1.57% of all games played on Roll20 was 3.5e, which, from what I can tell, is the most popular version after 5e.
That alone should be enough to tell you why, when DDB is years behind implementing 5e, it's not dedicating resources to 3.5e, let alone earlier versions or 4e.
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Moving on into data that is less guaranteed, but seems to be corroborated by multiple sites, as of 2019 there were 50 million players, 13 million of which were over 40, so 37 million were 40 and under. Accepting a premise earlier that older generations would go for pre5e materials while younger go for 5e, what we see is that the player base is substantially larger on the younger side. In Europe, the player base has quadrupled since 2014, which can almost entirely be attributed to 5e. Sure, some will be playing earlier versions (although not many, new players generally go for the newest version of a game), but many of the players of older versions will either have moved on to 5e or will play both.
The player base size is just that much larger for 5e than the rest combined.
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There was a claim that older generations have a greater disposable income. I'll accept that. However, the question is whether they're actually spending that on these online D&D websites. I mean, the Queen of the UK has a massive disposable income, but I'm pretty sure my local kebab place doesn't court her custom becuase it will never see any massive profit from it and will be better off courting mine, because despite earning substantially less, I'm actually likely to spend far more there.
Assuming the cutoff point is around 40 for whether you're 5e or pre5e, the stats don't look good for pre5e. They make up around a quarter of the playerbase, while only accounting for less than 2% of games - in other words, pre5e are 10x less likely to be playing a game, and by inferrance be spending money on it. From experience, I also strongly suspect that pre5e players are more likely to be playing homebrew than 5e - which means each game is less profitable because they can't sell you the adventure book either, if you homebrew.
Pre5e players just aren't ponying up the money. There's little profit to be had compared to 5e.
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Could these statistics be turned around? Maybe. If WotC were to massively invest in earlier editions, there's a small chance they could convert some 5e players to earlier editions. But why would they? It would be very costly, very risky (I wouldn't be too interested, and I daresay most 5e wouldn't either unless WotC made it very appealing, which takes money), and they already have their cashcow in 5e. It ain't gonna happen.
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It's also not an easy thing to do to put a new edition onto DDB. As I've already pointed out, they've taken over 6 years to implement 5e and still haven't gotten there yet. It takes a lot longer than you'd think to implement stuff with these companies. I play STA, and someone unofficially made a VTT for it. The coding was all done, so Modiphius jumped on board and decided they wanted to make it official. The creator was happy to give it away for free - it was a labour of love - and a year later they're still trying to implement it. That's with all the actual work already done, it's just dealing with the bureaucracy.
They staff behind DDB now have to implement 2024e, have 2 years to do it, and if they fail to do so, their website is screwed. With how we've seen things, how long it takes them to get things done, with what they have left to do on 5e and what they have to do for 2024e, do you think hey have staff to spare for pre5e? I'm reluctant to shift to DDB because the current support for 5e isn't complete. Too often I hear that how to do something is to bodge it using homebrew or a workaround. I guarantee that if they brought out 3.5e in the next 5 years, the support for it would be almost nonexistent and you'd (understandably) be here complaining that they've set up the system, taken your money...and there wasn't a lot to show for it. They just don't have the manpower to do it properly while they're still trying to to get 5e off the ground and trying to get 2024e operational.
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It's just plain capitalism. Every spare buck they have to invest will will have a far greater RoI if spent on 5e/2024e than pre5e. People just don't spend on pre5e on online resources, and DDB doesn't have the manpower to spare enough for an experiment when the current numbers favour 5e so heavily,
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.
Assuming the cutoff point is around 40 for whether you're 5e or pre5e, the stats don't look good for pre5e.
Which of course it isn't. Most players are going to play current edition regardless of age, unless there's a very strong sentiment against it (people did resist going to 4e, but that was an anomaly, 2e, 3e, and 3.5e all immediately took over).
Assuming the cutoff point is around 40 for whether you're 5e or pre5e, the stats don't look good for pre5e.
Which of course it isn't. Most players are going to play current edition regardless of age, unless there's a very strong sentiment against it (people did resist going to 4e, but that was an anomaly, 2e, 3e, and 3.5e all immediately took over).
I'd agree with that, mostly. I could see the oldies being unwilling to make the jump - once people get to around OAP age, they stop having the desire to change. Most ages would switch though. It was just a convenient data point that I had, and anyone younger than that I think would have just jumped ship for 5e. I think that is the cohort where people might have started keeping old versions going, and if the opposed claims were to have traction, then that's the cohort that would start giving it to them. Much older than that and the numbers drop fast. But yeah, I doubt that any given age group, at least in the working ages, would favour anything other than 5e.
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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.
You are correct the bottom line is what matters most to Hasbro. There is money to be made, they will do it. It’s the same reason they let the PDF sales happen on DriveThruRPG. Or DMs Guild has there stuff.
Corporations do not care about just making profit. They care about maximizing profit. As I have already stated, in the best case scenario where old players are profitable, based on Wizard's actions, it just seems like old edition players simply are not profitable enough to be worth catering to. There is no point trying to cater to old edition players if new edition players can offer them higher profit. If Hasbro will get five dollars in return for every dollar they spend on older editions, compared to getting ten dollars for every dollar on new editions, they have no reason to spend it on older editions. The opportunity cost of not investing enough in 5e is simply too high.
Selling static PDFs is very different from selling a digital toolset that is still in active development and constant change.
And when I refer to my Excel spreadsheet it’s to show it doesn’t take much to make it happen. And to drive that point home a bit more for an understanding of where I speak from I have over thirty years experience programming code. Also you’d be surprised how much of the corporate world operates off excel spreadsheets. 😂
That is not how business is run. It is not just about the cost of coding. It is the combination of costs and expenses that involves more than just coding to make things happen. What people outside of finance do not realize is how freaking expensive it can be to run an operation. If you really think it is that easy and cheap to make a digital toolset, make one and sell it to Wizards.
I know how much the world operates off of Excel and Google Sheets. I also know that selling digital character sheets in the form of spreadsheets is not acceptable. Beyond is so much more than a spread sheet.
The point is in my small world of socializing there is a market. You should check out some of the older edition boards/forums, leave the edition warring and approach open minded. Yes we are grognards at times, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised how many are still just older editions only. Heck just give us Character Sheets we can save update and searchable books and you’ll get money coming in.
WotC/Hasbro wants those customers back, as was said before it’s a simple olive branch.
Habro does not give a crap about edition wars nor olive branches. They care about making as much money as possible. Catering to older edition players simply does not contribute towards that goal.
If the old edition market is small, why would they even bother with that market if it is not profitable enough?
And congrats on being car free, you do realize the groceries you buy are trucked in right? So in the end the gas price issues effect all of us in some way or another. But it really moves us away from the topic at hand.
Yes, and economic inconvenience is nothing compared to the price we have to pay if we do not do something about global warming. Our disposable income is more than some people think, and our collective financial muscle is more than enough to make companies cater to us more.
They already had online tools for 4e and literally only had to maintain them.
The code was based on a Silverlight platform, which hit end of life. They would have had to port it to a new platform (which is doable but is not a maintenance task). Given that it didn't shut down until 2019, by which time 5e had been out for five years, the evidence for it being shut down to push people to 5e is... less than convincing.
It was shut down because the guy who coded the thing... erm... ended his term with life early. And nobody could figure out his code, so they had to shut it down. Silverlight going down was after this.
That's the virtual tabletop project
D&D Insider ran right up until microsoft decommissioned silverlight.
I remember DDI fondly as having the most amazing monster building tools, something I hope to see come to D&D Beyond for this edition in the future.
As for previous editions, I think it's exceptionally unlikely that we'll see them supported on DDB. Adam Bradford stated that 3.5 alone was far too complex to reasonably consider making a digital toolset for. Heck, over at Demiplane where he is now they're working on Pathfinder 2e as a digital toolset rather than PF1 (a D&D 3.5 derivative)
I'd agree with that, mostly. I could see the oldies being unwilling to make the jump - once people get to around OAP age, they stop having the desire to change. Most ages would switch though. It was just a convenient data point that I had, and anyone younger than that I think would have just jumped ship for 5e. I think that is the cohort where people might have started keeping old versions going, and if the opposed claims were to have traction, then that's the cohort that would start giving it to them. Much older than that and the numbers drop fast. But yeah, I doubt that any given age group, at least in the working ages, would favour anything other than 5e.
Not quite OAPs, since we're all mid-50s, but our group switched from PF1 to 5E when we moved online due to covid - and I'm not sure any of us would want to go back to the complexities of PF1 or 3.5E
I’m not that old, but I’m not super young either (I started with 3.5e in high school), and I love 5e. (I’m also looking forward to the new edition in 2024.)
It mainly falls as a want. so using your numbers above. If a quarter of us are playing something else wouldn’t you want that market?
How many aren’t even included in that figure that have been playing there homebrew 1/2e games for years. Honestly many of those forgotten ones you won’t get back without real targeted marketing. That isn’t financially feasible. What is feasible is to start with character sheets. Just fillable savable ones. That is about as small of investment and would show if more might be worthy of pursuing. Just a simple form that could store the information. You use that a loss leader to drive other sales. Ie the new version at whatever it is at the time. Next would be digitization of the books like with 5E. most of us would make the purchase of those books especially if they are searchable.
Im still going to play regularly even if Beyond goes away. And it will be across most editions.
And for the global warming comment and doing our part, wouldn’t putting down our electronics help out with that?
Fossil Fuels drives our electricity production with almost 61%. so short of us becoming a Class 1 Civilization soon I’d say that problem won’t be solved anytime soon.
It mainly falls as a want. so using your numbers above. If a quarter of us are playing something else wouldn’t you want that market?
It's not the number of players that's important, it's how much they spend. For every £50 5e players spend, 3.5e spend £1.50. That's just not a winning option so long as there's room to invest in 5e, and there is plenty of it left. Look at it this way, if you had £10 and could invest in Option A and get £50 back a year or you could invest in Option B and get £1.50 back a year...which would it be? Remember, WotC only has so much money, so this is how it works for them.
How many aren’t even included in that figure that have been playing there homebrew 1/2e games for years.
I don't know. People who are self sufficiently home-brewing aren't all that profitable though. They already have what they need. Sure, you could get them to double dip...but that means low prices and low profit. Think back to the options again. D&D virgins are the most profitable (despite attempts by people like Gamma ;)) because they spend a lot. All the rule books, adventure books, etc. Pre5e customers have pretty much everything. They'd mostly be interesting in character options as needed for the character generator. Not the most profitable customers.
Honestly many of those forgotten ones you won’t get back without real targeted marketing. That isn’t financially feasible. What is feasible is to start with character sheets. Just fillable savable ones. That is about as small of investment and would show if more might be worthy of pursuing. Just a simple form that could store the information. You use that a loss leader to drive other sales. Ie the new version at whatever it is at the time. Next would be digitization of the books like with 5E. most of us would make the purchase of those books especially if they are searchable.
Loss leaders are not very well liked outside of established markets. Places like supermarkets are fine because they know that people will come. A new market? That's a problem. Just getting into the market is costly and risky, and you're suggesting they intentionally take a hit on a gamble that people might come? People already shown to be tight with their pursestrings? Don't get me wrong. It makes sense and if I was intent on cracking the pre5e market, I'd probably suggest that method. The problem is... it's risky, probably not lucrative, and they already have a market that's pretty much a sure bet with plenty of profit to be had screaming out for investment.
Im still going to play regularly even if Beyond goes away. And it will be across most editions.
I'm glad. I'm not trying to dissuade you and if you could get your way and have a great experience, I'd love it. It may not help me, but I do think that if DDB could cater for everyone, they should. It's just pragmatism that says that this isn't going to be a thing for at least a good long while. If everything goes perfectly (yeah, sure it will!), it's a possibility that they could potentially start doing something in 2024 after the release, so maybe 2026 they could start selling things. I don't see anything happening before then.
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.
1.57% of all games played on Roll20 was 3.5e, which, from what I can tell, is the most popular version after 5e.
That alone should be enough to tell you why, when DDB is years behind implementing 5e, it's not dedicating resources to 3.5e, let alone earlier versions or 4e.
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Keep in mind though, that most of us old fogies aren't actually playing on Roll20. We still actually play the old fashioned way. It's not just new editions we haven't embraced but also new methods of play. You should not take a 1.57% ratio on roll20 to mean that only 1.57 of the overall client base for D&D is still playing 3e. A larger proportion of the overall client base IS playing older editions, and just not doing so on modern digital venues.
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DDB doesn't even include all 5e official content published with the ampersand.
yes, there's a new owner which is big-time news, but they've had to abandon UA content for resource reasons...and new 5e content is just hard to implement whenever something is out of the box. They don't have that down yet.
this site (imo) is designed to promote and enable new content sales
what you're asking is pretty much like asking Microsoft to keep Windows 3.5 updated. Companies move on - the profit is in new content, not old content.
legacy D&D content is absolutely everywhere on the internet. they can't even keep up with 5e pirated content, let alone legacy content.
A crapton of old content has just all kinds of racial, ethnic, and other issues which wotc is rightfully moving away from.
1.57% of all games played on Roll20 was 3.5e, which, from what I can tell, is the most popular version after 5e.
That alone should be enough to tell you why, when DDB is years behind implementing 5e, it's not dedicating resources to 3.5e, let alone earlier versions or 4e.
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Keep in mind though, that most of us old fogies aren't actually playing on Roll20. We still actually play the old fashioned way. It's not just new editions we haven't embraced but also new methods of play. You should not take a 1.57% ratio on roll20 to mean that only 1.57 of the overall client base for D&D is still playing 3e. A larger proportion of the overall client base IS playing older editions, and just not doing so on modern digital venues.
Sure, but how many people are playing 3e is irrelevant. If you're playing 3e at home with physical dice, physical books, and haven't seen the Internet since 56k, you're not going to buy the new digital tools etc regardless. DDB are interested in people who will buy into the digital toolset, so that 1.57%, while slightly low (I think people are more likely to buy into using it for character creation than a VTT), is the more appropriate statistic.
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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.
It mainly falls as a want. so using your numbers above. If a quarter of us are playing something else wouldn’t you want that market?
How many aren’t even included in that figure that have been playing there homebrew 1/2e games for years. Honestly many of those forgotten ones you won’t get back without real targeted marketing. That isn’t financially feasible. What is feasible is to start with character sheets. Just fillable savable ones. That is about as small of investment and would show if more might be worthy of pursuing. Just a simple form that could store the information. You use that a loss leader to drive other sales. Ie the new version at whatever it is at the time. Next would be digitization of the books like with 5E. most of us would make the purchase of those books especially if they are searchable.
Im still going to play regularly even if Beyond goes away. And it will be across most editions.
As Pantagruel and Linklite mentioned, there are additional costs and other factors involved and it is not just the cost of developing a character sheet. Despite being a big company, HAS is not sitting on piles of cash like MSFT and AMZN who can offer lots of legacy support or go into multiple markets at once. HAS only has so much resources to spend, and based on their actions so far, it seems like investing in 5e will give them the most returns. It makes no sense for HAS to invest in a market that generates 200% ROI when they can invest in another market and get 1,000%.
And 5e already got a few insanely good loss leaders that are free: Basic Rules and SRD.
Fossil Fuels drives our electricity production with almost 61%. so short of us becoming a Class 1 Civilization soon I’d say that problem won’t be solved anytime soon.
Depends on where you live. In California, about 60% of our electricity comes from non-fossil fuels, and there are some talks lately to hopefully revive and expand nuclear so we can rely less on natural gas, or at the very least extend the life our remaining sole nuclear plant.
DDB doesn't even include all 5e official content published with the ampersand. I agree, I think they should expand on their customization ability. I would love to add my own custom classes to the mix, especially some I’ve found published.
yes, there's a new owner which is big-time news, but they've had to abandon UA content for resource reasons...and new 5e content is just hard to implement whenever something is out of the box. They don't have that down yet. Abandoning UA was smart as it was only a test bed and with the constant change of it, it had to be a nightmare for project management of it on DB’s side.
this site (imo) is designed to promote and enable new content sales Agreed. But they still need to look at possible other sales that could be made.
what you're asking is pretty much like asking Microsoft to keep Windows 3.5 updated. Companies move on - the profit is in new content, not old content. Ah the old NT workstation. Nice little powerhouses that kept running. That’s a few decades back when I programmed for those. But I’m also one that keeps a slow dial up modem around so I can connect to a few old school BBS‘s out there. It may be slow but hasn’t let me down yet.
legacy D&D content is absolutely everywhere on the internet. they can't even keep up with 5e pirated content, let alone legacy content. Again in agreement, I remember when WotC first tried to prevent pirating a new book with in 3.5E. They pulled all PDFs down everywhere that was selling them. Pirates looked at it as a challenge. Within 6 hours of the release a rough scan was out in the wild. By the next day a nice OCR scan was widely available. Pirates are going to pirate, most who have pirated material would buy it if the digital was a reasonable cost. WotC took the lesson to heart for a couple of years and discounted PDF sales slightly compared to hard copies. That went away during 4E.
A crapton of old content has just all kinds of racial, ethnic, and other issues which wotc is rightfully moving away from. This one 😣 I hate seeing this argument. This a result of people looking to get offended. I could find it just as easy looking through some of the 5E material if I wanted to get offended. The game has always been one of including others, where “nerd” is almost a badge of honor nowadays it was looked down on by many back in the day. Than you had the Satanic Panic, that caused many of the changes in 2E. You weren’t allowed to have named demons and devils in your books anymore.
Apologies if it's already been pointed out and I missed it, but another issue with republishing old content is that there isn't any current or (I would strongly assume) future plans for releasing new content for 1, 2, 3.5, etc. That means a capped level of income per player. At least with 5e there is still current and future development happening. I would think for that reason alone the last thing WotC would even want to risk is sending new players to previous (and now finite) editions.
Apologies if it's already been pointed out and I missed it, but another issue with republishing old content is that there isn't any current or (I would strongly assume) future plans for releasing new content for 1, 2, 3.5, etc. That means a capped level of income per player. At least with 5e there is still current and future development happening. I would think for that reason alone the last thing WotC would even want to risk is sending new players to previous (and now finite) editions.
Older editions don't really need the kind of 'new content' that the most current edition of the day will always be producing. All they really need is new adventure modules; or adventure modules with cross-editions stat blocks so the same adventure can be run in multiple editions of the game. Right now, many of us already simply convert older adventure modules into 5e on the fly; or we do the opposite with the newer modules. Some of their modules are "repeats" anyway. I could have sworn that once upon a time I had at least 3 different versions of Curse of Strahad for example. So again it's a question of will they make a profit if they were to publish a 3e version of Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Rhime of the Frost Maiden; and how much relative to bringing forward into 5e the Ashardalon campaign for example.
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Older editions don't really need the kind of 'new content' that the most current edition of the day will always be producing. All they really need is new adventure modules
That's the sort of new content that they aren't producing in-house. In the end, Wizard's solution for support of older editions is DM's Guild.
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51.87% of all games played on Roll20 was 5e.
1.57% of all games played on Roll20 was 3.5e, which, from what I can tell, is the most popular version after 5e.
That alone should be enough to tell you why, when DDB is years behind implementing 5e, it's not dedicating resources to 3.5e, let alone earlier versions or 4e.
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Moving on into data that is less guaranteed, but seems to be corroborated by multiple sites, as of 2019 there were 50 million players, 13 million of which were over 40, so 37 million were 40 and under. Accepting a premise earlier that older generations would go for pre5e materials while younger go for 5e, what we see is that the player base is substantially larger on the younger side. In Europe, the player base has quadrupled since 2014, which can almost entirely be attributed to 5e. Sure, some will be playing earlier versions (although not many, new players generally go for the newest version of a game), but many of the players of older versions will either have moved on to 5e or will play both.
The player base size is just that much larger for 5e than the rest combined.
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There was a claim that older generations have a greater disposable income. I'll accept that. However, the question is whether they're actually spending that on these online D&D websites. I mean, the Queen of the UK has a massive disposable income, but I'm pretty sure my local kebab place doesn't court her custom becuase it will never see any massive profit from it and will be better off courting mine, because despite earning substantially less, I'm actually likely to spend far more there.
Assuming the cutoff point is around 40 for whether you're 5e or pre5e, the stats don't look good for pre5e. They make up around a quarter of the playerbase, while only accounting for less than 2% of games - in other words, pre5e are 10x less likely to be playing a game, and by inferrance be spending money on it. From experience, I also strongly suspect that pre5e players are more likely to be playing homebrew than 5e - which means each game is less profitable because they can't sell you the adventure book either, if you homebrew.
Pre5e players just aren't ponying up the money. There's little profit to be had compared to 5e.
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Could these statistics be turned around? Maybe. If WotC were to massively invest in earlier editions, there's a small chance they could convert some 5e players to earlier editions. But why would they? It would be very costly, very risky (I wouldn't be too interested, and I daresay most 5e wouldn't either unless WotC made it very appealing, which takes money), and they already have their cashcow in 5e. It ain't gonna happen.
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It's also not an easy thing to do to put a new edition onto DDB. As I've already pointed out, they've taken over 6 years to implement 5e and still haven't gotten there yet. It takes a lot longer than you'd think to implement stuff with these companies. I play STA, and someone unofficially made a VTT for it. The coding was all done, so Modiphius jumped on board and decided they wanted to make it official. The creator was happy to give it away for free - it was a labour of love - and a year later they're still trying to implement it. That's with all the actual work already done, it's just dealing with the bureaucracy.
They staff behind DDB now have to implement 2024e, have 2 years to do it, and if they fail to do so, their website is screwed. With how we've seen things, how long it takes them to get things done, with what they have left to do on 5e and what they have to do for 2024e, do you think hey have staff to spare for pre5e? I'm reluctant to shift to DDB because the current support for 5e isn't complete. Too often I hear that how to do something is to bodge it using homebrew or a workaround. I guarantee that if they brought out 3.5e in the next 5 years, the support for it would be almost nonexistent and you'd (understandably) be here complaining that they've set up the system, taken your money...and there wasn't a lot to show for it. They just don't have the manpower to do it properly while they're still trying to to get 5e off the ground and trying to get 2024e operational.
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It's just plain capitalism. Every spare buck they have to invest will will have a far greater RoI if spent on 5e/2024e than pre5e. People just don't spend on pre5e on online resources, and DDB doesn't have the manpower to spare enough for an experiment when the current numbers favour 5e so heavily,
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.
Which of course it isn't. Most players are going to play current edition regardless of age, unless there's a very strong sentiment against it (people did resist going to 4e, but that was an anomaly, 2e, 3e, and 3.5e all immediately took over).
I'd agree with that, mostly. I could see the oldies being unwilling to make the jump - once people get to around OAP age, they stop having the desire to change. Most ages would switch though. It was just a convenient data point that I had, and anyone younger than that I think would have just jumped ship for 5e. I think that is the cohort where people might have started keeping old versions going, and if the opposed claims were to have traction, then that's the cohort that would start giving it to them. Much older than that and the numbers drop fast. But yeah, I doubt that any given age group, at least in the working ages, would favour anything other than 5e.
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.
Corporations do not care about just making profit. They care about maximizing profit. As I have already stated, in the best case scenario where old players are profitable, based on Wizard's actions, it just seems like old edition players simply are not profitable enough to be worth catering to. There is no point trying to cater to old edition players if new edition players can offer them higher profit. If Hasbro will get five dollars in return for every dollar they spend on older editions, compared to getting ten dollars for every dollar on new editions, they have no reason to spend it on older editions. The opportunity cost of not investing enough in 5e is simply too high.
Selling static PDFs is very different from selling a digital toolset that is still in active development and constant change.
That is not how business is run. It is not just about the cost of coding. It is the combination of costs and expenses that involves more than just coding to make things happen. What people outside of finance do not realize is how freaking expensive it can be to run an operation. If you really think it is that easy and cheap to make a digital toolset, make one and sell it to Wizards.
I know how much the world operates off of Excel and Google Sheets. I also know that selling digital character sheets in the form of spreadsheets is not acceptable. Beyond is so much more than a spread sheet.
Habro does not give a crap about edition wars nor olive branches. They care about making as much money as possible. Catering to older edition players simply does not contribute towards that goal.
If the old edition market is small, why would they even bother with that market if it is not profitable enough?
Yes, and economic inconvenience is nothing compared to the price we have to pay if we do not do something about global warming. Our disposable income is more than some people think, and our collective financial muscle is more than enough to make companies cater to us more.
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 >
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That's the virtual tabletop project
D&D Insider ran right up until microsoft decommissioned silverlight.
I remember DDI fondly as having the most amazing monster building tools, something I hope to see come to D&D Beyond for this edition in the future.
As for previous editions, I think it's exceptionally unlikely that we'll see them supported on DDB. Adam Bradford stated that 3.5 alone was far too complex to reasonably consider making a digital toolset for. Heck, over at Demiplane where he is now they're working on Pathfinder 2e as a digital toolset rather than PF1 (a D&D 3.5 derivative)
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Not quite OAPs, since we're all mid-50s, but our group switched from PF1 to 5E when we moved online due to covid - and I'm not sure any of us would want to go back to the complexities of PF1 or 3.5E
I’m not that old, but I’m not super young either (I started with 3.5e in high school), and I love 5e. (I’m also looking forward to the new edition in 2024.)
It mainly falls as a want.
so using your numbers above. If a quarter of us are playing something else wouldn’t you want that market?
How many aren’t even included in that figure that have been playing there homebrew 1/2e games for years. Honestly many of those forgotten ones you won’t get back without real targeted marketing. That isn’t financially feasible.
What is feasible is to start with character sheets. Just fillable savable ones. That is about as small of investment and would show if more might be worthy of pursuing. Just a simple form that could store the information.
You use that a loss leader to drive other sales. Ie the new version at whatever it is at the time.
Next would be digitization of the books like with 5E.
most of us would make the purchase of those books especially if they are searchable.
Im still going to play regularly even if Beyond goes away. And it will be across most editions.
And for the global warming comment and doing our part, wouldn’t putting down our electronics help out with that?
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
Fossil Fuels drives our electricity production with almost 61%. so short of us becoming a Class 1 Civilization soon I’d say that problem won’t be solved anytime soon.
Depends what it costs? If it increases your dev costs by 25% sure, if it increases them by 200% no way. The 200% figure is more likely than the 25%.
It's not the number of players that's important, it's how much they spend. For every £50 5e players spend, 3.5e spend £1.50. That's just not a winning option so long as there's room to invest in 5e, and there is plenty of it left. Look at it this way, if you had £10 and could invest in Option A and get £50 back a year or you could invest in Option B and get £1.50 back a year...which would it be? Remember, WotC only has so much money, so this is how it works for them.
I don't know. People who are self sufficiently home-brewing aren't all that profitable though. They already have what they need. Sure, you could get them to double dip...but that means low prices and low profit. Think back to the options again. D&D virgins are the most profitable (despite attempts by people like Gamma ;)) because they spend a lot. All the rule books, adventure books, etc. Pre5e customers have pretty much everything. They'd mostly be interesting in character options as needed for the character generator. Not the most profitable customers.
Loss leaders are not very well liked outside of established markets. Places like supermarkets are fine because they know that people will come. A new market? That's a problem. Just getting into the market is costly and risky, and you're suggesting they intentionally take a hit on a gamble that people might come? People already shown to be tight with their pursestrings? Don't get me wrong. It makes sense and if I was intent on cracking the pre5e market, I'd probably suggest that method. The problem is... it's risky, probably not lucrative, and they already have a market that's pretty much a sure bet with plenty of profit to be had screaming out for investment.
I'm glad. I'm not trying to dissuade you and if you could get your way and have a great experience, I'd love it. It may not help me, but I do think that if DDB could cater for everyone, they should. It's just pragmatism that says that this isn't going to be a thing for at least a good long while. If everything goes perfectly (yeah, sure it will!), it's a possibility that they could potentially start doing something in 2024 after the release, so maybe 2026 they could start selling things. I don't see anything happening before then.
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.
Keep in mind though, that most of us old fogies aren't actually playing on Roll20. We still actually play the old fashioned way. It's not just new editions we haven't embraced but also new methods of play. You should not take a 1.57% ratio on roll20 to mean that only 1.57 of the overall client base for D&D is still playing 3e. A larger proportion of the overall client base IS playing older editions, and just not doing so on modern digital venues.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
here's my own thoughts:
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
Sure, but how many people are playing 3e is irrelevant. If you're playing 3e at home with physical dice, physical books, and haven't seen the Internet since 56k, you're not going to buy the new digital tools etc regardless. DDB are interested in people who will buy into the digital toolset, so that 1.57%, while slightly low (I think people are more likely to buy into using it for character creation than a VTT), is the more appropriate statistic.
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.
As Pantagruel and Linklite mentioned, there are additional costs and other factors involved and it is not just the cost of developing a character sheet. Despite being a big company, HAS is not sitting on piles of cash like MSFT and AMZN who can offer lots of legacy support or go into multiple markets at once. HAS only has so much resources to spend, and based on their actions so far, it seems like investing in 5e will give them the most returns. It makes no sense for HAS to invest in a market that generates 200% ROI when they can invest in another market and get 1,000%.
And 5e already got a few insanely good loss leaders that are free: Basic Rules and SRD.
Depends on where you live. In California, about 60% of our electricity comes from non-fossil fuels, and there are some talks lately to hopefully revive and expand nuclear so we can rely less on natural gas, or at the very least extend the life our remaining sole nuclear plant.
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Apologies if it's already been pointed out and I missed it, but another issue with republishing old content is that there isn't any current or (I would strongly assume) future plans for releasing new content for 1, 2, 3.5, etc. That means a capped level of income per player. At least with 5e there is still current and future development happening. I would think for that reason alone the last thing WotC would even want to risk is sending new players to previous (and now finite) editions.
Older editions don't really need the kind of 'new content' that the most current edition of the day will always be producing. All they really need is new adventure modules; or adventure modules with cross-editions stat blocks so the same adventure can be run in multiple editions of the game. Right now, many of us already simply convert older adventure modules into 5e on the fly; or we do the opposite with the newer modules. Some of their modules are "repeats" anyway. I could have sworn that once upon a time I had at least 3 different versions of Curse of Strahad for example. So again it's a question of will they make a profit if they were to publish a 3e version of Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Rhime of the Frost Maiden; and how much relative to bringing forward into 5e the Ashardalon campaign for example.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
That's the sort of new content that they aren't producing in-house. In the end, Wizard's solution for support of older editions is DM's Guild.