It feels like this community is getting a little too used to having WotC cave to their demands. The decision has already been made. It was a poor one, to be sure, but it feels silly to expect them to backpedal just because it inconvenienced a few hundred people.
They need to make an official response soon, not doing so is drawing this out and making it worse.
If the issue isn't addressed, people will lose interest and move on with their lives. Companies have every right to change how they operate, even if it kinda sucks for the rest of us.
We'll move on like always and find new things to get upset about in a few months. It's the forum circle of life.
I feel like this supposes the forum is the only place people are voicing concern with this issue, when it's also currently the bulk of the feedback channel on the official Discord and apparently being sent as support tickets as well to the point that Community Managers are having to clarify that doing it as a ticket is the slowest way to pass the info along.
Just at a basic level this reply is so full of apathy, it's perfectly natural to make your dissatisfaction known when a bad choice is made.
"A company can do whatever they want" is such a nothing response that treats it like an action in a vacuum. Sure they can but it's going to be responded to.
Maybe. But they're shaving off the edges of their customer base with each misstep. This move may not affect you, but I'm pretty fed up with it and canceling my subscription. it sounds like others are, too. So while it may not hurt their "core," cutting the edges off too many times leaves with you a small core of customers you hope to keep you afloat
I have bought full books on DNDBeyond as well as a la carte. I loved having options to buy what was right for me and the campaigns that I run. I loved Tasha's but really haven't liked any of the newer books enough to buy the entire thing. I would be ok for them to dump a la carte if they made better books more in line with what I want.
As a good example of this: I'm sure Spelljammer is great, but I have heard far more about the races it introduced than I have about anything to do with the actual setting or anything else in it.
The only other thing I've heard about it is that even for a DnD book it's extremely pricey.
I think if you couldn't buy the races separately, next to nobody would have them.
Just think of how much less money it would have brought in if that hadn't been possible before now, this is just hoping for whales and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.
As a good example of this: I'm sure Spelljammer is great, but I have heard far more about the races it introduced than I have about anything to do with the actual setting or anything else in it.
The only other thing I've heard about it is that even for a DnD book it's extremely pricey.
I think if you couldn't buy the races separately, next to nobody would have them.
Just think of how much less money it would have brought in if that hadn't been possible before now, this is just hoping for whales and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.
Spelljammer as a whole has been criticized for being a poor adventure missing core things like rules for ships, a lots of recommendations to use GotSM for ship rules.
That seems to be the reason it was such a great use for the piece meal option. I won't get into the races, but I am sure others will post about it.
Many were disappointed with Spelljammer, but many got lots of use out of the piece meal option. I own a physical copy solely because it was stupid cheap on sale last Christmas, I haven't opened the shrink wrap on it, and may not.
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CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
This is hilarious because after buying absolutely nothing from here or re-subbing since the OGL stuff, I returned just today because there were a couple a la carte things I wanted. I'm not paying $30 for the whole book just because I want one singular thing, so Wizards gets $0 from me instead and I'll just have to ask a friend.
As a good example of this: I'm sure Spelljammer is great, but I have heard far more about the races it introduced than I have about anything to do with the actual setting or anything else in it.
The only other thing I've heard about it is that even for a DnD book it's extremely pricey.
I think if you couldn't buy the races separately, next to nobody would have them.
Just think of how much less money it would have brought in if that hadn't been possible before now, this is just hoping for whales and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.
Literally just bought Plasmoid because a player wanted it, days before tis happened. Now they get zero dollars next time that happens.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DId you know? The DDB marketplace has REMOVED the option for purchasing one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters "a la carte". Now you ALWAYS have to buy the ENTIRE book instead.
Unhappy? UNSUBSCRIBE and Let them know your thoughts!
As a good example of this: I'm sure Spelljammer is great, but I have heard far more about the races it introduced than I have about anything to do with the actual setting or anything else in it.
The only other thing I've heard about it is that even for a DnD book it's extremely pricey.
I think if you couldn't buy the races separately, next to nobody would have them.
Just think of how much less money it would have brought in if that hadn't been possible before now, this is just hoping for whales and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.
Literally just bought Plasmoid because a player wanted it, days before tis happened. Now they get zero dollars next time that happens.
Same thing here for my friend and the Astral Elf. She was more than willing to buy it but it was too late, and now she has to buy the entire book just for ONE race. Except she didn't because I just homebrewed it in for her instead. Neither of us wanted to but one race isn't worth the pricetag of a whole book.
As a good example of this: I'm sure Spelljammer is great, but I have heard far more about the races it introduced than I have about anything to do with the actual setting or anything else in it.
The only other thing I've heard about it is that even for a DnD book it's extremely pricey.
I think if you couldn't buy the races separately, next to nobody would have them.
Just think of how much less money it would have brought in if that hadn't been possible before now, this is just hoping for whales and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.
Literally just bought Plasmoid because a player wanted it, days before tis happened. Now they get zero dollars next time that happens.
Same thing here for my friend and the Astral Elf. She was more than willing to buy it but it was too late, and now she has to buy the entire book just for ONE race. Except she didn't because I just homebrewed it in for her instead. Neither of us wanted to but one race isn't worth the pricetag of a whole book.
That's exactly what I'm saying, I've seen plenty of Plasmoids, a few Thri-Kreen, even an Astral Elf or two. Player creation options are fun, but not $70+ fun.
I think it would be better for them to learn this lesson now than it would be if they release a similar situation but without ala carte.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
Just the opposite for me, subscription canceled, and no new purchases, between what they did and how they are dealing with it, I can not support this place. Enjoy those new books.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
There's an easy answer to why people want this: A lot of people play but don't DM, and so don't need a good half of the full books. They just want new options for character creation such as races and subclasses, and it was nice to have the flexibility to just get what you needed for your sheet on Beyond.
Also would you are to share what those 'various reasons' are, exactly? If you can you'd be being more forthcoming than WoTC is being at least.
Nothing to add…just one more post to agree that removing the a carte system was such a bad and greedy move that as a result ended in my canceling any future dnd beyond purchasing plans … DndBeyond has been a great tool…has been
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
There's an easy answer to why people want this: A lot of people play but don't DM, and so don't need a good half of the full books. They just want new options for character creation such as races and subclasses, and it was nice to have the flexibility to just get what you needed for your sheet on Beyond.
Also would you are to share what those 'various reasons' are, exactly? If you can you'd be being more forthcoming than WoTC is being at least.
take monsters of the multiverse: it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents) 12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options) 8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond) to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
some of the various reasons: assume with wotc taking over dndbeyond that they can no longer afford to offer piece-meal without impacting revenue for future content (quality and quantity) they were spoiling their customer base with an option found no where else, which seems to of influenced people against purchasing complete works/books
customers cherry-picking contents via piece-meal seem to be the same people suggesting: *going elsewhere - even though price is the same and that they will be purchasing books, along with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh *finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents *recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it *cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing but either way ive gave my last opinion on the matter and ill leave it at that
take monsters of the multiverse: it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents)
Why would you assume any given person needs everything from Monsters of the Multiverse? Especially given there is already the Monster Manual?
And with the new PHB, again you are comparing a core book with setting books, where any given player and even most DM's will not need the majority of the book at all, with a Player's Handbook, which is pretty much 100% useful to both players and DM's.
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents) 12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options) 8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond) to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
And how many of those will a player actually need? You can only play one race and one sub-class per character (even if you multi-class you can't do more than an absolute maximum of 6 sub-classes), so if your group has a physical copy of the book, but you'd like to use D&D Beyond on a tablet rather than pen and paper, suddenly you have to buy a whole extra copy of the book rather than just spending $4 for the two things you need.
It's a massive barrier to entry for new players using D&D Beyond just to manage their first character sheet, and a burden to anyone who doesn't want or need the entire book but might gain use out of a handful of sub-classes and/or races.
Not everyone has a DM willing to pay for digital copies of all of their physical books, plus a subscription, just so everyone else in the group can use D&D Beyond for free. Many groups may not even use D&D Beyond consistently; some players may prefer to use devices, while others use pen and paper, and that is – and should be – perfectly fine. Piecemeal purchasing supported that, forcing everyone to buy an entire book or nothing at all does not.
*finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents
If a business does something that isn't customer-friendly, they lose any right to complain about customers doing something that isn't business-friendly. If D&D Beyond tells us to pay more money or **** off, they don't get to complain if we choose to **** off.
*recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it
People recreating stuff via homebrew will only prove the need to allow them to buy it piecemeal, because every sub-class recreated in homebrew is a potential sale lost. Nobody wants to spend a load of their time trying to recreate something in homebrew, as even simple homebrew can take a while to make, and needs to be tested and tweaked. But they'll do it if they're given no other choice (except to not use D&D Beyond at all).
This is the same lesson the music industry had to learn about piracy; when people can buy what they want, how they want, they will, because it's more convenient than digging around on pirate websites for a half-decent copy from a source that might be trustworthy enough to risk it.
However the difference here is that D&D Beyond already had the correct payment model, and they're throwing it away like idiots. And if they try to clamp down on recreation in homebrew they're going to be crippling yet another feature that kept people on the site.
Funnily enough, making a service progressively worse is not going to buy customer loyalty.
*cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
Do you not understand how subscriptions work? They're not a single up-front payment and you're a subscriber for life – cancelling the subscription saves the customer money (all future payments) and costs D&D Beyond the same amount of future revenue.
If people no longer have any reason to trust a company, why should keep giving it money? I'll answer that for; they shouldn't.
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing
If you think being robbed of our preferred means of buying content is "essentially nothing" then you haven't been paying attention at all. When the price goes from $4 to $30+, D&D Beyond is going to find a lot of people are not willing to pay 8 times the price they used to.
And it's such a blatant misunderstanding of what D&D is or how it's played. In groups that play/played without digital tools, it's not uncommon for the group as a whole to only own one copy of most books, including the Player's Handbook (though the more keen players might buy their own). Often it's just the DM who buys most of the books, and lends them to people so they can look at the options and make their characters.
While D&D Beyond is capable of simulating that with DM's purchasing full books and sharing them via a subscription and a campaign, this is a) more costly long term than physical (as it requires an ongoing subscription) and b) is forcing a DM to pay twice for everything if they already have physical copies of everything. But it's also incompatible with other forms of ownership that piecemeal purchases opened up. With piecemeal purchasing it's possible for players to buy what they need for themselves, or buy a race pack for everyone in the group to use from a book that the DM doesn't necessarily want to buy in its entirety, such as Monsters of the Multiverse, or a campaign setting they don't intend to use (like Spelljammer) and so-on. It enabled people to buy more content, not less.
I've no idea why you'd defend such a customer hostile move, or seek to victim blame into the bargain, or why you think it's appropriate to reply to me via private messages where I won't respond. I'm not afraid to make my arguments in the open where they belong.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
*cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
Do you not understand how subscriptions work? They're not a single up-front payment and you're a subscriber for life – cancelling the subscription saves the customer money (all future payments) and costs D&D Beyond the same amount of future revenue.
currently, one doesn't need a subscription to keep accessing the books one has already purchased.
that "currently" is the reason i've halted new spending. how are we supposed to be confident in their respect for customers when they aren't communicating respect for customers through their actions? we want to support a good product, sure. i really like new content! but, the game is in the playing, not the purchasing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
currently, one doesn't need a subscription to keep accessing the books one has already purchased.
that "currently" is the reason i've halted new spending. how are we supposed to be confident in their respect for customers when they aren't communicating respect for customers through their actions? we want to support a good product, sure. i really like new content! but, the game is in the playing, not the purchasing.
Sure, but at least one person in a group needs a subscription for content sharing to work. That's the only reason I haven't already cancelled mine, as I don't give a shit about subscriber perks, and while I have a lot of characters I've already exported most of them as PDFs already.
But we are very much looking at alternative platforms, and if there aren't any we can use, we'll look at leaving D&D entirely; while switching will take work, thanks to the OGL scandal there is no shortage of options to switch to that are highly compatible with 5th edition, so porting characters and homebrew shouldn't be that difficult, it's just a case of finding one that has a decent digital toolset to use. I expect we'll be seeing more of those cropping up soon too.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
There's an easy answer to why people want this: A lot of people play but don't DM, and so don't need a good half of the full books. They just want new options for character creation such as races and subclasses, and it was nice to have the flexibility to just get what you needed for your sheet on Beyond.
Also would you are to share what those 'various reasons' are, exactly? If you can you'd be being more forthcoming than WoTC is being at least.
take monsters of the multiverse: it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents) 12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options) 8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond) to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
some of the various reasons: assume with wotc taking over dndbeyond that they can no longer afford to offer piece-meal without impacting revenue for future content (quality and quantity) they were spoiling their customer base with an option found no where else, which seems to of influenced people against purchasing complete works/books
customers cherry-picking contents via piece-meal seem to be the same people suggesting: *going elsewhere - even though price is the same and that they will be purchasing books, along with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh *finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents *recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it *cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing but either way ive gave my last opinion on the matter and ill leave it at that
Yeah, you do not understand how the site worked before the marketplace changed, or how it works now.
Any piece meal purchases made were deducted from the price of the books, so at some point you could buy the book cheaper than the next few purchases.
Inputting directly from physical books via homebrew was and is(though for how long is anyone's guess) encouraged by DDB if you don't want to buy a digital copy.
"free" copies online are pirated and there are many reasons for piracy, a leading cause is service issues from the IP holder.
Going somewhere else with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh is not needed as you can use the site for free just limited characters and no sharing though as long as anyone in the campaign has a master sub then sharing can still work.
Even annual subscriptions when canceled still run till the renewal date as WotC doesn't give refunds they just don't renew, so there is no loss there nothing changes until then.
As to "spoiling their customers" LOL the only thing DDB does better than the other options is the character creator tool, and if you have to homebrew everything there are plenty of other options that can be self hosted so you are not tied to the whims of DDB being up when you want to use your characters.
With all of the bugs and broken things like say the search feature, a book shelf with owned content on it, and the fact that other than the appearance the market place is a significant down grade, you can't tell if you own a book until it is in your cart, and the piecemeal credits made before the change are only available if you go through customer service which is constantly overwhelmed on a normal day let alone with a book rolling out and all of this craziness over the marketplace changes it is no knee jerk reaction, is is people getting tired of nothing being fixed, and WotC constantly taking things away, yet not fixing any of the broken parts of the site.
There are other things, but voicing them is verboten here.
TLDR, DDB has gone down hill since WotC purchased it, and they seem to be intent on sacrificing it to build the wall around the upcoming 3d vvt.
I feel like this supposes the forum is the only place people are voicing concern with this issue, when it's also currently the bulk of the feedback channel on the official Discord and apparently being sent as support tickets as well to the point that Community Managers are having to clarify that doing it as a ticket is the slowest way to pass the info along.
Just at a basic level this reply is so full of apathy, it's perfectly natural to make your dissatisfaction known when a bad choice is made.
"A company can do whatever they want" is such a nothing response that treats it like an action in a vacuum. Sure they can but it's going to be responded to.
Just a friendly reminder... You're NOT supposed to shit on your customers. Huge **** up all around on this one
Maybe. But they're shaving off the edges of their customer base with each misstep. This move may not affect you, but I'm pretty fed up with it and canceling my subscription. it sounds like others are, too. So while it may not hurt their "core," cutting the edges off too many times leaves with you a small core of customers you hope to keep you afloat
I have bought full books on DNDBeyond as well as a la carte. I loved having options to buy what was right for me and the campaigns that I run. I loved Tasha's but really haven't liked any of the newer books enough to buy the entire thing. I would be ok for them to dump a la carte if they made better books more in line with what I want.
As a good example of this: I'm sure Spelljammer is great, but I have heard far more about the races it introduced than I have about anything to do with the actual setting or anything else in it.
The only other thing I've heard about it is that even for a DnD book it's extremely pricey.
I think if you couldn't buy the races separately, next to nobody would have them.
Just think of how much less money it would have brought in if that hadn't been possible before now, this is just hoping for whales and shooting yourself in the foot in the process.
Spelljammer as a whole has been criticized for being a poor adventure missing core things like rules for ships, a lots of recommendations to use GotSM for ship rules.
That seems to be the reason it was such a great use for the piece meal option. I won't get into the races, but I am sure others will post about it.
Many were disappointed with Spelljammer, but many got lots of use out of the piece meal option. I own a physical copy solely because it was stupid cheap on sale last Christmas, I haven't opened the shrink wrap on it, and may not.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
This is hilarious because after buying absolutely nothing from here or re-subbing since the OGL stuff, I returned just today because there were a couple a la carte things I wanted. I'm not paying $30 for the whole book just because I want one singular thing, so Wizards gets $0 from me instead and I'll just have to ask a friend.
Good job, guys!
Literally just bought Plasmoid because a player wanted it, days before tis happened.
Now they get zero dollars next time that happens.
DId you know?
The DDB marketplace has REMOVED the option for purchasing one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters "a la carte".
Now you ALWAYS have to buy the ENTIRE book instead.
Unhappy? UNSUBSCRIBE and
Let them know your thoughts!
Same thing here for my friend and the Astral Elf. She was more than willing to buy it but it was too late, and now she has to buy the entire book just for ONE race.
Except she didn't because I just homebrewed it in for her instead. Neither of us wanted to but one race isn't worth the pricetag of a whole book.
That's exactly what I'm saying, I've seen plenty of Plasmoids, a few Thri-Kreen, even an Astral Elf or two. Player creation options are fun, but not $70+ fun.
I think it would be better for them to learn this lesson now than it would be if they release a similar situation but without ala carte.
I will be continuing my subscription and the purchase of full books once the new PHB, DMG and MM get released. Since I see the piece-meal purchases as nothing more then pay in installments (no real discount) that can simply be achieved by stockpiling my change for a little while (simple saving/budgeting) and getting the full book. Also think piece-meal purchases were a bad business model for various reasons.
Now going to sit back and wait for those new books.
Just the opposite for me, subscription canceled, and no new purchases, between what they did and how they are dealing with it, I can not support this place. Enjoy those new books.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
There's an easy answer to why people want this: A lot of people play but don't DM, and so don't need a good half of the full books. They just want new options for character creation such as races and subclasses, and it was nice to have the flexibility to just get what you needed for your sheet on Beyond.
Also would you are to share what those 'various reasons' are, exactly? If you can you'd be being more forthcoming than WoTC is being at least.
Nothing to add…just one more post to agree that removing the a carte system was such a bad and greedy move that as a result ended in my canceling any future dnd beyond purchasing plans … DndBeyond has been a great tool…has been
take monsters of the multiverse:
it has 30 species, had $2 for a single species piece-meal, for that same investment you can get the digital and physical copy (unsure about shipping).
the new PHB alone should have: (a potential one stop shop based of implied contents)
12-13 classes (depending on articifer) and each of those have 4 subclasses based of one of the clips posted earlier (thats 48+ options)
8+ species (taking the monsters of the multiverse approach, could be anywhere upto 30 and beyond)
to me thats a book well worth the money - especially for players new to dnd
some of the various reasons:
assume with wotc taking over dndbeyond that they can no longer afford to offer piece-meal without impacting revenue for future content (quality and quantity)
they were spoiling their customer base with an option found no where else, which seems to of influenced people against purchasing complete works/books
customers cherry-picking contents via piece-meal seem to be the same people suggesting:
*going elsewhere - even though price is the same and that they will be purchasing books, along with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh
*finding a free copy online - which isnt very business friendly, especially for the people who created the contents
*recreate it via homebrew - they want it but still wont purchase..... atleast make some changes to it
*cancelling subscriptions - if it doesnt come with a refund, your just throwing away your money spent on the subscription....
alot of this thread is just knee-jerk reactions and escalations towards mob mentality over essentially nothing
but either way ive gave my last opinion on the matter and ill leave it at that
Why would you assume any given person needs everything from Monsters of the Multiverse? Especially given there is already the Monster Manual?
And with the new PHB, again you are comparing a core book with setting books, where any given player and even most DM's will not need the majority of the book at all, with a Player's Handbook, which is pretty much 100% useful to both players and DM's.
These are not equivalent.
And how many of those will a player actually need? You can only play one race and one sub-class per character (even if you multi-class you can't do more than an absolute maximum of 6 sub-classes), so if your group has a physical copy of the book, but you'd like to use D&D Beyond on a tablet rather than pen and paper, suddenly you have to buy a whole extra copy of the book rather than just spending $4 for the two things you need.
It's a massive barrier to entry for new players using D&D Beyond just to manage their first character sheet, and a burden to anyone who doesn't want or need the entire book but might gain use out of a handful of sub-classes and/or races.
Not everyone has a DM willing to pay for digital copies of all of their physical books, plus a subscription, just so everyone else in the group can use D&D Beyond for free. Many groups may not even use D&D Beyond consistently; some players may prefer to use devices, while others use pen and paper, and that is – and should be – perfectly fine. Piecemeal purchasing supported that, forcing everyone to buy an entire book or nothing at all does not.
If a business does something that isn't customer-friendly, they lose any right to complain about customers doing something that isn't business-friendly. If D&D Beyond tells us to pay more money or **** off, they don't get to complain if we choose to **** off.
People recreating stuff via homebrew will only prove the need to allow them to buy it piecemeal, because every sub-class recreated in homebrew is a potential sale lost. Nobody wants to spend a load of their time trying to recreate something in homebrew, as even simple homebrew can take a while to make, and needs to be tested and tweaked. But they'll do it if they're given no other choice (except to not use D&D Beyond at all).
This is the same lesson the music industry had to learn about piracy; when people can buy what they want, how they want, they will, because it's more convenient than digging around on pirate websites for a half-decent copy from a source that might be trustworthy enough to risk it.
However the difference here is that D&D Beyond already had the correct payment model, and they're throwing it away like idiots. And if they try to clamp down on recreation in homebrew they're going to be crippling yet another feature that kept people on the site.
Funnily enough, making a service progressively worse is not going to buy customer loyalty.
Do you not understand how subscriptions work? They're not a single up-front payment and you're a subscriber for life – cancelling the subscription saves the customer money (all future payments) and costs D&D Beyond the same amount of future revenue.
If people no longer have any reason to trust a company, why should keep giving it money? I'll answer that for; they shouldn't.
If you think being robbed of our preferred means of buying content is "essentially nothing" then you haven't been paying attention at all. When the price goes from $4 to $30+, D&D Beyond is going to find a lot of people are not willing to pay 8 times the price they used to.
And it's such a blatant misunderstanding of what D&D is or how it's played. In groups that play/played without digital tools, it's not uncommon for the group as a whole to only own one copy of most books, including the Player's Handbook (though the more keen players might buy their own). Often it's just the DM who buys most of the books, and lends them to people so they can look at the options and make their characters.
While D&D Beyond is capable of simulating that with DM's purchasing full books and sharing them via a subscription and a campaign, this is a) more costly long term than physical (as it requires an ongoing subscription) and b) is forcing a DM to pay twice for everything if they already have physical copies of everything. But it's also incompatible with other forms of ownership that piecemeal purchases opened up. With piecemeal purchasing it's possible for players to buy what they need for themselves, or buy a race pack for everyone in the group to use from a book that the DM doesn't necessarily want to buy in its entirety, such as Monsters of the Multiverse, or a campaign setting they don't intend to use (like Spelljammer) and so-on. It enabled people to buy more content, not less.
I've no idea why you'd defend such a customer hostile move, or seek to victim blame into the bargain, or why you think it's appropriate to reply to me via private messages where I won't respond. I'm not afraid to make my arguments in the open where they belong.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
currently, one doesn't need a subscription to keep accessing the books one has already purchased.
that "currently" is the reason i've halted new spending. how are we supposed to be confident in their respect for customers when they aren't communicating respect for customers through their actions? we want to support a good product, sure. i really like new content! but, the game is in the playing, not the purchasing.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Sure, but at least one person in a group needs a subscription for content sharing to work. That's the only reason I haven't already cancelled mine, as I don't give a shit about subscriber perks, and while I have a lot of characters I've already exported most of them as PDFs already.
But we are very much looking at alternative platforms, and if there aren't any we can use, we'll look at leaving D&D entirely; while switching will take work, thanks to the OGL scandal there is no shortage of options to switch to that are highly compatible with 5th edition, so porting characters and homebrew shouldn't be that difficult, it's just a case of finding one that has a decent digital toolset to use. I expect we'll be seeing more of those cropping up soon too.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
Yeah, you do not understand how the site worked before the marketplace changed, or how it works now.
Any piece meal purchases made were deducted from the price of the books, so at some point you could buy the book cheaper than the next few purchases.
Inputting directly from physical books via homebrew was and is(though for how long is anyone's guess) encouraged by DDB if you don't want to buy a digital copy.
"free" copies online are pirated and there are many reasons for piracy, a leading cause is service issues from the IP holder.
Going somewhere else with less functionality and potentially throwing away their currently purchased content to start fresh is not needed as you can use the site for free just limited characters and no sharing though as long as anyone in the campaign has a master sub then sharing can still work.
Even annual subscriptions when canceled still run till the renewal date as WotC doesn't give refunds they just don't renew, so there is no loss there nothing changes until then.
As to "spoiling their customers" LOL the only thing DDB does better than the other options is the character creator tool, and if you have to homebrew everything there are plenty of other options that can be self hosted so you are not tied to the whims of DDB being up when you want to use your characters.
With all of the bugs and broken things like say the search feature, a book shelf with owned content on it, and the fact that other than the appearance the market place is a significant down grade, you can't tell if you own a book until it is in your cart, and the piecemeal credits made before the change are only available if you go through customer service which is constantly overwhelmed on a normal day let alone with a book rolling out and all of this craziness over the marketplace changes it is no knee jerk reaction, is is people getting tired of nothing being fixed, and WotC constantly taking things away, yet not fixing any of the broken parts of the site.
There are other things, but voicing them is verboten here.
TLDR, DDB has gone down hill since WotC purchased it, and they seem to be intent on sacrificing it to build the wall around the upcoming 3d vvt.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.