Now, before the nay-sayers and whatnot chime in, seriously look at how they ( the company) has handled recent events ( the OGL coups was roughly 18 months ago ). Piss poor PR handling, movie profit is probably a trickle considering box office numbers put it at just a hair over even, subs might have rebounded but I highly doubt they fully recovered, D&D sector has been a dead beholder dragging their bottom line down like a ship taking on water, upper management jumping ship at a really convenient time, and now this.
I expect this is both worse for the game than the OGL thing… and will get far less attention. The OGL issue got a lot of press and fanfare, and a number of people cancelled their memberships… but more people subscribed during that time period than cancelled - the losses were less than the regular growth of the game. Further, you look at things like the OGL survey vs the OneD&D surveys, and the OGL survey numbers were far, far eclipsed by the number of people excitedly responding to a poll about the game’s future.
But the OGL thing was flashy and unique and thus got media attention - which forced Wizards to respond to the vocal minority who were making it an issue. A company changing its pricing model is hardly that interesting of a story - so, while this might cause more actual effect on the community than the relatively minor OGL issue, I doubt it will get the same level of attention in the general media that resulted in Wizards backtracking over the OGL.
You know I would personally love to know the real data from the company exactly what the hard numbers on the OGL, subs and rebound, and true numbers on feedback of playtest material.
All we have ever actually know is what they have press releases and vids, no hard copy version of the total breakdown of all those events. And yet I’m supposed to believe this company’s PR, which at this point I personally can nearly assume is non existent?
Quarterly earnings over the period of time are saying different. If they got more subs, it’s possible that increase came from the maps feature they are just now adding. ( if they had done this apon acquisition, instead of wasting investors time [ time is money, but at what cost to the brand did that waste truly cost ] the company could have been pioneering the digital future of D&D by turning this place into the ultimate database for all things D&D. Build the site to house every version of D&D, price it reasonably, an be the adult dragon with the biggest horde of players and access that competition is afraid of challenging, and more willing to to try and nudge players to a different genre. )
Dropping a-la-carte’ service, with no formal marketing communication or forewarning of such a change in sales, is about par with recent events and corporate governance. No surprise there.
That this point, after shooting themselves, and trying to play it off as it was nothing, and still bleeding badly, ball is in their court. ( and so far, WisBro is batting 0 for 3. )
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
10 printf "BYTE my shinny Metal A$$" ;
20 GOTO 10
30 MEMBER DATE(DD/MM/YYYY) : 11/09/2019, MEMBER NAME : "MaximusCathril"
Doesn't sound like they're bleeding badly by any stretch. Maybe they've got a good shiner PR-wise, but the sheer inertia of being the pre-eminent TTRPG has been carrying them pretty well, and really they've done a good job teeing up the launch of the updated core books. Honestly I expect this shift to get maybe a few weeks or a month of forum outrage and then just become the new status quo, unless somehow people manage a mass boycott, which I seriously doubt will happen when the OGL doesn't seem to have seriously crimped their business.
Personally see piece meal purchases as a luxury for the online consumer that only applied to the digital player, it's not like you can go to a store and just buy a few pages of a physical book.
Also unsure how piece meal purchases works when it comes to third-party content, are d&d beyond allowed/able to sell third-party content as piece meal??
In saying that allowing those who have bought piece meal to finish their current book purchase at previous discount or at least a heads up would of been nice. Outside of that I don't see it as a big deal.
Hasbro wants the money so they want to force full book sales. Its a terrible misstep! My only fear is that they will also take away the DM's ability to share content with player to try to force more purchases.
Unfortunately, things sit on an edge. Forcing unwanted things on players and fanbase don't ever come out well.
Doesn't sound like they're bleeding badly by any stretch. Maybe they've got a good shiner PR-wise, but the sheer inertia of being the pre-eminent TTRPG has been carrying them pretty well, and really they've done a good job teeing up the launch of the updated core books. Honestly I expect this shift to get maybe a few weeks or a month of forum outrage and then just become the new status quo, unless somehow people manage a mass boycott, which I seriously doubt will happen when the OGL doesn't seem to have seriously crimped their business.
I expect it won't matter much either way either (and I personally never used the feature, I like having full books) - but that's not going to stop me from asking them to revert the change and adding my voice to those who do use it, especially when I've seen people I know firsthand benefit from the functionality.
Personally see piece meal purchases as a luxury for the online consumer that only applied to the digital player, it's not like you can go to a store and just buy a few pages of a physical book.
Also unsure how piece meal purchases works when it comes to third-party content, are d&d beyond allowed/able to sell third-party content as piece meal??
In saying that allowing those who have bought piece meal to finish their current book purchase at previous discount or at least a heads up would of been nice. Outside of that I don't see it as a big deal.
All true, especially letting people know they should buy any books they have bought parts of BEFORE taking it away. That is what is borderline criminal, taking away the option for piece meal is a strange business choice, but what amounts to forcing people to pay for thing already purchased under an agreement by nullifying the agreement without notice is darn sure bumping the line of unlawful, but jumps right over the sleazy practices line. For many it is both a slap in the face while WotC's other hand is in your wallet.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Personally see piece meal purchases as a luxury for the online consumer that only applied to the digital player, it's not like you can go to a store and just buy a few pages of a physical book.
Also unsure how piece meal purchases works when it comes to third-party content, are d&d beyond allowed/able to sell third-party content as piece meal??
In saying that allowing those who have bought piece meal to finish their current book purchase at previous discount or at least a heads up would of been nice. Outside of that I don't see it as a big deal.
All true, especially letting people know they should buy any books they have bought parts of BEFORE taking it away. That is what is borderline criminal, taking away the option for piece meal is a strange business choice, but what amounts to forcing people to pay for thing already purchased under an agreement by nullifying the agreement without notice is darn sure bumping the line of unlawful, but jumps right over the sleazy practices line. For many it is both a slap in the face while WotC's other hand is in your wallet.
That's both a bit overdramatic imo and the intimations that it's criminal is factually incorrect. A business has the right to cease extending an offer to future customers at any time, unless they have specifically indicated the offer will remain for some duration. I guarantee you in the ToS none of us actually bothered to read when we were making purchases there's language to that specific effect that offers being extended to previous customers are not of themselves a guarantee they will remain in place for the future. And no, this is not some evil legal loophole that only corporations get to use, it's a fundamental cornerstone of contract law; you can put an offer out there, but barring other circumstances until the agreement has been finalized by both parties you have the right to retract that offer at will. It would certainly have looked a bit better for them if they'd given a heads up, but at the end of the day this is a business that operates to make money, and if they felt it would be more profitable to do this cold rather than let people get some final piecemeal purchases in, it's unrealistic to expect them to do otherwise. And the ethics of it on a personal level are, frankly, immaterial. WotC is not a person, it's a business, and one in the disposable income market. It is not concerned with how its actions affects each and every current or potential consumer personally, it's concerned with the most effect way to generate a profit.
Personally see piece meal purchases as a luxury for the online consumer that only applied to the digital player, it's not like you can go to a store and just buy a few pages of a physical book.
Also unsure how piece meal purchases works when it comes to third-party content, are d&d beyond allowed/able to sell third-party content as piece meal??
In saying that allowing those who have bought piece meal to finish their current book purchase at previous discount or at least a heads up would of been nice. Outside of that I don't see it as a big deal.
All true, especially letting people know they should buy any books they have bought parts of BEFORE taking it away. That is what is borderline criminal, taking away the option for piece meal is a strange business choice, but what amounts to forcing people to pay for thing already purchased under an agreement by nullifying the agreement without notice is darn sure bumping the line of unlawful, but jumps right over the sleazy practices line. For many it is both a slap in the face while WotC's other hand is in your wallet.
That's both a bit overdramatic imo and the intimations that it's criminal is factually incorrect. A business has the right to cease extending an offer to future customers at any time, unless they have specifically indicated the offer will remain for some duration. I guarantee you in the ToS none of us actually bothered to read when we were making purchases there's language to that specific effect that offers being extended to previous customers are not of themselves a guarantee they will remain in place for the future. And no, this is not some evil legal loophole that only corporations get to use, it's a fundamental cornerstone of contract law; you can put an offer out there, but barring other circumstances until the agreement has been finalized by both parties you have the right to retract that offer at will. It would certainly have looked a bit better for them if they'd given a heads up, but at the end of the day this is a business that operates to make money, and if they felt it would be more profitable to do this cold rather than let people get some final piecemeal purchases in, it's unrealistic to expect them to do otherwise. And the ethics of it on a personal level are, frankly, immaterial. WotC is not a person, it's a business, and one in the disposable income market. It is not concerned with how its actions affects each and every current or potential consumer personally, it's concerned with the most effect way to generate a profit.
Which is why I said "borderline", and "bumps the line", regardless it is a crappy thing to do to customers without notice or time to take advantage of a longstanding agreement.
As for dramatic, I guess that just depends on how much a customer stands to lose from this, seems quite a calloused position to defend this type of business practice to me.
As to doing it cold for profits, that just shows how they feel about their customers, given that significant changes like this (Legacy, sales tax....) have until now been telegraphed and timelined not instant and hardlined saps quite a bit of trust from their customers, time will tell how that works out for them.
The only money they will get from me may be another annual master tier sub next October, unless they allow the prior piece meal purchases a chance to buy the books with the credits for prior purchases.
They just keep stacking straw on the poor camel, it's almost like they want to make issues rather than a game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Personally see piece meal purchases as a luxury for the online consumer that only applied to the digital player, it's not like you can go to a store and just buy a few pages of a physical book.
Also unsure how piece meal purchases works when it comes to third-party content, are d&d beyond allowed/able to sell third-party content as piece meal??
In saying that allowing those who have bought piece meal to finish their current book purchase at previous discount or at least a heads up would of been nice. Outside of that I don't see it as a big deal.
All true, especially letting people know they should buy any books they have bought parts of BEFORE taking it away. That is what is borderline criminal, taking away the option for piece meal is a strange business choice, but what amounts to forcing people to pay for thing already purchased under an agreement by nullifying the agreement without notice is darn sure bumping the line of unlawful, but jumps right over the sleazy practices line. For many it is both a slap in the face while WotC's other hand is in your wallet.
That's both a bit overdramatic imo and the intimations that it's criminal is factually incorrect. A business has the right to cease extending an offer to future customers at any time, unless they have specifically indicated the offer will remain for some duration. I guarantee you in the ToS none of us actually bothered to read when we were making purchases there's language to that specific effect that offers being extended to previous customers are not of themselves a guarantee they will remain in place for the future. And no, this is not some evil legal loophole that only corporations get to use, it's a fundamental cornerstone of contract law; you can put an offer out there, but barring other circumstances until the agreement has been finalized by both parties you have the right to retract that offer at will. It would certainly have looked a bit better for them if they'd given a heads up, but at the end of the day this is a business that operates to make money, and if they felt it would be more profitable to do this cold rather than let people get some final piecemeal purchases in, it's unrealistic to expect them to do otherwise. And the ethics of it on a personal level are, frankly, immaterial. WotC is not a person, it's a business, and one in the disposable income market. It is not concerned with how its actions affects each and every current or potential consumer personally, it's concerned with the most effect way to generate a profit.
I read the TOS, Privacy Policy, any pretty much all the legal stuff that changed when the company bought the site, compared it to previous owners legal disclaimers and after finding the subtle differences between the two, the point I got from it all was that at any given point, WotC or Hasbro can cut the lights off on anything they provide at any time and for no reason, to have or be given by them ( company ) for doing so, and there is not a thing we can do about it.
Why, cause in order to use the site via account, we had to agree. I agreed knowing full well what could happen, just never thought it would happen.
Words of the wise still ring true, caveat emptor, “Buyer Beware?!?!”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
10 printf "BYTE my shinny Metal A$$" ;
20 GOTO 10
30 MEMBER DATE(DD/MM/YYYY) : 11/09/2019, MEMBER NAME : "MaximusCathril"
Still bummed they're not doing a-la carte anymore. Had some potential piecemeal things I was considering (Hadozee from Spelljammer really bums me since it's the only one where I had zero interest in ever buying the full book. And the others, while still sucky, are at least from books I could've considered.)
But at least they're going to fix the issue of reneging on their promises it seems.
I literally built my DM style around making sure people were working within the rules by having them ask for classes and races cause I could buy them piecemeal and having them use the character builder still made sure they weren't homebrewing stuff that as a new DM I wouldn't notice. My players enjoyed it cause they could show if they purchased something I didn't have yet, and it made it easier for everyone.
We bought a big chunk of Zanathar's guide piecemeal and then when it was on a sale and I could afford it I got the rest of it. We also went through and added stuff from various other books that the players were looking into, but we didn't need the whole book, just the character builder option.
This decision is going to result in a lot of people just Homebrewing the piecemeal stuff from the book and losing dndbeyond money in the long run.
TL;DR ------- Bring back A la carte options and the a la carte discounts!!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Trying to DM | Lost my party due to removal of A la Carte options | Party no longer wants to use Beyond
Just adding another comment here that they will no longer recieve a single dollar from me unless they bring back individual purchases. Excel spreadsheets are now more convenient.
This is the shittiest thing they’ve done since the OGL debacle. Are they stupid? I mean seriously are they stupid? I ask since messing up doesn’t mean someone is stupid but repeating the same mistake without ever learning from it is pretty much the definition of stupid.
Removing the a la carte, from the old ones, and in his fashion... How to broadcast you're run by thickhead corporates without saying it.
I was already cooling on the online systems the way things were headed here since being bought out.
Think this is the sign for me to cancel my sub and start committing to running without the Beyond suite.
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!
Removing "a la carte" is one thing, but forcing me to now pay the full price for an e-book which I previously already bought over have it's content (or for some few everything but the compendium) is the worst move I ever saw.
It's like buying ingredents for your meal one after the other, but now you additionally have to pay for the whole meal too, paying ~twice the amount in the end.
If there aren't coming any great sales above 50% off, I'll probably never buy anything again.
I could understand a la carte not being on the table for partnered content. But this is crazy. Buying stuff piecemeal over time eventually pushed me to fully purchase several books. And I'd rather not buy a book at all than spend $30 on the $5 worth of content that actually interested me.
All we can really do is make our displeasure known and pressure WotC to back down.
FYI, I've bought a fair bit piecemeal from the Eberron setting book. I just tested to see how much I'd be charged, and it showed the full $30. So that feature is NOT working right now as best I can tell.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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You know I would personally love to know the real data from the company exactly what the hard numbers on the OGL, subs and rebound, and true numbers on feedback of playtest material.
All we have ever actually know is what they have press releases and vids, no hard copy version of the total breakdown of all those events.
And yet I’m supposed to believe this company’s PR, which at this point I personally can nearly assume is non existent?
Quarterly earnings over the period of time are saying different. If they got more subs, it’s possible that increase came from the maps feature they are just now adding. ( if they had done this apon acquisition, instead of wasting investors time [ time is money, but at what cost to the brand did that waste truly cost ] the company could have been pioneering the digital future of D&D by turning this place into the ultimate database for all things D&D. Build the site to house every version of D&D, price it reasonably, an be the adult dragon with the biggest horde of players and access that competition is afraid of challenging, and more willing to to try and nudge players to a different genre. )
Dropping a-la-carte’ service, with no formal marketing communication or forewarning of such a change in sales, is about par with recent events and corporate governance. No surprise there.
That this point, after shooting themselves, and trying to play it off as it was nothing, and still bleeding badly, ball is in their court. ( and so far, WisBro is batting 0 for 3. )
Doesn't sound like they're bleeding badly by any stretch. Maybe they've got a good shiner PR-wise, but the sheer inertia of being the pre-eminent TTRPG has been carrying them pretty well, and really they've done a good job teeing up the launch of the updated core books. Honestly I expect this shift to get maybe a few weeks or a month of forum outrage and then just become the new status quo, unless somehow people manage a mass boycott, which I seriously doubt will happen when the OGL doesn't seem to have seriously crimped their business.
Personally see piece meal purchases as a luxury for the online consumer that only applied to the digital player, it's not like you can go to a store and just buy a few pages of a physical book.
Also unsure how piece meal purchases works when it comes to third-party content, are d&d beyond allowed/able to sell third-party content as piece meal??
In saying that allowing those who have bought piece meal to finish their current book purchase at previous discount or at least a heads up would of been nice. Outside of that I don't see it as a big deal.
Hasbro wants the money so they want to force full book sales. Its a terrible misstep! My only fear is that they will also take away the DM's ability to share content with player to try to force more purchases.
Unfortunately, things sit on an edge. Forcing unwanted things on players and fanbase don't ever come out well.
We shall see what the days bring!
I expect it won't matter much either way either (and I personally never used the feature, I like having full books) - but that's not going to stop me from asking them to revert the change and adding my voice to those who do use it, especially when I've seen people I know firsthand benefit from the functionality.
All true, especially letting people know they should buy any books they have bought parts of BEFORE taking it away. That is what is borderline criminal, taking away the option for piece meal is a strange business choice, but what amounts to forcing people to pay for thing already purchased under an agreement by nullifying the agreement without notice is darn sure bumping the line of unlawful, but jumps right over the sleazy practices line. For many it is both a slap in the face while WotC's other hand is in your wallet.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
That's both a bit overdramatic imo and the intimations that it's criminal is factually incorrect. A business has the right to cease extending an offer to future customers at any time, unless they have specifically indicated the offer will remain for some duration. I guarantee you in the ToS none of us actually bothered to read when we were making purchases there's language to that specific effect that offers being extended to previous customers are not of themselves a guarantee they will remain in place for the future. And no, this is not some evil legal loophole that only corporations get to use, it's a fundamental cornerstone of contract law; you can put an offer out there, but barring other circumstances until the agreement has been finalized by both parties you have the right to retract that offer at will. It would certainly have looked a bit better for them if they'd given a heads up, but at the end of the day this is a business that operates to make money, and if they felt it would be more profitable to do this cold rather than let people get some final piecemeal purchases in, it's unrealistic to expect them to do otherwise. And the ethics of it on a personal level are, frankly, immaterial. WotC is not a person, it's a business, and one in the disposable income market. It is not concerned with how its actions affects each and every current or potential consumer personally, it's concerned with the most effect way to generate a profit.
Which is why I said "borderline", and "bumps the line", regardless it is a crappy thing to do to customers without notice or time to take advantage of a longstanding agreement.
As for dramatic, I guess that just depends on how much a customer stands to lose from this, seems quite a calloused position to defend this type of business practice to me.
As to doing it cold for profits, that just shows how they feel about their customers, given that significant changes like this (Legacy, sales tax....) have until now been telegraphed and timelined not instant and hardlined saps quite a bit of trust from their customers, time will tell how that works out for them.
The only money they will get from me may be another annual master tier sub next October, unless they allow the prior piece meal purchases a chance to buy the books with the credits for prior purchases.
They just keep stacking straw on the poor camel, it's almost like they want to make issues rather than a game.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
seems they made a post about it on the homepage in last 30mins or so
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1709-d-d-beyond-marketplace-redesign-see-whats-new-here
I read the TOS, Privacy Policy, any pretty much all the legal stuff that changed when the company bought the site, compared it to previous owners legal disclaimers and after finding the subtle differences between the two, the point I got from it all was that at any given point, WotC or Hasbro can cut the lights off on anything they provide at any time and for no reason, to have or be given by them ( company ) for doing so, and there is not a thing we can do about it.
Why, cause in order to use the site via account, we had to agree. I agreed knowing full well what could happen, just never thought it would happen.
Words of the wise still ring true, caveat emptor, “Buyer Beware?!?!”
Still bummed they're not doing a-la carte anymore. Had some potential piecemeal things I was considering (Hadozee from Spelljammer really bums me since it's the only one where I had zero interest in ever buying the full book. And the others, while still sucky, are at least from books I could've considered.)
But at least they're going to fix the issue of reneging on their promises it seems.
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I literally built my DM style around making sure people were working within the rules by having them ask for classes and races cause I could buy them piecemeal and having them use the character builder still made sure they weren't homebrewing stuff that as a new DM I wouldn't notice. My players enjoyed it cause they could show if they purchased something I didn't have yet, and it made it easier for everyone.
We bought a big chunk of Zanathar's guide piecemeal and then when it was on a sale and I could afford it I got the rest of it. We also went through and added stuff from various other books that the players were looking into, but we didn't need the whole book, just the character builder option.
This decision is going to result in a lot of people just Homebrewing the piecemeal stuff from the book and losing dndbeyond money in the long run.
TL;DR ------- Bring back A la carte options and the a la carte discounts!!
Trying to DM | Lost my party due to removal of A la Carte options | Party no longer wants to use Beyond
Just adding another comment here that they will no longer recieve a single dollar from me unless they bring back individual purchases. Excel spreadsheets are now more convenient.
this is the absolute dumbest thing i can think that they could have done to themselves lol.. thats the end of them getting my money haha.
Can't wait to buy more Hasbro stocks when WotC keeps tanking their product 📉
Daggerheart looks like a fun alternative :)
This is the shittiest thing they’ve done since the OGL debacle. Are they stupid? I mean seriously are they stupid? I ask since messing up doesn’t mean someone is stupid but repeating the same mistake without ever learning from it is pretty much the definition of stupid.
Removing the a la carte, from the old ones, and in his fashion... How to broadcast you're run by thickhead corporates without saying it.
I was already cooling on the online systems the way things were headed here since being bought out.
Think this is the sign for me to cancel my sub and start committing to running without the Beyond suite.
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!
Removing "a la carte" is one thing, but forcing me to now pay the full price for an e-book which I previously already bought over have it's content (or for some few everything but the compendium) is the worst move I ever saw.
It's like buying ingredents for your meal one after the other, but now you additionally have to pay for the whole meal too, paying ~twice the amount in the end.
If there aren't coming any great sales above 50% off, I'll probably never buy anything again.
I could understand a la carte not being on the table for partnered content. But this is crazy. Buying stuff piecemeal over time eventually pushed me to fully purchase several books. And I'd rather not buy a book at all than spend $30 on the $5 worth of content that actually interested me.
All we can really do is make our displeasure known and pressure WotC to back down.
FYI, I've bought a fair bit piecemeal from the Eberron setting book. I just tested to see how much I'd be charged, and it showed the full $30. So that feature is NOT working right now as best I can tell.