Extremely poor choice on taking away the ala carte options.
Furthermore, DnD (and RPGs in general) are entertainment. DM's, Players (old and new) will leave DnD for a cheaper, more customer friendly game system. The CEOs and "management" who are ill equipped to LEAD an "entertainment" company whose goodwill and support relies on people bringing in new players (customers) should be removed.
Can I still purchase subclasses, feats, and other game listings à la carte?
À la carte purchases are no longer supported.
@WOTC @DNDBEYOND @the stupid people behind the scenes angling for more profitable options.
YOU. WILL. LOSE. MONEY OVER THIS CHANGE.
This will be seen as a major inconvenience to casual players. And may likely chill DMs future purchases, because maybe they aren't interested in everything a book has to offer. This also gambles with the idea that you are the only provider for content purchases. It's like the OGL debacle didn't teach you much. Squeeze harder why don't you.. People will choose to leave DnD behind and move onto other less restrictive and controlling IPs.
I have hopes they will revert this and bring back the option to buy a la carte, or else im out for sure. I had just recently started to use this site and liked the pick and choose options because I can get things I need at the pace im able to afford the hobby. Bring this back or I jump ship before its completely sunk....
No way in hell am I buying an entire book full of stuff I really don't need just so I can get a few magic items here, a few monsters there, etc. Instead of getting some of my money, they will now get none of it. I'm seeing the same sentiment pretty much everywhere. Whoever made this decision is idiotic.
How many times are you going to continue to make terrible decisions? Stop ******* up the hobby to line your pockets. The REASON I started spending money on DnD Beyond is because I already own the books but could buy individual pieces for my characters digitally. Now, not only can I not do that, I have to but the entire book which means REBUYING content I've already spent $5-$15 on. How are you people employed?
Canceled subscription. Lost costumer. Done with your products. Peace.
Everything that anyone needs to know about this asinine decision involves the discount for having purchased partial content previously:
In order to get the discount you're owed, you have to contact customer service and ask for it. You're supposed to remember - without being able to see it on the store page - which books you've previously purchased content from, otherwise D&D Beyond is going to overcharge (steal from) you.
D&D Beyond isn't as important as they think they are, and they're about to find that out in a big way when people migrate towards getting 5e content elsewhere.
Buying things Individually was LITERALLY THE ONLY Reason to use DNDBeyond over any of the 3rd party sites. Like Roll20 or Foundry. Going entirely back to 3rd party Sites now, have fun eating your profit loss over this WotC <3
I don't understand the logic behind this change at all. There are individual items I've bought where I would never buy the entire book (e.g., backgrounds from Ghosts of Saltmarsh). And there are books that I only bought as part of the sourcebook bundle (e.g., Acquisition Incorporated). If the new restrictions had been in place at the time, then I would have spent less money on dndbeyond.
Really disappointed with the update. Buying a la carte was what got me into using this site in the first place, since I can't really afford to buy a whole book at once. I was planning on buying the rest of Monsters of the Multiverse at some point, but going through customer support to get my discount isn't really appealing to me.
I don't understand the logic behind this change at all. There are individual items I've bought where I would never buy the entire book (e.g., backgrounds from Ghosts of Saltmarsh). And there are books that I only bought as part of the sourcebook bundle (e.g., Acquisition Incorporated). If the new restrictions had been in place at the time, then I would have spent less money on dndbeyond.
I'm guessing the logic is, with the new rulebooks coming out, they don't want people just buying select items from them. That would make the "X number of books sold since the launch of the new edition" announcements way less impressive if everyone just goes "Well, I want the new Monk but I don't care about the other classes" or whatever.
I personally think a much better way to handle this would have been a time gate on new content being available for individual purchases.
Like 3 months (A quarter) or 6 months (2 quarters) so they fluff up those quarterly earnings to investors, but still allows new people to get into the hobby cheaper later on.
Hell, even going for a bigger 1 year date would still be better than going you MUST plop down $30 or more. I'm in the same boat, individual purchases are what got me into D&D enough to buy entire books.
I really hope that a lot of customers are like us and they'll look at THOSE numbers. How many customers just bought a class or something first and then went on to spend a ton on the site later on? Driving away new customers wanting to try out the hobby isn't gonna work out well long term.
That would make the "X number of books sold since the launch of the new edition" announcements way less impressive if everyone just goes "Well, I want the new Monk but I don't care about the other classes" or whatever.
The correct solution to that "problem" is to just report on the number of players for a product, and/or the value of sales (since that's all the shareholders care about anyway). Number of "books" sold in units is irrelevant in a digital product.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
The writing has been on the wall for some time with me, but this solidifies it. I am done with giving any more of my money to WOTC in any capacity. Not just on this site, but the hundreds I spend on official minis and other D&D branded accessories each year will now be going to other games.
I will be immediately canceling my Master Tier subscription and never looking back. The events of the past couple of years have shown me that WOTC has no interest in keeping me as a customer.
Shadowdark is a more fun and accessible experience anyway IMHO.
Welp looks like people are about to go back to the days of looking up Any and all new content through pirating sites, and then just adding them as "Homebrew" to use.
Expect to start seeing a ton of "New Homebrew" Content EVERY time a book comes out.
Buying things Individually was LITERALLY THE ONLY Reason to use DNDBeyond over any of the 3rd party sites. Like Roll20 or Foundry. Going entirely back to 3rd party Sites now, have fun eating your profit loss over this WotC <3
Likely their next move will be to restrict or remove Homebrew options to prevent users from creating copies of official content. They will use every means possible to force players to spend money the way the company wants.
Have you noticed that sales discounts have been slowly getting worse and worse over the last year? That trend will continue, especially now that buying full books will be the only way to obtain content. This will be followed by steep increases in the base purchase price of each book.
They will ultimately price out casual players and those with limited disposable income, but they won't care as long as they can make up for it by getting more from the hardcore players. The leaders of Hasbro/WotC are suits who only see the numbers on a spreadsheet and nothing else.
here is something about the update that no-one has noticed or yet pointed out:
Pre-update the Vecna Eve of Ruin digital advertised that if you did the preorder you'd get early access (May 7th) to the digital content.
Now when you attempt to look at it, it will tell you that you own it, however, the countdown timer reflects 16 days (May 21st) at the time I am posting this. Looks like early access has been removed if you preordered it from dndbeyond (which I did). Oh, and the option to pay via paypal has also been removed.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
known as ZombieMall by some.. GameMasters by others..
I am literally now scrambling to move my campaign to another platform because I am sick of the updates this website releases without warning or care of how it impacts its users. I have always known that Hasbro and WotC were nothing more than greedy and money hungry but this is my last straw. $40 for 1 piece of content I want and 99 things I'll never use vs $10 for 8 things I want and nothing more? Why would I ever pay that much? Paying in the first place was, frankly, a courtesy. I used this website for its ease-of-use but now it's decided to be unusable, I have no reason to continue using it. WotC taking L after L lately, and I'm not sticking around to see the next.
I don't see myself making any future purchases from DDB or WOTC now that a la carte purchase options have been removed from D&D Beyond (even though I've always purchased the full books in both physical and digital formats). IMHO this change clearly shows that WOTC no longer cares about their fan base at all.
Even after all of your recent ludicrous shenanigans, missteps, bad press, and apologies, I've stuck with the D&D brand as a loyal fan (of over 40 years). I can no longer do that. WOTC is making it abundantly clear that fans are irrelevant to them and only deep-pocketed customers matter (though even their relevance seems to be limited to how recently they purchased anything). I had expected to spend a lot with WOTC this year due to the new sourcebooks coming out. Now, I think I'll spend that money on an entirely different system (even though I'm a legendary bundle owner, a master tier subscriber, and have an entire bookshelf full of official 5e physical books in my office).
Worse, this is yet another bad business decision. Most of the a la carte customers you had made those purchases because they either couldn't afford a full book or couldn't justify the cost when there were only a few things in it that they wanted. You may think this will turn a la carte purchasers into full-book customers, but in reality, I believe you'll likely just lose them all altogether. It will be interesting to see what WOTC / DDB revenues look like in a year. Even with the release of (most of) the updated 5e books (or whatever you're calling them this week) I suspect DDB's and probably WOTC's revenues will be significantly down by then.
Why would you throw away all those future purchases? You can't honestly believe you'll turn all of those customers into full book buyers.
It appears to me that WOTC is intent on pushing D&D fans away. Well congratulations, you succeeded. I'm done.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Gideon Hawke Just a Valor Bard trying to find his way through D&D after a 20+ year "break". Enjoying being back and sharing with my RL family.
Top priority: I would like to voice a complaint about the inability to filter content already owned as well. It was nice to be able to filter out the content I already own digitally because it cleaned up the marketplace to be able to tailor what was left for me to purchase. I don't always get the emails or time to read the blog posts about latest releases, so being able to filter the marketplace so I don't have to dig around is really key for me to do my shopping with ease.
Second is the lack of the bundles. I don't see a legendary bundle, source or adventure bundle guides anymore. While I already have purchased this in the past, it was easy for me to recommend to new DMs that they don't have to individually piecemeal things but can purchase what they need to DM a game with ease and a discount, was nice.
Finally, the a la carte feature where we could purchase content from the books was helpful when you already owned the physical book but wanted to add those features or magic items to your game for your players was a helpful feature for the DM on a budget. It would be lovely to have that feature back.
I'm not speculating why these changes were made, but information leading up to the decisions for, or some kind of acknowledgement if these features are going to make a comeback would be greatly appreciated.
Regardless on whether their action of getting rid of a' la cart purchases was some greedy & stupid plan to "increase" sales or a poorly made design flaw in the lacklustre new "upgrade" to the D&D Beyond store, I think we all can agree that it is one of the most poorest ill-conceived actions they have taken especially when they did not tell us before hand. In my opinion this is a stab in the back to us customer/fans (a move a Neutral Evil Rogue would make). I for one will be making less purchase (0 in fact) on ALL Wizards of the Coast products until they bring it back.
I have spent a heck-ton here, and was going to be doing so again over the life of oned&d. Now, I won't be. So, I am in two minds about this situation, as while I am extremely annoyed at what has been done, I am actually now looking forward to spending my money on other RPGs instead. I'll be surely thinking to myself "why can't they have a thing like dndbeyond used to have".... but then, so will users of dndbeyond.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Extremely poor choice on taking away the ala carte options.
Furthermore, DnD (and RPGs in general) are entertainment. DM's, Players (old and new) will leave DnD for a cheaper, more customer friendly game system. The CEOs and "management" who are ill equipped to LEAD an "entertainment" company whose goodwill and support relies on people bringing in new players (customers) should be removed.
Can I still purchase subclasses, feats, and other game listings à la carte?
À la carte purchases are no longer supported.
@WOTC
@DNDBEYOND
@the stupid people behind the scenes angling for more profitable options.
YOU. WILL. LOSE. MONEY OVER THIS CHANGE.
This will be seen as a major inconvenience to casual players. And may likely chill DMs future purchases, because maybe they aren't interested in everything a book has to offer. This also gambles with the idea that you are the only provider for content purchases. It's like the OGL debacle didn't teach you much. Squeeze harder why don't you.. People will choose to leave DnD behind and move onto other less restrictive and controlling IPs.
I have hopes they will revert this and bring back the option to buy a la carte, or else im out for sure. I had just recently started to use this site and liked the pick and choose options because I can get things I need at the pace im able to afford the hobby. Bring this back or I jump ship before its completely sunk....
No way in hell am I buying an entire book full of stuff I really don't need just so I can get a few magic items here, a few monsters there, etc. Instead of getting some of my money, they will now get none of it. I'm seeing the same sentiment pretty much everywhere. Whoever made this decision is idiotic.
How many times are you going to continue to make terrible decisions? Stop ******* up the hobby to line your pockets. The REASON I started spending money on DnD Beyond is because I already own the books but could buy individual pieces for my characters digitally. Now, not only can I not do that, I have to but the entire book which means REBUYING content I've already spent $5-$15 on. How are you people employed?
Canceled subscription. Lost costumer. Done with your products. Peace.
Everything that anyone needs to know about this asinine decision involves the discount for having purchased partial content previously:
In order to get the discount you're owed, you have to contact customer service and ask for it. You're supposed to remember - without being able to see it on the store page - which books you've previously purchased content from, otherwise D&D Beyond is going to overcharge (steal from) you.
D&D Beyond isn't as important as they think they are, and they're about to find that out in a big way when people migrate towards getting 5e content elsewhere.
[REDACTED]
Buying things Individually was LITERALLY THE ONLY Reason to use DNDBeyond over any of the 3rd party sites. Like Roll20 or Foundry. Going entirely back to 3rd party Sites now, have fun eating your profit loss over this WotC <3
Also anyone else notice that https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1709-d-d-beyond-marketplace-redesign-see-whats-new-here is the 1st and only "News Post" they have released that doesn't allow commenting! I wonder why....
"Not getting cut into bloody littles slices, That's the key to a sound plan."
I don't understand the logic behind this change at all. There are individual items I've bought where I would never buy the entire book (e.g., backgrounds from Ghosts of Saltmarsh). And there are books that I only bought as part of the sourcebook bundle (e.g., Acquisition Incorporated). If the new restrictions had been in place at the time, then I would have spent less money on dndbeyond.
Really disappointed with the update. Buying a la carte was what got me into using this site in the first place, since I can't really afford to buy a whole book at once. I was planning on buying the rest of Monsters of the Multiverse at some point, but going through customer support to get my discount isn't really appealing to me.
I'm guessing the logic is, with the new rulebooks coming out, they don't want people just buying select items from them.
That would make the "X number of books sold since the launch of the new edition" announcements way less impressive if everyone just goes "Well, I want the new Monk but I don't care about the other classes" or whatever.
I personally think a much better way to handle this would have been a time gate on new content being available for individual purchases.
Like 3 months (A quarter) or 6 months (2 quarters) so they fluff up those quarterly earnings to investors, but still allows new people to get into the hobby cheaper later on.
Hell, even going for a bigger 1 year date would still be better than going you MUST plop down $30 or more.
I'm in the same boat, individual purchases are what got me into D&D enough to buy entire books.
I really hope that a lot of customers are like us and they'll look at THOSE numbers.
How many customers just bought a class or something first and then went on to spend a ton on the site later on?
Driving away new customers wanting to try out the hobby isn't gonna work out well long term.
The correct solution to that "problem" is to just report on the number of players for a product, and/or the value of sales (since that's all the shareholders care about anyway). Number of "books" sold in units is irrelevant in a digital product.
Former D&D Beyond Customer of six years: With the axing of piecemeal purchasing, lack of meaningful development, and toxic moderation the site isn't worth paying for anymore. I remain a free user only until my groups are done migrating from DDB, and if necessary D&D, after which I'm done. There are better systems owned by better companies out there.
I have unsubscribed from all topics and will not reply to messages. My homebrew is now 100% unsupported.
The writing has been on the wall for some time with me, but this solidifies it. I am done with giving any more of my money to WOTC in any capacity. Not just on this site, but the hundreds I spend on official minis and other D&D branded accessories each year will now be going to other games.
I will be immediately canceling my Master Tier subscription and never looking back. The events of the past couple of years have shown me that WOTC has no interest in keeping me as a customer.
Shadowdark is a more fun and accessible experience anyway IMHO.
Likely their next move will be to restrict or remove Homebrew options to prevent users from creating copies of official content. They will use every means possible to force players to spend money the way the company wants.
Have you noticed that sales discounts have been slowly getting worse and worse over the last year? That trend will continue, especially now that buying full books will be the only way to obtain content. This will be followed by steep increases in the base purchase price of each book.
They will ultimately price out casual players and those with limited disposable income, but they won't care as long as they can make up for it by getting more from the hardcore players. The leaders of Hasbro/WotC are suits who only see the numbers on a spreadsheet and nothing else.
here is something about the update that no-one has noticed or yet pointed out:
Pre-update the Vecna Eve of Ruin digital advertised that if you did the preorder you'd get early access (May 7th) to the digital content.
Now when you attempt to look at it, it will tell you that you own it, however, the countdown timer reflects 16 days (May 21st) at the time I am posting this. Looks like early access has been removed if you preordered it from dndbeyond (which I did). Oh, and the option to pay via paypal has also been removed.
known as ZombieMall by some.. GameMasters by others..
https://www.youtube.com/@gamemasters
I am literally now scrambling to move my campaign to another platform because I am sick of the updates this website releases without warning or care of how it impacts its users. I have always known that Hasbro and WotC were nothing more than greedy and money hungry but this is my last straw. $40 for 1 piece of content I want and 99 things I'll never use vs $10 for 8 things I want and nothing more? Why would I ever pay that much? Paying in the first place was, frankly, a courtesy. I used this website for its ease-of-use but now it's decided to be unusable, I have no reason to continue using it. WotC taking L after L lately, and I'm not sticking around to see the next.
I was able to buy Books, Legendary Bundle Owner and owning every released Book.
Now I can't pay via Paypal anymore, only Creditcard, which I do not own.
D&D Beyond losing a very willing-to pay customer because they **** up their payment system.
YARR HARR FIDELDIDY
I agree.
I don't see myself making any future purchases from DDB or WOTC now that a la carte purchase options have been removed from D&D Beyond (even though I've always purchased the full books in both physical and digital formats). IMHO this change clearly shows that WOTC no longer cares about their fan base at all.
Even after all of your recent ludicrous shenanigans, missteps, bad press, and apologies, I've stuck with the D&D brand as a loyal fan (of over 40 years). I can no longer do that. WOTC is making it abundantly clear that fans are irrelevant to them and only deep-pocketed customers matter (though even their relevance seems to be limited to how recently they purchased anything). I had expected to spend a lot with WOTC this year due to the new sourcebooks coming out. Now, I think I'll spend that money on an entirely different system (even though I'm a legendary bundle owner, a master tier subscriber, and have an entire bookshelf full of official 5e physical books in my office).
Worse, this is yet another bad business decision. Most of the a la carte customers you had made those purchases because they either couldn't afford a full book or couldn't justify the cost when there were only a few things in it that they wanted. You may think this will turn a la carte purchasers into full-book customers, but in reality, I believe you'll likely just lose them all altogether. It will be interesting to see what WOTC / DDB revenues look like in a year. Even with the release of (most of) the updated 5e books (or whatever you're calling them this week) I suspect DDB's and probably WOTC's revenues will be significantly down by then.
Why would you throw away all those future purchases? You can't honestly believe you'll turn all of those customers into full book buyers.
It appears to me that WOTC is intent on pushing D&D fans away. Well congratulations, you succeeded. I'm done.
Gideon Hawke
Just a Valor Bard trying to find his way through D&D after a 20+ year "break". Enjoying being back and sharing with my RL family.
Top priority: I would like to voice a complaint about the inability to filter content already owned as well. It was nice to be able to filter out the content I already own digitally because it cleaned up the marketplace to be able to tailor what was left for me to purchase. I don't always get the emails or time to read the blog posts about latest releases, so being able to filter the marketplace so I don't have to dig around is really key for me to do my shopping with ease.
Second is the lack of the bundles. I don't see a legendary bundle, source or adventure bundle guides anymore. While I already have purchased this in the past, it was easy for me to recommend to new DMs that they don't have to individually piecemeal things but can purchase what they need to DM a game with ease and a discount, was nice.
Finally, the a la carte feature where we could purchase content from the books was helpful when you already owned the physical book but wanted to add those features or magic items to your game for your players was a helpful feature for the DM on a budget. It would be lovely to have that feature back.
I'm not speculating why these changes were made, but information leading up to the decisions for, or some kind of acknowledgement if these features are going to make a comeback would be greatly appreciated.
Regardless on whether their action of getting rid of a' la cart purchases was some greedy & stupid plan to "increase" sales or a poorly made design flaw in the lacklustre new "upgrade" to the D&D Beyond store, I think we all can agree that it is one of the most poorest ill-conceived actions they have taken especially when they did not tell us before hand. In my opinion this is a stab in the back to us customer/fans (a move a Neutral Evil Rogue would make). I for one will be making less purchase (0 in fact) on ALL Wizards of the Coast products until they bring it back.
I have spent a heck-ton here, and was going to be doing so again over the life of oned&d. Now, I won't be.
So, I am in two minds about this situation, as while I am extremely annoyed at what has been done, I am actually now looking forward to spending my money on other RPGs instead. I'll be surely thinking to myself "why can't they have a thing like dndbeyond used to have".... but then, so will users of dndbeyond.