I know people are complaining about its removal, but like any such issue, people unhappy about the change are far more visible than people who don't care (I doubt there's any major group that's actively in favor). So I thought I'd try to get at least a slightly more representative sample with a poll.

I've always purchased the books. But there are some subclasses that I would like to get from some of the newer books, like Bigby's giants book that I'm not actually interested in the book itself. But I hadn't made the move to buy the subclass at this point. 

I do hope that they bring back individual purchases in the 2024 update. At least for later books. I will get the PHB.

There are multiple books where I wanted the subclasses, magic items, or races from but had no use for the rest of the book.  So yes, I absolutely did use the option on a regular basis.

I never did, and I won't set my account on fire if it never comes back or anything. But it was a clear value proposition for DDB and its removal puzzles me. I just don't see the marginal increase they might get in whole-book sales being worth the loss of incremental revenue they'd have gotten from players (who vastly outnumber DMs) picking up the player options from a given text.

Even for people who complained about Spelljammer and Krynn being thin - I could simply point out that they could grab the races and feats for a fraction of the cost and ignore the ship rules if they found them so objectionable. Now it's all or nothing, and I foresee a lot of people choosing nothing.

I more frequently bought whole books, but where I did individual purchases, it was for books that I was 100% never going to purchase the whole thing. I'm proficient with the homebrew tools, so that's just going to be my go-to now.

Quote from PsyrenXY >>

I never did, and I won't set my account on fire if it never comes back or anything. But it was a clear value proposition for DDB and its removal puzzles me. I just don't see the marginal increase they might get in whole-book sales being worth the loss of incremental revenue they'd have gotten from players (who vastly outnumber DMs) picking up the player options from a given text.

 Well, given relative cost it doesn't take a lot of people switching, but I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason was the effort of supporting the option, and possibly being mostly oblivious to the existence of the option; while Wizards is under no obligation to continue offering the option, they probably (I never read the verbiage closely, since I didn't care) do have an obligation to honor the discount on buying the full book after buying a part of it, and service tickets is an absolutely horrendous way of solving it that they wouldn't have picked on purpose.

Exclusively ONLY Purchased Individual items. Only WHOLE Books I have bought were the 3rd party books.
There is almost 0 Content in books for players, So what little there is are the only things worth buying for myself, or my groups.

Honestly they should have added an option to buy the "Player Content" separate. Cause most of the time that all anyone wants from these books. WotC has been dropping the ball on good content for adventures and DMs for ages. 3rd Party creators are just doing a significantly better content wise for stories and adventures.

A lot. One of the most useful ways of this store.

Currently? I think it's about 1/3rd, which got technically removed because I was tempted into buying the whole books during a sale (wouldn't have been likely to have happened if it weren't for piecemeal).

Had it continued, it would have gone up to about 70-80% by the end of the year. There was a lot of stuff I wanted but was waiting for them to be needed. With two campaigns ending in the next month (and therefore two campaigns beginning shortly afterwards) and potentially a third swap by the end of the year (one of the new campaigns is Spelljammer), then those needs would have been coming up soon. I have the physical books so no need to buy the whole lot and I wanted mostly the monsters and playable races.

There are a lot of other purchases that I'd only really want piecemeal. For example, Drakewarden - I have Fizban's physically, the only thing I'm likely to want from it is the DW and maybe the occasional dragon. Bigby's is the kind of book I'd like to have physically because it's mostly about lore - but if I wanted the specific statblocks, then I'd be tempted at $1.99 a piece. 

At $1.99, it was "cheaper" to buy the pieces than to do it yourself. Even on minimum wage (US), you were better off working and then using the earnings to pay for it than just doing it - unless you're doing a lot of home-brewing for practice. As things are though, it's going to be much more viable to homebrew, so I'll do that instead.

The concern I have is that they'll see a massive uptick in the homebrew as people decide that while it's worth $1.99 for a subclass, it's not worth $29.99 (or more) to get it. Rather than admit that perhaps the old system is better, they'll start messing with homebrew to deter that behaviour - for example, locking it behind subs - and all of a sudden DDB becomes a whole lot more expensive to use. That's exactly the kind of thinking that lead us here, and it's the worry that's making me reconsider moving to DDB.

Since I DM and I like owning all of a thing, Iäve mostly bought whole books. There has been a couple of times where I have bought items exclusive to an adventure books when I've been a player, so I really appreciate the ability to buy things individually.

Rarely for me. When I first bought things on Beyond, I did not realize TFTYP was one book, and I purchased its adventures separately. But other than that, all my other digital-only purchases were whole books, usually bought during sales. Buying the whole book was cheaper overall when factoring in sales at the time, so I never consciously chose the à la carte option. And once the Legendary Bundle went on sale, I immediately jumped on that, especially when it came with a future discount on all digital books too.

Ever since Wizards released the physical-digital bundles though, I switched to buying physical-digital bundles, so I have not been able to really use the Legendary Bundle discount much. I could have ordered them separately to save some money, and to ensure the physical book is not damaged from poor packaging during shipping, but I want to support physical-digital bundle purchases hoping that shipping will improve over time. As far as I can tell, shipping has not improved, and there is always some form of minor but noticeable cosmetic damage on the books. I do not think I have ever gotten a book that is free of damage shipped to me. I do not mind the minor cosmetic damage too much since I see the books as tools that will eventually get minor dings and dents here and there, but it would still be nice if those minor damages were caused by me rather than by somebody else due to poor packaging during shipping.

My wife and I used it on occasion, but generally speaking we go right for the whole book. Even so, I hope they bring the feature back, as it was nice to have as an option. That, and we have players at our table who did buy specific parts that they liked and wanted to include (like a race or class here and there). 

I used it whenever I wanted a specific bit of content. The idea of buying the whole book when I could just buy piecemeal had never occurred to me, which is probably why they removed it :/

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

 Well, given relative cost it doesn't take a lot of people switching, but I wouldn't be surprised if the main reason was the effort of supporting the option, and possibly being mostly oblivious to the existence of the option; while Wizards is under no obligation to continue offering the option, they probably (I never read the verbiage closely, since I didn't care) do have an obligation to honor the discount on buying the full book after buying a part of it, and service tickets is an absolutely horrendous way of solving it that they wouldn't have picked on purpose.

 They've said they plan to continue honoring the discounts for existing partial purchases. And I don't think doing so was a problem for them before, it's only gotten dicey now that they removed the option.

I'll also add the obvious - that the people who post on this forum are a tiny, tiny fraction of DDB's overall userbase, and we're likely the deeper fan(atic)s for D&D as a whole who are more inclined to pick up entire books even when we're not DMing regularly. So even if your poll skews heavily towards "never" it isn't exactly a representative sample.

I voted rarely - but only because there is no real timeframe on the frequency period in the poll.  When I first started on Beyond, I was also fresh to 5e and making the choice of whether to switch over from older editions.  At that time, I purchased whatever subclasses and races folks wanted to play as piecemeal options.  Over the course of the next couple of months, I piecemeal purchases items and other content that looked interesting for my campaign.  Eventually, I decided I rather did enjoy 5e and pulled the trigger on the legendary bundle.  At this point, I only buy full books - it has been years since my last piecemeal purchase.

Now, in the absence of piecemeal purchasing?  I probably would still be in the same place right now. I probably would have bought a full book for the one player who was super into playing a non-basic race and, perhaps, the rest of the group would have been a bit less eclectic.  Ultimately, the end state would likely have been the same - purchase of the legendary bundle - but I think it may have taken me a bit longer before pulling that trigger.  And, in that interim, my campaign would have been a lot less interesting - some of those piecemeal options we used really ended up defining characters, who built entire identities out of being a non-standard race in the world. 

Still, it was a rather useful tool which really helped me get over some of my misgivings and fall in love with 5e as a system.  Even though it is not something I use at this point in my D&D career, it makes me a tad sad that others starting their 5e career will no longer have access to something I found so very helpful at the start. 

18% of my purchases apparently. Got a half price PHB as my first purchase, then some piecemeal backgrounds/character options but then the pandemic was in full swing and I jumped in with both feet and grabbed the Legendary Bundle. From then on out I've only bought full books and I'm fine with that. Sticking with digital only they cost me ~£20 a book with my discount and I'm happy with that.

Sure I dipped my toes in to begin with but beyond that I really don't get the fuss/drama surrounding this.

A completely wild guess is the new store backend is probably an off the shelf solution that is more modern and isn't configured for piecemeal purchasing but that is complete speculation.

I think there were two instances, Tasha's and Fizban's, where I bought something a la carte first before eventually buying the whole thing, and in both cases it was a situation of "I need this specific thing for a campaign, but don't have the budget for the whole book at the moment"

Otherwise, it's been buy the whole book, usually as a preorder, or just snip out what I want from it and ignore the rest

Now I guess it'll be buy the whole book, or homebrew the bits I want and ignore the rest

I voted never, even though I probably should have used it once or twice, I just went full book. I hope it comes back as an option, but personally, I doubt I’ll use it. 

FWIW, in my gaming group of about 15ish people across a few games, I was the only one who even knew it was an option. Obviously, that’s purely anecdotal and doesn’t mean anything larger. Just putting it out there that among at least one bunch of active players, it wasn’t known. 

I've always nabbed it all because I want the materials for my campaigns as a DM and for my friends to have character options in those campaigns.

As the numbers show, offering both paths worked fine for several people. The long tail of hosting and delivering an ala carte option was trivial, making it a good profit and a leader into full book purchases.

I think this is more about preparing this platform for the 2024 books and class options. The 2014 books and all their options will become Legacy content. I'm wagering that this will make it easier for us to maintain our purchases without hosting two marketplaces for ala carte vs books going forward. It's a decision driven by technical complexity (and a good answer in that light).