. Serious fail. Even today, I was like... maybe I'll finally pick up Vortex Warp. Nope. Not available. I'm not buying the book, yet you lost out on a simple easy transaction from me just now. Now I'll just custom create a spell and you get nothing. I feel like Gene Wilder.
The best part about owning physical books is that one can avoid being forced to upgrade to new editions, avoid having their content deprecated, and tell DDB to go pound sand.
If you own the physical books, just walk away from DDB for good. They don't care about us or our frustrations, so there's no reason to continue doing business with them.
I mean, you can see before you even add it to your cart that most of the stuff is only about 10-20% off. The only things off by 50% were maybe PHB and DMG something most people already have anyway. This and the marketplace changes are why I didn't buy anything. It's just not worth it.
I'd rather homebrew feats, classes and items myself before paying anything anymore.
Especially after their mess with the a-la-carte discounts... I'm definitely not looking through all my stuff to find out which book it is from and then contact support to wait for them to send me a discount... I mean, they aren't even able to hide bought content on the marketplace anymore it seems, or I'm just too blind to find this option.
As long as they don't fix this, buying anything here isn't worth it at all....
If I recall, when you cancel your subscription remains open until its renewal date. Cancelling now sends the point even if they already have your money for the year.
That's what I did, my sub doesn't run out until March 2025 but I made sure to cancel and put in the reasoning was a la carte. IF they don't ever make it right then my sub runs out and my players will just have to switch to pen/paper. I will use what I bought for me but they aren't getting another dime.
I'm going to let my campaign know we're finishing out the modules we have and if A la Carte isn't back by the time we finish (could take up to a year with the ones I have left) We will be leaving DDB
Trying to DM | Lost my party due to removal of A la Carte options | Party no longer wants to use Beyond
On a business side thing I understand that $1.99 purchases with a credit card means they end up paying fees that eat further into the margin of the sale. And yes, while the content is already in there and it's not like selling physical books that cost them money to make there still is site maintenance and servers they have to pay for.
I still feel that switching to pack only purchases (i.e., not the individual item/option for $1.99 but the magic item / race option / subclass options / monster bundle for its' $5.99 - $14.99 options it was). That and future books come shrink wrapped and have a single use digital code to get the physical/digital bundle for just $10 more. Alt covers only sell at a FLGS, so because we want that version of the book we aren't given the same deal, which is not very fair.
There's multiple things they could have done if credit card fees were the issue. Off the top of my head they could just sell the packs as you suggest, they could increase the price by say $0.50 to cover the fee, or they could set a minimum order size (e.g. you have to spend at least $10 per order, but that could be 1 feature each from 5 books. If the change was made due to card fees then there's much better ways to resolve the problem rather than just removing a la carte completely, which suggests this isn't the reason behind the change. Besides, DnDBeyond isn't the only company using microtransactions, plenty of other companies manage to offer small purchases and remain profitable.
The problem is that, due to their refusal to communicate, we don't know why a la carte was removed. This means everyone is left to draw their own conclusions, and with WotC's history and statements made by upper management they don't have the benefit of the doubt.
If it went up to 10 dollars minimum purchase who would still make a buy?
It would all have to be from one book at a time.
And who would just hold off and buy the whole book at 20 ducks a digital copy?
Why would it have to be from the same book? The suggestion was that you could pick and choose features the same way as before at $2 each and from different books, you'd just have to be spending at least $10 total per order to justify the credit card fees. I can't speak for anyone else, but most of my a la carte purchases have involved a few items at a time, so I'd be happy to effectively have a 5 item minimum order. One of the biggest benefits to me of a la carte is the flexability to mix & match features from different books. If they went with this idea I'd be spending £10 for the features I want rather than £150+ to purchase all 5 books.
Again though, there's no indication that credit card fees are an issue as there's been no communication at all.
(P.S. Minor nitpick, but the digital books as a whole are $30 each (with a few exceptions). $20 just gets you the compendium, not any of the character builder options which are what most people want out of DnDBeyond)
I was speaking more about what WOTC might do in the future to spur more full book purchases instead of that ticktack 2 buck single item purchase.
I am sure they do not like people getting everything they need to play for one tenth the price of the full book.
Look at it this way.
Your trying to sell a used car. Its a great but not new.
You want 3000 for it but a bunch of people come up and say they will just rent it for 30 bucks because that is what the last owner did.
You would never deal with that and in my opinion that could be exactly how WOTC feels right now.
They spend time, creative and artistic energy plus millions in cash into making a book and everyone just comes by and steels a page or two. Or even offers them a few bucks pocket change to make themselves feel better about the whole thing.
Yeah that could be it too, any order under x amount will have a tacked on transactional fee. So many digital media models use micro-transactions it's crazy, it's how games like Fortnite stay in business. I mentioned that model much earlier in this thread but basically said the same thing.
And yeah, the communication is horrendous. We only get a few moderators and mods, one of which is really letting their frustration show in their responses. But I'm just spit-balling ideas that would be a halfway point I could settle with at this point.
Well the books are $30 a copy, so the $10 is 1/3rd the cost of the whole book and that would be of items from all over, not just one source.
The spend threshold of being a minimum of $10 per transaction would be like $2 for a subclass option in book A, $2 for race in book B, $6 for magic items in book C. That's the $10 for things across 3 books, a whole lot cheaper than having to spend $90 to get those same things in the new model.
Honestly, the majority of my piecemeal transactions were in the $7-$10 range regardless. What just bewilders me though is that the barrier to entry for new users rose significantly. So many of us have put in hundreds of $$ in purchases plus the yearly subs because of that initial bread crumbing. When I joined, that $30 price tag for a copy of the PHB I picked up on amazon for just $10 seemed excessive. I debated back and forth on getting it for a full year. My first purchase was $4.30 for the kenku race and circle of spores druid subclass. Even that felt unnecessary, but it made me feel more comfortable because if I ended up not liking the platform or played some other TTRPG the loss was easier to swallow. And from there it was a snowball effect. If I joined and piecemeal was not a thing, I'd never have spent a dime and so many others will attest to the same.
How do they expect to entice new players or DMs when they could get all the same resources online for free. The only thing they push is "oh well you can share your content if you have a subscription" when what if you don't see either of those options as worth it at all. So what the DM or other players can share, maybe the DM is broke and doesn't have the money to spend, or any of the players do either. "You can share the things you bought by spending more money," okay big woop I can do the same with a book and not spend a dollar more.
You can copy and paste into Roll20, and every single one of the 5e books exist online in PDF format for free. It's a no contest for those who are uncertain of the investment or don't have the money. Even those with the money to burn won't see a $30 price tag when they want 1 option as a deal. That's what just gets me, who was in the room when they made this decision and did they even consider any of that.
I totally appreciate that. I am sure that even if you aren't able to pass it all on, you can establish that, even though you aren't sharing all of the feedback, there's a truly staggering amount of it. And, honestly, the community feels hurt and taken advantage of.
So, I reached out to customer support for a discount code on a book I'd made previously purchases for.
It took T E N days for CS to get me the code. That was after I made two follow up messages and lodged a second ticket.
Finally, I get the code. I go to marketplace, add item to cart. Add the coupon code and ... Coupon could not be applied to this purchase.
I think I'm done with DnDBeyond. They've broken all trust... Community managers are being thrown to the wolves to face our anger, and customer support are as useful as a white crayon in the Australian summer.