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
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Trying to DM | Lost my party due to removal of A la Carte options | Party no longer wants to use Beyond
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
with all the negativity how high is the consideration of the team to reverse whats been done?
I don't have any insight on that decision. I can continue to gather feedback, but there's still a big difference in the volume of comments that I see versus what I pass on; I can't record every single piece of feedback that exists out there.
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.
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.
They’re basically just trying to break down peoples patience, all good Will has gone out the window, and even the mods are showing their frustrations.
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.
They’re basically just trying to break down peoples patience, all good Will has gone out the window, and even the mods are showing their frustrations.
Makes me wonder if they're trying to make it fail, tbh.
They’re basically just trying to break down peoples patience, all good Will has gone out the window, and even the mods are showing their frustrations.
Makes me wonder if they're trying to make it fail, tbh.
They're trying to run it on the cheap. We know there was a round of layoffs start of this year, and, well, being understaffed results in things like bad CS and buggy releases (most of the issues with the store appear to just be straight-up bugs, rather than some deep plan).
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.
Your car example is not good. This is more of a case of wanting a single car part for your own custom car and you are expected to buy the entire car in order to obtain one small part of it.
It does not also help that most books aside from the major ones like the PHB, DMG, Xanathar and Tasha's are more of a DLC package with what is mostly bloat from the PoV of a player (not a DM). I bet that more people would be happy to just buy a package with just spells, items, subclasses etc.
In any case it is up to the Wizards to offer a product/service that people are happy to pay for. This type of game was originally completely analog and if the Wizards keep seeking all the money instead of enough of the money, it will again become much more analog. They are deluded if they believe that people who used to share a single copy of each book as a group will be happy to each buy a full digital copy of an expansion book.
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.
The launch of the DC20 kickstarter could not have been more well timed... I was just going to move to 5.5 and leave it at that, but with how much they've trashed DDB and how good the DC20 system is looking, I think I'll just pay for that instead.
Same, but worse. I waited a week and change, and only got back a response that they weren't going to send a discount code, as it wouldn't stack with the sale items I was after. But, if I want one that works after the sale, I can re-request (and probably wait another one or two weeks).
In the old system, I am almost positive my a la carte amounts were taken into account with sale prices (as I definitely recall buying multiple full books during sales because the price dropped so low between the sale and application of my a la carte discount). Now that it's a code they (eventually?) provide you, it doesn't stack with sales. So, we don't even get the full credit that we used to.
That's what I get for deciding "well, maybe I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and try to buy something... they said they'll still honor the a la carte amounts." Nope!
Funny thing is, if they wouldn't have made all these terrible decisions and simply left the marketplace as it was, I would have absolutely purchased Tome of Beast I, Where Evil Lives, and Flee Mortals, even given the high priced "buy the whole thing or nothing" nature of third-party content (like I did with Tal'Dorei, Humblewood, etc). Now? I'm not buying them just on principle.
I was excited to move to 1D&D / 5e Revised / 5.5 / We Only Want Your Money (whatever we're calling it) but try as I might, my goodwill has finally collapsed. I really want to keep supporting this game, but it no longer seems like a prudent thing to do in regard to financial/emotional investment. I know emotional investment sounds dopey, but I really care deeply about this game, the history, it's place in my life over many years and what it's meant to me. I'm incredibly saddened by all of this, mostly what feels like the complete lack of empathy or regard for the community and the very real people that make up that community (with the notable exception of @LaTiaJacquise, I deeply appreciate your communicating with us).
I have canceled my subscription, but will keep playing 5e for the foreseeable future, while I look for a game that fits my wants and needs. Hopefully at least some of my players, who have all become friends, will come with me whenever I jump ship. I will keep my fingers crossed (with very little hope at this point) that WotC/Hasboro will correct course and start meaningful conversations with their supporters/players before my ship has completely sunk.
Do you know if anyone is tracking the join date and post count of the members dissenting these changes?
It seems like a large portion of them are long time members that do not post often, many of them didn't post during the OGL issue.
that would be meeeeee~
I'm not tracking that granularly, but I do note the amount of individual commenters.
I didn't say anything here about the OGL cause that wasn't D&D Beyond doing it. That was WoTC and unfortunately DDB got caught in the crossfire. But this IS directly a DDB issue, so time to speak up.
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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.
They’re basically just trying to break down peoples patience, all good Will has gone out the window, and even the mods are showing their frustrations.
Makes me wonder if they're trying to make it fail, tbh.
They're trying to run it on the cheap. We know there was a round of layoffs start of this year, and, well, being understaffed results in things like bad CS and buggy releases (most of the issues with the store appear to just be straight-up bugs, rather than some deep plan).
Your car example is not good.
This is more of a case of wanting a single car part for your own custom car and you are expected to buy the entire car in order to obtain one small part of it.
It does not also help that most books aside from the major ones like the PHB, DMG, Xanathar and Tasha's are more of a DLC package with what is mostly bloat from the PoV of a player (not a DM). I bet that more people would be happy to just buy a package with just spells, items, subclasses etc.
In any case it is up to the Wizards to offer a product/service that people are happy to pay for.
This type of game was originally completely analog and if the Wizards keep seeking all the money instead of enough of the money, it will again become much more analog. They are deluded if they believe that people who used to share a single copy of each book as a group will be happy to each buy a full digital copy of an expansion book.
The launch of the DC20 kickstarter could not have been more well timed... I was just going to move to 5.5 and leave it at that, but with how much they've trashed DDB and how good the DC20 system is looking, I think I'll just pay for that instead.
@LaTiaJacquise
Do you know if anyone is tracking the join date and post count of the members dissenting these changes?
It seems like a large portion of them are long time members that do not post often, many of them didn't post during the OGL issue.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Same, but worse. I waited a week and change, and only got back a response that they weren't going to send a discount code, as it wouldn't stack with the sale items I was after. But, if I want one that works after the sale, I can re-request (and probably wait another one or two weeks).
In the old system, I am almost positive my a la carte amounts were taken into account with sale prices (as I definitely recall buying multiple full books during sales because the price dropped so low between the sale and application of my a la carte discount). Now that it's a code they (eventually?) provide you, it doesn't stack with sales. So, we don't even get the full credit that we used to.
That's what I get for deciding "well, maybe I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and try to buy something... they said they'll still honor the a la carte amounts." Nope!
Funny thing is, if they wouldn't have made all these terrible decisions and simply left the marketplace as it was, I would have absolutely purchased Tome of Beast I, Where Evil Lives, and Flee Mortals, even given the high priced "buy the whole thing or nothing" nature of third-party content (like I did with Tal'Dorei, Humblewood, etc). Now? I'm not buying them just on principle.
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I'm not tracking that granularly, but I do note the amount of individual commenters.
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I was excited to move to 1D&D / 5e Revised / 5.5 / We Only Want Your Money (whatever we're calling it) but try as I might, my goodwill has finally collapsed. I really want to keep supporting this game, but it no longer seems like a prudent thing to do in regard to financial/emotional investment. I know emotional investment sounds dopey, but I really care deeply about this game, the history, it's place in my life over many years and what it's meant to me. I'm incredibly saddened by all of this, mostly what feels like the complete lack of empathy or regard for the community and the very real people that make up that community (with the notable exception of @LaTiaJacquise, I deeply appreciate your communicating with us).
I have canceled my subscription, but will keep playing 5e for the foreseeable future, while I look for a game that fits my wants and needs. Hopefully at least some of my players, who have all become friends, will come with me whenever I jump ship. I will keep my fingers crossed (with very little hope at this point) that WotC/Hasboro will correct course and start meaningful conversations with their supporters/players before my ship has completely sunk.
I didn't say anything here about the OGL cause that wasn't D&D Beyond doing it. That was WoTC and unfortunately DDB got caught in the crossfire. But this IS directly a DDB issue, so time to speak up.