This is absolute garbage. So when my DM gives my character an item I have to buy an entire book just for that one item. Really losing faith in Dndbeyond.
This is absolute garbage. So when my DM gives my character an item I have to buy an entire book just for that one item. Really losing faith in Dndbeyond.
You do not need to buy anything. If the GM has Content Sharing turned on in the campaign, you have access to everything the GM has.
yup. sad. what a dumb move on their part.. allowing us to buy items individually was one of the best features they ever had and they threw it away... the amount of people that defend it is just as sad to me.. shame... so many times i would have given them money and they miss out and i miss out.. literally lose / lose..
they are losing a ton of money for this no matter what they have convinced themselves lol
There is a moronic theory that has become practice that a CEO's primary responsibility is to keep profits moving constantly upward and to the right to keep shareholders happy. Anyone with a functional brain knows that it is a path to failure, because eternal growth is impossible. However, corporations still insist on it despite the fact that it proven to kill company after company. Yet they merge, cut everything for the sake of the bottom line, and generally ruin their long-term viability for a few more months of short-term profits. I mean, why would the CEO care since most of them are gone before the damage, and their compensation package solely cares about stock value of the moment.
Even if a single CEO gets in that does the right things, the next one will quickly destroy what they received to pad their stock bonuses some more. Don't worry though, once Hasbro has run D&D into the ground for their short-term profits they will be sold off or merged with someone else. Ultimately, everything will be owned by Disney and we will all celebrate the return of the d20 Star Wars RPG to the fold.
This is historically proven. Shareholder driven profit motive and corporate ladder climbing of CEOs jumping from one firm to another promising to increase profits by doing things the last CEO balked at, and selling off to the bigger fish or a private equity firm to dissolve it: It is the heart of the enshitification of the market, particularly the last 50-60 years..
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!
Such a step backwards for inclusivity from people of all walks of life. Sometimes people cant afford a whole ass book for the one feat or subclass etc they need.
So disappointing that they would create such a pay-wall, I get angry about this every time I come across a subclass or feat I can't just buy singularly.
Such a step backwards for inclusivity from people of all walks of life. Sometimes people cant afford a whole ass book for the one feat or subclass etc they need.
So disappointing that they would create such a pay-wall, I get angry about this every time I come across a subclass or feat I can't just buy singularly.
Really impacts character creation.
While it was never promoted and sold like bundle discount stacking was (which has for all intents and purposes been removed to date though they claim to be working on a fix that doesn't include a long and ultimately fruitless "solution" for many), taking piecemeal purchasing away is definitely perceived as financial gatekeeping to many who have bought into this platform, which would seem to run askew with what wotc has indicated they want to quell and distance themselves from the original creators of the IP. They do seem to be at odds with what they say, and what they do though it is their IP, we do not have to buy in or continue to support these business practices, if we do not agree with where they choose to go. Though wizbro is doing what corporations do to keep shareholders happy, until they are inclined to divest it is we as end users control the pursestrings at the end of the day.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Me and my party are leaving D&D Beyond to use Foundry. Sad but necessary. We alway bought individual itens. We live in Brazil and pay 40 USD in a book just to use a single feat is not an option. 40 USD is A LOT of money. What a shame wizards
Ok, so the DM has to buy the whole book for one item. I fail to see how that's any better.
The DM has to buy the whole book for the contents of the book; if you only want a book for two pages, it may not be worth getting the book, but that's the way RPGs have worked for fifty years.
It's not how it's worked for the last 6-7 years that DnDBeyond has been around. Or if you want to compare just to physical books then for 50 years you've never had to pay a subscription to share content you own.
Whichever way you look at it DnDBeyond have chosen to make the online game more expensive and much less usable, for no reason other than corporate greed, and they don't even have the decency to communicate with their customers about it.
Just throwing my voice in to help spread the word and hopefully get Hasbro/Wizards' attention.
I loved a la carte purchases... I'm the type of person who loves crafting characters, and I'm willing to pay a couple bucks here and there for interesting character options or magic items.
But I cannot justify spending 30-50 dollars when all I want is a subclass or a background. And, by extension, I'm not going to do it. I guess I'll just stick to what I already have until they reinstate the microtransactions a la carte as an option. This is absolutely ridiculous and I hope that Wizards is taking a financial beating from this awful decision.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Unhappy that the market got rid of individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
Me and my party are leaving D&D Beyond to use Foundry. Sad but necessary. We alway bought individual itens. We live in Brazil and pay 40 USD in a book just to use a single feat is not an option. 40 USD is A LOT of money. What a shame wizards
Foundry, eh? What other ones are people thinking? I'd prefer to stay here, but with no a la carte, I'm cutting my losses, DNDbeyond is a bad investment.
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!
There is a moronic theory that has become practice that a CEO's primary responsibility is to keep profits moving constantly upward and to the right to keep shareholders happy.
For a publicly traded for-profit corporation, the job of a CEO is in fact to maximize shareholder value (for other types of business, it can be different). The usual error is seeking transient bonuses with negative long-term effects (e.g. staff cuts almost certainly increase profits for the year you do them, but the resulted loss of quality will cost you in later years. This can be a worthwhile tradeoff, but the way incentive structures are set up often result in people making that tradeoff even when it isn't actually worthwhile).
No its due to a court case where shareholders went to court, due to the company owner wanting not to focus on the short term and instead of wanting to improve the company as a whole focusing long term(like treating workers not as slave labor).... they won then took they money they gained from said short term gains and founded a Direct competitor for that company, this court case set quite a bad precendent and ever since that its mistakenly considered the only goal of a CEO is to appease the shareholders since people only look at one aspect of the situation... atleast in U.S.A(they have a funny way of taking things out context... like the saying "customer is always right" which is not even the complete quote but managers seem to take it to heart)
No its due to a court case where shareholders went to court, due to the company owner wanting not to focus on the short term and instead of wanting to improve the company as a whole focusing long term.
I'm not sure what case you're referring to... but the reason it's possible to win a shareholder lawsuit like that is because the CEO has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders.
Ok, so the DM has to buy the whole book for one item. I fail to see how that's any better.
You are right that it is not better. But the general convention is that the GM provides for everything their players need, and GMs generally would rather buy the whole book on Beyond rather than just the piecemeal content, since they are likely to use more than just one piece of content in a book. As a GM, I foot all the hobbies' bills and I do not expect my players to spend anything. And since I myself utilize Beyond, they have will have access to everything that I have access to. However, at the same time, I am not going to give them an item that I myself do not have access to either.
Obviously not every GM can afford to provide everything their players need, but there are plenty of ways to access/utilize Beyond without paying for it. Since you need just one item, the easiest way to get it without paying is to just homebrew it. If you want to actually solve the issue and find a more permanent solution, you can ask your GM to ask the local D&D community or on various social media to help give them access to content. Plenty of GMs help each other out with access to books and content, so with the help from fellow GMs, even the brokest GM can provide for everything their players need.
It's not how it's worked for the last 6-7 years that DnDBeyond has been around. Or if you want to compare just to physical books then for 50 years you've never had to pay a subscription to share content you own.
Whichever way you look at it DnDBeyond have chosen to make the online game more expensive and much less usable, for no reason other than corporate greed, and they don't even have the decency to communicate with their customers about it.
Charging a subscription on Beyond to share content is pretty reasonable in my opinion. There is a limit to how many people you can share at a time with a physical book. On a digital platform like Beyond, if Content Sharing is free, there is no need for anyone to buy anything, since it is far easier for people who bought content to share with multiple people at the same time. And if you really do not want to pay a subscription for Content Sharing, that is totally possible too; the GM can simply make a private homebrew copy of whatever they want, and homebrew is automatically shared in a campaign without needing to turn on Content Sharing.
Beyond has signficantly lowered the barrier of entry. Sure, it is not as low as before when à la carte purchases existed, but it is still reasonably low right now. As long as a GM has an ounce of Charisma, and are willing to pay $5 or $6 a month for Master Subscription for Content Sharing, they should not have any issue getting help from fellow GMs to access all content on Beyond. If a GM is really broke, some fellow generous GMs will even turn on Content Sharing for the less fortunate. If you are friends with the right people, paying $5 or $6 a month is honestly pretty cheap given that you can access over $1,000 worth of books on Beyond.
It is a pain in the ass to jump through all those hoops. However, there is something you and your GM can do about the removal of individual purchases, and low balling Wizards with subscription is one way to do it. Alternatively, if you are really lucky, you might not even need to pay for Content Sharing.
Digital and physical platforms and methods of playing are not comparable with each other. Especially when something has been established as being the way it works for the better part of the last decade, when it then becomes restricted with no explanation and no notice with a much less functional interface, something is wrong.
It is reminiscent of video games trending towards all-digital yet still increasing in price despite no longer having to pay for distribution and manufacturing. If you buy a physical book as a DM, you can be rest assured that you will always have that book and it will function exactly how it was intended. If you buy content on D&D Beyond, if the website goes down you completely lose access to all of that. It should be cheaper and it should be more readily available, especially because the cost of integrating content within the website and keeping the servers running is bound to be less than the creation of the physical objects, especially when there are people already paying for subscriptions.
I wonder if they'd ever consider a compromise of "renting" content. Maybe instead of buying a book, you can pay a couple bucks a month for it. I hate going even further into the "you will own nothing" world, but if we're not going to be able to purchase individual items from books it would be nice to still have an economical option. It would be a good analogue to the ability to rent physical books. Heck, make it a subscription tier if you really want to. Any way that can be a bit more of an economic solution for those of us who would be pirating PDFs or playing a different game altogether would be nice.
Just want to leave my feedback and say that individual purchases were my favorite feature of dnd beyond.
For me and my friends it was THE reason we loved this service and bought plenty of single spells, items, races, subclasses etc.
None of us is even considering buying a whole book if we only want small pieces of it.
It actually is really frustrating and discouraged us in playing more dnd. I can't believe that this way is generating you more money, because you canceled an easy and catchy mechanic to let new players try out stuff.
Do you know if anyone is tracking the join date and post count of the members dissenting these changes?
It seems like a large portion of them are long time members that do not post often, many of them didn't post during the OGL issue.
that would be meeeeee~
I'm not tracking that granularly, but I do note the amount of individual commenters.
For your feedback list:
I didnt play DnD for a couple of years now and just came back to starting with a new group of old friends while noticing the changes made to individual purchases (or "a la cart") and it is a complete downer. This feature was the #1 reason I advertised DDB years ago and it was my personal starting point of DnD as it made it easy for a new player to mix and match stuff to play around your own fantasy. All of that destroyed by greed.
Its not only that I wont purchase a whole sourcebook if I only want one item/feat/race/subclass/spell etc., its even more the feeling knowing that this change was made with giving no f about your customers. It feels like getting spit in the face by someone that wants to sell me a product.
DDB has kind of died for me personally with this change. I really wasnt expecting this coming back to this hobby... :(
I'm adding my voice to the choir, this is a ridiculous change. NOBODY besides Dungeon Masters want to purchase the content of an entire book. Players don't care/need to purchase monsters, treasures, compendium content. So why should people be forced to pay for something they don't want?
I won't be purchasing anything on DnDBeyond unless they revert this.
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This is absolute garbage. So when my DM gives my character an item I have to buy an entire book just for that one item. Really losing faith in Dndbeyond.
You do not need to buy anything. If the GM has Content Sharing turned on in the campaign, you have access to everything the GM has.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
yup. sad. what a dumb move on their part.. allowing us to buy items individually was one of the best features they ever had and they threw it away... the amount of people that defend it is just as sad to me.. shame... so many times i would have given them money and they miss out and i miss out.. literally lose / lose..
they are losing a ton of money for this no matter what they have convinced themselves lol
This is historically proven.
Shareholder driven profit motive and corporate ladder climbing of CEOs jumping from one firm to another promising to increase profits by doing things the last CEO balked at, and selling off to the bigger fish or a private equity firm to dissolve it: It is the heart of the enshitification of the market, particularly the last 50-60 years..
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!
Over 1000 posts on this topic. Lets keep it going
Such a step backwards for inclusivity from people of all walks of life. Sometimes people cant afford a whole ass book for the one feat or subclass etc they need.
So disappointing that they would create such a pay-wall, I get angry about this every time I come across a subclass or feat I can't just buy singularly.
Really impacts character creation.
While it was never promoted and sold like bundle discount stacking was (which has for all intents and purposes been removed to date though they claim to be working on a fix that doesn't include a long and ultimately fruitless "solution" for many), taking piecemeal purchasing away is definitely perceived as financial gatekeeping to many who have bought into this platform, which would seem to run askew with what wotc has indicated they want to quell and distance themselves from the original creators of the IP. They do seem to be at odds with what they say, and what they do though it is their IP, we do not have to buy in or continue to support these business practices, if we do not agree with where they choose to go. Though wizbro is doing what corporations do to keep shareholders happy, until they are inclined to divest it is we as end users control the pursestrings at the end of the day.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
Me and my party are leaving D&D Beyond to use Foundry. Sad but necessary. We alway bought individual itens. We live in Brazil and pay 40 USD in a book just to use a single feat is not an option. 40 USD is A LOT of money. What a shame wizards
Ok, so the DM has to buy the whole book for one item. I fail to see how that's any better.
The DM has to buy the whole book for the contents of the book; if you only want a book for two pages, it may not be worth getting the book, but that's the way RPGs have worked for fifty years.
i check every few days in hopes that they will come to their damn senses and fix this blunder so i can give them more money but nope hahaa
It's not how it's worked for the last 6-7 years that DnDBeyond has been around. Or if you want to compare just to physical books then for 50 years you've never had to pay a subscription to share content you own.
Whichever way you look at it DnDBeyond have chosen to make the online game more expensive and much less usable, for no reason other than corporate greed, and they don't even have the decency to communicate with their customers about it.
Just throwing my voice in to help spread the word and hopefully get Hasbro/Wizards' attention.
I loved a la carte purchases... I'm the type of person who loves crafting characters, and I'm willing to pay a couple bucks here and there for interesting character options or magic items.
But I cannot justify spending 30-50 dollars when all I want is a subclass or a background. And, by extension, I'm not going to do it. I guess I'll just stick to what I already have until they reinstate the
microtransactionsa la carte as an option. This is absolutely ridiculous and I hope that Wizards is taking a financial beating from this awful decision.Unhappy that the market got rid of individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
Provide feedback!
Foundry, eh?
What other ones are people thinking?
I'd prefer to stay here, but with no a la carte, I'm cutting my losses, DNDbeyond is a bad investment.
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!
No its due to a court case where shareholders went to court, due to the company owner wanting not to focus on the short term and instead of wanting to improve the company as a whole focusing long term(like treating workers not as slave labor).... they won then took they money they gained from said short term gains and founded a Direct competitor for that company, this court case set quite a bad precendent and ever since that its mistakenly considered the only goal of a CEO is to appease the shareholders since people only look at one aspect of the situation... atleast in U.S.A(they have a funny way of taking things out context... like the saying "customer is always right" which is not even the complete quote but managers seem to take it to heart)
I'm not sure what case you're referring to... but the reason it's possible to win a shareholder lawsuit like that is because the CEO has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders.
You are right that it is not better. But the general convention is that the GM provides for everything their players need, and GMs generally would rather buy the whole book on Beyond rather than just the piecemeal content, since they are likely to use more than just one piece of content in a book. As a GM, I foot all the hobbies' bills and I do not expect my players to spend anything. And since I myself utilize Beyond, they have will have access to everything that I have access to. However, at the same time, I am not going to give them an item that I myself do not have access to either.
Obviously not every GM can afford to provide everything their players need, but there are plenty of ways to access/utilize Beyond without paying for it. Since you need just one item, the easiest way to get it without paying is to just homebrew it. If you want to actually solve the issue and find a more permanent solution, you can ask your GM to ask the local D&D community or on various social media to help give them access to content. Plenty of GMs help each other out with access to books and content, so with the help from fellow GMs, even the brokest GM can provide for everything their players need.
Charging a subscription on Beyond to share content is pretty reasonable in my opinion. There is a limit to how many people you can share at a time with a physical book. On a digital platform like Beyond, if Content Sharing is free, there is no need for anyone to buy anything, since it is far easier for people who bought content to share with multiple people at the same time. And if you really do not want to pay a subscription for Content Sharing, that is totally possible too; the GM can simply make a private homebrew copy of whatever they want, and homebrew is automatically shared in a campaign without needing to turn on Content Sharing.
Beyond has signficantly lowered the barrier of entry. Sure, it is not as low as before when à la carte purchases existed, but it is still reasonably low right now. As long as a GM has an ounce of Charisma, and are willing to pay $5 or $6 a month for Master Subscription for Content Sharing, they should not have any issue getting help from fellow GMs to access all content on Beyond. If a GM is really broke, some fellow generous GMs will even turn on Content Sharing for the less fortunate. If you are friends with the right people, paying $5 or $6 a month is honestly pretty cheap given that you can access over $1,000 worth of books on Beyond.
It is a pain in the ass to jump through all those hoops. However, there is something you and your GM can do about the removal of individual purchases, and low balling Wizards with subscription is one way to do it. Alternatively, if you are really lucky, you might not even need to pay for Content Sharing.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
Digital and physical platforms and methods of playing are not comparable with each other. Especially when something has been established as being the way it works for the better part of the last decade, when it then becomes restricted with no explanation and no notice with a much less functional interface, something is wrong.
It is reminiscent of video games trending towards all-digital yet still increasing in price despite no longer having to pay for distribution and manufacturing. If you buy a physical book as a DM, you can be rest assured that you will always have that book and it will function exactly how it was intended. If you buy content on D&D Beyond, if the website goes down you completely lose access to all of that. It should be cheaper and it should be more readily available, especially because the cost of integrating content within the website and keeping the servers running is bound to be less than the creation of the physical objects, especially when there are people already paying for subscriptions.
I wonder if they'd ever consider a compromise of "renting" content. Maybe instead of buying a book, you can pay a couple bucks a month for it. I hate going even further into the "you will own nothing" world, but if we're not going to be able to purchase individual items from books it would be nice to still have an economical option. It would be a good analogue to the ability to rent physical books. Heck, make it a subscription tier if you really want to. Any way that can be a bit more of an economic solution for those of us who would be pirating PDFs or playing a different game altogether would be nice.
Just want to leave my feedback and say that individual purchases were my favorite feature of dnd beyond.
For me and my friends it was THE reason we loved this service and bought plenty of single spells, items, races, subclasses etc.
None of us is even considering buying a whole book if we only want small pieces of it.
It actually is really frustrating and discouraged us in playing more dnd. I can't believe that this way is generating you more money, because you canceled an easy and catchy mechanic to let new players try out stuff.
Huge L-move from this site.
For your feedback list:
I didnt play DnD for a couple of years now and just came back to starting with a new group of old friends while noticing the changes made to individual purchases (or "a la cart") and it is a complete downer.
This feature was the #1 reason I advertised DDB years ago and it was my personal starting point of DnD as it made it easy for a new player to mix and match stuff to play around your own fantasy. All of that destroyed by greed.
Its not only that I wont purchase a whole sourcebook if I only want one item/feat/race/subclass/spell etc., its even more the feeling knowing that this change was made with giving no f about your customers. It feels like getting spit in the face by someone that wants to sell me a product.
DDB has kind of died for me personally with this change. I really wasnt expecting this coming back to this hobby... :(
I'm adding my voice to the choir, this is a ridiculous change. NOBODY besides Dungeon Masters want to purchase the content of an entire book. Players don't care/need to purchase monsters, treasures, compendium content. So why should people be forced to pay for something they don't want?
I won't be purchasing anything on DnDBeyond unless they revert this.