I have not read through the whole thread but curious if anyone knows what the “spin” is on this from Beyond? How it is good for us? LOL.
There isn't any spin that I've seen, which I'm grateful for. It's a business decision, one that isn't a question of ethics (at least, not fundamentally so). That doesn't mean it's a good decision, just it's not about righteousness v evil.
There's such a thing as having respect for your customers. Springing the removal of individual purchases on without warning what (before buyout by WotC) was something of a community of supporters here, not just wallets to pick, creates an awful feeling and aversion to further supporting their products. Poisoning the community. Not evil. Stupid, greedy, harmful if they were seeking to build good will for their brand. If they realise they cut off an entry into D&D and buying here, as all these comments are saying, maybe they will admit this as yet another corporate mistake and backtrack. But I doubt it.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
Whoever run them numbers should be fired. I just wonder if the removal of a-la’-carte is the Order 66 of the former management?
Okay, both parts of that are just comically melodramatic; saying someone should be fired because they recommended a course of action you dislike is ridiculously petty, and do you really think the outgoing exec isn’t getting a decent severance package? Grandiose acts of sabotage like you’re suggesting happen in cheesy dramas, not reality.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
This is undoubtedly so, which is why it is incumbent upon us, the consumers, to turn that decision around. If we don't give-in and buy the books when we only need individual items they will see that they are losing revenue, however miniscule it may have been. Then the choice only makes sense if there is some cost involved with the offerings, which is unlikely the case.
I have not read through the whole thread but curious if anyone knows what the “spin” is on this from Beyond? How it is good for us? LOL.
There isn't any spin that I've seen, which I'm grateful for. It's a business decision, one that isn't a question of ethics (at least, not fundamentally so). That doesn't mean it's a good decision, just it's not about righteousness v evil.
There's such a thing as having respect for your customers. Springing the removal of individual purchases on without warning what (before buyout by WotC) was something of a community of supporters here, not just wallets to pick, creates an awful feeling and aversion to further supporting their products. Poisoning the community. Not evil. Stupid, greedy, harmful if they were seeking to build good will for their brand. If they realise they cut off an entry into D&D and buying here, as all these comments are saying, maybe they will admit this as yet another corporate mistake and backtrack. But I doubt it.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
Whoever run them numbers should be fired. I just wonder if the removal of a-la’-carte is the Order 66 of the former management?
Okay, both parts of that are just comically melodramatic; saying someone should be fired because they recommended a course of action you dislike is ridiculously petty, and do you really think the outgoing exec isn’t getting a decent severance package? Grandiose acts of sabotage like you’re suggesting happen in cheesy dramas, not reality.
Reality currently is acting like drama, and most dramas end sadly.
At this point, IMHO this is Hasbro/WotC squeezing the site in hopes it survives till the new stuff releases.
Instead, they should set this place to have a fire sale of the old, to boost interest in the new. ( and yea don’t care for the new personally, the the site however currently suits my char gen needs, and thats all it ever really was worth what I bought here. ) Not light the place on fire.
Reality currently is acting like drama, and most dramas end sadly.
At this point, IMHO this is Hasbro/WotC squeezing the site in hopes it survives till the new stuff releases.
Instead, they should set this place to have a fire sale of the old, to boost interest in the new. ( and yea don’t care for the new personally, the the site however currently suits my char gen needs, and thats all it ever really was worth what I bought here. ) Not light the place on fire.
I wish! Would've snagged a Legendary bundle if most adventures were on sale.
For everyone complaining about needing to buy books again because you went physical first, the core class features are all free from basic rules, and you can use Homebrew to recreate any subclasses, spells, feats, etc. you already have physically so long as you keep that homebrew in your private collection rather than making it public. Is that notably less convenient than having it pre-built? Yes. That is what you're paying for when you buy the product on D&DB, the convenience of someone else having spent the time and effort to set up all these things so they integrate with the character sheet. And charging a monthly amount cheaper than a lot of fast food meals anymore in exchange for access to their creation tools and near unlimited storage is hardly an egregious ask. Again, this is a for-profit enterprise for a hobby, not a charity, and on top of that a website like this with all these integrated components does require continuous upkeep. The physical books and this site are two separate products; owning one does not create any obligation for WotC to provide you with the other gratis.
You are making an argument that was not the point of the thread. It is the loss of a la carte purchasing that people are angry about. I am also angry that I cannot filter on content I own. Also, I bought the legendary bundle and a lot of books that came as part of the bundle do not carry the tag that I own the digital book so I could end up purchasing the same content twice.
There are players who will never buy an adventure yet who did purchase the crunch from the books in order to access it via character builder. Those players will not buy the whole adventure just to get the new spells, feats, backgrounds or races.
I bought some books piece by piece untiill I got the whole one..how can they not see that it was something useful for them rather than a loss? Specifically when they have a competition with free tools?
You assume that piecemeal wasn't creating a loss, if only in terms of opportunity costs. Money tends to be worth more in the present than it will be in the future on a unit for unit basis, so if people piecemeal their way to a full book over months or years, WotC is in practice making less of a profit, even if the sticker price comes out the same. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that someone with a degree in economics crunched the numbers and argued with supporting evidence that the demand for the products is sufficient that even with a reduction in overall sales on any given book across a period of years, the increase in immediate sales ultimately produces higher value returns.
Is this in the best interests of each and every player? No, not particularly. Does a for-profit entertainment company producing a hobby product have any real reason to place the best interests of the players above all else? No, not particularly. This is not an issue of the "personal relationship" between WotC and the players, and it's certainly not an issue of ethics. It's a business decision, and expecting a company to make what it considers to be an objectively bad business decision to appease one segment of its consumers is just not realistic, not when we're talking about a disposable income product rather than something that has impacts on peoples' health, well-being, etc.
Now, obviously I'm only speculating, I don't have anything near the background or information needed to know if this scenario is the case, but saying offering piecemeal could only have been a positive for WotC compared to alternative options is simply not an absolute truth.
A player is not going to buy a full adventure book just for the crunch. They will lose money on this one because a la carte was player friendly. Now players will just expect the DM to own it all and get it through Master Tier.
Out of curiosity for the people who only bought piecemeal, how often were you buying things here? Once a month, twice a month, every two months? And how much did you typically spend at a time?
At least once a month and the cost of a beer off the shelf.
It is the only way I have been purchasing the whole books
I look at the price and for a hobby of mine I cannot justify the price of the whole book. I have a lot of other competing priorities in life that take precedence over an online copy of a D&D book.
But I can justify the cost of a beer to treat myself some down time. For me the a la carte purchases fell into this level of expenditure. Can I skip a beer and buy part of the book to use now? I can justify that to myself (granted I’ll have the beer anyway - it’s downtime), but I can’t justify the full purchase right at that moment.
These piecemeal purchases overtime then brought down the price for the remainder to the point where I could justify buying the final part.
I will not be buying the content again as part of a whole book (I don’t buy it a second time on the VTT I use either) and I will not jump through hoops to contact customer service to get them to deduct my existing purchases off the ticketed price of the remainder.
I already own all the core books, specifically because it took them so long to offer physical books and digital downloads. I buy the items as I need or as new players join and find things they're interested in. So now I have to buy all those books again just to be able to add stuff to our sheets? I have to buy an entire sourcebook for one item a player wants from a book I don't have?
And how long does anyone really expect them to leave the Homebrew board as it is before they start cleaning it up and removing things that have just been copied over from the main books?
This is an absolutely ridiculous move and I am strongly considering cancelling my subscription. I did it for the OGL and came back because they corrected but they seem determined to make DnD less accessible.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
A D&D staff member literally asked us to share our feedback, friend. I believe that’s what we
It would be extremely silly to not voice our opinions on this. We are the customers and our feedback should matter to a company. Look at the OGL debacle and say we shouldn't have said anything.
Ridiculous to sit back and not say anything about a bad greedy practice. I don't care about their profit margins, this is a scummy tactic and I won't be quiet about it.
Before everyone gets all twisted up on this lets give them a better chance than a week to change things.
They may have bigger ideas for the customers and have just not rolled them out yet. Or if they see sales did not make predicted levels they might just bring back piecemeal purchases.
I personally do not like them because I always feel like I am missing something. But that is just me.
But I can see the individual prices going up a touch just to get you to buy the who book faster. Or even a limit on how much a la cart purchases you could make from each book, something like a quarter to a third of the book.
Using D&DBeyond is the big seller around here though. Not the books, people can buy those anyplace, people come here because of the character generation and the complete integration of the books into it. Trusting if not knowing that what they do through it is correct. Even the homebrew option should be able to be trusted as creating something by the rules when you use it. Now that mapping and such are being offered that should follow the same idea also. If you use the stuff here it should be close to tournament ready.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
I suspect it's not even that they expect to make more money directly this way, as much as adding it into the probably off-the-shelf marketplace backend was going to take something like two months and $large, for a relatively trivial amount of money, plus increased ongoing support costs, and they decided it wasn't worth it. I don't have their numbers, of course, but a la carte buying is likely only used by a small percentage of the users -- most people don't know about it, and the vast majority of people just play with their GM's books. Yes, many of the people here do it, but there's no evidence they're typical.
Between that and credit-card fees eating a lot of the small purchases, I can easily see why they might decide to ditch it in favor of getting centralized purchasing of digital-physical bundles, which is going to net them more cash. (Why not update the existing code to sell the bundles? If it's anything like the character builder code appears to be, that's probably a technical nightmare.)
That said, they still botched the rollout something fierce. Just announcing it was going away in advance would give them a temporary bump in sales, and it's also badly integrated into the site.
They didn’t do this on a whim; they did this because someone had numbers that piecemeal was a less effective revenue stream than only offering the books. They’re not going alter course at this point just because a couple dozen people sound off online, and this simply is not going to attract the interest to pull or sustain much more attention than what we’re seeing right now. Maybe if they start losing out on sales they’ll reconsider, but they clearly have some reason to believe they have at least better than even odds of things going the other way and nobody here is going to have enough info to gainsay that assessment by the numbers.
I suspect it's not even that they expect to make more money directly this way, as much as adding it into the probably off-the-shelf marketplace backend was going to take something like two months and $large, for a relatively trivial amount of money, plus increased ongoing support costs, and they decided it wasn't worth it. I don't have their numbers, of course, but a la carte buying is likely only used by a small percentage of the users -- most people don't know about it, and the vast majority of people just play with their GM's books. Yes, many of the people here do it, but there's no evidence they're typical.
Between that and credit-card fees eating a lot of the small purchases, I can easily see why they might decide to ditch it in favor of getting centralized purchasing of digital-physical bundles, which is going to net them more cash. (Why not update the existing code to sell the bundles? If it's anything like the character builder code appears to be, that's probably a technical nightmare.)
That said, they still botched the rollout something fierce. Just announcing it was going away in advance would give them a temporary bump in sales, and it's also badly integrated into the site.
What if this is the start of the legacy transition? Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
What if this is the start of the legacy transition?
It's something they want online for the rollout for the new books, so they can push selling the bundles.
No idea what you mean by "the legacy transition".
Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
Is that not reasonable?
Seems very unlikely.
The reason they can sell the digital at only $10 above the physical without really hurting their margins is because the margins for a physical book directly from them are much higher, because there's no intermediaries taking a cut. When you buy it from the game store, there's both a distributor and the store who need to make money on the deal. (Amazon and big chain stores are probably getting it straight from Hasbro.)
As a now forever DM who learned 5e via DDB I can't help but feel this will encourage players to rely on a DM to have not only content, but also a master subscription enabling them to share content. Few casual players will want to buy PHB, DMG (might want to go oathbreaker), and loads of other digital books based on their PC, plus a new book every time their DM gives them a new item. Playing Curse of Strahd? Either the DM has that master subscription or anyone who wants to play a lineage or take a background needs to buy the book individually.
As a player I was willing, happy even, to drop $1.99 every time my DM handed out a treasure out of the newest book. Dreaming up a new character? I'll drop two bucks on autognome on a whim. But a casual player will likely balk at dropping $60 because their DM gave them an item out of the new Vecna adventure.
So that leaves it to the DM. Player wants to play a goblin? They can no longer pick that out of Mordenkainen. Prepare for a lot of "Hey DM can you buy...?"
I like DnDBeyond. I (currently) have a master subscription. I think DDB can be a useful tool for new and experienced players. But this will likely scare both players and DMs alike away from committing to the platform.
What if this is the start of the legacy transition?
It's something they want online for the rollout for the new books, so they can push selling the bundles.
No idea what you mean by "the legacy transition".
Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
Is that not reasonable?
Seems very unlikely.
The reason they can sell the digital at only $10 above the physical without really hurting their margins is because the margins for a physical book directly from them are much higher, because there's no intermediaries taking a cut. When you buy it from the game store, there's both a distributor and the store who need to make money on the deal. (Amazon and big chain stores are probably getting it straight from Hasbro.)
Don’t care about the physical, digital could use a price reduction to at least lessen the sting of the lost of the a-la-catre.
As for Legacy Transition, the coin is the fact that this is the start of DDB beginning to convert the 2014 CORE Three ( PHB, DMG,& MM), plus various other content that is rules antithetical to newly released content and rules. Read how they classified the reason for the transition of previous content into legacy and not wonder if this is how the process starts?
New player here, my first campaign and I have two characters, until now I was delighted with the dyd beyond app and the option to buy a la carte. Today I was very disappointed, and I'm about to go back to pencil and paper and simply ask my master to borrow his books. Which means zero expenses for me.
As a now forever DM who learned 5e via DDB I can't help but feel this will encourage players to rely on a DM to have not only content, but also a master subscription enabling them to share content. Few casual players will want to buy PHB, DMG (might want to go oathbreaker), and loads of other digital books based on their PC, plus a new book every time their DM gives them a new item. Playing Curse of Strahd? Either the DM has that master subscription or anyone who wants to play a lineage or take a background needs to buy the book individually.
As a player I was willing, happy even, to drop $1.99 every time my DM handed out a treasure out of the newest book. Dreaming up a new character? I'll drop two bucks on autognome on a whim. But a casual player will likely balk at dropping $60 because their DM gave them an item out of the new Vecna adventure.
So that leaves it to the DM. Player wants to play a goblin? They can no longer pick that out of Mordenkainen. Prepare for a lot of "Hey DM can you buy...?"
I like DnDBeyond. I (currently) have a master subscription. I think DDB can be a useful tool for new and experienced players. But this will likely scare both players and DMs alike away from committing to the platform.
couldnt a DM and players simply during session 0 have a little discussion with eachother as to what books they own and take that into consideration when giving out items or what not??
honestly think that if a player is hell bent on playing a specific species or class without considering what they have available (purchased for themselves) or what the DM has already purchased and able to share, then the cost should be the players - since its them thats unwilling to compromise or at the very least play within their means and invest in a game they wish to play (hopefully on more then one occasion) now there may be some generous people out there but they should not be expected to be generous - a DM sharing content is one thing, a DM buying content for others is a separate beast and possibly dependant on who actually whats that specific content in the campaign.
as a side note piece-meal purchases were nice but was mainly a financial convenience that i personally never used without the intention of purchasing the full book, and can see the possibility that using piece-meal to avoid buying a book in full could potentially cost dndbeyond money - hypothetically say it costs dndbeyond $20 to be able to sell a single copy of a book, they in return sell it to the customer for $40 (a potential $20 profit), now if the customer only spends say $6 to cherry pick out what they want creates a potential lose of $14 per book
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Okay, both parts of that are just comically melodramatic; saying someone should be fired because they recommended a course of action you dislike is ridiculously petty, and do you really think the outgoing exec isn’t getting a decent severance package? Grandiose acts of sabotage like you’re suggesting happen in cheesy dramas, not reality.
This is undoubtedly so, which is why it is incumbent upon us, the consumers, to turn that decision around. If we don't give-in and buy the books when we only need individual items they will see that they are losing revenue, however miniscule it may have been. Then the choice only makes sense if there is some cost involved with the offerings, which is unlikely the case.
Reality currently is acting like drama, and most dramas end sadly.
At this point, IMHO this is Hasbro/WotC squeezing the site in hopes it survives till the new stuff releases.
Instead, they should set this place to have a fire sale of the old, to boost interest in the new. ( and yea don’t care for the new personally, the the site however currently suits my char gen needs, and thats all it ever really was worth what I bought here. ) Not light the place on fire.
I wish! Would've snagged a Legendary bundle if most adventures were on sale.
You are making an argument that was not the point of the thread. It is the loss of a la carte purchasing that people are angry about. I am also angry that I cannot filter on content I own. Also, I bought the legendary bundle and a lot of books that came as part of the bundle do not carry the tag that I own the digital book so I could end up purchasing the same content twice.
There are players who will never buy an adventure yet who did purchase the crunch from the books in order to access it via character builder. Those players will not buy the whole adventure just to get the new spells, feats, backgrounds or races.
A player is not going to buy a full adventure book just for the crunch. They will lose money on this one because a la carte was player friendly. Now players will just expect the DM to own it all and get it through Master Tier.
At least once a month and the cost of a beer off the shelf.
It is the only way I have been purchasing the whole books
I look at the price and for a hobby of mine I cannot justify the price of the whole book. I have a lot of other competing priorities in life that take precedence over an online copy of a D&D book.
But I can justify the cost of a beer to treat myself some down time. For me the a la carte purchases fell into this level of expenditure. Can I skip a beer and buy part of the book to use now? I can justify that to myself (granted I’ll have the beer anyway - it’s downtime), but I can’t justify the full purchase right at that moment.
These piecemeal purchases overtime then brought down the price for the remainder to the point where I could justify buying the final part.
I will not be buying the content again as part of a whole book (I don’t buy it a second time on the VTT I use either) and I will not jump through hoops to contact customer service to get them to deduct my existing purchases off the ticketed price of the remainder.
I simply will not purchase the full books.
I fear that the next step in their greedy little corporate hearts after the removal of a la carte is the share owned material feature.
I already own all the core books, specifically because it took them so long to offer physical books and digital downloads. I buy the items as I need or as new players join and find things they're interested in. So now I have to buy all those books again just to be able to add stuff to our sheets? I have to buy an entire sourcebook for one item a player wants from a book I don't have?
And how long does anyone really expect them to leave the Homebrew board as it is before they start cleaning it up and removing things that have just been copied over from the main books?
Terrible decision by Hasbro. Corporate greed at its finest.
This is an absolutely ridiculous move and I am strongly considering cancelling my subscription. I did it for the OGL and came back because they corrected but they seem determined to make DnD less accessible.
It would be extremely silly to not voice our opinions on this. We are the customers and our feedback should matter to a company. Look at the OGL debacle and say we shouldn't have said anything.
Ridiculous to sit back and not say anything about a bad greedy practice. I don't care about their profit margins, this is a scummy tactic and I won't be quiet about it.
Before everyone gets all twisted up on this lets give them a better chance than a week to change things.
They may have bigger ideas for the customers and have just not rolled them out yet. Or if they see sales did not make predicted levels they might just bring back piecemeal purchases.
I personally do not like them because I always feel like I am missing something. But that is just me.
But I can see the individual prices going up a touch just to get you to buy the who book faster. Or even a limit on how much a la cart purchases you could make from each book, something like a quarter to a third of the book.
Using D&DBeyond is the big seller around here though. Not the books, people can buy those anyplace, people come here because of the character generation and the complete integration of the books into it. Trusting if not knowing that what they do through it is correct.
Even the homebrew option should be able to be trusted as creating something by the rules when you use it.
Now that mapping and such are being offered that should follow the same idea also.
If you use the stuff here it should be close to tournament ready.
I suspect it's not even that they expect to make more money directly this way, as much as adding it into the probably off-the-shelf marketplace backend was going to take something like two months and $large, for a relatively trivial amount of money, plus increased ongoing support costs, and they decided it wasn't worth it. I don't have their numbers, of course, but a la carte buying is likely only used by a small percentage of the users -- most people don't know about it, and the vast majority of people just play with their GM's books. Yes, many of the people here do it, but there's no evidence they're typical.
Between that and credit-card fees eating a lot of the small purchases, I can easily see why they might decide to ditch it in favor of getting centralized purchasing of digital-physical bundles, which is going to net them more cash. (Why not update the existing code to sell the bundles? If it's anything like the character builder code appears to be, that's probably a technical nightmare.)
That said, they still botched the rollout something fierce. Just announcing it was going away in advance would give them a temporary bump in sales, and it's also badly integrated into the site.
What if this is the start of the legacy transition? Still what gets me is that in the physical and digital bundle, they price the digital at 10$. Now, rather than continuing to push digital at 30$ and removing a-la-carte, they might start selling digital full content at 14.99$?
Is that not reasonable?
It's something they want online for the rollout for the new books, so they can push selling the bundles.
No idea what you mean by "the legacy transition".
Seems very unlikely.
The reason they can sell the digital at only $10 above the physical without really hurting their margins is because the margins for a physical book directly from them are much higher, because there's no intermediaries taking a cut. When you buy it from the game store, there's both a distributor and the store who need to make money on the deal. (Amazon and big chain stores are probably getting it straight from Hasbro.)
As a now forever DM who learned 5e via DDB I can't help but feel this will encourage players to rely on a DM to have not only content, but also a master subscription enabling them to share content. Few casual players will want to buy PHB, DMG (might want to go oathbreaker), and loads of other digital books based on their PC, plus a new book every time their DM gives them a new item. Playing Curse of Strahd? Either the DM has that master subscription or anyone who wants to play a lineage or take a background needs to buy the book individually.
As a player I was willing, happy even, to drop $1.99 every time my DM handed out a treasure out of the newest book. Dreaming up a new character? I'll drop two bucks on autognome on a whim. But a casual player will likely balk at dropping $60 because their DM gave them an item out of the new Vecna adventure.
So that leaves it to the DM. Player wants to play a goblin? They can no longer pick that out of Mordenkainen. Prepare for a lot of "Hey DM can you buy...?"
I like DnDBeyond. I (currently) have a master subscription. I think DDB can be a useful tool for new and experienced players. But this will likely scare both players and DMs alike away from committing to the platform.
Don’t care about the physical, digital could use a price reduction to at least lessen the sting of the lost of the a-la-catre.
As for Legacy Transition, the coin is the fact that this is the start of DDB beginning to convert the 2014 CORE Three ( PHB, DMG,& MM), plus various other content that is rules antithetical to newly released content and rules.
Read how they classified the reason for the transition of previous content into legacy and not wonder if this is how the process starts?
New player here, my first campaign and I have two characters, until now I was delighted with the dyd beyond app and the option to buy a la carte. Today I was very disappointed, and I'm about to go back to pencil and paper and simply ask my master to borrow his books. Which means zero expenses for me.
couldnt a DM and players simply during session 0 have a little discussion with eachother as to what books they own and take that into consideration when giving out items or what not??
honestly think that if a player is hell bent on playing a specific species or class without considering what they have available (purchased for themselves) or what the DM has already purchased and able to share, then the cost should be the players - since its them thats unwilling to compromise or at the very least play within their means and invest in a game they wish to play (hopefully on more then one occasion)
now there may be some generous people out there but they should not be expected to be generous - a DM sharing content is one thing, a DM buying content for others is a separate beast and possibly dependant on who actually whats that specific content in the campaign.
as a side note
piece-meal purchases were nice but was mainly a financial convenience that i personally never used without the intention of purchasing the full book, and can see the possibility that using piece-meal to avoid buying a book in full could potentially cost dndbeyond money - hypothetically say it costs dndbeyond $20 to be able to sell a single copy of a book, they in return sell it to the customer for $40 (a potential $20 profit), now if the customer only spends say $6 to cherry pick out what they want creates a potential lose of $14 per book