I'm kind of speechless they've removed the option for individual purchases.
If I just want a feat, or a background, or a species, or a spell, or a subclass, I'm not going to get an entire book I don't want 99% of just to get that individual thing. I'll just not buy it at all.
Here is the thing. As much as I shake my head at wotc's behaviour in yet again another brewing controversy, the very idea of "pay to win" by buying the very best features/classes/subclasses is simply well, awful. If wotc had said "We are banning this practice because we feel it is antithetical to the game. It confirms that power-gaming is an acceptable way to play, and this is not what D&D is about", I would have respected that.
But the manner that this was rolled out, in the dark of the night, well, others have stated how that looks.The simple truth is that wotc will use the model that maximizes profits.That's it. Nothing more.
This is a game with a live DM, not an MMO. It is not 'Pay to Win'
This is a game with a live DM, not an MMO. It is not 'Pay to Win'
It certainly SHOULD not be. In MMO's Pay-to-win is a virus that has infected everything. Some player buying a specific spell or feat, and nothing else from a book, in D&D is exactly the same thing. Maybe wotc has recognized that and for the greater good of the game has banned that concept. LOL..who am I kidding. The reason wotc has done it was so wotc can make more money.
My sibling, the balance of the features does not change if you buy them individually or as part of a book. People are always gonna cherry pick the "best" stuff out of any release; the only difference is how much they have to pay for it. Charging $2 for a busted subclass is less "pay to win" than charging $60 for the same subclass in a book full of less busted material, because the barrier to entry is lower.
Today WoTC took something great away from the community with the À la carte changes. It used to be newcomers could have agency over how fast or slow they dip their toes in the pool now you're asking them to just jump straight in with full book purchases.
I'm sure WoTC has done the math and their charts show that this will help the next quarterly report.
But what's being lost is the people who would start their journey on DNDBeyond if they can do it $5 at a time, being able to say "Here's $5! Can I please have this fun thing so I can go enjoy it on my character? THANKS!" was awesome.
It made it very easy for people to boast about how awesome DNDBeyond was as a platform. Now we have to instead explain to them that WoTC took that away from everyone. This looks bad for those of us that have sold others on DNDBeyond. This looks bad for new players considering starting to use DNDBeyond.
THIS MAKES IT MORE DIFFICULT TO ONBOARD NEW PLAYERS.
Yes there are other options, but that little guy now has far fewer options that they are in control of. They now need to find a DM to run a campaign so they can access the contents of their books.
This DEGRADES the product. Please reconsider this change. New players are your future profits. You took something from them and damaged the communities ability to onboard new players into the hobby.
I'm kind of speechless they've removed the option for individual purchases.
If I just want a feat, or a background, or a species, or a spell, or a subclass, I'm not going to get an entire book I don't want 99% of just to get that individual thing. I'll just not buy it at all.
Here is the thing. As much as I shake my head at wotc's behaviour in yet again another brewing controversy, the very idea of "pay to win" by buying the very best features/classes/subclasses is simply well, awful. If wotc had said "We are banning this practice because we feel it is antithetical to the game. It confirms that power-gaming is an acceptable way to play, and this is not what D&D is about", I would have respected that.
But the manner that this was rolled out, in the dark of the night, well, others have stated how that looks.The simple truth is that wotc will use the model that maximizes profits.That's it. Nothing more.
This is a game with a live DM, not an MMO. It is not 'Pay to Win'
It certainly SHOULD not be. In MMO's Pay-to-win is a virus that has infected everything. Some player buying a specific spell or feat, and nothing else from a book, in D&D is exactly the same thing. Maybe wotc has recognized that and for the greater good of the game has banned that concept. LOL..who am I kidding. The reason wotc has done it was so wotc can make more money.
You do realize that a DM can say 'no' to that one player, right? And that the DM would almost certainly declare it available to the entire group? What happens if one player buys a book the others do not have? They do not get to use everything or anything from it without the DM's permission.
This is no different from any given player saying "I want to play Goku" or "I want to play Batman" or "I want to play <insert any other OP character here>." A DM does not need there to be any book to allow that. But why would any DM allow it simply because a player has paid WotC for it? It isn't and never has been that kind of game.
Before DDB the only way to get a part of a book was to buy the book. Them taking that away is surprising, but not shocking, taking away the credit for piece meal purchases is egregious, though they say we will still get the old deal on anything purchased before the marketplace roll out fiasco, if so I am ok with the change, I still think it is a bad move to take the piece meal away, but outside of DDB it is the way it has and is done. What other TTRPG can you buy a single item, class, race et al and not the whole book?
Still a bold move, with the new stuff coming a whole book does not interest me at all, a piece here or there for a player or game maybe, but not a whole book. With the new store there is less information about what of the ex-peice meal items are in them, just a total count of each category no names or lists, not conducive to making an easily informed purchase. Add to that it was a cool program that few if any competitor could offer, but walled gardens are for not having to worry about the competition.
I bought the BOMT for a feat, and completely regret the purchase lesson learned.
What other TTRPG can you buy a single item, class, race et al and not the whole book?
Just off the top of my head, Lancer gives away all player-facing information (Mechs, Talents, gear, etc) for free, independent of the books those items come in. Shadowrun may not offer individual item purchases, but their supplement books are much more focused (this one has more guns, this one has more spells, this one has more races, etc) and thus much more affordable. Exalted typically releases sub-books focused on each "class". Most other games don't release $30-$60 expansion books out of which any given player might only want one thing. The barrier to entry to D&D is abnormally high; a la carte was unique to DDB because a la carte was solving a problem unique to D&D.
This feels like a real slap in the face to PLAYERS who don’t really get anything out of having a whole book. Like… why on Earth is a player gonna drop $30 on Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse to get the species they want when they, as a player and not a DM, otherwise have no use for a monster manual? They’re more likely to just homebrew what they want and pay nothing. Seems silly to me.
This feels like a real slap in the face to PLAYERS who don’t really get anything out of having a whole book. Like… why on Earth is a player gonna drop $30 on Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse to get the species they want when they, as a player and not a DM, otherwise have no use for a monster manual? They’re more likely to just homebrew what they want and pay nothing. Seems silly to me.
I mean, I bought the book for exactly that reason. Honestly, that one’s a poor example since it’s got several dozen race/species options in it, making it at least as player facing as DM facing. But I’d have bought VGtM and MToF too if I hadn’t missed that window, and I have bought Fizban’s and Bigby’s with no intention of being a DM. Don’t underestimate how many people are probably willing to pay for the whole book.
This feels like a real slap in the face to PLAYERS who don’t really get anything out of having a whole book. Like… why on Earth is a player gonna drop $30 on Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse to get the species they want when they, as a player and not a DM, otherwise have no use for a monster manual? They’re more likely to just homebrew what they want and pay nothing. Seems silly to me.
I mean, I bought the book for exactly that reason. Honestly, that one’s a poor example since it’s got several dozen race/species options in it, making it at least as player facing as DM facing. But I’d have bought VGtM and MToF too if I hadn’t missed that window, and I have bought Fizban’s and Bigby’s with no intention of being a DM. Don’t underestimate how many people are probably willing to pay for the whole book.
Sure, but I’m not talking about the players who are prepared to drop full price for a book despite not being able to use most of it. I know plenty of players who are happy to buy up books because they just like having them. My point is that there are also plenty of players who don’t want to blow money on stuff they don’t need who would rather just pay a few dollars for the convenience of using a player option that they want for their campaign.
The players who like having the whole book were gonna buy it anyway. The players who don’t are probably likely to find some kind of workaround. That’s been my experience with a lot of the people I’ve played with, anyway. I’d be very interested in seeing the data that informed this decision because the “all or nothing” approach doesn’t feel like something that is going to win any favor.
The big black box remaining is what happens to folks who previously bought part of a book - can the functionality for them to receive a discount on the cover price due to their partial purchases be retained, or alternatively, can those partial purchases be refunded?
If they solve that, then I'll still disagree with this move - but it will at least be a fair business decision.
The players who like having the whole book were gonna buy it anyway. The players who don’t are probably likely to find some kind of workaround. That’s been my experience with a lot of the people I’ve played with, anyway. I’d be very interested in seeing the data that informed this decision
This is especially true when you consider the big issue with this site that has dominated the forums since its launch: the issue of physical vs. digital.
People who have bought physical books in the past aren’t especially inclined to repurchase the digital version for the same price. It’s an opinion dictated not by the consumer’s selfishness, but by common sense — why would you drop $30 on something you already own when you could use the same amount of money to purchase something entirely new?
What I’m trying to say is that the large group of people who refuse to repurchase their physical books don’t have the same reservations around piecemeal purchases. If you want artificer on a character and already own the physical version of Eberron, you might not be willing to buy the whole book again just for one class. However, dropping $2 on a subclass (in my case, armorer) is a commitment folks are much more comfortable with.
I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC had been losing money to this group of holdouts, but removing piecemeal options altogether was an even worse choice. The average player won’t give in and buy the full book — they’ll simply resort to a different method of obtaining the class, likely using the homebrew creator or a certain .tools.
It makes pay to win more expensive, no doubt. I assume that is what wotc is actually testing with this model: Just how much are people who want to power game actually willing to pay for that privilege? I have brought the term up before. It is called "the price elasticity of demand".
Tell me you never played D&D without actually telling me. It is impossible for Wizards to benefit from pay-to-win. Wizards does not GM at a table. If a person wants to pay to win, they do that by bribing their GM.
Here is the thing. As much as I shake my head at wotc's behaviour in yet again another brewing controversy, the very idea of "pay to win" by buying the very best features/classes/subclasses is simply well, awful. If wotc had said "We are banning this practice because we feel it is antithetical to the game. It confirms that power-gaming is an acceptable way to play, and this is not what D&D is about", I would have respected that.
But the manner that this was rolled out, in the dark of the night, well, others have stated how that looks.The simple truth is that wotc will use the model that maximizes profits.That's it. Nothing more.
As long as everyone at the table is having fun and no one gets hurt, there is no wrong way to play D&D. Do not be "that" guy that people avoid at the game store, and you are being "that" guy right now. Telling and insinuating others are playing the game wrong is toxic and uncalled for. You are not their GM, you are not their player, you are not at their table. If some people want to start their campaign at level 20 with max stats, max HP, loaded with feats and epic boons, equipped with the best magic items, proficient in all skills and tools and weapons and armor, know all languages, and can use legendary resistance and legendary success, that is their decision and their decsion only. You do not have to play with them, and they do not have play with you, so what they do at their table is none of your business.
Epic Heroism is in the DMG and Wish is in the PHB, so an Epic Hero wizard that can spam Wish has been here since 2014. Players have been killing gods and murderhoboing innocents with even more broken homebrew content even before 5e. All that is part of D&D. The ONLY thing that raised powercreep since 2014 was Simulacrum in ROTF in 2020, and that removes some of the penalty for using Wish more creatively.
Microtransactions are here to stay in the gaming industry. Get over it. Many people like it, and many people want it to be brought back to Beyond.
I am glad they are planning to honor the piece meal credits, as of now, no credit for prior piece meal purchases that I have found, but I am getting my legendary bundle discount. If we do actually get our piece meal discount then I have no dog in the fight.
I still think it is a bad move, but that is a different colored cat all together.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
If that is functionality they promised that isn't working, that's a bug report for the site support team. But it would probably be best opened by someone (or someones) who is actually trying to make that jump from a partial purchase to a full book.
The players who like having the whole book were gonna buy it anyway. The players who don’t are probably likely to find some kind of workaround. That’s been my experience with a lot of the people I’ve played with, anyway. I’d be very interested in seeing the data that informed this decision
This is especially true when you consider the big issue with this site that has dominated the forums since its launch: the issue of physical vs. digital.
People who have bought physical books in the past aren’t especially inclined to repurchase the digital version for the same price. It’s an opinion dictated not by the consumer’s selfishness, but by common sense — why would you drop $30 on something you already own when you could use the same amount of money to purchase something entirely new?
What I’m trying to say is that the large group of people who refuse to repurchase their physical books don’t have the same reservations around piecemeal purchases. If you want artificer on a character and already own the physical version of Eberron, you might not be willing to buy the whole book again just for one class. However, dropping $2 on a subclass (in my case, armorer) is a commitment folks are much more comfortable with.
I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC had been losing money to this group of holdouts, but removing piecemeal options altogether was an even worse choice. The average player won’t give in and buy the full book — they’ll simply resort to a different method of obtaining the class, likely using the homebrew creator or a certain .tools.
To me the root problem is not physical vs digital, but what you are actually buying on DDB, which is (oversimplification incoming) your books are pre-entered for the character creator, ie you can put any and all of your physical books in as homebrew, or you can pay DDB instead of doing it yourself you also get a digital hyperlinked and (somewhat) searchable (compendium) digital copy of the book as well.
For some reason a lot of people gloss over the very important part of all of the homebrewing is done for you if you already have the physical book and want the digital copy. It is not the digital book most buy books on DDB that people want, but the access to the information in the books for the character creation tool the tool is free, and homebrewing is free, you just have to pay DDB if you do not want to input things from the physical books.
I would rather buy the character creation tool (an actual download hosted on my machine for a one time cost) and manually input the books I want than to buy the books to put in the online tool. I am also aware that this will likely never happen.
When you buy a "book" on DDB you are getting a lot more than an OCR'd pdf.
The big black box remaining is what happens to folks who previously bought part of a book - can the functionality for them to receive a discount on the cover price due to their partial purchases be retained, or alternatively, can those partial purchases be refunded?
If they solve that, then I'll still disagree with this move - but it will at least be a fair business decision.
Here's the problem: IT WAS DONE in secretive. Nobody cares if they post news about it AFTER they changed it. Every person who owned part of a book, as of this moment, has the buy the WHOLE book again, and pay the FULL PRICE. It's contradicting to their news, and it should have been announced hours/days before the change, so people could have a chance to buy the rest of those books.
Yea, sure, they could have just not write any news at all. But you can pretty sure, that this would have exploded even more if they didn't.
The big black box remaining is what happens to folks who previously bought part of a book - can the functionality for them to receive a discount on the cover price due to their partial purchases be retained, or alternatively, can those partial purchases be refunded?
If they solve that, then I'll still disagree with this move - but it will at least be a fair business decision.
Here's the problem: IT WAS DONE in secretive. Nobody cares if they post news about it AFTER they changed it. Every person who owned part of a book, as of this moment, has the buy the WHOLE book again, and pay the FULL PRICE. It's contradicting to their news, and it should have been announced hours/days before the change, so people could have a chance to buy the rest of those books.
Yea, sure, they could have just not write any news at all. But you can pretty sure, that this would have exploded even more if they didn't.
Can I still purchase subclasses, feats, and other game listings à la carte?
À la carte purchases are no longer supported. However, any individual items you've previously purchased will continue to be available for use on D&D Beyond, and those purchases will still be credited toward the cost of the books they originally came from.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
The big black box remaining is what happens to folks who previously bought part of a book - can the functionality for them to receive a discount on the cover price due to their partial purchases be retained, or alternatively, can those partial purchases be refunded?
If they solve that, then I'll still disagree with this move - but it will at least be a fair business decision.
Here's the problem: IT WAS DONE in secretive. Nobody cares if they post news about it AFTER they changed it. Every person who owned part of a book, as of this moment, has the buy the WHOLE book again, and pay the FULL PRICE. It's contradicting to their news, and it should have been announced hours/days before the change, so people could have a chance to buy the rest of those books.
Yea, sure, they could have just not write any news at all. But you can pretty sure, that this would have exploded even more if they didn't.
I'm not going to defend WotC's PR team, Ao knows they're supremely bad at it.
But the intent seems to be that if you did a partial purchase, those purchases will count towards the full book. So "you have the buy the WHOLE book again and pay FULL PRICE" is incorrect, or at the very least a site bug that should be handled like all other site bugs, i.e. via the Support process.
The big black box remaining is what happens to folks who previously bought part of a book - can the functionality for them to receive a discount on the cover price due to their partial purchases be retained, or alternatively, can those partial purchases be refunded?
If they solve that, then I'll still disagree with this move - but it will at least be a fair business decision.
Here's the problem: IT WAS DONE in secretive. Nobody cares if they post news about it AFTER they changed it. Every person who owned part of a book, as of this moment, has the buy the WHOLE book again, and pay the FULL PRICE. It's contradicting to their news, and it should have been announced hours/days before the change, so people could have a chance to buy the rest of those books.
Yea, sure, they could have just not write any news at all. But you can pretty sure, that this would have exploded even more if they didn't.
I'm not going to defend WotC's PR team, Ao knows they're supremely bad at it.
But the intent seems to be that if you did a partial purchase, those purchases will count towards the full book. So "you have the buy the WHOLE book again and pay FULL PRICE" is incorrect, or at the very least a site bug that should be handled like all other site bugs, i.e. via the Support process.
That statement was added well after the store was changed, well after the blowback and still has yet to actually be implemented for the users.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
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This is a game with a live DM, not an MMO. It is not 'Pay to Win'
My sibling, the balance of the features does not change if you buy them individually or as part of a book. People are always gonna cherry pick the "best" stuff out of any release; the only difference is how much they have to pay for it. Charging $2 for a busted subclass is less "pay to win" than charging $60 for the same subclass in a book full of less busted material, because the barrier to entry is lower.
Today WoTC took something great away from the community with the À la carte changes. It used to be newcomers could have agency over how fast or slow they dip their toes in the pool now you're asking them to just jump straight in with full book purchases.
I'm sure WoTC has done the math and their charts show that this will help the next quarterly report.
But what's being lost is the people who would start their journey on DNDBeyond if they can do it $5 at a time, being able to say "Here's $5! Can I please have this fun thing so I can go enjoy it on my character? THANKS!" was awesome.
It made it very easy for people to boast about how awesome DNDBeyond was as a platform. Now we have to instead explain to them that WoTC took that away from everyone. This looks bad for those of us that have sold others on DNDBeyond. This looks bad for new players considering starting to use DNDBeyond.
THIS MAKES IT MORE DIFFICULT TO ONBOARD NEW PLAYERS.
Yes there are other options, but that little guy now has far fewer options that they are in control of. They now need to find a DM to run a campaign so they can access the contents of their books.
This DEGRADES the product. Please reconsider this change. New players are your future profits. You took something from them and damaged the communities ability to onboard new players into the hobby.
You do realize that a DM can say 'no' to that one player, right? And that the DM would almost certainly declare it available to the entire group? What happens if one player buys a book the others do not have? They do not get to use everything or anything from it without the DM's permission.
This is no different from any given player saying "I want to play Goku" or "I want to play Batman" or "I want to play <insert any other OP character here>." A DM does not need there to be any book to allow that. But why would any DM allow it simply because a player has paid WotC for it? It isn't and never has been that kind of game.
Before DDB the only way to get a part of a book was to buy the book. Them taking that away is surprising, but not shocking, taking away the credit for piece meal purchases is egregious, though they say we will still get the old deal on anything purchased before the marketplace roll out fiasco, if so I am ok with the change, I still think it is a bad move to take the piece meal away, but outside of DDB it is the way it has and is done. What other TTRPG can you buy a single item, class, race et al and not the whole book?
Still a bold move, with the new stuff coming a whole book does not interest me at all, a piece here or there for a player or game maybe, but not a whole book. With the new store there is less information about what of the ex-peice meal items are in them, just a total count of each category no names or lists, not conducive to making an easily informed purchase. Add to that it was a cool program that few if any competitor could offer, but walled gardens are for not having to worry about the competition.
I bought the BOMT for a feat, and completely regret the purchase lesson learned.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Just off the top of my head, Lancer gives away all player-facing information (Mechs, Talents, gear, etc) for free, independent of the books those items come in. Shadowrun may not offer individual item purchases, but their supplement books are much more focused (this one has more guns, this one has more spells, this one has more races, etc) and thus much more affordable. Exalted typically releases sub-books focused on each "class". Most other games don't release $30-$60 expansion books out of which any given player might only want one thing. The barrier to entry to D&D is abnormally high; a la carte was unique to DDB because a la carte was solving a problem unique to D&D.
This feels like a real slap in the face to PLAYERS who don’t really get anything out of having a whole book. Like… why on Earth is a player gonna drop $30 on Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse to get the species they want when they, as a player and not a DM, otherwise have no use for a monster manual? They’re more likely to just homebrew what they want and pay nothing. Seems silly to me.
I mean, I bought the book for exactly that reason. Honestly, that one’s a poor example since it’s got several dozen race/species options in it, making it at least as player facing as DM facing. But I’d have bought VGtM and MToF too if I hadn’t missed that window, and I have bought Fizban’s and Bigby’s with no intention of being a DM. Don’t underestimate how many people are probably willing to pay for the whole book.
Sure, but I’m not talking about the players who are prepared to drop full price for a book despite not being able to use most of it. I know plenty of players who are happy to buy up books because they just like having them. My point is that there are also plenty of players who don’t want to blow money on stuff they don’t need who would rather just pay a few dollars for the convenience of using a player option that they want for their campaign.
The players who like having the whole book were gonna buy it anyway. The players who don’t are probably likely to find some kind of workaround. That’s been my experience with a lot of the people I’ve played with, anyway. I’d be very interested in seeing the data that informed this decision because the “all or nothing” approach doesn’t feel like something that is going to win any favor.
They've officially announced the change now, so it's not secretive: https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1709-d-d-beyond-marketplace-redesign-see-whats-new-here
The big black box remaining is what happens to folks who previously bought part of a book - can the functionality for them to receive a discount on the cover price due to their partial purchases be retained, or alternatively, can those partial purchases be refunded?
If they solve that, then I'll still disagree with this move - but it will at least be a fair business decision.
The FAQ and the news post both read they will count towards the full book. But that isn't happening. Definitely need clarification on that point
https://dndbeyond-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/articles/7747224960788-FAQ-D-D-Beyond-Sales
This is especially true when you consider the big issue with this site that has dominated the forums since its launch: the issue of physical vs. digital.
People who have bought physical books in the past aren’t especially inclined to repurchase the digital version for the same price. It’s an opinion dictated not by the consumer’s selfishness, but by common sense — why would you drop $30 on something you already own when you could use the same amount of money to purchase something entirely new?
What I’m trying to say is that the large group of people who refuse to repurchase their physical books don’t have the same reservations around piecemeal purchases. If you want artificer on a character and already own the physical version of Eberron, you might not be willing to buy the whole book again just for one class. However, dropping $2 on a subclass (in my case, armorer) is a commitment folks are much more comfortable with.
I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC had been losing money to this group of holdouts, but removing piecemeal options altogether was an even worse choice. The average player won’t give in and buy the full book — they’ll simply resort to a different method of obtaining the class, likely using the homebrew creator or a certain .tools.
Terra Lubridia archive:
The Bloody Barnacle | The Gut | The Athene Crusader | The Jewel of Atlantis
Tell me you never played D&D without actually telling me. It is impossible for Wizards to benefit from pay-to-win. Wizards does not GM at a table. If a person wants to pay to win, they do that by bribing their GM.
As long as everyone at the table is having fun and no one gets hurt, there is no wrong way to play D&D. Do not be "that" guy that people avoid at the game store, and you are being "that" guy right now. Telling and insinuating others are playing the game wrong is toxic and uncalled for. You are not their GM, you are not their player, you are not at their table. If some people want to start their campaign at level 20 with max stats, max HP, loaded with feats and epic boons, equipped with the best magic items, proficient in all skills and tools and weapons and armor, know all languages, and can use legendary resistance and legendary success, that is their decision and their decsion only. You do not have to play with them, and they do not have play with you, so what they do at their table is none of your business.
Epic Heroism is in the DMG and Wish is in the PHB, so an Epic Hero wizard that can spam Wish has been here since 2014. Players have been killing gods and murderhoboing innocents with even more broken homebrew content even before 5e. All that is part of D&D. The ONLY thing that raised powercreep since 2014 was Simulacrum in ROTF in 2020, and that removes some of the penalty for using Wish more creatively.
Microtransactions are here to stay in the gaming industry. Get over it. Many people like it, and many people want it to be brought back to Beyond.
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I am glad they are planning to honor the piece meal credits, as of now, no credit for prior piece meal purchases that I have found, but I am getting my legendary bundle discount. If we do actually get our piece meal discount then I have no dog in the fight.
I still think it is a bad move, but that is a different colored cat all together.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
If that is functionality they promised that isn't working, that's a bug report for the site support team. But it would probably be best opened by someone (or someones) who is actually trying to make that jump from a partial purchase to a full book.
To me the root problem is not physical vs digital, but what you are actually buying on DDB, which is (oversimplification incoming) your books are pre-entered for the character creator, ie you can put any and all of your physical books in as homebrew, or you can pay DDB instead of doing it yourself you also get a digital hyperlinked and (somewhat) searchable (compendium) digital copy of the book as well.
For some reason a lot of people gloss over the very important part of all of the homebrewing is done for you if you already have the physical book and want the digital copy. It is not the digital book most buy books on DDB that people want, but the access to the information in the books for the character creation tool the tool is free, and homebrewing is free, you just have to pay DDB if you do not want to input things from the physical books.
I would rather buy the character creation tool (an actual download hosted on my machine for a one time cost) and manually input the books I want than to buy the books to put in the online tool. I am also aware that this will likely never happen.
When you buy a "book" on DDB you are getting a lot more than an OCR'd pdf.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Here's the problem: IT WAS DONE in secretive. Nobody cares if they post news about it AFTER they changed it.
Every person who owned part of a book, as of this moment, has the buy the WHOLE book again, and pay the FULL PRICE.
It's contradicting to their news, and it should have been announced hours/days before the change, so people could have a chance to buy the rest of those books.
Yea, sure, they could have just not write any news at all. But you can pretty sure, that this would have exploded even more if they didn't.
I'm not going to defend WotC's PR team, Ao knows they're supremely bad at it.
But the intent seems to be that if you did a partial purchase, those purchases will count towards the full book. So "you have the buy the WHOLE book again and pay FULL PRICE" is incorrect, or at the very least a site bug that should be handled like all other site bugs, i.e. via the Support process.
That statement was added well after the store was changed, well after the blowback and still has yet to actually be implemented for the users.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.