Sigh. Another one on the cancel pile, I suppose. This is ridiculous. Homebrewing spells and magic items we already have, really? The legacy system is already in place, just use that for everything that's changed... Gah. And here I thought I escaped pen and paper.
You only need to add a version ID to the database entry for these things and let the players decide. Unless the idea is to force us into the new content.
In either case, I'm strongly considering unsubscribing.
I've unsubscribed as i still have access for my current subscription. The only thing they listen too is cancellations.
I am in the process of homebrew copying over spells, and I can finish doing that over the next few days.
However, I am not sure I can handle magic items. The amount to copy is insane. Is there anyway we can get a list of items that are being updated so I do not have to copy everything over? Seems like mundane armor is unchanged, but what about magic armor? If I can skip copying magic armor and magic weapons, that will eliminate a huge load of work.
I am really not happy that I have to resort to homebrew copy a bunch of stuff that I paid for. As much as I love the digital tools on Beyond, I am not optimistic about Beyond's future. I am sticking with Beyond for now, so I will still continue to make purchases in the foreseeable future, but I really do not want to. I guess I should really start considering using Google Sheets, but it is such a pain in the ass to set things up.
I am interested in why you are doing this now instead of waiting until you have a list of exactly which spells/items are being made unavailable. Please don't take this as accusatory or having some ulterior motive behind my post. Truthfully, you are one of my favorite posters on this entire site, so I am asking out of genuine curiosity.
This has to be the dumbest decision in a. long time. D&D is NOT World of Warcraft, where you just change up everything and everyone just deals with it, because everyone’s play experience is amended to be in alignment with the mechanics out of the gate. For many of us, we are in the middle of campaigns in the 2014 ruleset, and have no plans to move to the 2024 ruleset until we finish our current campaigns. I’m sorry, but neither WotC nor Hasbro has the right to brute force a mid-campaign rule swap. And I can always buy the 2014 ruleset as used books, bypassing the need for D&D Beyond.
I’m going to be blunt. I don’t need “digital D&D.” My group uses a VTT because we are spread across multiple states. All we need are tokens and maps. If I want to play a multiplayer virtual tabletop, it’s called an MMORPG and I scratch that itch with any number of them: WoW, FFXIV, Rift, even DDO. DDB could have been a lovely, polished VTT to compete with Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds, but y’all decided to Frankenstein the animated aspects of the MMORPG with the mechanics of die rolling. I mean, fine - Larian pulled that off with BG3, but I don’t pay for DDB for that. I pay DDB to have access to the digital ruleset and to fiddle around with builds when my DM’s campaign in Fantasy Grounds is offline. Honestly, Hasbro has no clue how to handle the IP.
The answer is to roll all the 2014 stuff to legacy that can be toggled, and just post the 2024 stuff under its own ruleset. Because mashing it together is just going to result in those of us using this site as reference material in stopping our subscriptions. I am not going to fight the interface on this website to find the information I need. And if I can’t keep digital copies of my character sheets as-is, this site is useless to me. I will decide if and when I will adopt the 2024 ruleset, not WotC and certainly not Hasbro. You are not Blizzard, and the digital expression of D&D is certainly not WoW.
And frankly, if Hasbro wants to compete in the MMORPG space, just take DDO and either give that IP to a developer who can put better polish on it or buy Turbine and invest in better art assets. Folks looking for the “D&D flavor” in their MMORPG space will be happy, and Hasbro isn’t re-inventing the wheel.
This is the worst decision possible. I will be terminating my master subscription and moving to another RPG. This is a blatant money move that hurts players and destroys the years of work I have put in as a DM. After the OGL fiasco and this, no one should ever trust WotC to do anything other than ruin a consumer's experience with their services.
If you want a frozen copy of a book, you should have purchased a physical book.
This is the way Digital Works evolve these days. You can't tell Apple that you don't want to ever get an update to your iPhone and expect it to remain supported.
I think it’s slightly nuanced though. We are talking about purchasing published written content, not a software application like iOS or Microsoft Office. I don’t care if the dndbeyond mobile app user interface changes but I do care if you rewrite my digital books that I paid for. If I’m reading Lord of the Rings, I expect it won’t change one day or update to a new story even if I’m reading on kindle.
It’s hard to imagine that the people who make these decisions actually play D&D or test these decisions thoroughly. Campaigns in my experience take months or years to finish, where characters develop over time in intricate and story-dependent ways. To say my character’s weapons and spells will suddenly be different at a moment’s notice is bonkers and not grounded in how tabletop roleplaying games work.
I am in the process of homebrew copying over spells, and I can finish doing that over the next few days.
However, I am not sure I can handle magic items. The amount to copy is insane. Is there anyway we can get a list of items that are being updated so I do not have to copy everything over? Seems like mundane armor is unchanged, but what about magic armor? If I can skip copying magic armor and magic weapons, that will eliminate a huge load of work.
I am really not happy that I have to resort to homebrew copy a bunch of stuff that I paid for. As much as I love the digital tools on Beyond, I am not optimistic about Beyond's future. I am sticking with Beyond for now, so I will still continue to make purchases in the foreseeable future, but I really do not want to. I guess I should really start considering using Google Sheets, but it is such a pain in the ass to set things up.
I am interested in why you are doing this now instead of waiting until you have a list of exactly which spells/items are being made unavailable. Please don't take this as accusatory or having some ulterior motive behind my post. Truthfully, you are one of my favorite posters on this entire site, so I am asking out of genuine curiosity.
It makes sense to do so now. It's been indicated that we will no longer have access to the current spells as template when creating homebrew when the 5.5 PHB drops. That means right now you can simply create copies of the spells directly. But later you'd have to manually reenter text and damage dice and other things.
I believe I read somewhere that Wizbro is making a virtual tabletop for Dnd. If the marketing department at Wizbro was smart, they'd make it so folks can access both the 2014 material and the 2024 material available on DDB, so BOTH groups could use the VTT for their campaigns, instead of alienating the 2014 players with this nonsense they are doing.
If you don't let me keep my legacy content, I will cancel my subscription. I know that you are making D&D one to be backwards compatible... but don't force it on me. Granted, there are some things that I like about dnd1, but I don't want to leave 5e right now. I want to keep my options open.
I am in the process of homebrew copying over spells, and I can finish doing that over the next few days.
However, I am not sure I can handle magic items. The amount to copy is insane. Is there anyway we can get a list of items that are being updated so I do not have to copy everything over? Seems like mundane armor is unchanged, but what about magic armor? If I can skip copying magic armor and magic weapons, that will eliminate a huge load of work.
I am really not happy that I have to resort to homebrew copy a bunch of stuff that I paid for. As much as I love the digital tools on Beyond, I am not optimistic about Beyond's future. I am sticking with Beyond for now, so I will still continue to make purchases in the foreseeable future, but I really do not want to. I guess I should really start considering using Google Sheets, but it is such a pain in the ass to set things up.
I am interested in why you are doing this now instead of waiting until you have a list of exactly which spells/items are being made unavailable. Please don't take this as accusatory or having some ulterior motive behind my post. Truthfully, you are one of my favorite posters on this entire site, so I am asking out of genuine curiosity.
I do not trust Beyond to give me a timely answer, if they give an answer at all, so I rather have a head start right now. I am really disappointed in Beyond's lack of communication with eliminating individual purchases, and while they did give us a heads up this time due to the relatively timely communication from the community managers and mods, this level of communication is an exception rather than the norm. Community managers and mods cannot give us timely communication if the higher ups themselves refuses to tell them in advance or disallow them to relay that information to us.
Additionally, my confidence in them has further eroded when they simply could have just made all the spells and magic items Legacy instead of replacing and getting rid of them. While I like the stuff in 2024, I still want the option to use 2014 stuff too.
I am not too sure how I will handle copying magic items since that list is several times longer than the spell list. I think the most sensible option is to emulate what Beyond did with Dragon's Wrath weapons, so I will just make a copy of an example for now, and then homebrew the rest as needed when the time comes. That would still be a lot of magic items to homebrew, but it will cut down on the amount I have to do right now, and spread out that work into the future.
Zooming out a bit, all of this just serves to reinforce the idea that stressing backwards compatibility was a huge mistake. WOTC should've just been very upfront, with lots of advanced warning, that what was coming next wasn't intended to be directly compatible with 5E. They should've taken Colville's approach, with no sacred cows, and really done a complete redesign.
And they should've clearly and well in advance given notice on when 5E content was going to be sunsetted on DDB. (As well as offering some kind of discount or incentive for folks who'd bought the content here.)
Ultimately, all of this mess results from 1) wanting to make everyone happy (which they were never going to do anyway) and 2) poor, vague, and inconsistent communication.
It remains staggering to me how BADLY WOTC has screwed the pooch in the last 20 months or so.
I believe I read somewhere that Wizbro is making a virtual tabletop for Dnd. If the marketing department at Wizbro was smart, they'd make it so folks can access both the 2014 material and the 2024 material available on DDB, so BOTH groups could use the VTT for their campaigns, instead of alienating the 2014 players with this nonsense they are doing.
They have two in development
Maps - the 2d one , its ok but I wish most updates didn't consist of them adding maps to it and instead actually fix the problems. You can't draw on it without freezing everyone's browser. You can tell in videos the devs of it seem to really want to do a good job. I just am sure there is some one telling them they have to put in maps from books before anything else , to encourage people to buy the books.
Sigil - The 3d one you probably read about , it legit looks cool. So its sad I am having my group switch back to pen and paper.
I guarantee this change was the result of one person somewhere up the line , who is unable to hear criticism that is forcing this change. It makes literally 0 sense why they would do it this way other than greed. A toggle system for content is already built in. Its not a database thing because they want us all to homebrew the old stuff back in. Its just some person who thinks DM's will magically flock to new books if forced to, and they are out of their mind. Make the players lives miserably by changing up links forcing the DM to just switch to 5.5. This legit might get them sued if implemented. There are countries who do not screw around with that.
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Also if you do it now you show it was when they made the announcement
Good call, I've cancelled my renewal.
Unsubscribe.. Fill out feedback forms https://dndbeyond-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=225303 Money talks for companies... words don't. Share with your players, share with your DM's share with everyone that these terrible decisions are impacting...
Has it been answered yet if spells and items released under 2014 that will not get an updated version will still be available?
And lets say I own the 2014 PHB, will spells that got an update still be available to me, or will these be locked after the update?
Sigh. Another one on the cancel pile, I suppose. This is ridiculous. Homebrewing spells and magic items we already have, really? The legacy system is already in place, just use that for everything that's changed... Gah. And here I thought I escaped pen and paper.
I've unsubscribed as i still have access for my current subscription. The only thing they listen too is cancellations.
Money.
By making the experience miserable and using the old ruleset tedious, they're hoping to force people to re-buy the books out of sheer frustration.
I am interested in why you are doing this now instead of waiting until you have a list of exactly which spells/items are being made unavailable. Please don't take this as accusatory or having some ulterior motive behind my post. Truthfully, you are one of my favorite posters on this entire site, so I am asking out of genuine curiosity.
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This has to be the dumbest decision in a. long time. D&D is NOT World of Warcraft, where you just change up everything and everyone just deals with it, because everyone’s play experience is amended to be in alignment with the mechanics out of the gate. For many of us, we are in the middle of campaigns in the 2014 ruleset, and have no plans to move to the 2024 ruleset until we finish our current campaigns. I’m sorry, but neither WotC nor Hasbro has the right to brute force a mid-campaign rule swap. And I can always buy the 2014 ruleset as used books, bypassing the need for D&D Beyond.
I’m going to be blunt. I don’t need “digital D&D.” My group uses a VTT because we are spread across multiple states. All we need are tokens and maps. If I want to play a multiplayer virtual tabletop, it’s called an MMORPG and I scratch that itch with any number of them: WoW, FFXIV, Rift, even DDO. DDB could have been a lovely, polished VTT to compete with Roll 20 and Fantasy Grounds, but y’all decided to Frankenstein the animated aspects of the MMORPG with the mechanics of die rolling. I mean, fine - Larian pulled that off with BG3, but I don’t pay for DDB for that. I pay DDB to have access to the digital ruleset and to fiddle around with builds when my DM’s campaign in Fantasy Grounds is offline. Honestly, Hasbro has no clue how to handle the IP.
The answer is to roll all the 2014 stuff to legacy that can be toggled, and just post the 2024 stuff under its own ruleset. Because mashing it together is just going to result in those of us using this site as reference material in stopping our subscriptions. I am not going to fight the interface on this website to find the information I need. And if I can’t keep digital copies of my character sheets as-is, this site is useless to me. I will decide if and when I will adopt the 2024 ruleset, not WotC and certainly not Hasbro. You are not Blizzard, and the digital expression of D&D is certainly not WoW.
And frankly, if Hasbro wants to compete in the MMORPG space, just take DDO and either give that IP to a developer who can put better polish on it or buy Turbine and invest in better art assets. Folks looking for the “D&D flavor” in their MMORPG space will be happy, and Hasbro isn’t re-inventing the wheel.
I imagine the reason of "it's better to be safe than sorry" applies here.
Wonderful! You have just successfully alienated pretty much all of your customers.
You seem to have a terminal case of HUA Syndrome.
Archive nothing; tag Legacy as such!
This is the worst decision possible. I will be terminating my master subscription and moving to another RPG. This is a blatant money move that hurts players and destroys the years of work I have put in as a DM. After the OGL fiasco and this, no one should ever trust WotC to do anything other than ruin a consumer's experience with their services.
I don’t think I’ll buy more content if this holds
I think it’s slightly nuanced though. We are talking about purchasing published written content, not a software application like iOS or Microsoft Office. I don’t care if the dndbeyond mobile app user interface changes but I do care if you rewrite my digital books that I paid for. If I’m reading Lord of the Rings, I expect it won’t change one day or update to a new story even if I’m reading on kindle.
It’s hard to imagine that the people who make these decisions actually play D&D or test these decisions thoroughly. Campaigns in my experience take months or years to finish, where characters develop over time in intricate and story-dependent ways. To say my character’s weapons and spells will suddenly be different at a moment’s notice is bonkers and not grounded in how tabletop roleplaying games work.
It makes sense to do so now. It's been indicated that we will no longer have access to the current spells as template when creating homebrew when the 5.5 PHB drops. That means right now you can simply create copies of the spells directly. But later you'd have to manually reenter text and damage dice and other things.
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I believe I read somewhere that Wizbro is making a virtual tabletop for Dnd. If the marketing department at Wizbro was smart, they'd make it so folks can access both the 2014 material and the 2024 material available on DDB, so BOTH groups could use the VTT for their campaigns, instead of alienating the 2014 players with this nonsense they are doing.
If you don't let me keep my legacy content, I will cancel my subscription. I know that you are making D&D one to be backwards compatible... but don't force it on me. Granted, there are some things that I like about dnd1, but I don't want to leave 5e right now. I want to keep my options open.
I do not trust Beyond to give me a timely answer, if they give an answer at all, so I rather have a head start right now. I am really disappointed in Beyond's lack of communication with eliminating individual purchases, and while they did give us a heads up this time due to the relatively timely communication from the community managers and mods, this level of communication is an exception rather than the norm. Community managers and mods cannot give us timely communication if the higher ups themselves refuses to tell them in advance or disallow them to relay that information to us.
Additionally, my confidence in them has further eroded when they simply could have just made all the spells and magic items Legacy instead of replacing and getting rid of them. While I like the stuff in 2024, I still want the option to use 2014 stuff too.
I am not too sure how I will handle copying magic items since that list is several times longer than the spell list. I think the most sensible option is to emulate what Beyond did with Dragon's Wrath weapons, so I will just make a copy of an example for now, and then homebrew the rest as needed when the time comes. That would still be a lot of magic items to homebrew, but it will cut down on the amount I have to do right now, and spread out that work into the future.
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Zooming out a bit, all of this just serves to reinforce the idea that stressing backwards compatibility was a huge mistake. WOTC should've just been very upfront, with lots of advanced warning, that what was coming next wasn't intended to be directly compatible with 5E. They should've taken Colville's approach, with no sacred cows, and really done a complete redesign.
And they should've clearly and well in advance given notice on when 5E content was going to be sunsetted on DDB. (As well as offering some kind of discount or incentive for folks who'd bought the content here.)
Ultimately, all of this mess results from 1) wanting to make everyone happy (which they were never going to do anyway) and 2) poor, vague, and inconsistent communication.
It remains staggering to me how BADLY WOTC has screwed the pooch in the last 20 months or so.
They have two in development
Maps - the 2d one , its ok but I wish most updates didn't consist of them adding maps to it and instead actually fix the problems. You can't draw on it without freezing everyone's browser. You can tell in videos the devs of it seem to really want to do a good job. I just am sure there is some one telling them they have to put in maps from books before anything else , to encourage people to buy the books.
Sigil - The 3d one you probably read about , it legit looks cool. So its sad I am having my group switch back to pen and paper.
I guarantee this change was the result of one person somewhere up the line , who is unable to hear criticism that is forcing this change. It makes literally 0 sense why they would do it this way other than greed. A toggle system for content is already built in. Its not a database thing because they want us all to homebrew the old stuff back in. Its just some person who thinks DM's will magically flock to new books if forced to, and they are out of their mind. Make the players lives miserably by changing up links forcing the DM to just switch to 5.5. This legit might get them sued if implemented. There are countries who do not screw around with that.