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What I think people are griping about and what I'm not keen on, is the pricing of individual components. They're a very, very large mark-up for a small component. I can also see them being a disincentive to purchase full products unless there's some sort of in-built discount on full prices after having bought some content. For instance, you buy a couple of classes, a couple of races and then you're thinking you should probably just go the whole hog and get the full PHB but you've already spent $14 and think that paying $29.99 for the rest of it isn't fair.
I'm just pointing out how people are going to react to it. I, personally, would never buy individual components because they simply don't represent good value to me. So it doesn't concern me in that respect. I would make a decision between purchasing the full books or not at all. But I can definitely understand the sentiment of others looking at the price for individual components and thinking it's quite high.
At the end of the day, I'm a fan, I've decided to buy in, I think you're all doing a great job and I honestly believe that this will not only be a great success, in the long run, but that it will get better and better as time goes on. But none of that is going to stop me from criticising things I think are deserving of criticism, and this is one of those things.
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
― Oscar Wilde.
You (The awesome people at Wizards/Curse) forgot the
Unlock Everything Hero tier for xx.xx per month.
and the
Unlock Everything Master Tier for 2(xx.xx) per month.
People want an unlock all option, even if it has to be pricey. (Cheaper is better of course :) )
Sell these "Unlock Everything" tiers in one-year chunks if you are worried that people will sign up for a month and quit.
Books are never outdated and also continue even if the company that makes them no longer exists. Digital subscriptions not so much. A discount would probably cause more people to actually purchase the product as I'm sure a lot more people will side with buying physical copies and going places without ads.
Until people realize they have paid $2 for a magic item that their character no longer needs or has a week later. Or their character dies the day after buying all the individual components.
I am so down with this. And I hope my group follows.
Welcome to the Grand Illusion, come on in and see what's happening, pay the price, get your ticket for the show....
I don't think I can add too much to the conversation. I feel Curse made a good faith effort with their pricing announcement. They were not going to please everyone, even if they tried. However, I do understand the concern. Personally, I'll more than likely pick up the 3 core books and DM Tier subscription. My plans include getting my players to use DDB. It's a fantastic toolset, but not for everyone. Again, just for me, even in the 'free state' I found DDB invaluable as I was writing up encounters and treasure, late at night on my laptop.
I wonder how much excitement for DDB was a result of prior experiences with failed digital tools from WoTC (anecdotal because I took a hiatus between 2e and 4e). I also wonder how much consternation is a result of Curse doing a fan-freaking-tanstic job on DDB; everyone _really_ wants to use it but are scared off by the sticker shock. I also wonder how many folks were/are disappointed because they were hoping for a tool befitting their needs when Curse (most likely) had a slightly different user base in mind.
And because we don't know the future, I would hope that Curse considers some of the suggestions being made and implement some in the coming years. Who knows? maybe we'll have digital access codes from WoTC - maybe we'll have "Deity Tier" However, until then, Curse, and rightly so in my opinion, has to concern themselves with "keeping the lights on" so they can continue to improve and support DDB.
My 2 cents... :-D
I wear pants, short pants.
I also ask a lot of questions; insatiably curious
The pricing sounds reasonable to me and I really like DDB. So most likely, I will join the club on August 15. But there are still some things that bother me.
There is the campaign management. The tool so far, can hardly be called a campaign management tool, since you only have three textboxes. No adventure log for the players, calendar, handouts, encounter or maps section. So what will it look like and will it be available when DDB is released?
Second, many of us play D&D on a VTT. Will there be an export function for ROLL20 or FG? This was mentioned some time ago. But I did not find any information about that. It would be awesome if players can manage their characters in DDB and use them in Roll20 (with a proper character sheet) or if a DM can export monsters to reuse them on Roll20. But I can see that there might be a conflict of interest. Is there a possibility that Curse will release their own VTT?
Another thing is, that you keep saying that users do not have to buy the digital content and that you can recreate everything as homebrew content. This is not entirely true. There is for example no option to create homebrew cleric domains or other character options. Is this a planned feature?
As I see it, the current version is more a player tool. For the DM it is just a little more than searchable database. There were some announcements for some interesting features, like a combat tracker, encounter builder, etc., but it would be nice to have some kind of road map to see what the future of DDB will look like.
So, no word on redeeming physical books as digital or dual purchases? Because as an Aussie, I paid AU$70 for my PHB. I paid AU$70 for my DMG. No way am I paying another AU$37 at current exchange rates for access to their digital equivalents, toolkit or no - there are usable free equivalents out there for almost any platform, and even over having to manually enter everything myself into a poorly designed application, you're not adding AU$37 per book of value. And let's tally it up: I own a Player's Handbook, a Dungeon Master's Guide, a Monster Manual, and Volo's Guide to Monsters. That's a total of US$119.96, or AU$154.46. Add onto that roughly AU$101 for a future purchase of Xanathar's Guide to Everything in both formats, and you've got a lost customer on your hands.
I love that you're doing this, and as far as I know you'd be the first company to have a first-party, officially supported digital platform of any kind (even a digital character sheet for people playing physically!) for a pen and paper game. And I'd love to support it. But at these prices, and especially given that I'm expected to re-purchase content I already own there's pretty much zero chance I'll be buying in. It looks outright hostile to customers as it is, or like Curse and/or Wizards are in a huge rush to recoup the sunk cost of this platform as though they expect it to fail before they have a chance to make any money back. I do hope it goes well, though, both for the prospects of this platform and of investment in this kind of thing in the future.
You are half correct. Again, I am just correcting your comparison, not taking a side on the discounted digital copy of D&D products.
Don't know if it hasn't been said before... but for those complaining about d&d being an expensive hobby and this service "ripping off" people:
1) The free rules and SRD is MORE than enough to play the game and have tonnes of fun.
2) CCGs (Collectible Card Games) cost WAAAYYYY more in the long run. Like horrendously so.
3) Warhammer... not even going there (price wise)
4) Master sub is less than a cup of coffee a week
5) Proving you own a copy of the book to get cheaper digital subs would mean WIZARDS would need to hire someone (pretty much full time) to check receipts and verify EVERY purchase. They may be able to include vouchers from here on in but who knows.
6) You don't have to buy any of this stuff... no-one is forcing you to buy anything, you're paying for the convenience. Wizards nor Curse owe you anything. Here is a great new service and if you would like to use it, go for it. Roll20 and Fantasy grounds, last I looked, have even more expensive options with way less utility.
7) Buying an audio book does not ENTITLE you to a copy of the paperback, buying Vinyl does not ENTITLE you to a digital copy, sometimes you get it, often you don't. If you would like to type out a book, or record your own audio book/vinyl into a digital format. That is your prerogative to take that time to do so.
8a) Don't want to pay for it? Then spend the time homebrewing it. You're paying for convenience. If the argument is, "but XYZ has this info in their (probably inferior) toolset", well that's awesome that they donated their time, but no-one should be EXPECTED to give away their time and effort.
9) As soon as the campaign management stuff is expanded, holy moly, this is worth its weight in gold
That's my thoughts on it all. To the whole Curse DDB team. Thank you a million times over, I've been trying to create something like this in onenote, but this is so much more elegant, and so much less work. Time is money, and the money I'll pay on this, is MUCH cheaper than what my time is worth.
I'm not saying everything is cross-platform (or even should be as it is the platform owner and publishers choice), but you picked one specific example (Blizzard/Overwatch - WoW is cross-platform) so I just thought I'd pick another example to balance it out.
Don't take this to mean I'm siding against you in this argument. I know very well that there is more work to digitizing content (especially in a new usable format like DDB). I just cringe and believe that sometimes bad or incomplete comparisons bring down a side of the argument for everyone else kind of like a weakest link.
Is it the norm? no, definitely not. Does it happen? yes, more and more as we move into the future. Steam is pretty good about allowing you to buy a game once that will play on any platform it supports (PC, Mac, Linux) now.
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D&D Beyond FoundersMorning all - going to try to answer a few questions here.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
You have the option to buy the core books and Volo's. It will be cheaper that buy the single races and classes. And the prices for those books are less than the physiscal books.
This all looks good when comparing similar pricing schemes (such as DnDClassics.com and the various Virtual TableTop vendors), but I have a few questions that appear to be shared.
From my understanding D&D Beyond does not (and according to a linked interview) have a virtual tabletop. The linked interview mentioned that you folks will be working to integrate D&D Beyond into being somewhat usable with those other vendors. I believe the example mentioned was exporting characters.
1) Is there a plan, that you are aware of, to implement some sort of Ultraviolet-like digital library for source material between DDB and the VTTs or DDB and DnDClassics? As an example, Ultraviolet is a modern system that allows a consumer to buy one digital copy of a product and access it through any of the vendors backed by Ultraviolet.
2) What is the strategy for providing the source material that was bought through DDB (source books, for example) when DDB ceases operation? Will it be unavailable from that point forward? Will it be downloadable in some format for permanent use later? Will it be provided in some other manner? Note: We realize that you don't intend to cease the product any time soon, but that's not really a prediction that you can make so I'd appreciate if that was not the answer. Many products have made the same claim and due to issues 'beyond their control' it has happened.
3) I believe this has been answered, but I will ask it for completion. I am going to assume that physical source material already bought will not interact in any way with DDB (including any discounts). It probably would not be feasible to verify physical products for digital conversion similar to the Walmart and VUDU process for verifying DVDs/Blu-Rays for UltraViolet HDX conversion. Therefore, is there a plan, that you are aware of, to offer a digital copy in future physical products that will work with DDB (or any other system) whether it be scratch off codes inside, serial number, purchase from WotC, etc? I am guessing it would require a system as mentioned in question 1, but there may be a plan outside the box of normal thinking.
It looks pretty good, on its own, to me. Only when you consider people using other virtual products do there appear to be some concerns.
NOTE: This is intended to be posed to DDB folks and/or moderators that may be able to answer any of these questions for certain (or officially). For other users that are just speculating, please refrain from answering these questions because your answer would be no better than my guess (or for that matter just pasting the lyrics to an Iron Maiden song as the answer) in answering these questions and may dilute them ;-)
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D&D Beyond FoundersHi Ray 57913,
if you have 15 characters and are expecting plenty more, then I'd have to say that buying single classes/races really isn't designed for you.As BadEye explained very eloquently, it's designed for players who don't want to buy a whole rulebook, but just want one class/race.
As BadEye explained very eloquently, it's designed for players who don't want to buy a whole rulebook, but just want one class/race, to allow them to do this without a large outlay of money.
This isn't being done to try to fleece money from users with multiple characters - it's in response to user feedback, to allow a cheaper route into playing for new players.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Also, fingers crossed that third party publishers will be included soon!
Homebrewing Tome of Beasts? Pass.