... acting like children throwing a tantrum. ..."THE OGL THING IS KILLING D&D FOREVER AND IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE IT YOU'RE A CORPO SHILL AND YOU SHOULD DIE".
omg, the hypocrisy. the only one that doesn't seem to want to play nice is you. Your caustic takes on things are deranged.
The WotC hierarchy have shown themselves to be duplicitous liars. Many former fans, who have invested themselves substantially in the game, have a right to, typically respectfully, have our say. Your toxic spins and slurs have no place in a forum of reasoning people.
It's okay, if you have a cutesy disclaimer in your signature apparently you can repeatedly brazenly break the forum rules at will. Hope and lIght! <cackle>
We don't know if it's fraud. I honestly doubt it's just trolling, and I do not disbelieve that someone in DDB's management is floating a 30/m paid tier. What I refuse to believe without evidence is that this will be the ONLY tier, because that would be absolute insanity on DDB's part when people already grumble at the cost of current subscriptions compared to services that offer a dozen times the actual entertainment value for their dollars. People are making this out like DDB is going to announce the suspension of all accounts tomorrow and will only unsuspend accounts that agree to pay thirty dollars a month.
If they're cracked enough to do that? Then I guess I'll eat my crow a second time, as well as saying sayonara to all my current games and characters because I'm not paying that price for this service regardless of the bells and whistles they try and tempt me with. I simply do not believe they're cracked enough to do that, especially in the wake of OGL Ragnarok.
Thanks but that's a list of "Best Sellers in Puzzle & Game Reference" with a whole load of references to games like chess.
It's still weighed toward D&D in Best Sellers in Role-Playing & War Games but at least here, with some other fillers, the Pathfinder RPG: Advanced Player’s Guide (P2) comes in eighth.
So, what I’m hearing is D&D is still No. 1. No matter which way you slice it.
Granted, the full impact of all this is not yet known, and probably won’t be for some time. Could be D&D sales fall off a cliff. Could also be pathfinder is just getting a sugar high that will go away by the end of the month. Either way, calling this the end of D&D is not accurate.
After the very first 6 edition test release I told my group some of the changes only made sense if WOTC were trying to make the content usable by an AI for an automated DM. Nothing else made sense. Once we saw the second release, I knew that that’s what they were doing.
The DM is the biggest shortage in D&D and made sense on why they went with the software engine they did for their VTT design in the demo they showed.
After I retired from the military, I worked with a not-for-profit defense contractor (a few do exist) where our company managed both our people and a few other subcontractors from other companies on one of our projects. It was two easy-to-use N-tier software packages (both computer workstation and web based) that US military combat units could use to “program” these incredibly large, complicated and expensive computer systems owned by the Department of Defense that existed at a few locations for training for battle from crew sized up to Brigades. The project(s) was called “The Commanders' Integrated Training Tool for the Close Combat Tactical Trainer” or CITT for short. There are currently several spin offs of it for both crew and organization training for it still in use today by very large defense contractors with similar acronyms. It was not AI but it was the closest that we had at that time that I saw. The web-based server package is what I took over after another company suddenly quit work on it. I managed the server side of these and wrote the final instruction manuals along with some subject matter experts from my company and a few other defense contractor companies on the web based side. I have since retired from that defense contractor company and are no longer bound by any NDA's (The military made the projects public long ago).
I mention the above paragraph because I learned the kind of structure needed to create an AI to cut down on processing and separate the presentation, application and data layers. The same things I keep seeing with every 6e update. The same goes for cutting down on data branching.
In short, I believe the latest “leak” because I have been seeing this coming since the first talks of the sixth edition based on what I did before in the past.
We don't know if it's fraud. I honestly doubt it's just trolling, and I do not disbelieve that someone in DDB's management is floating a 30/m paid tier. What I refuse to believe without evidence is that this will be the ONLY tier, because that would be absolute insanity on DDB's part when people already grumble at the cost of current subscriptions compared to services that offer a dozen times the actual entertainment value for their dollars. People are making this out like DDB is going to announce the suspension of all accounts tomorrow and will only unsuspend accounts that agree to pay thirty dollars a month.
If they're cracked enough to do that? Then I guess I'll eat my crow a second time, as well as saying sayonara to all my current games and characters because I'm not paying that price for this service regardless of the bells and whistles they try and tempt me with. I simply do not believe they're cracked enough to do that, especially in the wake of OGL Ragnarok.
You keep twisting and exaggerating things DnD Short's tweet said:
"...VP Chris Cao has planned for the future of D&D The $30pm is for the highest tier, and includes monthly content drop Their dream is everyone paying $30pm to play..." Please note "dream"!
If this was pure fraud why wouldn't HotC respond to it rapidly, especially since it is right here on the own platform, like they did back in August?
PR people wrestle with this all the time. Sometimes denying rumors ends up just giving them oxygen, its a balance which ones you want to speak to. And then if they do, we’ll all be going over the denial with a microscope trying to find what they’re “really” saying, or what they didn’t say, which will spawn a whole new set of rumors. Often, it’s best to let them fizzle out on their own.
I’m not trying to say if it’s true or not, I learned my lesson last week. I’m just explaining why they might not address it.
Thanks but that's a list of "Best Sellers in Puzzle & Game Reference" with a whole load of references to games like chess.
It's still weighed toward D&D in Best Sellers in Role-Playing & War Games but at least here, with some other fillers, the Pathfinder RPG: Advanced Player’s Guide (P2) comes in eighth.
So, what I’m hearing is D&D is still No. 1. No matter which way you slice it.
Granted, the full impact of all this is not yet known, and probably won’t be for some time. Could be D&D sales fall off a cliff. Could also be pathfinder is just getting a sugar high that will go away by the end of the month. Either way, calling this the end of D&D is not accurate.
Even with the 4E Debacle, WotC still made more sales than Paizo did at that time. D&D 3.0E-3.5E gave D&D enough buzz to live through one bad iteration and not fail. D&D 5E will give WotC the same lift and they can go through one licensing fiasco for D&D 6E and live through it. What D&D won't live through is stagnation of the game rules, and they appear to be going that way.
D&D Combat needs a complete revamp including players being able to use the +4/+5 items without breaking the game (ie bounded accuracy needs to be replaced). D&D combat is long due to hit point inflation and player death is all but an impossibility due to super hero being a player class now.
Maybe in 6-10 years D&D will wane, but they got a lot word of mouth that can live on before driving away players to the point where they become non-profitable. I'm willing to bet they will see an increase in sales for 1-3 years before the rot becomes evident. They'll have to hide their ARPU and ARRPU values to the share holders and especially % Change in Players and % Change in Paid Players because the former will decline precipitously on wanting more money and the later will drop because there will be less players to convert to paying. Overall, real bone headed strategy by the D&D Execs.
And? Of course DDB would love it if every one of their users subscribed to the maximum possible tier. That's one of those things that's so obvious it doesn't need to be said, and also a complete and total nothingburger.
People are taking Shorts' tweet as "DDB will make it impossible to play without paying 30/m", which isn't even what the tweet says. Even Shorts, who has been encouraging and stoking riots this entire time, did not go so far as to say "You won't be able to play if you don't pay 30/m". Because that's batshit insane and DDB knows it. There's no possible way their user base would support such a play and literally everyone knows it. Yet here we are with people trying to start yet another forumwide flame war over it when we don't even know what they're doing.
But fine. Freak out about it. Harass people still playing over it. Harass staff over it. Do whatever it is y'all feel the need to do in your spite-fueled rages. I'm just about done trying to convince people to stop being horrible over all this, it is clearly a lost cause. Go on, then. All y'all. Be horrible. Let no one say I didn't ******* try.
After the very first 6 edition test release I told my group some of the changes only made sense if WOTC were trying to make the content usable by an AI for an automated DM. Nothing else made sense. Once we saw the second release, I knew that that’s what they were doing.
The DM is the biggest shortage in D&D and made sense on why they went with the software engine they did for their VTT design in the demo they showed.
After I retired from the military, I worked with a not-for-profit defense contractor (a few do exist) where our company managed both our people and a few other subcontractors from other companies on one of our projects. It was two easy-to-use N-tier software packages (both computer workstation and web based) that US military combat units could use to “program” these incredibly large, complicated and expensive computer systems owned by the Department of Defense that existed at a few locations for training for battle from crew sized up to Brigades. The project(s) was called “The Commanders' Integrated Training Tool for the Close Combat Tactical Trainer” or CITT for short. There are currently several spin offs of it for both crew and organization training for it still in use today by very large defense contractors with similar acronyms. It was not AI but it was the closest that we had at that time that I saw. The web-based server package is what I took over after another company suddenly quit work on it. I managed the server side of these and wrote the final instruction manuals along with some subject matter experts from my company and a few other defense contractor companies on the web based side. I have since retired from that defense contractor company and are no longer bound by any NDA's (The military made the projects public long ago).
I mention the above paragraph because I learned the kind of structure needed to create an AI to cut down on processing and separate the presentation, application and data layers. The same things I keep seeing with every 6e update. The same goes for cutting down on data branching.
In short, I believe the latest “leak” because I have been seeing this coming since the first talks of the sixth edition based on what I did before in the past.
And the term "AI" is cute. It doesn't have to be an AI. All it will be is a few paid voice actors doing lines for the villains, monsters and the DM when describing the room. From there the players will be asked what do they want to do by giving them a few role options and that will be it. Its going to be a dumbed down computer game from the looks of all it. They'll be asking players to pay $30/month for a poor video game experience while they use their DCI number and "true" Adventurers League Characters.
So I'm on the fence here. Just going by this blurry slide, which is possibly fake. If I pay $30 per month, get access to all products as long as I have a subscription, and my players don't need to pay, then I'm fine with that. It will save me money as I won't have to rebuy the DnDBeyond access in addition to my physical purchases, and that I'm a fan of.
That being said, my players and I do very little homebrewing on DnDB so that's very different from a lot of very talented people who do, and do so well.
If this requires all participants to have a $30 (or really anything above a few bucks) tier, that's just absolute craziness and there is literally no company that would possibly think that's a good idea...that's like selling randomized proxies of MTG cards. Who would be that arrogant?
You keep twisting and exaggerating things DnD Short's tweet said:
"...VP Chris Cao has planned for the future of D&D The $30pm is for the highest tier, and includes monthly content drop Their dream is everyone paying $30pm to play..." Please note "dream"!
I wasn't responding to DnD short at all. I was responding to people responding to it. Or really, to the Dungeon Scribe twitter. Looking at the 4 points in the original:
$30/mo/player: with the clarification that it's a new higher tier, that sounds like a product that's likely to fail, but it's not a problem. The problem would be changes to the pricing of existing tiers.
Deauthorized 1.0a: well, that wasn't news.
Homebrew banned at Base Tiers: depends what Base Tier actually is. I mean, using homebrew in your campaigns is already listed as being only hero/master tier, so if base tier is unpaid, it's not even a change (is it even possible to create a campaign in free tier? I've never used DDB for campaigns)
Stripped down gameplay for AI DMs: making the rules clearer and monster writeups simpler makes it easier for AI DMs. It also makes it easier for human DMs.
I just came from D&D Next reddit and people are saying you can't play without 30$ a month PER PLAYER! And not a single comment on how this may be just a rumor. So yeah, people are freaking out again and would believe anything bad about WotC at this point. A visit yonder also showed me that the D&D One playtest is now probably FUBAR as, according to a well upvoted theory, the most dedicated part of the community will not engage with it, and all who are left will be OGL ragers and, more importantly, trolls who will give intentionally bad advice to the designers. I'm planning on doing my best with D&D One, but I must say I am worried for 5.5/6e. We will see if Wizards announces this evil plan of theirs tomorrow, though they really probably won't even if this is true.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
You can create homebrew, and also campaigns, as a free account. You cannot publish/share your homebrew (which you shouldn't do anyways), nor add anybody else's homebrew to your collection, without a paid account, but you can create homebrew for your own personal use as well as start, I believe, up to 3 campaigns as an unpaid account.
After the very first 6 edition test release I told my group some of the changes only made sense if WOTC were trying to make the content usable by an AI for an automated DM. Nothing else made sense. Once we saw the second release, I knew that that’s what they were doing.
The DM is the biggest shortage in D&D and made sense on why they went with the software engine they did for their VTT design in the demo they showed.
After I retired from the military, I worked with a not-for-profit defense contractor (a few do exist) where our company managed both our people and a few other subcontractors from other companies on one of our projects. It was two easy-to-use N-tier software packages (both computer workstation and web based) that US military combat units could use to “program” these incredibly large, complicated and expensive computer systems owned by the Department of Defense that existed at a few locations for training for battle from crew sized up to Brigades. The project(s) was called “The Commanders' Integrated Training Tool for the Close Combat Tactical Trainer” or CITT for short. There are currently several spin offs of it for both crew and organization training for it still in use today by very large defense contractors with similar acronyms. It was not AI but it was the closest that we had at that time that I saw. The web-based server package is what I took over after another company suddenly quit work on it. I managed the server side of these and wrote the final instruction manuals along with some subject matter experts from my company and a few other defense contractor companies on the web based side. I have since retired from that defense contractor company and are no longer bound by any NDA's (The military made the projects public long ago).
I mention the above paragraph because I learned the kind of structure needed to create an AI to cut down on processing and separate the presentation, application and data layers. The same things I keep seeing with every 6e update. The same goes for cutting down on data branching.
In short, I believe the latest “leak” because I have been seeing this coming since the first talks of the sixth edition based on what I did before in the past.
Not arguing against this, but it does seem weird to do. I know there’s lots of people out there interested in solo play, or groups who can’t find a DM. But an AI DM, people might as well just play baulder’s gate 3. It’s got co-op and everything.
You can create homebrew, and also campaigns, as a free account. You cannot publish/share your homebrew (which you shouldn't do anyways), nor add anybody else's homebrew to your collection, without a paid account, but you can create homebrew for your own personal use as well as start, I believe, up to 3 campaigns as an unpaid account.
Which is nuts. You can recreate every single piece of official content for personal use. Classes, items etc. Then DnD Beyond gets to pay to host that data and doesnt get revenue for their tools.
I am a vocal detractor of this place lately but always found that WILD.
Looking at the sarah post, her only post I believe. All it said was it didnt come from wizards and wasnt the current plan. Yes, if it is true, the leak didnt come from Wizards and it was a future plan. Good spin though.
That thread from five months ago now is not relevant to this new leak, save that it resembles the old leak to an almost spooky degree. Sarahiscoffee has yet to respond to this, so far as I know.
It really feels like there is a big disconnect between DNDBeyond and the new VTT.
WOTC is trying to us make a new product that is not DDB. DDB is reasonably priced at $5/mo. for what you get.
The new VTT is something imaginary that could be the next big thing that could be worth $30/mo.
This is the Gap between expected product delivery and the actuals. Right now we know that $30/mo is not the right valuation for the current actual DDB product.
If you expect ME to pay $30/month plus products, I would need something that resembles Baldur's Gate 3 for every product that WOTC publishes, Not some trash tier VTT.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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Because playing whack-a-mole with rumors is a waste of time and people wouldn't believe whatever they said anyway?
It's okay, if you have a cutesy disclaimer in your signature apparently you can repeatedly brazenly break the forum rules at will.
Hope and lIght!
<cackle>
We don't know if it's fraud. I honestly doubt it's just trolling, and I do not disbelieve that someone in DDB's management is floating a 30/m paid tier. What I refuse to believe without evidence is that this will be the ONLY tier, because that would be absolute insanity on DDB's part when people already grumble at the cost of current subscriptions compared to services that offer a dozen times the actual entertainment value for their dollars. People are making this out like DDB is going to announce the suspension of all accounts tomorrow and will only unsuspend accounts that agree to pay thirty dollars a month.
If they're cracked enough to do that? Then I guess I'll eat my crow a second time, as well as saying sayonara to all my current games and characters because I'm not paying that price for this service regardless of the bells and whistles they try and tempt me with. I simply do not believe they're cracked enough to do that, especially in the wake of OGL Ragnarok.
Please do not contact or message me.
"Because playing whack-a-mole with rumors is a waste of time and people wouldn't believe whatever they said anyway?"
And yet they did just that the last time this came up.
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.
So, what I’m hearing is D&D is still No. 1. No matter which way you slice it.
Granted, the full impact of all this is not yet known, and probably won’t be for some time. Could be D&D sales fall off a cliff. Could also be pathfinder is just getting a sugar high that will go away by the end of the month.
Either way, calling this the end of D&D is not accurate.
After the very first 6 edition test release I told my group some of the changes only made sense if WOTC were trying to make the content usable by an AI for an automated DM. Nothing else made sense. Once we saw the second release, I knew that that’s what they were doing.
The DM is the biggest shortage in D&D and made sense on why they went with the software engine they did for their VTT design in the demo they showed.
After I retired from the military, I worked with a not-for-profit defense contractor (a few do exist) where our company managed both our people and a few other subcontractors from other companies on one of our projects. It was two easy-to-use N-tier software packages (both computer workstation and web based) that US military combat units could use to “program” these incredibly large, complicated and expensive computer systems owned by the Department of Defense that existed at a few locations for training for battle from crew sized up to Brigades. The project(s) was called “The Commanders' Integrated Training Tool for the Close Combat Tactical Trainer” or CITT for short. There are currently several spin offs of it for both crew and organization training for it still in use today by very large defense contractors with similar acronyms. It was not AI but it was the closest that we had at that time that I saw. The web-based server package is what I took over after another company suddenly quit work on it. I managed the server side of these and wrote the final instruction manuals along with some subject matter experts from my company and a few other defense contractor companies on the web based side. I have since retired from that defense contractor company and are no longer bound by any NDA's (The military made the projects public long ago).
I mention the above paragraph because I learned the kind of structure needed to create an AI to cut down on processing and separate the presentation, application and data layers. The same things I keep seeing with every 6e update. The same goes for cutting down on data branching.
In short, I believe the latest “leak” because I have been seeing this coming since the first talks of the sixth edition based on what I did before in the past.
You keep twisting and exaggerating things DnD Short's tweet said:
"...VP Chris Cao has planned for the future of D&D
The $30pm is for the highest tier, and includes monthly content drop
Their dream is everyone paying $30pm to play..."
Please note "dream"!
PR people wrestle with this all the time. Sometimes denying rumors ends up just giving them oxygen, its a balance which ones you want to speak to.
And then if they do, we’ll all be going over the denial with a microscope trying to find what they’re “really” saying, or what they didn’t say, which will spawn a whole new set of rumors.
Often, it’s best to let them fizzle out on their own.
I’m not trying to say if it’s true or not, I learned my lesson last week. I’m just explaining why they might not address it.
Even with the 4E Debacle, WotC still made more sales than Paizo did at that time. D&D 3.0E-3.5E gave D&D enough buzz to live through one bad iteration and not fail. D&D 5E will give WotC the same lift and they can go through one licensing fiasco for D&D 6E and live through it. What D&D won't live through is stagnation of the game rules, and they appear to be going that way.
D&D Combat needs a complete revamp including players being able to use the +4/+5 items without breaking the game (ie bounded accuracy needs to be replaced). D&D combat is long due to hit point inflation and player death is all but an impossibility due to super hero being a player class now.
Maybe in 6-10 years D&D will wane, but they got a lot word of mouth that can live on before driving away players to the point where they become non-profitable. I'm willing to bet they will see an increase in sales for 1-3 years before the rot becomes evident. They'll have to hide their ARPU and ARRPU values to the share holders and especially % Change in Players and % Change in Paid Players because the former will decline precipitously on wanting more money and the later will drop because there will be less players to convert to paying. Overall, real bone headed strategy by the D&D Execs.
And? Of course DDB would love it if every one of their users subscribed to the maximum possible tier. That's one of those things that's so obvious it doesn't need to be said, and also a complete and total nothingburger.
People are taking Shorts' tweet as "DDB will make it impossible to play without paying 30/m", which isn't even what the tweet says. Even Shorts, who has been encouraging and stoking riots this entire time, did not go so far as to say "You won't be able to play if you don't pay 30/m". Because that's batshit insane and DDB knows it. There's no possible way their user base would support such a play and literally everyone knows it. Yet here we are with people trying to start yet another forumwide flame war over it when we don't even know what they're doing.
But fine. Freak out about it. Harass people still playing over it. Harass staff over it. Do whatever it is y'all feel the need to do in your spite-fueled rages. I'm just about done trying to convince people to stop being horrible over all this, it is clearly a lost cause. Go on, then. All y'all. Be horrible. Let no one say I didn't ******* try.
Please do not contact or message me.
And the term "AI" is cute. It doesn't have to be an AI. All it will be is a few paid voice actors doing lines for the villains, monsters and the DM when describing the room. From there the players will be asked what do they want to do by giving them a few role options and that will be it. Its going to be a dumbed down computer game from the looks of all it. They'll be asking players to pay $30/month for a poor video game experience while they use their DCI number and "true" Adventurers League Characters.
No Thank You WotC.
So I'm on the fence here. Just going by this blurry slide, which is possibly fake. If I pay $30 per month, get access to all products as long as I have a subscription, and my players don't need to pay, then I'm fine with that. It will save me money as I won't have to rebuy the DnDBeyond access in addition to my physical purchases, and that I'm a fan of.
That being said, my players and I do very little homebrewing on DnDB so that's very different from a lot of very talented people who do, and do so well.
If this requires all participants to have a $30 (or really anything above a few bucks) tier, that's just absolute craziness and there is literally no company that would possibly think that's a good idea...that's like selling randomized proxies of MTG cards. Who would be that arrogant?
This could just be a corporate phishing attack to see what people are willing to pay.
I wasn't responding to DnD short at all. I was responding to people responding to it. Or really, to the Dungeon Scribe twitter. Looking at the 4 points in the original:
I just came from D&D Next reddit and people are saying you can't play without 30$ a month PER PLAYER! And not a single comment on how this may be just a rumor. So yeah, people are freaking out again and would believe anything bad about WotC at this point. A visit yonder also showed me that the D&D One playtest is now probably FUBAR as, according to a well upvoted theory, the most dedicated part of the community will not engage with it, and all who are left will be OGL ragers and, more importantly, trolls who will give intentionally bad advice to the designers. I'm planning on doing my best with D&D One, but I must say I am worried for 5.5/6e. We will see if Wizards announces this evil plan of theirs tomorrow, though they really probably won't even if this is true.
DM for life by choice, biggest fan of D&D specifically.
You can create homebrew, and also campaigns, as a free account. You cannot publish/share your homebrew (which you shouldn't do anyways), nor add anybody else's homebrew to your collection, without a paid account, but you can create homebrew for your own personal use as well as start, I believe, up to 3 campaigns as an unpaid account.
Please do not contact or message me.
Not arguing against this, but it does seem weird to do. I know there’s lots of people out there interested in solo play, or groups who can’t find a DM. But an AI DM, people might as well just play baulder’s gate 3. It’s got co-op and everything.
Which is nuts. You can recreate every single piece of official content for personal use. Classes, items etc. Then DnD Beyond gets to pay to host that data and doesnt get revenue for their tools.
I am a vocal detractor of this place lately but always found that WILD.
Looking at the sarah post, her only post I believe. All it said was it didnt come from wizards and wasnt the current plan. Yes, if it is true, the leak didnt come from Wizards and it was a future plan. Good spin though.
That thread from five months ago now is not relevant to this new leak, save that it resembles the old leak to an almost spooky degree. Sarahiscoffee has yet to respond to this, so far as I know.
Please do not contact or message me.
It really feels like there is a big disconnect between DNDBeyond and the new VTT.
WOTC is trying to us make a new product that is not DDB. DDB is reasonably priced at $5/mo. for what you get.
The new VTT is something imaginary that could be the next big thing that could be worth $30/mo.
This is the Gap between expected product delivery and the actuals. Right now we know that $30/mo is not the right valuation for the current actual DDB product.
If you expect ME to pay $30/month plus products, I would need something that resembles Baldur's Gate 3 for every product that WOTC publishes, Not some trash tier VTT.