For me personally, it's too little too late. I literally had to rush the ending of a nearly three year campaign because of this nonsense. I've also spent my long weekend now setting up alternate solutions. Worse still, this isn't the solution that other services are offering. This isn't a win, this isn't a company listening to feedback. This is a company bleeding income through unsubcribes being forced into a corner.
The stress this caused people...it's not good enough.
Beyond that, the announcement this time is in very carefully worded language. Language that I think is more revealing than whichever PR person who wrote might believe.
I'm happy to see you've walked back your decision to replace 2014 content with 2024 content. I am still confused as to why you plan to change labeling on our 2014 ruleset character sheets. Doing this will make it so the naming conventions do not align with the rules we are using.
Why can't you just not alter anything for 2014 players and DMs? Can't this be part of the toggle option?
I for one will not be keeping my master tier subscription if the character sheets do not allow me to easily access the products I paid to unlock. The encounter builder is neat and I am enjoying trying out the maps feature but those are not used at my table, the character sheets are (at this stage).
Personally, I see this as a reminder that we don't own the information, we are hiring access to it. At any point that can be taken away if it is financially viable for them.
As an insurance policy I am going to purchase hard copies of the 2014 books from a brick-and-mortar store and start getting back in touch with paper character sheets...expand upon that with some 3rd party content and I'm no longer beholden to what their website allows me to have on my sheet.
first off this is good. i am glad that they listened and are making a step in the right direction! however to anyone that thought this was a technical issue, seeing how they are able to implement the change with out delaying the update shows that they could of done this the whole time from the start. to be honest and to be frank this relationship with this company is starting to feel like a toxic relationship you just keep slapping your player base in the face then come back asking for forgiveness with flowers or something.. like i said the change is good, and i really hope it helps alot of people moving forward. but for me i feel like im still going to need a break from ddb and dnd as a whole this has made me realize im too dependent on this website and this game.
I'm not going to thank you for making the right decision, though I did reinstate my subscription. How long it stays reinstated is up to you.
You want to make more money from us. Which is great! I love spending money on this hobby. To make it easier, I will gladly tell you what you have to do to get money from me:
Improve on the SaaS service you currently offer; if I wanted a video game, I'd buy one. I would love to see the Encounter Builder enhanced though! Next to the character sheet, that is the functionality that's kept me here so long.
Continue to support third party content creators.
Keep all of the characters, items, feats, spells, and monsters etc. balanced. Don't go for the cash grab of power creep, because it will make your system unplayable, and I will instead support your competition.
Hire creative people - writers - to create your own new original content. This will not yield runaway or insane profits for you. But there will be profit, and it will allow you to remain the most influential/biggest RPG apart from your competitors. You can't remix old material forever.
You're under-utilizing the modules you have. If you were to sell add-ons that included every map, and every VTT token needed for your modules, I would GLADLY pay extra for them, and probably more $ than you'd think. If you were to sell physical handouts, or other materials for the table, I'd buy them. (If you were to have physical materials I could ship to my virtual players, that'd be insanely cool.)
A la carte was pretty great, and was one of the features I'd used to recommend this site to people who weren't so sure about it. Bring it back. Even if I don't buy every book (and I do buy most of them), I buy the a la carte. Not having that option will not make me purchase a book I don't want.
Continue to support other VTTs. Just make yours better. If you try to force me to switch, I won't. If you make it truly awesome, I will.
If you were interested in my money, that would be how to get it. Unfortunately, this hobby probably isn't the place to go for a quick cash grab. You have to put the work in.
Still going to hold my judgement until after the September 3rd launch to see EXACTLY how the addition of 2024 PHB affects the current character sheets. Once burned, twice shy as they say!
I think that's a very reasonable stance to take. If fully delivered on, great news from the DDB staff that solves our concerns. But like you, still on guard in case there ends up being any weasel-wording.
I'm really hoping they don't screw this up. Given the choice, I'd rather keep using one site, instead starting over with another one. That said, I will do just that if it comes down to it. If I had to make a guess, I'd say this whole fiasco was the result of some shortsighted exec at Hasbro focusing solely on selling their new product. They don't seem to have a clue when it comes to the DnD player base. Maybe if they tried playing a few campaigns they might have a better idea. Heck, even the actors in Honor of Thieves played it to understand the game better!
Could you imagine an executive board meeting centered around a campaign? Would love to see that!!
Pleased as I am we backed you into a corner to reconsider. It was amazing how tone deaf this has all been. I don't plan to renew until I actually see what the rollout looks like, even then I'm sure as hell not committing to a full year again. I like many others spent the last few days working on making use to alternatives to this platform, and well sunk cost fallacy is a funny thing. Currently I don't trust you [WotC/Hasbro] to keep making decisions that are in the best interests of the long-time users of the service you sell, but in the best short-sighted gains of the shareholders.
As an insurance policy I am going to purchase hard copies of the 2014 books from a brick-and-mortar store and start getting back in touch with paper character sheets...expand upon that with some 3rd party content and I'm no longer beholden to what their website allows me to have on my sheet.
You might check your local secondhand bookshop and see if they have any available. Another option is check online and see if anyone is selling their books. Cheapest way to get them, and you wouldn't technically be supporting Hasbro/WotC since you're paying the bookstore/online seller for secondhand material.
Paper and pen is always an option, one I would go back to if necessary since we have many of the physical books we also have digitally on DDB. I just like the convenience in using the character sheets here, and had planned on doing so with the 2024 edition, but I'm now holding off on that until I see they've fixed the problem to my satisfaction. If they haven't, then I will still be getting a digital version of the book, only on a different site, and will be either cancel or downgrade my master tier subscription accordingly. Not gonna support a company that's just going to repeat the same mistakes.
I would also like to add myself to the large list of people who will not be continuing with my subscription if I cannot use the character builder from 5e. I do not want to play with the new 5.5e changes to classes. It is a very simple thing to just have a little drop down menu during character creation that says "Would you like to build using the rules from 5e (2014), or the new ruleset from 5.5e (2024). If I cannot do this, I might just switch to pathfinder for future campaigns.
I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me that they just could've copied the current program, made changes to the copy to incorporate the 2024 material, and saved the copy as a separate program under a different/altered name. I'm sure there would be tweaks that needed to be made to allow the use of some of the 2014 material, such as the 2014 species/classes/subclasses and such, but that way they'd have a program dedicated to the 2014 material, and one for the 2024 users. A toggle switch would allow the players to access what they wanted to use.
I know that is probably a simplified solution, but the best a 60-year-old mother of two who is computer literate, but not necessarily familiar with all the ins and outs of these things.
I want to say thank you to any and all dev team and site mod workers whose immediate life is affected by the dumb decisions made by folks in positions above you. Thank you for the hard work and likely overtime you put in to make the site work, and to keep up with the changing decisions. We know you're not the ones making these unforced errors, and we appreciate the efforts you give to make the site run.
"Some people are okay with these changes, and some are not"
Let me correct that for you...
"A very, very, very small percentage of people are okay with these changes, while the overwhelmingly vast majority of people are not"
Semantics. People who have negative opinions are generally more vocal about their displeasure than those who are okay with something. Those who are okay with something, as I'm seeing here, are quick to be called 'shills', 'sheep', or any other negative moniker.
It’s disheartening to see a staff member respond this way to criticism about a mistake made by the agency they represent. WOTC made a poor decision, the community called them out on it, and they corrected the mistake. The fact that the backlash was larger than the support indicates that the community's concerns were valid. Dismissing these concerns as "semantics" implies that they're not being taken seriously and suggests that the majority was wrong to speak up.
I hope WOTC addresses this issue and ensures that staff members respect constructive feedback from the community.
On the other side, I want to say thanks to the mods/staff that genuinely listened, and worked to revert this so we can continue to enjoy the game! Glad to see the update! :)
I mainly use this for the tool tips and rules linked in the character sheet. That's my main issue. I am dyslexic and having such quick access to the rules makes the game more accessible to me. I'll be losing the main reason I use and pay for the service. I'm in a multi year campaign where I fought to stay in the 5e system instead of Pathfinder because of this service.
Adding my 2 cents in as well, as I am also disappointed about how the 2024 rules are being implemented. It's great that WOTC are offering the 2024 basic rules and spells for free- awesome. What's upsetting is that the character sheets will no longer be convenient to use if you are not ready to make the switch. My group is interested in the new rules...but we are absolutely not interested in making the switch mid campaign. If we have to do a bunch of extra work to make the character sheets in DnD Beyond continue to work for our campaign, there's zero point to continue using it. Period. We use DnD Beyond because it is a great tool and super convenient, and if tool is now super inconvenient, may as well go back to paper- or switch to another app. There's already an existing legacy system in place, so it seems as though it would be simple to add a toggle for the old content /rules for users who own them, and yet WOTC is choosing to not do this. I understand the e-books are still available, but the fact that they will be no longer linked to the DnD Beyond character sheets makes the character sheets worthless to me and my group for the rest of this campaign.
I'm glad things were reconsidered.. it was one thing to take a la carte, but the ability on how to play? Tchtchtch~
As others have stated- I wont be thanking for this as a choice as big as which version to play shouldn't have been difficult to allow. It took a lot of pointing and even major partners to call this out. wHICH.. You (DDB) stressed lots of people out. At least Roll20 was happily stepping up to fill the shoes in the hysteria- but even now things have settled.. with the drastic changes being played around with.. the community is treading lightly.
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Hello! You can call me Nomad. Early 20's - He/They - SpaceNomad247#8429
Thanks for walking back on this - it was necessary and I feel better about keeping my characters on ddb. Personally I like the way ddb sheets function and didn’t want to have to migrate somewhere else with the large trove of characters I have kicking around.
I cancelled my annual sub, but there is a while yet before it runs out. If WOTC continues to behave, I’ll renew. In the meantime I’ll be making an effort to make sure I have all my owned content either physically or backed up somehow.
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I'm glad I procrastinated on cancelling my subscription! Thanks for walking this back. It was a ridiculous move.
Is their a way we can talk about changes that are seemingly going to be meet with resistance so that we can avoid this stress in the future?
For me personally, it's too little too late. I literally had to rush the ending of a nearly three year campaign because of this nonsense. I've also spent my long weekend now setting up alternate solutions. Worse still, this isn't the solution that other services are offering. This isn't a win, this isn't a company listening to feedback. This is a company bleeding income through unsubcribes being forced into a corner.
The stress this caused people...it's not good enough.
Beyond that, the announcement this time is in very carefully worded language. Language that I think is more revealing than whichever PR person who wrote might believe.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I'm happy to see you've walked back your decision to replace 2014 content with 2024 content. I am still confused as to why you plan to change labeling on our 2014 ruleset character sheets. Doing this will make it so the naming conventions do not align with the rules we are using.
Why can't you just not alter anything for 2014 players and DMs? Can't this be part of the toggle option?
Glad they have seen sense!
I for one will not be keeping my master tier subscription if the character sheets do not allow me to easily access the products I paid to unlock. The encounter builder is neat and I am enjoying trying out the maps feature but those are not used at my table, the character sheets are (at this stage).
Personally, I see this as a reminder that we don't own the information, we are hiring access to it. At any point that can be taken away if it is financially viable for them.
As an insurance policy I am going to purchase hard copies of the 2014 books from a brick-and-mortar store and start getting back in touch with paper character sheets...expand upon that with some 3rd party content and I'm no longer beholden to what their website allows me to have on my sheet.
first off this is good. i am glad that they listened and are making a step in the right direction! however to anyone that thought this was a technical issue, seeing how they are able to implement the change with out delaying the update shows that they could of done this the whole time from the start. to be honest and to be frank this relationship with this company is starting to feel like a toxic relationship you just keep slapping your player base in the face then come back asking for forgiveness with flowers or something.. like i said the change is good, and i really hope it helps alot of people moving forward. but for me i feel like im still going to need a break from ddb and dnd as a whole this has made me realize im too dependent on this website and this game.
Dear Hasbro,
I'm not going to thank you for making the right decision, though I did reinstate my subscription. How long it stays reinstated is up to you.
You want to make more money from us. Which is great! I love spending money on this hobby. To make it easier, I will gladly tell you what you have to do to get money from me:
If you were interested in my money, that would be how to get it. Unfortunately, this hobby probably isn't the place to go for a quick cash grab. You have to put the work in.
Thank you.
I'm really hoping they don't screw this up. Given the choice, I'd rather keep using one site, instead starting over with another one. That said, I will do just that if it comes down to it. If I had to make a guess, I'd say this whole fiasco was the result of some shortsighted exec at Hasbro focusing solely on selling their new product. They don't seem to have a clue when it comes to the DnD player base. Maybe if they tried playing a few campaigns they might have a better idea. Heck, even the actors in Honor of Thieves played it to understand the game better!
Could you imagine an executive board meeting centered around a campaign? Would love to see that!!
Pleased as I am we backed you into a corner to reconsider. It was amazing how tone deaf this has all been. I don't plan to renew until I actually see what the rollout looks like, even then I'm sure as hell not committing to a full year again.
I like many others spent the last few days working on making use to alternatives to this platform, and well sunk cost fallacy is a funny thing. Currently I don't trust you [WotC/Hasbro] to keep making decisions that are in the best interests of the long-time users of the service you sell, but in the best short-sighted gains of the shareholders.
You might check your local secondhand bookshop and see if they have any available. Another option is check online and see if anyone is selling their books. Cheapest way to get them, and you wouldn't technically be supporting Hasbro/WotC since you're paying the bookstore/online seller for secondhand material.
Paper and pen is always an option, one I would go back to if necessary since we have many of the physical books we also have digitally on DDB. I just like the convenience in using the character sheets here, and had planned on doing so with the 2024 edition, but I'm now holding off on that until I see they've fixed the problem to my satisfaction. If they haven't, then I will still be getting a digital version of the book, only on a different site, and will be either cancel or downgrade my master tier subscription accordingly. Not gonna support a company that's just going to repeat the same mistakes.
I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me that they just could've copied the current program, made changes to the copy to incorporate the 2024 material, and saved the copy as a separate program under a different/altered name. I'm sure there would be tweaks that needed to be made to allow the use of some of the 2014 material, such as the 2014 species/classes/subclasses and such, but that way they'd have a program dedicated to the 2014 material, and one for the 2024 users. A toggle switch would allow the players to access what they wanted to use.
I know that is probably a simplified solution, but the best a 60-year-old mother of two who is computer literate, but not necessarily familiar with all the ins and outs of these things.
I want to say thank you to any and all dev team and site mod workers whose immediate life is affected by the dumb decisions made by folks in positions above you. Thank you for the hard work and likely overtime you put in to make the site work, and to keep up with the changing decisions. We know you're not the ones making these unforced errors, and we appreciate the efforts you give to make the site run.
Praise the Lord! I will be re-subbing now.
It’s disheartening to see a staff member respond this way to criticism about a mistake made by the agency they represent. WOTC made a poor decision, the community called them out on it, and they corrected the mistake. The fact that the backlash was larger than the support indicates that the community's concerns were valid. Dismissing these concerns as "semantics" implies that they're not being taken seriously and suggests that the majority was wrong to speak up.
I hope WOTC addresses this issue and ensures that staff members respect constructive feedback from the community.
On the other side, I want to say thanks to the mods/staff that genuinely listened, and worked to revert this so we can continue to enjoy the game! Glad to see the update! :)
I mainly use this for the tool tips and rules linked in the character sheet. That's my main issue. I am dyslexic and having such quick access to the rules makes the game more accessible to me. I'll be losing the main reason I use and pay for the service. I'm in a multi year campaign where I fought to stay in the 5e system instead of Pathfinder because of this service.
Did you see where this has been fixed? You'll have access to the 2014 spells, etc. from your character sheet.
Adding my 2 cents in as well, as I am also disappointed about how the 2024 rules are being implemented. It's great that WOTC are offering the 2024 basic rules and spells for free- awesome. What's upsetting is that the character sheets will no longer be convenient to use if you are not ready to make the switch. My group is interested in the new rules...but we are absolutely not interested in making the switch mid campaign. If we have to do a bunch of extra work to make the character sheets in DnD Beyond continue to work for our campaign, there's zero point to continue using it. Period. We use DnD Beyond because it is a great tool and super convenient, and if tool is now super inconvenient, may as well go back to paper- or switch to another app. There's already an existing legacy system in place, so it seems as though it would be simple to add a toggle for the old content /rules for users who own them, and yet WOTC is choosing to not do this. I understand the e-books are still available, but the fact that they will be no longer linked to the DnD Beyond character sheets makes the character sheets worthless to me and my group for the rest of this campaign.
I'm glad things were reconsidered.. it was one thing to take a la carte, but the ability on how to play? Tchtchtch~
As others have stated- I wont be thanking for this as a choice as big as which version to play shouldn't have been difficult to allow. It took a lot of pointing and even major partners to call this out. wHICH.. You (DDB) stressed lots of people out. At least Roll20 was happily stepping up to fill the shoes in the hysteria- but even now things have settled.. with the drastic changes being played around with.. the community is treading lightly.
Thanks for walking back on this - it was necessary and I feel better about keeping my characters on ddb. Personally I like the way ddb sheets function and didn’t want to have to migrate somewhere else with the large trove of characters I have kicking around.
I cancelled my annual sub, but there is a while yet before it runs out. If WOTC continues to behave, I’ll renew. In the meantime I’ll be making an effort to make sure I have all my owned content either physically or backed up somehow.