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 Ă la carte?
Ă€ 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.
Hey folks! I am going to make a wider post about this, but as the most active thread on the forums about the marketplace changes, it seemed prudent to start here.
Regarding partial purchases: if you want to buy a book that you made a la carte/individual purchases from, you must contact customer service to receive your discount. The marketplace article has been updated to reflect this.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :) CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
Hey folks! I am going to make a wider post about this, but as the most active thread on the forums about the marketplace changes, it seemed prudent to start here.
Regarding partial purchases: if you want to buy a book that you made a la carte/individual purchases from, you must contact customer service to receive your discount. The marketplace article has been updated to reflect this.
Are they going to be updating the store accordingly so that such methods are no longer needed in the future?
Just want to add my voice to those saying they are frustrated by the honestly unbelievable lack of communication around this and other recent developments. Having significant changes sprung on us without warning just sucks. Particularly when things like, just as an example, the filtering of previously purchased items is so unclear (having a cart button is clear enough, but what does a "+" mean and why is it on some items I already own and one I don't?).
I am really disappointed in and frustrated by what I consider a major issue of consistently poor communication and lack of transparency from WotC. I really love this game and I want to support it's continued development, but man stuff like this makes it difficult.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Much that once was is lost. Objects in Mirror Image are closer than they appear. All the world's indeed a stage, and we are merely players, performers and portrayers...
Hey folks! I am going to make a wider post about this, but as the most active thread on the forums about the marketplace changes, it seemed prudent to start here.
Regarding partial purchases: if you want to buy a book that you made a la carte/individual purchases from, you must contact customer service to receive your discount. The marketplace article has been updated to reflect this.
So, to clarify, I have to remember what I've bought piecemeal and from what book, then contact DDB to try and get a discount? Rather than just...having the discount?
Is this a short term fix or is this the MO from now on?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I don't have the answer to that question right now, but the community team and moderators are collecting as much feedback about this as y'all are giving us, so please continue to voice those thoughts!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :) CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
You can see what individual purchases you've made in your Order History and in the Licenses tab on your Account page.
I know it's clunky AF, but this is the current method of getting that discount. I'll make sure that feedback is heard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :) CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
no problem! I'm just sorry I wasn't in here earlier, but as you can imagine, it's been a bit... much... over the last 36-ish hours, hahaha.
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Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her) You can call me LT. :) CM Hat On| CM Hat Off Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5]. Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
I think doing this was a huge mistake to be honest. I used to buy whole (physical) sourcebooks just for my own enjoyment, as well as individual piecemeal digital options for specific characters. WoTC already have been disappointing us and ruining their own reputation time and time again. I kept using dndbeyond and regularly spending money on books and piecemeal options honestly because it was convenient and i do enjoy dnd a lot, but I'm not going to buy a whole book I'm not even interested in for one damn subclass.
My friend switched to just making and calculating their own character sheets usingothercontent easily available for free elsewhere online a while ago and i think I'm going to have to start doing the same.
The convenience is no longer even slightly enough for the price they've now made it. And doing this without any announcement beforehand has degraded what was left of the trust so i don't think I'll be buying any more physical sourcebooks either. Just super disappointing and a terrible business move as far as i can tell.
Ive been complaining about and being talked down to by the community and silenced by the WotC team since this change was obviously going to happen a couple of years ago.
"There are no plans to do that." "It's only for partnered content."
Sincerely, eat a giant helping of processed pig byproducts.
or You know... Just give us a $10 sub option that grants access to all the material.
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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.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/marketplace >
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 >
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.
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D&D StaffHey folks! I am going to make a wider post about this, but as the most active thread on the forums about the marketplace changes, it seemed prudent to start here.
Regarding partial purchases: if you want to buy a book that you made a la carte/individual purchases from, you must contact customer service to receive your discount. The marketplace article has been updated to reflect this.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her)
You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On | CM Hat Off
Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5].
Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
Useful Links: Site Rules & Guidelines | D&D Educator Resources | Change Your Nickname | Submit a Support Ticket
Are they going to be updating the store accordingly so that such methods are no longer needed in the future?
Just want to add my voice to those saying they are frustrated by the honestly unbelievable lack of communication around this and other recent developments. Having significant changes sprung on us without warning just sucks. Particularly when things like, just as an example, the filtering of previously purchased items is so unclear (having a cart button is clear enough, but what does a "+" mean and why is it on some items I already own and one I don't?).
I am really disappointed in and frustrated by what I consider a major issue of consistently poor communication and lack of transparency from WotC. I really love this game and I want to support it's continued development, but man stuff like this makes it difficult.
Much that once was is lost.
Objects in Mirror Image are closer than they appear.
All the world's indeed a stage, and we are merely players, performers and portrayers...
So, to clarify, I have to remember what I've bought piecemeal and from what book, then contact DDB to try and get a discount? Rather than just...having the discount?
Is this a short term fix or is this the MO from now on?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
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D&D StaffI don't have the answer to that question right now, but the community team and moderators are collecting as much feedback about this as y'all are giving us, so please continue to voice those thoughts!
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her)
You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On | CM Hat Off
Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5].
Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
Useful Links: Site Rules & Guidelines | D&D Educator Resources | Change Your Nickname | Submit a Support Ticket
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D&D StaffYou can see what individual purchases you've made in your Order History and in the Licenses tab on your Account page.
I know it's clunky AF, but this is the current method of getting that discount. I'll make sure that feedback is heard.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her)
You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On | CM Hat Off
Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5].
Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
Useful Links: Site Rules & Guidelines | D&D Educator Resources | Change Your Nickname | Submit a Support Ticket
Just want to say a Huge thank you for the communication, really thank you!!!
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D&D Staffno problem! I'm just sorry I wasn't in here earlier, but as you can imagine, it's been a bit... much... over the last 36-ish hours, hahaha.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Community Manager (she/her)
You can call me LT. :)
CM Hat On | CM Hat Off
Generally active from 9am - 6pm CDT [GMT-5].
Thank you for your patience if you message me outside of those hours!
Useful Links: Site Rules & Guidelines | D&D Educator Resources | Change Your Nickname | Submit a Support Ticket
Thank you from those of us who are not always so vocal.
And good luck with the role out.
I think doing this was a huge mistake to be honest. I used to buy whole (physical) sourcebooks just for my own enjoyment, as well as individual piecemeal digital options for specific characters. WoTC already have been disappointing us and ruining their own reputation time and time again. I kept using dndbeyond and regularly spending money on books and piecemeal options honestly because it was convenient and i do enjoy dnd a lot, but I'm not going to buy a whole book I'm not even interested in for one damn subclass.
My friend switched to just making and calculating their own character sheets using other content easily available for free elsewhere online a while ago and i think I'm going to have to start doing the same.
The convenience is no longer even slightly enough for the price they've now made it. And doing this without any announcement beforehand has degraded what was left of the trust so i don't think I'll be buying any more physical sourcebooks either. Just super disappointing and a terrible business move as far as i can tell.
edited for clarity :))
Ive been complaining about and being talked down to by the community and silenced by the WotC team since this change was obviously going to happen a couple of years ago.
"There are no plans to do that." "It's only for partnered content."
Sincerely, eat a giant helping of processed pig byproducts.
or You know... Just give us a $10 sub option that grants access to all the material.