The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
Just wanted to say thank you for the support you've been showing us all. It feels like you are adamantly defending us and it's not often you see staff of a company defend its customers like this.
Brand new player and subscribed member here. I bought the digital Handbook for $30 a few weeks ago and started my first campaign as a Barbarian. I'm loving the game so far and have just reached level 3 where I get to pick my primal path. I've spent the last week or so exploring and comparing the options for my character in great detail only to come back ready to purchase one a la carte and find the option has been removed. What an absolute disappointment this is, knowing I could have purchased the one I was considering a week ago but wanting, to my detriment, to learn more about this great game. I will NOT be spending another $30 on Xanthar's Guide just to be able to have a specific primal class. So now I'm stuck with my second option which came with the Handbook. So anyway, as a new member of this DDB platform I'm certainly starting with a sour taste in my mouth and now considering going the old pencil and paper route. Please DDB fix this.
There is a workaround for you that I am mentioning not just for you, as you have probably already considered it, but so that everyone, including the WotC can see that the decision to remove a la carte is money lost to them.
You can google the option you want, then create a homebrew subclass and just enter all of the info you find on another site into your homebrew subclass. Yes...it would be far more convenient to spend $2 to just pick it up from DND Beyond, but since you can't...might as well hack it.
Or...DND Beyond can return a la carte sales and get the $2. I'm not a mathematician but I think this formula is accurate: $2 > $0
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.
I wouldn't lead with Paizo in your litany. You only get a free PDF if you enroll in a subscription program (which would also cuts out the FLGS).
And since they're probably the largest "competitor" ....
I also wouldn't call any of those other studios competitors of WotC either. None of those companies have anything close to a significant fraction of WotC's revenue or marketshare. After WotC the bulk of TTRPG production is basically cottage to small press industry. A sales blockbuster for them sells a tenth or less of a 5e release. The smaller studios need the free PDF program because it actually helps them move physical games too, and Bits and Mortar exists because those smaller companies know FLGS are close to vital to their significantly smaller cut of the TTRPG market.
Moreover DDB is not the equivalent of a PDF copy. The correct analog to DDB is Demiplane. Let me know how it goes asking for a Free League module for free on Demiplane because you have a receipt for a printed book.
DDB pulling piecemeal sales was a crappy move and I'd love to hear the official logic behind it (like Paizo provides their logic of not putting out free PDFs despite the existence of such programs). Like maybe they're going to start thinking of their post core books as the equivalent of "season passes" so you buy the whole deal or not. They can literally afford these experiments because the list of TTRPG makers under them are not coming after them. Have some D&D adjacent companies done well in light of various WotC missteps with the brand, yes; but not so much to bring any of those companies to the scale of D&D's place in the toys and games sector. Honestly, as someone who plays more non D&D than D&D, I actually prefer it that way.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
Just wanted to say thank you for the support you've been showing us all. It feels like you are adamantly defending us and it's not often you see staff of a company defend its customers like this.
I just got into DnD with my wife literally last week. To put it mildly, I'm really salty about this 'cause I'm being forced to spend 60 dollars (we only have the physical starter set so far) just to make the swashbuckler rouge build that I really want. I'm really disappointed because my wife and I was enjoying physical starter set. I was about to buy her the Player's Handbook as a gift so we can enhance our experience through DND Beyond but this greedy move left a really sour experience for me and now I'm more than inclined to not give DnD Beyond a single penny in the future because of this.
As a player, the microtransactions to buy just a section of a book was a key selling point in convincing me to buy into D&D Beyond. I could limit my spend to just the main character options books and then pick up any additional character options I wanted for new characters a la carte. I did that with VRGtR, buying the Lineages, and starting my little sub-hobby of making character builds. I later went on to buy the entire book, because I was going to DM and I was interested in using the book for that. I can't say if I ultimately would have bought that book or not, but I can say that I have gone on to buy other little pieces that I would not have bothered with if I had to buy the whole book. From the start, I think I would have been deterred that player options were locked away behind "DM spending". If these a la carte options are going to remain locked, I suggest at the very least to have the products allow separate purchase of DM resources and character options - classes, subclasses, races, backgrounds, spells, feats. One of the striking things about this change is that there was no other avenue to get character options introduced as an alternative to buying complete. Even a Q1 character options collection would have been something.
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
This is kind of a peripheral question, but is there anything you can say about bundles? Are they gone, or coming back or any news or planned announcements on that front?
And thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this. It's really good to see someone from Wizards actively trying to help, or at least, listen.
This is crazy, I was really getting into character creating because I was told I can just buy small individual pieces I'd need instead of entire books I would never actually read. Guess I'm just not going to spend any money at all now :/
I just got into DnD with my wife literally last week. To put it mildly, I'm really salty about this 'cause I'm being forced to spend 60 dollars (we only have the physical starter set so far) just to make the swashbuckler rouge build that I really want. I'm really disappointed because my wife and I was enjoying physical starter set. I was about to buy her the Player's Handbook as a gift so we can enhance our experience through DND Beyond but this greedy move left a really sour experience for me and now I'm more than inclined to not give DnD Beyond a single penny in the future because of this.
If you are new to D&D, I highly recommend not spending a single penny in the hobby until you got at least a campaign or two under your belt first. D&D can be played for free with the Basic Rules/Systems Reference Document, and there are enough options to last at least two or three campaigns and give you a taste of what D&D is like. D&D is a very niche hobby, and it is not for everyone. Even among my group of eleven nerdy friends, only half wanted to try it, and only half of that wanted to continue to play (total of four of us). If only a quarter of nerds likes to play D&D, that does not speak well of its appeal to the general public. Keep in mind there is also a huge boatload of Unearthed Arcana (playtest) content available completely for free from Wizard's website. And if you look on Google, there is practically an unlimited amount of free third-party homebrew for D&D. Only spend money on this hobby if you are really sure you like it. Do not pay for a hobby that you might not like.
Additionally, GMs often provide all the resources necessary to play the game, so you and your wife would not need to pay to have access to the PHB if you join a GM's campaign. I assume you already opened the Starter Set box, so I would just keep it, but if I were in your position, I would not spend a single further penny on this hobby until I have played at least one or two campaigns. Even if it is just you and your wife and one of you is the GM, I still would not spend money on D&D until you have enough experience to determine whether you really like this hobby or not. Also check out your local game stores too and meet its people; some friendly GMs may even let you temporarily access all content that they have paid for on D&D Beyond even if you are not in their campaign.
And as you have just found out, Beyond does not have à la carte purchases anymore. I highly recommend checking out Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and Foundry and see if they suit your needs more. Beyond is not the only official toolset, and the other three platforms have a large following too. Wthout à la carte purchases, Beyond's only real edge compared to other platforms would be its intuitive and pretty character sheets, but that is a subjective metric in the eyes of the beholder. The other three platforms are VTTs (virtual table tops) focused more on digital online play, while Beyond's digital tools compliment and supplement physical in-person play more. Beyond has a VTT too, but Beyond got in the game late in that regard, and Beyond's VTT is still in alpha development, so it is nowhere near mature. I chose and plan to stick with Beyond because it is geared towards in-person play and I already spent a lot of money on here. But since you are new, make sure you check out all the official digital tools first. While the other three might focus more on digital online play, I am pretty sure they got digital tools for in person play too, so do not settle for Beyond if other platforms suit your needs better.
The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
This is kind of a peripheral question, but is there anything you can say about bundles? Are they gone, or coming back or any news or planned announcements on that front?
And thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this. It's really good to see someone from Wizards actively trying to help, or at least, listen.
It's literally no problem at all; if I could split myself to answer every question about this I would, but I also think I'd try to get more sleep about it.
As I understand it, bundles are gone gone. I don't have any insight if they're coming back or being replaced with something else.
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The feedback I've been reading since last week has made me see this more than ever. I'm a bit of a completionist, and was a Legendary Bundle buyer in DDB's early days, so owning everything was just something I knew I wanted to do, but I've read so many stories of players and DMs who buy to supplement their physical collections, and it's such a clever and awesome way to have used the feature, it makes me more frustrated than ever for y'all who can't use it like this anymore.
This is kind of a peripheral question, but is there anything you can say about bundles? Are they gone, or coming back or any news or planned announcements on that front?
And thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this. It's really good to see someone from Wizards actively trying to help, or at least, listen.
It's literally no problem at all; if I could split myself to answer every question about this I would, but I also think I'd try to get more sleep about it.
As I understand it, bundles are gone gone. I don't have any insight if they're coming back or being replaced with something else.
I would simply like to know if other changes to the site, and functionality as is, will from now on be preceded by two week notice before change implementation?
or simply will you give us a heads up of changes before you make them in the future?
[REDACTED] It can't be the case that you become a successful company who takes over a market who then starts cutting back on the features that made it successful to MILK the users.
This is clearly to force people to buy whole books now that D&DBeyond is the standard. I'm so done with this phase of corporate american laws that allow this ******* behavior to go unchecked.
can anyone enlighten me on how the removal of a micro-transaction (the piece-meal purchases) which takes what ever money a person is willing to spend for a tiny portion of the whole is a money hungry and greedy move??
how is it money hungry or greedy if people can still get those books they bought piece-meal from at a discount??
to my knowledge (possibly wrong) no other site offers piece-meal purchases for tiny portions of their books, so what is the appeal of other sites over dndbeyond just to be met with purchasing books in full anyway??
can anyone enlighten me on how the removal of a micro-transaction (the piece-meal purchases) which takes what ever money a person is willing to spend for a tiny portion of the whole is a money hungry and greedy move??
how is it money hungry or greedy if people can still get those books they bought piece-meal from at a discount??
to my knowledge (possibly wrong) no other site offers piece-meal purchases for tiny portions of their books, so what is the appeal of other sites over dndbeyond just to be met with purchasing books in full anyway??
Piecemeal purchases allow for a gentle ease into the more detailed and costly side of being on the DM side of the screen.
And as a player just starting, yes later having all the content when one would be ready to commit to full content made buying piecemeal worth the wait for a particular sale.
Now, that at this time is no longer available. Those just starting now have a higher, costlier entry in the one thing the game really could use now and thats becoming a DM/GM.
As a player, learning the game for the first time, and having a massive collection of specific options that one could easily choose piecemeal to use without need of fluff that at the particular time was like a bargain bin at walmart.
go back and read the whole thread again and see the discussion and displeasure with this decision. Not just this thread, but others in the feedback section.
On paper it sounds backwards, but in reality look and read how the community utilized it, how it tempted people into buying the whole when the price was right.
can anyone enlighten me on how the removal of a micro-transaction (the piece-meal purchases) which takes what ever money a person is willing to spend for a tiny portion of the whole is a money hungry and greedy move??
how is it money hungry or greedy if people can still get those books they bought piece-meal from at a discount??
to my knowledge (possibly wrong) no other site offers piece-meal purchases for tiny portions of their books, so what is the appeal of other sites over dndbeyond just to be met with purchasing books in full anyway??
1.) "Other sites" are more robust VTTs, virtual table tops, with features that DDB is just beginning to catch up to with its maps tool (which is in Alpha, unlike the full releases of the Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and Foundry). Those VTTs are also designed to be used with a number of different game systems. So there's the appeal of the other sites.
2.) People are calling DDB's removal of piecemeal purchases "money hungry and greedy" because it's a common taunt used against a business when a customer loses access to an affordable feature of that business. I don't know what the rationale was for removing piecemeal purchases from the marketplace, though maximizing revenue from D&D has been more or less reported as desire by WotC. I'm not sure how removing piecemeal sales serves that desire. If anything I can see it working quite the opposite. To me, till now DDB has been the most accessible way to start playing D&D with official products/rules and the piecemeal system was a great way to convert those initial players using the free basic rules into paying players. Those players may buy now into D&D at a slower pace, or not at all, either moving onto different game systems with more affordable access or staying within friends' games and accessing through content sharing. Presumably WotC has some sort of data that would indicate this is not the case, but WotC is apparently in year two of what many critics of the company call a cycle of unforced errors.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Now, that at this time is no longer available. Those just starting now have a higher, costlier entry in the one thing the game really could use now and thats becoming a DM/GM.
As a player, learning the game for the first time, and having a massive collection of specific options that one could easily choose piecemeal to use without need of fluff that at the particular time was like a bargain bin at walmart.
Yeah, allowing players to purchase their own content piecemeal takes some pressure off of the GM to provide for everything. In most cases, established GMs will have whatever their player wants, but in the off chance that the GM does not have it, the player can just get it on their own. And since players often play for free and spend little money on the hobby, the piecemeal purchases eases players into it. It also helps players transition to being GMs, with the piecemeal purchases counting towards the discount of the full books later.
And since most players do not spend that much money, Wizards wants to make more money by giving players something to spend on. Character folders, various rule cards, campaign journals, minis, character sheets (I would never pay for blank character sheets since Wizards literally give those PDFs out for free for people to print out, but people can also buy blank physical sheets if they want to), etc. are nice products geared towards players. Beyond's à la carte purchases are the perfect digital extension of those physical tools. Taking away microtransactions is a step backwards, it is antithetical to the goal of making players spend more.
If the transaction cost is really the issue (I have no idea, I am just guessing at the reason), Beyond should just say that and try to work with the community, like increase the cost of individual purchases, or make individual purchases count less towards the full book. Worst case scenario it is both, and individual options cost $3 and it only discounts the book by $1. We will not be happy about it, but at least we will understand the reason and can empathize. I am sure some of us would rather have a crappier à la carte option than without that option at all.
This has come up multiple times, so I'm going to explain one last time why piecemeal purchasing shouldn't be compared to microtransactions.
What are microtransactions?
They are usually part of a game and are a method of selling small parts of the product for a reduced price. One.of the key features though that distinguishes them from, say, selling a game in parts (for example, selling expansion packs) is that they tend to lock the game if you don't buy them - you can't play the game with paying for them, or you will be stopped from progressing by a timer - or otherwise pressure you to buy them.
Why are microtransactions scummy?
They're "scummy" because they're designed to hide the true cost of the game in attempt to make you pay more for the product than you would if you saw the total amount in one go. To take a famous example, EA's Star Wars Battlefront charged you for the game, then locked the most desirable content,.and the main way to unlock it was to pay for loot boxes. You didn't see the game price as $100 (which you might not have paid for), but saw $60 then a bunch of $1ish loot boxes, and all of a sudden you've paid $100. There was that example of the guy who literally spent thousands on his FIFA game.
A more benign (or rather, less sinister) form is Fortnite, which is free and only charges for cosmetic stuff (last I checked, which admittedly has been a long while), but still leads into over paying for content because you see it as 50¢ for a shirt, rather than $90 for the game.
Microtransactions generally carve out parts of the product that you'd normally already consider purchased when you paid for the game itself, then tries to sell it to you. It encourages you to spend more for a product that you would with full knowledge of what you're getting.
Why shouldn't we compare piecemeal purchases to microtransactions?
Superficially, they're similar. You're paying a nominally smaller amount for a portion of the product. They're not the same thing though, not in the whole picture.
Piecemeal purchasing allowed you to buy products at your own pace, at no disadvantage to you. Outside of exceptional circumstances, you never paid more buying piecemeal than if you bought the product outright. This already means half the scumminess of microtransactions does not apply - it's not trying to hide the true cost and slide it past you.
Piecemeal purchasing did not encourage you to "rebuy" the product. You only ever paid for it once - if you wanted the Hexblade, you could buy the Hexblade piecemeal or as part of the book. You don't have to keep on buying it, nor did you buy Tasha's and then be told that you had to buy the Subclasses separately. You never paid more (with a few marginal exceptions) than if you just paid upfront. That's the other half of the scumminess of microtransactions.
Piecemeal purchases allowed you to buy what you needed and ignore a lot of what you didn't. Sure, the pricing was disproportional - you didn't get 10% of the book for 10% of the price - but that's fine and reasonable.
What's wrong with microtransactions in general doesn't apply to piecemeal purchases. It literally saved you money if it were a useful product, as opposed to microtransactions (which is essentially a euphemism for trying to trick you into overspending) which sought to make you overpay.
Please stop bringing up microtransactions as being comparable to piecemeal purchases. Piecemeal purchases were one of the strongest selling points of DDB over its competitors. You may not care about them, but complaining about them is like complaining about the shop selling individual chocolate bars when you only buy multi packs.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
They will not be able to do anything to DndBeyond, but they need to start becoming aware via complaints of this kind of practice.
Whether you liked this feature or not, this was part of what made DndBeyond dominate the VTT market.
Now they cut features to make more money. This type of scummy customer milking practice that adds NO value, ESPECIALLY after forcing other competitors OUT of the market and becoming the de-facto official option. This particular reply will probably be taken down, but if you're interested on adding noise to this issue please do.
They will not be able to do anything to DndBeyond, but they need to start becoming aware via complaints of this kind of practice.
Whether you liked this feature or not, this was part of what made DndBeyond dominate the VTT market.
Now they cut features to make more money. This type of scummy customer milking practice that adds NO value, ESPECIALLY after forcing other competitors OUT of the market and becoming the de-facto official option. This particular reply will probably be taken down, but if you're interested on adding noise to this issue please do.
I would never claim to be an expert in antitrust law - I studied it a bit back in law school, but it is such an absurdly complicated field of law that, unless one actually practices antitrust, expertise is nearly unreachable.
That said, I can say with an extremely high degree of confidence this is not an antitrust issue and is not something the FTC would care about. This is a change to a pricing model and not some kind of effort to promote unfair competition or which would otherwise implicate antitrust. In fact, if you read the thread, a whole lot of the posts boil down to “this will drive us into the hands of your competitors” - which, definitionally, is the opposite of an antitrust issue.
Feel free to make your opinions known here - staff is clearly monitoring this thread. And you can always take to social media if you want a different platform. But let us not waste the government’s time on something that does not fall within their purview.
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Just wanted to say thank you for the support you've been showing us all. It feels like you are adamantly defending us and it's not often you see staff of a company defend its customers like this.
You're the real MVPs.
There is a workaround for you that I am mentioning not just for you, as you have probably already considered it, but so that everyone, including the WotC can see that the decision to remove a la carte is money lost to them.
You can google the option you want, then create a homebrew subclass and just enter all of the info you find on another site into your homebrew subclass. Yes...it would be far more convenient to spend $2 to just pick it up from DND Beyond, but since you can't...might as well hack it.
Or...DND Beyond can return a la carte sales and get the $2. I'm not a mathematician but I think this formula is accurate: $2 > $0
I wouldn't lead with Paizo in your litany. You only get a free PDF if you enroll in a subscription program (which would also cuts out the FLGS).
https://paizo.com/paizo/faq#v5748eaic9niz
And since they're probably the largest "competitor" ....
I also wouldn't call any of those other studios competitors of WotC either. None of those companies have anything close to a significant fraction of WotC's revenue or marketshare. After WotC the bulk of TTRPG production is basically cottage to small press industry. A sales blockbuster for them sells a tenth or less of a 5e release. The smaller studios need the free PDF program because it actually helps them move physical games too, and Bits and Mortar exists because those smaller companies know FLGS are close to vital to their significantly smaller cut of the TTRPG market.
Moreover DDB is not the equivalent of a PDF copy. The correct analog to DDB is Demiplane. Let me know how it goes asking for a Free League module for free on Demiplane because you have a receipt for a printed book.
DDB pulling piecemeal sales was a crappy move and I'd love to hear the official logic behind it (like Paizo provides their logic of not putting out free PDFs despite the existence of such programs). Like maybe they're going to start thinking of their post core books as the equivalent of "season passes" so you buy the whole deal or not. They can literally afford these experiments because the list of TTRPG makers under them are not coming after them. Have some D&D adjacent companies done well in light of various WotC missteps with the brand, yes; but not so much to bring any of those companies to the scale of D&D's place in the toys and games sector. Honestly, as someone who plays more non D&D than D&D, I actually prefer it that way.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I concur...thank you.
I just got into DnD with my wife literally last week. To put it mildly, I'm really salty about this 'cause I'm being forced to spend 60 dollars (we only have the physical starter set so far) just to make the swashbuckler rouge build that I really want. I'm really disappointed because my wife and I was enjoying physical starter set. I was about to buy her the Player's Handbook as a gift so we can enhance our experience through DND Beyond but this greedy move left a really sour experience for me and now I'm more than inclined to not give DnD Beyond a single penny in the future because of this.
As a player, the microtransactions to buy just a section of a book was a key selling point in convincing me to buy into D&D Beyond. I could limit my spend to just the main character options books and then pick up any additional character options I wanted for new characters a la carte. I did that with VRGtR, buying the Lineages, and starting my little sub-hobby of making character builds. I later went on to buy the entire book, because I was going to DM and I was interested in using the book for that. I can't say if I ultimately would have bought that book or not, but I can say that I have gone on to buy other little pieces that I would not have bothered with if I had to buy the whole book. From the start, I think I would have been deterred that player options were locked away behind "DM spending". If these a la carte options are going to remain locked, I suggest at the very least to have the products allow separate purchase of DM resources and character options - classes, subclasses, races, backgrounds, spells, feats. One of the striking things about this change is that there was no other avenue to get character options introduced as an alternative to buying complete. Even a Q1 character options collection would have been something.
This is kind of a peripheral question, but is there anything you can say about bundles? Are they gone, or coming back or any news or planned announcements on that front?
And thank you for taking the time to engage with us on this. It's really good to see someone from Wizards actively trying to help, or at least, listen.
This is crazy, I was really getting into character creating because I was told I can just buy small individual pieces I'd need instead of entire books I would never actually read. Guess I'm just not going to spend any money at all now :/
If you are new to D&D, I highly recommend not spending a single penny in the hobby until you got at least a campaign or two under your belt first. D&D can be played for free with the Basic Rules/Systems Reference Document, and there are enough options to last at least two or three campaigns and give you a taste of what D&D is like. D&D is a very niche hobby, and it is not for everyone. Even among my group of eleven nerdy friends, only half wanted to try it, and only half of that wanted to continue to play (total of four of us). If only a quarter of nerds likes to play D&D, that does not speak well of its appeal to the general public. Keep in mind there is also a huge boatload of Unearthed Arcana (playtest) content available completely for free from Wizard's website. And if you look on Google, there is practically an unlimited amount of free third-party homebrew for D&D. Only spend money on this hobby if you are really sure you like it. Do not pay for a hobby that you might not like.
Additionally, GMs often provide all the resources necessary to play the game, so you and your wife would not need to pay to have access to the PHB if you join a GM's campaign. I assume you already opened the Starter Set box, so I would just keep it, but if I were in your position, I would not spend a single further penny on this hobby until I have played at least one or two campaigns. Even if it is just you and your wife and one of you is the GM, I still would not spend money on D&D until you have enough experience to determine whether you really like this hobby or not. Also check out your local game stores too and meet its people; some friendly GMs may even let you temporarily access all content that they have paid for on D&D Beyond even if you are not in their campaign.
And as you have just found out, Beyond does not have à la carte purchases anymore. I highly recommend checking out Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and Foundry and see if they suit your needs more. Beyond is not the only official toolset, and the other three platforms have a large following too. Wthout à la carte purchases, Beyond's only real edge compared to other platforms would be its intuitive and pretty character sheets, but that is a subjective metric in the eyes of the beholder. The other three platforms are VTTs (virtual table tops) focused more on digital online play, while Beyond's digital tools compliment and supplement physical in-person play more. Beyond has a VTT too, but Beyond got in the game late in that regard, and Beyond's VTT is still in alpha development, so it is nowhere near mature. I chose and plan to stick with Beyond because it is geared towards in-person play and I already spent a lot of money on here. But since you are new, make sure you check out all the official digital tools first. While the other three might focus more on digital online play, I am pretty sure they got digital tools for in person play too, so do not settle for Beyond if other platforms suit your needs better.
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D&D StaffIt's literally no problem at all; if I could split myself to answer every question about this I would, but I also think I'd try to get more sleep about it.
As I understand it, bundles are gone gone. I don't have any insight if they're coming back or being replaced with something else.
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I would simply like to know if other changes to the site, and functionality as is, will from now on be preceded by two week notice before change implementation?
or simply will you give us a heads up of changes before you make them in the future?
[REDACTED]
[REDACTED] It can't be the case that you become a successful company who takes over a market who then starts cutting back on the features that made it successful to MILK the users.
This is clearly to force people to buy whole books now that D&DBeyond is the standard. I'm so done with this phase of corporate american laws that allow this ******* behavior to go unchecked.
Boy, this company really knows how to keep people perpetually upset with their product.
can anyone enlighten me on how the removal of a micro-transaction (the piece-meal purchases) which takes what ever money a person is willing to spend for a tiny portion of the whole is a money hungry and greedy move??
how is it money hungry or greedy if people can still get those books they bought piece-meal from at a discount??
to my knowledge (possibly wrong) no other site offers piece-meal purchases for tiny portions of their books, so what is the appeal of other sites over dndbeyond just to be met with purchasing books in full anyway??
Piecemeal purchases allow for a gentle ease into the more detailed and costly side of being on the DM side of the screen.
And as a player just starting, yes later having all the content when one would be ready to commit to full content made buying piecemeal worth the wait for a particular sale.
Now, that at this time is no longer available. Those just starting now have a higher, costlier entry in the one thing the game really could use now and thats becoming a DM/GM.
As a player, learning the game for the first time, and having a massive collection of specific options that one could easily choose piecemeal to use without need of fluff that at the particular time was like a bargain bin at walmart.
go back and read the whole thread again and see the discussion and displeasure with this decision. Not just this thread, but others in the feedback section.
On paper it sounds backwards, but in reality look and read how the community utilized it, how it tempted people into buying the whole when the price was right.
And for what I simply ask, for what?
1.) "Other sites" are more robust VTTs, virtual table tops, with features that DDB is just beginning to catch up to with its maps tool (which is in Alpha, unlike the full releases of the Roll20, Fantasy Grounds and Foundry). Those VTTs are also designed to be used with a number of different game systems. So there's the appeal of the other sites.
2.) People are calling DDB's removal of piecemeal purchases "money hungry and greedy" because it's a common taunt used against a business when a customer loses access to an affordable feature of that business. I don't know what the rationale was for removing piecemeal purchases from the marketplace, though maximizing revenue from D&D has been more or less reported as desire by WotC. I'm not sure how removing piecemeal sales serves that desire. If anything I can see it working quite the opposite. To me, till now DDB has been the most accessible way to start playing D&D with official products/rules and the piecemeal system was a great way to convert those initial players using the free basic rules into paying players. Those players may buy now into D&D at a slower pace, or not at all, either moving onto different game systems with more affordable access or staying within friends' games and accessing through content sharing. Presumably WotC has some sort of data that would indicate this is not the case, but WotC is apparently in year two of what many critics of the company call a cycle of unforced errors.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yeah, allowing players to purchase their own content piecemeal takes some pressure off of the GM to provide for everything. In most cases, established GMs will have whatever their player wants, but in the off chance that the GM does not have it, the player can just get it on their own. And since players often play for free and spend little money on the hobby, the piecemeal purchases eases players into it. It also helps players transition to being GMs, with the piecemeal purchases counting towards the discount of the full books later.
And since most players do not spend that much money, Wizards wants to make more money by giving players something to spend on. Character folders, various rule cards, campaign journals, minis, character sheets (I would never pay for blank character sheets since Wizards literally give those PDFs out for free for people to print out, but people can also buy blank physical sheets if they want to), etc. are nice products geared towards players. Beyond's à la carte purchases are the perfect digital extension of those physical tools. Taking away microtransactions is a step backwards, it is antithetical to the goal of making players spend more.
If the transaction cost is really the issue (I have no idea, I am just guessing at the reason), Beyond should just say that and try to work with the community, like increase the cost of individual purchases, or make individual purchases count less towards the full book. Worst case scenario it is both, and individual options cost $3 and it only discounts the book by $1. We will not be happy about it, but at least we will understand the reason and can empathize. I am sure some of us would rather have a crappier à la carte option than without that option at all.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
This has come up multiple times, so I'm going to explain one last time why piecemeal purchasing shouldn't be compared to microtransactions.
What are microtransactions?
They are usually part of a game and are a method of selling small parts of the product for a reduced price. One.of the key features though that distinguishes them from, say, selling a game in parts (for example, selling expansion packs) is that they tend to lock the game if you don't buy them - you can't play the game with paying for them, or you will be stopped from progressing by a timer - or otherwise pressure you to buy them.
Why are microtransactions scummy?
They're "scummy" because they're designed to hide the true cost of the game in attempt to make you pay more for the product than you would if you saw the total amount in one go. To take a famous example, EA's Star Wars Battlefront charged you for the game, then locked the most desirable content,.and the main way to unlock it was to pay for loot boxes. You didn't see the game price as $100 (which you might not have paid for), but saw $60 then a bunch of $1ish loot boxes, and all of a sudden you've paid $100. There was that example of the guy who literally spent thousands on his FIFA game.
A more benign (or rather, less sinister) form is Fortnite, which is free and only charges for cosmetic stuff (last I checked, which admittedly has been a long while), but still leads into over paying for content because you see it as 50¢ for a shirt, rather than $90 for the game.
Microtransactions generally carve out parts of the product that you'd normally already consider purchased when you paid for the game itself, then tries to sell it to you. It encourages you to spend more for a product that you would with full knowledge of what you're getting.
Why shouldn't we compare piecemeal purchases to microtransactions?
Superficially, they're similar. You're paying a nominally smaller amount for a portion of the product. They're not the same thing though, not in the whole picture.
What's wrong with microtransactions in general doesn't apply to piecemeal purchases. It literally saved you money if it were a useful product, as opposed to microtransactions (which is essentially a euphemism for trying to trick you into overspending) which sought to make you overpay.
Please stop bringing up microtransactions as being comparable to piecemeal purchases. Piecemeal purchases were one of the strongest selling points of DDB over its competitors. You may not care about them, but complaining about them is like complaining about the shop selling individual chocolate bars when you only buy multi packs.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Complain.
File a complaint to the FTC.
https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation
They will not be able to do anything to DndBeyond, but they need to start becoming aware via complaints of this kind of practice.
Whether you liked this feature or not, this was part of what made DndBeyond dominate the VTT market.
Now they cut features to make more money. This type of scummy customer milking practice that adds NO value, ESPECIALLY after forcing other competitors OUT of the market and becoming the de-facto official option. This particular reply will probably be taken down, but if you're interested on adding noise to this issue please do.
I would never claim to be an expert in antitrust law - I studied it a bit back in law school, but it is such an absurdly complicated field of law that, unless one actually practices antitrust, expertise is nearly unreachable.
That said, I can say with an extremely high degree of confidence this is not an antitrust issue and is not something the FTC would care about. This is a change to a pricing model and not some kind of effort to promote unfair competition or which would otherwise implicate antitrust. In fact, if you read the thread, a whole lot of the posts boil down to “this will drive us into the hands of your competitors” - which, definitionally, is the opposite of an antitrust issue.
Feel free to make your opinions known here - staff is clearly monitoring this thread. And you can always take to social media if you want a different platform. But let us not waste the government’s time on something that does not fall within their purview.