i'm not sure what the delta is between the losses they'll get from alientating players who just want to character-build, and the gains made from forcing people to buy entire sourcebooks (most of which people will never read or use, because what they want is the character creation options). It really seems like they're leaving a large chunk of their audience un-served here?
most people i know that use D&DBeyond, use it exclusively as a character creation tool, a digital character sheet. They don't read modules, fluff, actual pages of digital books, they just want character options for their fantasy doll-maker. I know more people that use it to idly make characters than actually play D&D, and it's those people that would happily pay the price of a cup of coffee for a handful of subclasses and a spell or two.
I can't say how much WotC would lose from dropping this feature, or whether it would balance out into enough people buying whole books as to offset the losses, but it's a definite, concrete thing that they'll have alienated thousands upon thousands of customers by removing the smaller purchase options. I've bought the new PHB, and for me that's the limit. extra subclasses, features and stuff i'm just gonna have to homebrew, it really sucks.
let's not forget that in lots of IPs, the 'personalise your character, buy these skins/features' style of purchase is a massive thing. WotC just got rid of it. let's hope they know what they're doing - i can only voice my immense disappointment.
this whole idea that WotC did this just to force people to buy the whole book is ridiculous. If they wanted to really sell more books they would get rid of content sharing and force everyone to buy the books if they want to use it. WotC is a business. they more then likely did the math of how much they made from piece meal purchases vs how much it costs to program and maintain the ability to offer it and decided it wasn't worth it. sure they may have made profit from doing it, but it was probably not enough to justify using the resources and divert those programmers to other more profitable areas.
At the end of the day they are a business. and they have to make decisions that will result in the most profit. All successful companies do that.
This is actually a super common phenomenon in business. WotC likely looked at the numbers to see how much they would make if piecemeal purchasers were to buy the whole book, they got dollar signs in their eyes, and decided to *remove* functionality (I don't agree with the previous poster. The feature worked it didn't need maintenance, they actively removed something existing.) The problem of course is that they neglected to take into account that the people who paid for stuff piecemeal would likely just not purchase the sourcebook at all, resulting in an overall revenue decline. We've seen this time and time again from companies. Take netflix for instance. They knew that often accounts would share with their significant other or family member or whatever and decided to crack down on password sharing in the hopes that everyone who didn't own an account would then pay full price for the account. They suffered a huge setback because doing this alienated legitimate existing users and those who were lets say two people enjoying a single account just took their business elsewhere.
Essentially, companies only look at the easily quantifiable data and fail to take into account the data that is harder to quantify. It's why this site is continually pushing new features/content instead of addressing the bugs that have been around for years in the site's software. They can do market research saying "Hey, this feature would net us a couple million dollars in revenue" but they aren't doing similar research on what not fixing persistent bugs will cost them in terms of retention.
It's nothing new but still disappointing. Just take a look at the whole 2024 debacle or take a browse through some of the bug/feedback threads. They even have mods telling people that certain bugs are outside of the site's control which anyone without expertise can probably determine to be false, let alone anyone with any sort of coding background. They're prioritizing things with clear revenue gains over customer retention/maintenance of their existing features. It's a very short-sighted move that will bite them in the ass. I'm not even directly affected by the 2024 stuff, but telling falsehoods to the public, not giving people refunds and threatening to ban their account if they seek those refunds out for products they haven't received, is just disgusting and dishonest behavior that I won't support. Yes I'm sure WotC is just telling them to spout these talking points, but while I offer my services when a company employs me, lying to third parties/customer base is not a service I will ever provide.
They're struggling to fill existing orders of the PHB, but you know what I see on the front page of DndBeyond? Order the PHB today! Just gross.
"They even have mods telling people that certain bugs are outside of the site's control which anyone without expertise can probably determine to be false, let alone anyone with any sort of coding background."
Gonna need a source on this one.
No, Reddit is not a source.
No, a coding background doesn't mean you know the code of this site.
Yes, the company has made critical errors in the name of pleasing stockholders & investors who only care about number go up.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
This is actually a super common phenomenon in business. WotC likely looked at the numbers to see how much they would make if piecemeal purchasers were to buy the whole book, they got dollar signs in their eyes, and decided to *remove* functionality (I don't agree with the previous poster. The feature worked it didn't need maintenance, they actively removed something existing.) The problem of course is that they neglected to take into account that the people who paid for stuff piecemeal would likely just not purchase the sourcebook at all, resulting in an overall revenue decline. We've seen this time and time again from companies. Take netflix for instance. They knew that often accounts would share with their significant other or family member or whatever and decided to crack down on password sharing in the hopes that everyone who didn't own an account would then pay full price for the account. They suffered a huge setback because doing this alienated legitimate existing users and those who were lets say two people enjoying a single account just took their business elsewhere.
Essentially, companies only look at the easily quantifiable data and fail to take into account the data that is harder to quantify. It's why this site is continually pushing new features/content instead of addressing the bugs that have been around for years in the site's software. They can do market research saying "Hey, this feature would net us a couple million dollars in revenue" but they aren't doing similar research on what not fixing persistent bugs will cost them in terms of retention.
It's nothing new but still disappointing. Just take a look at the whole 2024 debacle or take a browse through some of the bug/feedback threads. They even have mods telling people that certain bugs are outside of the site's control which anyone without expertise can probably determine to be false, let alone anyone with any sort of coding background. They're prioritizing things with clear revenue gains over customer retention/maintenance of their existing features. It's a very short-sighted move that will bite them in the ass. I'm not even directly affected by the 2024 stuff, but telling falsehoods to the public, not giving people refunds and threatening to ban their account if they seek those refunds out for products they haven't received, is just disgusting and dishonest behavior that I won't support. Yes I'm sure WotC is just telling them to spout these talking points, but while I offer my services when a company employs me, lying to third parties/customer base is not a service I will ever provide.
They're struggling to fill existing orders of the PHB, but you know what I see on the front page of DndBeyond? Order the PHB today! Just gross.
for your Netflix example, they did realize a net gain of new subscribers, so the decision worked in their favor. and yes All websites need to have maintenance when doing things like ecommerce and adding functionality.
As for they choose to prioritize things that will bring in revenue, well ya, they are a business after all. bringing in revenue is their whole goal.
There are a lot of things business look at when making decisions. none of us know what is going on behind the scenes.
As for your last paragraph, it is all complete falshoods.
This is actually a super common phenomenon in business. WotC likely looked at the numbers to see how much they would make if piecemeal purchasers were to buy the whole book, they got dollar signs in their eyes, and decided to *remove* functionality (I don't agree with the previous poster. The feature worked it didn't need maintenance, they actively removed something existing.) The problem of course is that they neglected to take into account that the people who paid for stuff piecemeal would likely just not purchase the sourcebook at all, resulting in an overall revenue decline. We've seen this time and time again from companies. Take netflix for instance. They knew that often accounts would share with their significant other or family member or whatever and decided to crack down on password sharing in the hopes that everyone who didn't own an account would then pay full price for the account. They suffered a huge setback because doing this alienated legitimate existing users and those who were lets say two people enjoying a single account just took their business elsewhere.
Essentially, companies only look at the easily quantifiable data and fail to take into account the data that is harder to quantify. It's why this site is continually pushing new features/content instead of addressing the bugs that have been around for years in the site's software. They can do market research saying "Hey, this feature would net us a couple million dollars in revenue" but they aren't doing similar research on what not fixing persistent bugs will cost them in terms of retention.
It's nothing new but still disappointing. Just take a look at the whole 2024 debacle or take a browse through some of the bug/feedback threads. They even have mods telling people that certain bugs are outside of the site's control which anyone without expertise can probably determine to be false, let alone anyone with any sort of coding background. They're prioritizing things with clear revenue gains over customer retention/maintenance of their existing features. It's a very short-sighted move that will bite them in the ass. I'm not even directly affected by the 2024 stuff, but telling falsehoods to the public, not giving people refunds and threatening to ban their account if they seek those refunds out for products they haven't received, is just disgusting and dishonest behavior that I won't support. Yes I'm sure WotC is just telling them to spout these talking points, but while I offer my services when a company employs me, lying to third parties/customer base is not a service I will ever provide.
They're struggling to fill existing orders of the PHB, but you know what I see on the front page of DndBeyond? Order the PHB today! Just gross.
for your Netflix example, they did realize a net gain of new subscribers, so the decision worked in their favor. and yes All websites need to have maintenance when doing things like ecommerce and adding functionality.
As for they choose to prioritize things that will bring in revenue, well ya, they are a business after all. bringing in revenue is their whole goal.
There are a lot of things business look at when making decisions. none of us know what is going on behind the scenes.
As for your last paragraph, it is all complete falshoods.
Netflix did see positive net subscribers, but you're being obtuse. They generally always see positive net subscribers, but after that change their growth slowed. This suggests that they could have made more money by not doing what they did.
You also completely missed the point about prioritizing revenue. Creating new features may increase revenue in an easily traceable way, but not addressing issues will cause you to lose subscribers in a way that's harder to quantify. The point is that never addressing issues is a terrible business strategy.
As for the last paragraph being falsehoods, it's easily verifiable and provable. You literally just look through recent posts on the forums I mentioned. So I'm not sure why you're suggesting it's not or why you're defending WotC when the evidence is as clear as day to anyone who looks. Or are you suggesting all the frustrated customers are lying about their experiences?
"They even have mods telling people that certain bugs are outside of the site's control which anyone without expertise can probably determine to be false, let alone anyone with any sort of coding background."
Gonna need a source on this one.
No, Reddit is not a source.
No, a coding background doesn't mean you know the code of this site.
Yes, the company has made critical errors in the name of pleasing stockholders & investors who only care about number go up.
This is actually a super common phenomenon in business. WotC likely looked at the numbers to see how much they would make if piecemeal purchasers were to buy the whole book, they got dollar signs in their eyes, and decided to *remove* functionality (I don't agree with the previous poster. The feature worked it didn't need maintenance, they actively removed something existing.) The problem of course is that they neglected to take into account that the people who paid for stuff piecemeal would likely just not purchase the sourcebook at all, resulting in an overall revenue decline. We've seen this time and time again from companies. Take netflix for instance. They knew that often accounts would share with their significant other or family member or whatever and decided to crack down on password sharing in the hopes that everyone who didn't own an account would then pay full price for the account. They suffered a huge setback because doing this alienated legitimate existing users and those who were lets say two people enjoying a single account just took their business elsewhere.
Essentially, companies only look at the easily quantifiable data and fail to take into account the data that is harder to quantify. It's why this site is continually pushing new features/content instead of addressing the bugs that have been around for years in the site's software. They can do market research saying "Hey, this feature would net us a couple million dollars in revenue" but they aren't doing similar research on what not fixing persistent bugs will cost them in terms of retention.
It's nothing new but still disappointing. Just take a look at the whole 2024 debacle or take a browse through some of the bug/feedback threads. They even have mods telling people that certain bugs are outside of the site's control which anyone without expertise can probably determine to be false, let alone anyone with any sort of coding background. They're prioritizing things with clear revenue gains over customer retention/maintenance of their existing features. It's a very short-sighted move that will bite them in the ass. I'm not even directly affected by the 2024 stuff, but telling falsehoods to the public, not giving people refunds and threatening to ban their account if they seek those refunds out for products they haven't received, is just disgusting and dishonest behavior that I won't support. Yes I'm sure WotC is just telling them to spout these talking points, but while I offer my services when a company employs me, lying to third parties/customer base is not a service I will ever provide.
They're struggling to fill existing orders of the PHB, but you know what I see on the front page of DndBeyond? Order the PHB today! Just gross.
for your Netflix example, they did realize a net gain of new subscribers, so the decision worked in their favor. and yes All websites need to have maintenance when doing things like ecommerce and adding functionality.
As for they choose to prioritize things that will bring in revenue, well ya, they are a business after all. bringing in revenue is their whole goal.
There are a lot of things business look at when making decisions. none of us know what is going on behind the scenes.
As for your last paragraph, it is all complete falshoods.
Netflix did see positive net subscribers, but you're being obtuse. They generally always see positive net subscribers, but after that change their growth slowed. This suggests that they could have made more money by not doing what they did.
You also completely missed the point about prioritizing revenue. Creating new features may increase revenue in an easily traceable way, but not addressing issues will cause you to lose subscribers in a way that's harder to quantify. The point is that never addressing issues is a terrible business strategy.
As for the last paragraph being falsehoods, it's easily verifiable and provable. You literally just look through recent posts on the forums I mentioned. So I'm not sure why you're suggesting it's not or why you're defending WotC when the evidence is as clear as day to anyone who looks. Or are you suggesting all the frustrated customers are lying about their experiences?
"You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet & tell lies?"
If WotC can lie by omission, so can anyone else.
You've still not cited any reliable source that they're lying about what you're talking about that has zero room for reasonable doubt. You're the accuser. Back up what you're saying.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Just popping in in case anyone at WoTC reads this but I have spent hundreds of dollars on content on DnDBeyond through the years and I did it specifically because the piecemeal approach meant it would stay sustainable, I could always just buy the character classes and new races and then if I needed the monsters or other stuff I'd buy them as I need them. This has made a lot of the money I've spent feel like a waste cause I simply cannot afford to keep pace with content now. If the new core rulebooks were too expensive to piecemeal out then it'd be fine if those were full purchase only but then retroactively making it so all books require full purchase means buying stuff here is completely unsustainable now. I doubt I'll end up playing 5.5 because of this issue. I'll run any games I want to run in 5 using dndbeyond still but even if I play 5.5 I'd just buy the physical book and use a different tool and input the stuff myself since image to text is so readily available now.
As an aside I've never seen a change in management become so apparent in a product. As soon as BadEye left the dndbeyond team it became immediately clear that the new people didn't understand what an amazing thing him and his team had done and have slowly ruined it ever since. I dunno, I'm sad about it all cause it was so promising and I was such a huge advocate for the platform and now I've lost most of my hope for it.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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i'm not sure what the delta is between the losses they'll get from alientating players who just want to character-build, and the gains made from forcing people to buy entire sourcebooks (most of which people will never read or use, because what they want is the character creation options). It really seems like they're leaving a large chunk of their audience un-served here?
most people i know that use D&DBeyond, use it exclusively as a character creation tool, a digital character sheet. They don't read modules, fluff, actual pages of digital books, they just want character options for their fantasy doll-maker. I know more people that use it to idly make characters than actually play D&D, and it's those people that would happily pay the price of a cup of coffee for a handful of subclasses and a spell or two.
I can't say how much WotC would lose from dropping this feature, or whether it would balance out into enough people buying whole books as to offset the losses, but it's a definite, concrete thing that they'll have alienated thousands upon thousands of customers by removing the smaller purchase options. I've bought the new PHB, and for me that's the limit. extra subclasses, features and stuff i'm just gonna have to homebrew, it really sucks.
let's not forget that in lots of IPs, the 'personalise your character, buy these skins/features' style of purchase is a massive thing. WotC just got rid of it. let's hope they know what they're doing - i can only voice my immense disappointment.
this whole idea that WotC did this just to force people to buy the whole book is ridiculous. If they wanted to really sell more books they would get rid of content sharing and force everyone to buy the books if they want to use it. WotC is a business. they more then likely did the math of how much they made from piece meal purchases vs how much it costs to program and maintain the ability to offer it and decided it wasn't worth it. sure they may have made profit from doing it, but it was probably not enough to justify using the resources and divert those programmers to other more profitable areas.
At the end of the day they are a business. and they have to make decisions that will result in the most profit. All successful companies do that.
This is actually a super common phenomenon in business. WotC likely looked at the numbers to see how much they would make if piecemeal purchasers were to buy the whole book, they got dollar signs in their eyes, and decided to *remove* functionality (I don't agree with the previous poster. The feature worked it didn't need maintenance, they actively removed something existing.) The problem of course is that they neglected to take into account that the people who paid for stuff piecemeal would likely just not purchase the sourcebook at all, resulting in an overall revenue decline. We've seen this time and time again from companies. Take netflix for instance. They knew that often accounts would share with their significant other or family member or whatever and decided to crack down on password sharing in the hopes that everyone who didn't own an account would then pay full price for the account. They suffered a huge setback because doing this alienated legitimate existing users and those who were lets say two people enjoying a single account just took their business elsewhere.
Essentially, companies only look at the easily quantifiable data and fail to take into account the data that is harder to quantify. It's why this site is continually pushing new features/content instead of addressing the bugs that have been around for years in the site's software. They can do market research saying "Hey, this feature would net us a couple million dollars in revenue" but they aren't doing similar research on what not fixing persistent bugs will cost them in terms of retention.
It's nothing new but still disappointing. Just take a look at the whole 2024 debacle or take a browse through some of the bug/feedback threads. They even have mods telling people that certain bugs are outside of the site's control which anyone without expertise can probably determine to be false, let alone anyone with any sort of coding background. They're prioritizing things with clear revenue gains over customer retention/maintenance of their existing features. It's a very short-sighted move that will bite them in the ass. I'm not even directly affected by the 2024 stuff, but telling falsehoods to the public, not giving people refunds and threatening to ban their account if they seek those refunds out for products they haven't received, is just disgusting and dishonest behavior that I won't support. Yes I'm sure WotC is just telling them to spout these talking points, but while I offer my services when a company employs me, lying to third parties/customer base is not a service I will ever provide.
They're struggling to fill existing orders of the PHB, but you know what I see on the front page of DndBeyond? Order the PHB today! Just gross.
"They even have mods telling people that certain bugs are outside of the site's control which anyone without expertise can probably determine to be false, let alone anyone with any sort of coding background."
Gonna need a source on this one.
No, Reddit is not a source.
No, a coding background doesn't mean you know the code of this site.
Yes, the company has made critical errors in the name of pleasing stockholders & investors who only care about number go up.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
for your Netflix example, they did realize a net gain of new subscribers, so the decision worked in their favor. and yes All websites need to have maintenance when doing things like ecommerce and adding functionality.
As for they choose to prioritize things that will bring in revenue, well ya, they are a business after all. bringing in revenue is their whole goal.
There are a lot of things business look at when making decisions. none of us know what is going on behind the scenes.
As for your last paragraph, it is all complete falshoods.
Netflix did see positive net subscribers, but you're being obtuse. They generally always see positive net subscribers, but after that change their growth slowed. This suggests that they could have made more money by not doing what they did.
You also completely missed the point about prioritizing revenue. Creating new features may increase revenue in an easily traceable way, but not addressing issues will cause you to lose subscribers in a way that's harder to quantify. The point is that never addressing issues is a terrible business strategy.
As for the last paragraph being falsehoods, it's easily verifiable and provable. You literally just look through recent posts on the forums I mentioned. So I'm not sure why you're suggesting it's not or why you're defending WotC when the evidence is as clear as day to anyone who looks. Or are you suggesting all the frustrated customers are lying about their experiences?
Here's your source: https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/78114-pdf-export-bugged-now-with-old-data
If you REALLY think that a site's own feature is somehow beyond their own control to change, EVEN AFTER THEY ADMITTED IT WAS, then I really don't know what to tell you.
"You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet & tell lies?"
If WotC can lie by omission, so can anyone else.
You've still not cited any reliable source that they're lying about what you're talking about that has zero room for reasonable doubt. You're the accuser. Back up what you're saying.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Just popping in in case anyone at WoTC reads this but I have spent hundreds of dollars on content on DnDBeyond through the years and I did it specifically because the piecemeal approach meant it would stay sustainable, I could always just buy the character classes and new races and then if I needed the monsters or other stuff I'd buy them as I need them. This has made a lot of the money I've spent feel like a waste cause I simply cannot afford to keep pace with content now. If the new core rulebooks were too expensive to piecemeal out then it'd be fine if those were full purchase only but then retroactively making it so all books require full purchase means buying stuff here is completely unsustainable now. I doubt I'll end up playing 5.5 because of this issue. I'll run any games I want to run in 5 using dndbeyond still but even if I play 5.5 I'd just buy the physical book and use a different tool and input the stuff myself since image to text is so readily available now.
As an aside I've never seen a change in management become so apparent in a product. As soon as BadEye left the dndbeyond team it became immediately clear that the new people didn't understand what an amazing thing him and his team had done and have slowly ruined it ever since. I dunno, I'm sad about it all cause it was so promising and I was such a huge advocate for the platform and now I've lost most of my hope for it.