Yeah, it's by design. DDB is pretty clearly set up to replicate the usual table experience, where only one person has the core books, maybe with an extra copy of the PH running around. This is why piecemeal buying likely isn't that big a deal to WotC -- the game's culture doesn't encourage building characters with stuff only you own, so it mostly sells only to people who build characters outside of games, and groups that have the print books and don't want to buy them digitally as well. (And various other relatively small populations.)
To me, that doesn't even seem like a good business model. It seems like they would want to find ways sell products to both DM's and players, espeically since, at least at indiviual tables, the players outnumber the DM.
It's the business model they had. When you're working with paper books, there's nothing you can do to stop people passing them around, and that's the competition when you try to introduce online tools. Convenience is not going to win out over "now everybody has to buy the books".
If they'd gone with keeping piecemeal buying, but removed content sharing, the yelling would be orders of magnitude worse, and justifiably so. That would collapse the DDB business model. The groups I'm in, who are scattered across multiple time zones, would be migrated to google docs within weeks. It'd be annoying AF, but we'd do it. Within a few months, there'd be unofficial tooling being circulated. You'd have to fill in the data yourself, but somebody would have a good enough character sheet built in google sheets or something. I think such things already exist, but they don't see much use because they're way less convenient.
Despite what you see some people claiming, WotC do actually understand how people play this game.
Yeah, it's by design. DDB is pretty clearly set up to replicate the usual table experience, where only one person has the core books, maybe with an extra copy of the PH running around. This is why piecemeal buying likely isn't that big a deal to WotC -- the game's culture doesn't encourage building characters with stuff only you own, so it mostly sells only to people who build characters outside of games, and groups that have the print books and don't want to buy them digitally as well. (And various other relatively small populations.)
To me, that doesn't even seem like a good business model. It seems like they would want to find ways sell products to both DM's and players, espeically since, at least at indiviual tables, the players outnumber the DM.
It's the business model they had. When you're working with paper books, there's nothing you can do to stop people passing them around, and that's the competition when you try to introduce online tools. Convenience is not going to win out over "now everybody has to buy the books".
If they'd gone with keeping piecemeal buying, but removed content sharing, the yelling would be orders of magnitude worse, and justifiably so. That would collapse the DDB business model. The groups I'm in, who are scattered across multiple time zones, would be migrated to google docs within weeks. It'd be annoying AF, but we'd do it. Within a few months, there'd be unofficial tooling being circulated. You'd have to fill in the data yourself, but somebody would have a good enough character sheet built in google sheets or something. I think such things already exist, but they don't see much use because they're way less convenient.
Despite what you see some people claiming, WotC do actually understand how people play this game.
Those tools have been around far longer than DDB. DDB just made it a lot easier, and piece meal made it an easy choice to switch, that is not to say DDB doesn't have issues, several of which go unaddressed going on 8 years and wotc's first choice was addressing (and screwing up) the store, yet still no dark mode (though they claim accessibility is important unless it is visual issues that dark mode would solve), the utter failure that the search function is, an owned content page and the plethora of other places the time and money could have been spent that would have filled the forum with thanks and accolades.
Instead they just spit on their users and are unhappy when this dis was not well received. No wotc does not understand their players at all.
the Kellogs cereal CEO had a bad interview that led to a boycott. the metgala embraced a tone-deaf expression of inequity that led to sharp criticism and wide-ranging ad revenue disruption. the suits know about this stuff even if you guys don't follow it. simple solution or not, they aren't going to release a statement now without a good long think first. and anyway it's important to note who a potential statement would be directed at: fans, a vocal minority. so if they haven't made a statement by this friday (the classic day to dump unflattering news), then it's either because that minority is of low value (already own the product, not the target of ads) or the statement would put at risk the expected continued influx of new users (wouldn't look good in gotcha headlines) or both.
i'm saying we might not get to know why this happened, but it is not coming across as being on the low-brain-use side of hanlon's.
They have so many simple avenues for communication at this point that incompetency on that level stretches disbelief a bit.
What on earth gave you the impression Wizards was competent at PR? They've had multiple debacles over the years. The reality is that their management of this situation is incompetent regardless of their motivation, so it doesn't tell you anything more than that they're bad at PR.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.
The fact it’s been two weeks and the only person who has said anything is one community manager makes this whole situation a lot worse. The longer they wait the less likely we are to continue supporting them even if they make this right.
The longer they take to say this wasn't motivated by greed, the more motivated by greed it looks.
Ok, step back a moment. Perspective.
This is a for profit company. This is not a charity. D&D is a luxury product, not a necessity. They do not owe any of us anything, nor are any of us going to starve or go without water or shelter if their products are not available at the prices we prefer.
There is no moral high ground here on our parts.
The main risk at pricing too high or too inconveniently is theirs, not ours. It is their bottom line at risk, not ours. It is they who risk going without food or shelter if their products fail, not us. Note that does not make any of us charities, either! None of us have any obligation to purchase, either.
Personally, I think this is a horrid business decision on their part, but 'greed' is not a term that applies to such situations in any conventional sense.
Purposely making a product worse in order to squeeze more money out of it's customers is objectively greedy, acting like the only form of greed is the kind related to resources is so blatantly disingenuous it's unreal.
Acting like they're going to fail and go hungry tomorrow because we didn't all buy overpriced books is also incredibly disingenuous.
Overall it just feels like you're playing Devil's Advocate for people who don't deserve it.
They have so many simple avenues for communication at this point that incompetency on that level stretches disbelief a bit.
What on earth gave you the impression Wizards was competent at PR? They've had multiple debacles over the years. The reality is that their management of this situation is incompetent regardless of their motivation, so it doesn't tell you anything more than that they're bad at PR.
This. Let us not forget, this is a company that failed to respond to the biggest crisis in recent D&D’s history - the OGL leak - for, what, ten days? That is not entirely PR’s fault - legal and management would have to be part of the conversation… but, guess what? If you are having a problem big enough that the Washington Post reports on the story, you work round the clock to get your message out as quickly as possible… and you try to make a message that doesn’t seem dismissive of your community’s concerns.
As far as I can tell, the only competent community-facing person Wizards has on the D&D side of things is LaTiaJacquise - they at least listen, respond, and clearly use language players understand (no easy feat - we are the community that threw a fit when folks forgot the meaning of the word “draft). But the rest of their team? Consistently (and nearly universally) making problems far worse than they are through slow, often tone-deaf responses.
So the former WoTC president wanted to bring micro-transactions to the D&DB. This makes no sense. This was a fantastic use of micro-transactions on the site; where players could beef up their characters as they test the waters to see if they wanted to dive deeper into that content or into D&D in general. Now we have to lay out 40 or 50 bucks if we want to try a new feat. I think this is a money loser for WoTC because most of the people who shopped using these micro-transactions will not cross the line and purchase the books.
And can I add that the new Marketplace is poorly designed? Why are the images so big? Why is everything divided up in so many different ways? I got used to the old Marketplace but I cringe when I go there now.
Let's just say this update robbed us of the only good micro-transactions that WoTC could offer and really makes you work to find what you want to buy from WoTC.
Hey, WoTC do you ever talk to your customers? Do you even have a clue of who we are?
Purposely making a product worse in order to squeeze more money out of it's customers is objectively greedy, acting like the only form of greed is the kind related to resources is so blatantly disingenuous it's unreal.
Acting like they're going to fail and go hungry tomorrow because we didn't all buy overpriced books is also incredibly disingenuous.
Overall it just feels like you're playing Devil's Advocate for people who don't deserve it.
Purposely making a luxury product worse seems like a horrible plan for getting more money from anyone.
And you are really twisting my words when you read "tomorrow" in or read that as any obligation on our part to buy at any given price. In fact I clearly pointed out, we have no such obligation. We do not owe them, either.
I am not rushing out to buy anything from them. I am not advocating anyone buy anything from them. However rhetoric like "They owe us" is not very helpful. They simply do not.
Yeah, it's by design. DDB is pretty clearly set up to replicate the usual table experience, where only one person has the core books, maybe with an extra copy of the PH running around. This is why piecemeal buying likely isn't that big a deal to WotC -- the game's culture doesn't encourage building characters with stuff only you own, so it mostly sells only to people who build characters outside of games, and groups that have the print books and don't want to buy them digitally as well. (And various other relatively small populations.)
To me, that doesn't even seem like a good business model. It seems like they would want to find ways sell products to both DM's and players, espeically since, at least at indiviual tables, the players outnumber the DM.
It's the business model they had. When you're working with paper books, there's nothing you can do to stop people passing them around, and that's the competition when you try to introduce online tools. Convenience is not going to win out over "now everybody has to buy the books".
If they'd gone with keeping piecemeal buying, but removed content sharing, the yelling would be orders of magnitude worse, and justifiably so. That would collapse the DDB business model. The groups I'm in, who are scattered across multiple time zones, would be migrated to google docs within weeks. It'd be annoying AF, but we'd do it. Within a few months, there'd be unofficial tooling being circulated. You'd have to fill in the data yourself, but somebody would have a good enough character sheet built in google sheets or something. I think such things already exist, but they don't see much use because they're way less convenient.
Despite what you see some people claiming, WotC do actually understand how people play this game.
Those tools have been around far longer than DDB. DDB just made it a lot easier, and piece meal made it an easy choice to switch, that is not to say DDB doesn't have issues, several of which go unaddressed going on 8 years and wotc's first choice was addressing (and screwing up) the store, yet still no dark mode (though they claim accessibility is important unless it is visual issues that dark mode would solve), the utter failure that the search function is, an owned content page and the plethora of other places the time and money could have been spent that would have filled the forum with thanks and accolades.
Instead they just spit on their users and are unhappy when this dis was not well received. No wotc does not understand their players at all.
The mainly just selling to DM the business model was dictated by the technology of physical books and paper charcter sheets filled out with pencil. That's old.
With digital a better business model is possible.
Players want to buy things too, at least I do. The adventure books are usually kind of inapproperate purchases for players, but it occassional made sense, as a player to buy something specific a la carte, but mainly it was just fun to buy and have/have access to bundles of indivudual items from within books (spells, races, subclasses, feats, backgrounds, magic items, etc . .. also Monsters in order to get beasts that a druid could wildshape into), books that I didn't need or want to own the whole thing. I think people enjoy spending money on their hobbies (assuming there is something to purchase that suits their needs at a price that isn't unreasonable); players are D&D hobbyest too. It seems like they would want to offer products that would be geared towards players in order to make players, into customers. Offering indivdual purchases seemed like a good way to do that. And I'm pretty sure that a la carte buyers were paying something of a premium price for what they got for the luxury of being able to pick and choose what they wanted to buy.
Subscritions, unfortuntatlly for the consumer, are the way of the present and very likely the way of the future too, perhaps more and more. I don't foresee them getting rid of the subscrition model, or the premium teir that allows content sharing. I think they rather like that stream of income.
Subscritions, unfortuntatlly for the consumer, are the way of the present and very likely the way of the future too, perhaps more and more. I don't foresee them gettiing rid of the subscrition model, or the premium teir that allows content sharing. I think they rather like that stream of income.
That's what is so nonsensical about the change, they already have a subscription model in place. It may not be perfect, they could absolutely change what the benefits are, do more to entice people onto the basic subscription, add more value to the master tier so more people choose it, maybe add a third tier in somewhere etc. etc., but it's there, and this change does nothing for ongoing payments.
Because as you say, digital gives so much more scope for people to spend differently, and it's the players who traditionally wouldn't buy many books that they need to be looking at. Especially since players are the DMs of tomorrow (I never wanted to DM when I started, now I love it) and the easier you can make it to start owning content, the better, as barriers to entry can only turn people away.
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.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.
The fact it’s been two weeks and the only person who has said anything is one community manager makes this whole situation a lot worse. The longer they wait the less likely we are to continue supporting them even if they make this right.
The longer they take to say this wasn't motivated by greed, the more motivated by greed it looks.
Ok, step back a moment. Perspective.
This is a for profit company. This is not a charity. D&D is a luxury product, not a necessity. They do not owe any of us anything, nor are any of us going to starve or go without water or shelter if their products are not available at the prices we prefer.
There is no moral high ground here on our parts.
The main risk at pricing too high or too inconveniently is theirs, not ours. It is their bottom line at risk, not ours. It is they who risk going without food or shelter if their products fail, not us. Note that does not make any of us charities, either! None of us have any obligation to purchase, either.
Personally, I think this is a horrid business decision on their part, but 'greed' is not a term that applies to such situations in any conventional sense.
This type of forum post only exists in America, Not all Americans' thankfully, and less and less these days. But wow.
Imagine thinking corporate head offices need people sticking up for them. And the talking down to consumers exercising the only power they have. smh.
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!
This type of forum post only exists in America, Not all Americans' thankfully, and less and less these days. But wow.
Imagine thinking corporate head offices need people sticking up for them. And the talking down to consumers exercising the only power they have. smh.
False. As a consumer, your job is to vote with your wallet. That’s how capitalism works.
Derailing a feedback thread because you (not you specifically) wanna cry about capitalism and corporate greed is not exercising any form of power. All you’re doing is contaminating a perfectly good feedback thread.
WotC doesn’t need to be told how “greedy” it is. It’s a for-profit corporation, of course it’s gonna want your money.
There is no David vs. Goliath struggle going on here — just a poor business decision.
Nooo, It's called word of mouth, which carries far further than your individual dollar. It makes other consumers aware of a shitty/greedy/exploitative deal. And it is killing shareholders the world over right now.
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!
Nooo, It's called word of mouth, which carries far further than your individual dollar. It makes other consumers aware of a shitty/greedy/exploitative deal. And it is killing shareholders the world over right now.
Hell if they said "no more individual item/feat/class option purchases, only the full sections" I'd have been okay with it. I mean, I kind of do that anyway. "You can no longer individually buy the Sword of Slaying Great Dragons, but you can still buy just the magic item bundle from The Book of Cool Dragon Stuff."
Agree that this would have been a pretty good middle ground, if only they'd communicated and weighed up the options first.
The fact it’s been two weeks and the only person who has said anything is one community manager makes this whole situation a lot worse. The longer they wait the less likely we are to continue supporting them even if they make this right.
The longer they take to say this wasn't motivated by greed, the more motivated by greed it looks.
Ok, step back a moment. Perspective.
This is a for profit company. This is not a charity. D&D is a luxury product, not a necessity. They do not owe any of us anything, nor are any of us going to starve or go without water or shelter if their products are not available at the prices we prefer.
There is no moral high ground here on our parts.
The main risk at pricing too high or too inconveniently is theirs, not ours. It is their bottom line at risk, not ours. It is they who risk going without food or shelter if their products fail, not us. Note that does not make any of us charities, either! None of us have any obligation to purchase, either.
Personally, I think this is a horrid business decision on their part, but 'greed' is not a term that applies to such situations in any conventional sense.
This type of forum post only exists in America, Not all Americans' thankfully, and less and less these days. But wow.
Imagine thinking corporate head offices need people sticking up for them. And the talking down to consumers exercising the only power they have. smh.
I am not an American. I am a Canadian and actually currently living in Germany, not that any of that should be relevant to any of this.
Too many people today think they have more rights than they actually have. Note, this includes those 'corporate head office' people, too. Unrealistic and outright false expectations are everywhere.
You also might want to re-read the parts of my post I have bolded. Again, I think this is an incredibly stupid business decision on their part. I do not like that they have done this and think it will only cost them, not just in the short term or long term but in both. And frankly, I think someone in head office likely got that same "THEY OWE US!" mentality and decided a la carte was somehow we consumers 'getting away with something.' This decision smells far more ideological than logical.
But unfortunately, the right to be geniuses comes with the right to be idiots. And there is far more likelihood of the latter than the former, including (and possibly especially) in head offices.
I wouldn't have minded that as much,if I had some warning that al-carte purchases were going to be discontinued.Then I would been able to buy all the classes I wanted to experiment with in the future. But it's been dead silent on all counts from official d&d staff,apart from one community manager since this was dumped on us.
Well if they warned us about ALC purchases going away, we would have made them all really quickly and they wouldn't have been able to take advantage of the situation. What they didn't count on is many people responding with simply doing without.
I wouldn't have minded that as much,if I had some warning that al-carte purchases were going to be discontinued.Then I would been able to buy all the classes I wanted to experiment with in the future. But it's been dead silent on all counts from official d&d staff,apart from one community manager since this was dumped on us.
I don't recall them warning that they were going to change the store at all. I'm pretty sure they were just assuming most people wouldn't care... which was obviously a bad assumption.
For me, and this might be overstating things, but the removal of A la Carte starts to break what this site does best.
In my opinion, this site has two major things that separates it from the competitors. The first is how good the character sheets are in terms of usability, tracking, and simplifying things in an understatedly complex hobby. The second, is access to officially licensed D&D content and being able to not only purchase it on the site but then have it interact seamlessly with the character sheets that work so well. There are other things like the ability to homebrew and have it interact with the wonderful character sheets. But, I do believe that the previous two are the core of what make this site great and stand above the rest of the competition.
Removing a la carte starts to break that connection. It makes it a lot more expensive and a lot less attainable to interact and purchase the new content that they're producing which in turn makes the character sheets worse. While the character sheets physically have not been changed, their ease of use has. If I, or a player of mine, wants to use a new spell from one of the new books, try a new subclass, try a new race, I'm not able offer that option to unless one of us has enough money to purchase it. Which, by removing a la carte, significantly increases the cost since you have to by the entire book now. This makes it a lot less likely for people to interact with the new books and in turn begs the question, "Well, if the character sheets aren't able to reflect what I want to do, why don't I just use a different site that might have the same problem, but offers a lot more in other features that dndbeyond doesn't?"
To me, by removing a la carte they really hurt what makes this site great by putting it behind a big paywall. I hope that they bring a version of it back that is more financially viable if that really is the problem. But, if not, I don't know what the point of using this site anymore when there are other sites that do vtts better, that allow easier homebrew capabilities, or are just easier for new players to try and play without a major paywall limiting their options.
I love this hobby, and it's just so disappointing that a place that was a breeding ground for that interest and growth and so accessible to new players is starting to become a place that is just for the rich who can afford to stick around.
Nooo, It's called word of mouth, which carries far further than your individual dollar. It makes other consumers aware of a shitty/greedy/exploitative deal. And it is killing shareholders the world over right now.
Both. Both have power in different ways.
You're right. But apologists like to pretend you only have the one, because they really want you to shut up and not influence others.
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!
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
It's the business model they had. When you're working with paper books, there's nothing you can do to stop people passing them around, and that's the competition when you try to introduce online tools. Convenience is not going to win out over "now everybody has to buy the books".
If they'd gone with keeping piecemeal buying, but removed content sharing, the yelling would be orders of magnitude worse, and justifiably so. That would collapse the DDB business model. The groups I'm in, who are scattered across multiple time zones, would be migrated to google docs within weeks. It'd be annoying AF, but we'd do it. Within a few months, there'd be unofficial tooling being circulated. You'd have to fill in the data yourself, but somebody would have a good enough character sheet built in google sheets or something. I think such things already exist, but they don't see much use because they're way less convenient.
Despite what you see some people claiming, WotC do actually understand how people play this game.
Those tools have been around far longer than DDB. DDB just made it a lot easier, and piece meal made it an easy choice to switch, that is not to say DDB doesn't have issues, several of which go unaddressed going on 8 years and wotc's first choice was addressing (and screwing up) the store, yet still no dark mode (though they claim accessibility is important unless it is visual issues that dark mode would solve), the utter failure that the search function is, an owned content page and the plethora of other places the time and money could have been spent that would have filled the forum with thanks and accolades.
Instead they just spit on their users and are unhappy when this dis was not well received. No wotc does not understand their players at all.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
the Kellogs cereal CEO had a bad interview that led to a boycott. the metgala embraced a tone-deaf expression of inequity that led to sharp criticism and wide-ranging ad revenue disruption. the suits know about this stuff even if you guys don't follow it. simple solution or not, they aren't going to release a statement now without a good long think first. and anyway it's important to note who a potential statement would be directed at: fans, a vocal minority. so if they haven't made a statement by this friday (the classic day to dump unflattering news), then it's either because that minority is of low value (already own the product, not the target of ads) or the statement would put at risk the expected continued influx of new users (wouldn't look good in gotcha headlines) or both.
i'm saying we might not get to know why this happened, but it is not coming across as being on the low-brain-use side of hanlon's.
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!
What on earth gave you the impression Wizards was competent at PR? They've had multiple debacles over the years. The reality is that their management of this situation is incompetent regardless of their motivation, so it doesn't tell you anything more than that they're bad at PR.
Purposely making a product worse in order to squeeze more money out of it's customers is objectively greedy, acting like the only form of greed is the kind related to resources is so blatantly disingenuous it's unreal.
Acting like they're going to fail and go hungry tomorrow because we didn't all buy overpriced books is also incredibly disingenuous.
Overall it just feels like you're playing Devil's Advocate for people who don't deserve it.
This. Let us not forget, this is a company that failed to respond to the biggest crisis in recent D&D’s history - the OGL leak - for, what, ten days? That is not entirely PR’s fault - legal and management would have to be part of the conversation… but, guess what? If you are having a problem big enough that the Washington Post reports on the story, you work round the clock to get your message out as quickly as possible… and you try to make a message that doesn’t seem dismissive of your community’s concerns.
As far as I can tell, the only competent community-facing person Wizards has on the D&D side of things is LaTiaJacquise - they at least listen, respond, and clearly use language players understand (no easy feat - we are the community that threw a fit when folks forgot the meaning of the word “draft). But the rest of their team? Consistently (and nearly universally) making problems far worse than they are through slow, often tone-deaf responses.
So the former WoTC president wanted to bring micro-transactions to the D&DB. This makes no sense. This was a fantastic use of micro-transactions on the site; where players could beef up their characters as they test the waters to see if they wanted to dive deeper into that content or into D&D in general. Now we have to lay out 40 or 50 bucks if we want to try a new feat. I think this is a money loser for WoTC because most of the people who shopped using these micro-transactions will not cross the line and purchase the books.
And can I add that the new Marketplace is poorly designed? Why are the images so big? Why is everything divided up in so many different ways? I got used to the old Marketplace but I cringe when I go there now.
Let's just say this update robbed us of the only good micro-transactions that WoTC could offer and really makes you work to find what you want to buy from WoTC.
Hey, WoTC do you ever talk to your customers? Do you even have a clue of who we are?
Purposely making a luxury product worse seems like a horrible plan for getting more money from anyone.
And you are really twisting my words when you read "tomorrow" in or read that as any obligation on our part to buy at any given price. In fact I clearly pointed out, we have no such obligation. We do not owe them, either.
I am not rushing out to buy anything from them. I am not advocating anyone buy anything from them. However rhetoric like "They owe us" is not very helpful. They simply do not.
The mainly just selling to DM the business model was dictated by the technology of physical books and paper charcter sheets filled out with pencil. That's old.
With digital a better business model is possible.
Players want to buy things too, at least I do. The adventure books are usually kind of inapproperate purchases for players, but it occassional made sense, as a player to buy something specific a la carte, but mainly it was just fun to buy and have/have access to bundles of indivudual items from within books (spells, races, subclasses, feats, backgrounds, magic items, etc . .. also Monsters in order to get beasts that a druid could wildshape into), books that I didn't need or want to own the whole thing. I think people enjoy spending money on their hobbies (assuming there is something to purchase that suits their needs at a price that isn't unreasonable); players are D&D hobbyest too. It seems like they would want to offer products that would be geared towards players in order to make players, into customers. Offering indivdual purchases seemed like a good way to do that. And I'm pretty sure that a la carte buyers were paying something of a premium price for what they got for the luxury of being able to pick and choose what they wanted to buy.
Subscritions, unfortuntatlly for the consumer, are the way of the present and very likely the way of the future too, perhaps more and more. I don't foresee them getting rid of the subscrition model, or the premium teir that allows content sharing. I think they rather like that stream of income.
That's what is so nonsensical about the change, they already have a subscription model in place. It may not be perfect, they could absolutely change what the benefits are, do more to entice people onto the basic subscription, add more value to the master tier so more people choose it, maybe add a third tier in somewhere etc. etc., but it's there, and this change does nothing for ongoing payments.
Because as you say, digital gives so much more scope for people to spend differently, and it's the players who traditionally wouldn't buy many books that they need to be looking at. Especially since players are the DMs of tomorrow (I never wanted to DM when I started, now I love it) and the easier you can make it to start owning content, the better, as barriers to entry can only turn people away.
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.
This type of forum post only exists in America, Not all Americans' thankfully, and less and less these days. But wow.
Imagine thinking corporate head offices need people sticking up for them. And the talking down to consumers exercising the only power they have. smh.
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!
False. As a consumer, your job is to vote with your wallet. That’s how capitalism works.
Derailing a feedback thread because you (not you specifically) wanna cry about capitalism and corporate greed is not exercising any form of power. All you’re doing is contaminating a perfectly good feedback thread.
WotC doesn’t need to be told how “greedy” it is. It’s a for-profit corporation, of course it’s gonna want your money.
There is no David vs. Goliath struggle going on here — just a poor business decision.
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Nooo, It's called word of mouth, which carries far further than your individual dollar. It makes other consumers aware of a shitty/greedy/exploitative deal. And it is killing shareholders the world over right now.
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!
Both. Both have power in different ways.
I am not an American. I am a Canadian and actually currently living in Germany, not that any of that should be relevant to any of this.
Too many people today think they have more rights than they actually have. Note, this includes those 'corporate head office' people, too. Unrealistic and outright false expectations are everywhere.
You also might want to re-read the parts of my post I have bolded. Again, I think this is an incredibly stupid business decision on their part. I do not like that they have done this and think it will only cost them, not just in the short term or long term but in both. And frankly, I think someone in head office likely got that same "THEY OWE US!" mentality and decided a la carte was somehow we consumers 'getting away with something.' This decision smells far more ideological than logical.
But unfortunately, the right to be geniuses comes with the right to be idiots. And there is far more likelihood of the latter than the former, including (and possibly especially) in head offices.
I wouldn't have minded that as much,if I had some warning that al-carte purchases were going to be discontinued.Then I would been able to buy all the classes I wanted to experiment with in the future. But it's been dead silent on all counts from official d&d staff,apart from one community manager since this was dumped on us.
Well if they warned us about ALC purchases going away, we would have made them all really quickly and they wouldn't have been able to take advantage of the situation. What they didn't count on is many people responding with simply doing without.
I don't recall them warning that they were going to change the store at all. I'm pretty sure they were just assuming most people wouldn't care... which was obviously a bad assumption.
For me, and this might be overstating things, but the removal of A la Carte starts to break what this site does best.
In my opinion, this site has two major things that separates it from the competitors. The first is how good the character sheets are in terms of usability, tracking, and simplifying things in an understatedly complex hobby. The second, is access to officially licensed D&D content and being able to not only purchase it on the site but then have it interact seamlessly with the character sheets that work so well. There are other things like the ability to homebrew and have it interact with the wonderful character sheets. But, I do believe that the previous two are the core of what make this site great and stand above the rest of the competition.
Removing a la carte starts to break that connection. It makes it a lot more expensive and a lot less attainable to interact and purchase the new content that they're producing which in turn makes the character sheets worse. While the character sheets physically have not been changed, their ease of use has. If I, or a player of mine, wants to use a new spell from one of the new books, try a new subclass, try a new race, I'm not able offer that option to unless one of us has enough money to purchase it. Which, by removing a la carte, significantly increases the cost since you have to by the entire book now. This makes it a lot less likely for people to interact with the new books and in turn begs the question, "Well, if the character sheets aren't able to reflect what I want to do, why don't I just use a different site that might have the same problem, but offers a lot more in other features that dndbeyond doesn't?"
To me, by removing a la carte they really hurt what makes this site great by putting it behind a big paywall. I hope that they bring a version of it back that is more financially viable if that really is the problem. But, if not, I don't know what the point of using this site anymore when there are other sites that do vtts better, that allow easier homebrew capabilities, or are just easier for new players to try and play without a major paywall limiting their options.
I love this hobby, and it's just so disappointing that a place that was a breeding ground for that interest and growth and so accessible to new players is starting to become a place that is just for the rich who can afford to stick around.
You're right. But apologists like to pretend you only have the one, because they really want you to shut up and not influence others.
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!