PSA: The marketplace got rid of individual purchases! (Contact support to get discount on prior individual purchases.)

Quote from AuroraMoon >>

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 

 That's not how it works. Giving access to someone, whether piecemeal or as a whole, literally costs pennies. The cost of DDB is mostly creating the book and maintaining the servers, and my access barely moves the needle on that (hence why homebrew can be free, despite costing similar for maintenance). Neither of which is affected by whether I buy a book or buy piecemeal, and only marginally by whether I buy anything at all. The costs that I pay are, other than profit, to help pay for the mostly fixed costs of producing the work in the first place and a bit for server maintenance. Whether I bought piecemeal or not is irrelevant to that (they've already paid for that and giving me a product isn't going to noticeably change it) - it's just a question of how much money they get from my wallet.  It's possible they need larger margins, but I was lead to believe that DDB was quite profitable for them.

Quote from Linklite >>

Giving access to someone, whether piecemeal or as a whole, literally costs pennies. The cost of DDB is mostly creating the book and maintaining the servers...

That's not really accurate. (Disclaimer: I am not a dndbeyond developer, but I am a software developer.)

It's my understanding that the "cost" is/was, for the most part, the complexity of the system for divvying up the permissions (ownership) of all the little character creation options. For example, I recall hearing that that was the reason it took so long to implement many of the features from Tasha's (and why some of Tasha's features are still not implemented). Implementing the systems in such a granular, modular fashion may have been significant extra work.

So I wouldn't be surprised (but, note, I'm not certain) if they decided that, going forward, they were going to support whole books and not split them up. That could make all their future/upcoming work  much easier to develop, simpler/cheaper to maintain, and faster to grow.

(Who knows? Under the hood, some of the OneD&D changes may very much exist to make things easier to code. I recall that that was a big driver of the 3e changes, from 2e, back in the day.)

To be clear, I'm not trying to defend or even condone the change they've made. But there could very well be some cost/benefit sense to it.

What from Tasha's hasn't been implemented? I have the book and haven't noticed anything not working. 

Quote from Vandak >>

What from Tasha's hasn't been implemented? I have the book and haven't noticed anything not working.

Read through the first post at https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/87774-tashas-cauldron-of-everything-issues-and-support. And the second post (and the whole thread, really) can give you a sense of how long they spent working on what does work.

Quote from Vandak >>

What from Tasha's hasn't been implemented? I have the book and haven't noticed anything not working. 

 
Some infusions aren't fully working.

Some dynamic statblocks from some features and spells are not able to be added and used properly.

Certain items that affect specific class spellcasting DCs do not function properly for multiclass spellcasters.

Spell swapping for Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Soul subclasses is not yet supported, requiring clunky workarounds by homebrewing copies of the subclass and changing it yourself.

Some feats like Eldritch Adept and Fighting Initiate do not work fully.

Some feats add spells as once-per-day plus use of spell slots but the second part is still not supported, which required workarounds by homebrewing race/subclass to add the "use spell slot" aspect for scaling and such.

Sidekicks are not yet supported.

- There's probably more but I can't recall of top of my head and have a headache.

Ah, you're right. I forgot about spell swapping for Aberrant Mind sorcerers. Yeah, that's annoying. 

Guess I waited to long to pick up a couple subclasses I was thinking about. Oh well, I guess WOTC doesn't want my money cause I am not going to buy two or three source books for one subclass each. But I would have spent the few dollars that each of them cost if I was allowed to do so. How can they think this is going to make them more money? This only gives people less reason to spend money on their site.

Look, I know you're being genuine, and I appreciate you hearing us all out, but as long as WotC continues to make D&D Beyond more and more prominent in D&D and continues to offer zero digital support for in-store purchases whatsoever any talk of trying to "incentivize shopping your FLGS" is just meaningless corporate gas lighting.

All of your competitors offer some kind of digital support for their products, whether that is working through Bits and Mortar, providing PDFs with proof of in store purchase, putting digital access codes in the books, or just sending the PDFs to anyone that asks and shows proof of a physical copy. We're talking Paizo, Modiphius, Free League, Evil Hat, Goodman Games, Exalted Funeral, pretty much everyone else offers SOMETHING. WotC is the ONLY major RPG publisher that does not do this in any way whatsoever, and because of that it cannot be argued that D&D Beyond now direct selling all the books in exclusive physical + digital bundles isn't undercutting FLGS'. DDB isn't poaching sales from retailers because DDB ships a week earlier, it's poaching sales because WotC refuses to provide digital support for retailers, and WotC knows that and is still trying to eat the lunch of FLGS'.

The narrative, whether true or false, that pretty much the entire gaming community believes is that Hasbro is trying to find any way they can to turn D&D into a digital subscription product of some kind and to cut everyone else out; following up the OGL mess and the totally uncalled for mass firings in December with pulling all the a la carte options with no warning in the dark of night while at the same time pulling the rug out from local game stores with the secret roll out of DDB selling all the books direct now and with an exclusive digital plus physical bundle only feeds into that perception. Please tell your bosses to stop making the same choices that 80's movie villains would make.

I canceled my subscription because of this. I am not interested in buying 100+ magic items or maps or whatever. I just want to buy the character options that my players are using. I was more than happy to spend a few bucks here and there (usually like 2 or 3 purchases per book), but I am not shelling out for an entire book. Most of my friends have been talking about switching games, but I have always argued that DnD beyond made 5e simple. Now I'm thinking I might be interested in another game as well.

This was a bad choice. Please roll this decision back ASAP. You are going to lose players and LOSE revenue in the future over this change. Pure. F.cking. Greed. And it's not going to work.

Imagine being so stupid that you get rid of what are effectively micro transactions on a gaming platform in 2024.

Remarkably bad move. I think all of my purchases here have been a la carte because I don't need the majority of the information in those books. This is not going to cause me to buy full books, I'm just going to find the missing information elsewhere and go back to making characters in PDF character sheets and continue playing my games on another platform.

Quote from WhitestElric >>

All of your competitors offer some kind of digital support for their products, whether that is working through Bits and Mortar, providing PDFs with proof of in store purchase, putting digital access codes in the books, or just sending the PDFs to anyone that asks and shows proof of a physical copy. We're talking Paizo, Modiphius, Free League, Evil Hat, Goodman Games, Exalted Funeral, pretty much everyone else offers SOMETHING. WotC is the ONLY major RPG publisher that does not do this in any way whatsoever, and because of that it cannot be argued that D&D Beyond now direct selling all the books in exclusive physical + digital bundles isn't undercutting FLGS'. DDB isn't poaching sales from retailers because DDB ships a week earlier, it's poaching sales because WotC refuses to provide digital support for retailers, and WotC knows that and is still trying to eat the lunch of FLGS'. 

Can D&D's competitors really offer what D&D can provide in terms of convenience and quality of life though? What 5e is really lacking are PDFs, but we have a substitute for that in the form of digital compendiums on Beyond, and its equivalents on Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and Foundry. I cannot comment on other companies' compendium since I have not tried them, but what Beyond's compendium lack in reliability and access (you need internect connection whereas PDF do not), it is made up for with ease of navigation through hyperlinks and integration with the database.

D&D is not the most competitive on price either, but it did have à la carte purchases on Beyond at one point to be somewhat competitive. I do not know of any other TTRPG that sells content at that individual level of granularity. Pathfinder's rules are completely free whereas D&D's rules are not, but D&D got UA for free. UA content is not super polished compared to paid published content, but UA is free content.

In terms of physical tools, the only TTRPG that comes close to Wizards is Pathfinder. Both got dice, dice trays, dice bags (red dragon dice bag is super cute), dice towers, GM screens, rule cards, book tabs, book bags, notebooks, character folders, minis, flat minis, tokens, terrain, mats, and whatever miscellaneous products you can think of. While you can use generic products for some of them, you cannot really use generic products for various rule cards, and having tailored book tabs and GM screens makes running prewritten adventures easier.

In terms of digital tools, I think D&D got the best character builder. Despite its many flaws, it is the easiest to use and the best looking one. D&D and Pathfinder both got really good databases, but I think Pathfinder edges out in this one since theirs is completely free. I do not know any other TTRPGs with databases as easy to use as Wizards' and Paizo's though. For VTTs, unless a TTRPG is really small and obscure, I think most TTRPGs are on pretty equal footing in this aspect being available on Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and Foundry.

And in terms of having a community and finding other people to play and bond with, D&D by far is the easiest one to get into and start. Pathfinder is not as easy as D&D, but it should not be that much more difficult either. Both got organized play in AL and PS. For every other TTRPG though, people are going to have more difficulty finding a community and group of people to play with, whether online or in real life. 

Quote from Driscale >>

Quote from AuroraMoon >>

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 

 

you know what's worse than a $14 loss? a 100% loss from people not buying the book at all

That assumes only those two avenues exist; if they get people who were slowly buying a la carte buying whole books instead, then they just need that segment to offset the people who are marching off in a huff over the change. Which is obviously what they expect to happen, or they wouldn't have made the shift.

I kinda want to stay out of this, but I confess to being angry about it.

i have bought a few books after buying enough little things, but given how generally useless to me most stuff is, unless there is a super compelling reason for me to buy. Book, it just means fewer purchases from me.

i would have bought some bits from the Vecna thing, but this wipes out the entire book for me — wasn’t interested in the “story” or adventure, but the little stuff and adds would have been nice. So, probably a good 20 bucks lost entirely there.

If they continue past practice of adding new stuff into adventures, it means they lose any money they could have gotten from me. 

I don’t hold animosity about it, though — I am not going to shout and throw things are write vicious letters or report them to some Twitter hack or YT doofus over it — just isn’t that big a deal.

they lost money doing this — and the redesign of the store is pretty and all, I grant, but not exciting enough.

I would love to see the break down numbers of exactly what has been piecemeal purchased.

What was so popular that people just had to have it.
And how many of those people bought anything else.

Those who spent the most money could have their opinions weighted better.

I know I'm not the only one voicing my opinnion about this, but I feel like it is something worth bringing up as loudly as possible. 

I'm a fairly casual D&D player. Mostly a player, but occasionally I also DM. I have purchased all the core books I deem necessary (physical copies, but out of convenience also digitally). I don't get the chance to play as often as I'd like, and because of that buying entire books feels very expensive. This is why being able to buy just the components I need was a huge selling point for using D&D Beyond. I was able to pick and choose things I needed for my campaigns, even on the fly if something came up mid-game. With the update, that option is gone, and I am not about to start buying entire books either. For the sake of other casual players with smaller budgets like me, please bring back the a la carte purchasing options.

I agree. 

I don't see myself making any future purchases from DDB or WOTC now that a la carte purchase options have been removed from D&D Beyond (even though I've always purchased the full books in both physical and digital formats). IMHO this change clearly shows that WOTC no longer cares about their fan base at all.

Even after all of your recent ludicrous shenanigans, missteps, bad press, and apologies, I've stuck with the D&D brand as a loyal fan (of over 40 years). I can no longer do that. WOTC is making it abundantly clear that fans are irrelevant to them and only deep-pocketed customers matter (though even their relevance seems to be limited to how recently they purchased anything). I had expected to spend a lot with WOTC this year due to the new sourcebooks coming out. Now, I think I'll spend that money on an entirely different system (even though I'm a legendary bundle owner, a master tier subscriber, and have an entire bookshelf full of official 5e physical books in my office).

Worse, this is yet another bad business decision. Most of the a la carte customers you had made those purchases because they either couldn't afford a full book or couldn't justify the cost when there were only a few things in it that they wanted. You may think this will turn a la carte purchasers into full-book customers, but in reality, I believe you'll likely just lose them all altogether. It will be interesting to see what WOTC / DDB revenues look like in a year. Even with the release of (most of) the updated 5e books (or whatever you're calling them this week) I suspect DDB's and probably WOTC's revenues will be significantly down by then.

Why would you throw away all those future purchases? You can't honestly believe you'll turn all of those customers into full book buyers.

It appears to me that WOTC is intent on pushing D&D fans away. Well congratulations, you succeeded. I'm done.