To purchase and then use the digital books, the subscription is not mandatory.
Unless I'm mistaken, you don't need a subscription to use purchases either, unless you want to run a campaign and give access to your material for your players, then you need a Master Tier sub.
Correct.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
I don't think a subscription service that gives full access to everything is a good idea. I know it seems counterintuitive, but subscription services, like Netflix, often come with a lot of restrictions that you don't think about. I pay for the full $12 tier of Netflix, which grants five profiles, but it also locks you in at four active screens. They do that to limit the number of people who can access your subscription, to incentivize your to keep your subscription within your family. If Curse were to include a pure subscription plan, they would have to find a way to account for the way that people use their service. The first thing to go would be the unlimited characters option, regardless of any subscription level, because allowing for unlimited characters would mean that there's no incentive for a majority of people to invest in the product at all, since everyone could share one $15 account and not worry about eating into each other's character limit. Curse would also have to limit the number of devices that can access it, and since DMs are likely to use more than one device to plan and execute the campaign, that would eat into that limited number, whatever that might be, not to mention how many devices each player logs in to. If every player logs into their computer and their tablet, you've limited the subscription to six people, including the DM. Basically, especially in concert with the lack of unlimited characters, even if the limit is closer to 18 characters what that means is that you're paying $15/month for each campaign, which will get exceedingly expensive very quickly, unless you're running more than one campaign with the same people.
Secondly, the subscription model takes away player options. $15/month is a good price for absolutely everything, but it's only worthwhile if you want or need to gain access to absolutely everything. If all you really want or need is the PHB, then the $15/month model loses it's worth after the first two months. Even if you want all the books with player options, that's six months worth of subscription fees (eight if you in Xanathar's). The subscription model also takes away the flexibility for every different type of player. For less than $15, you can buy the individual class, race, and background bundles from whatever combination of books, to create one character. For those that are only playing in one campaign, and want to customize across the books, that's all they need to pay forever. A subscription model hurts them, especially if the campaign runs over the span of many months or years.
The subscription model harms those that are looking to bridge access. As a DM, I can choose to buy everything, and unlock all of that for up to 12 characters for players who don't have that content. If I want my players to try the game out before they decide to buy into it, they'd have to create their characters on my account, but if they decide to buy in, they'd have to create their own account, and transfer everything over, especially if they started expanding to other campaigns than our own. With the current model, I can give them access to it all, and they can then make their individual purchases as they can afford it the time, or they can hold off until there's a sale, or as gifts from others. And, at that point, I begin opening up slots for other new players that I want to introduce for the hobby.
Finally, the sharing of a subscription adds other potential levels of harm, especially if there's a group falling out, or someone leaves. What happens to them? What if the've been contributing to the subscription, but now their characters are held hostage? What if someone gets mad at the others and messes with their characters, or deletes them? What do you do then?
The model as Curse has developed is built on providing a wider range of options for players and DMs, and why comparrisons to services like Netflix or Spotify fall short, because there are many, many more differences between the very nature of the services. Frankly, they're just different enough that it creates more problems than it solves. I believe that the current system is what's going to work best. The free 12 character slots even works a little like the family sharing system that Apple employs for itheir App Stores, iTunes, and Apple Music, which is an amazing service.
I don't think a subscription service that gives full access to everything is a good idea. I know it seems counterintuitive, but subscription services, like Netflix, often come with a lot of restrictions that you don't think about. I pay for the full $12 tier of Netflix, which grants five profiles, but it also locks you in at four active screens. They do that to limit the number of people who can access your subscription, to incentivize your to keep your subscription within your family. If Curse were to include a pure subscription plan, they would have to find a way to account for the way that people use their service. The first thing to go would be the unlimited characters option, regardless of any subscription level, because allowing for unlimited characters would mean that there's no incentive for a majority of people to invest in the product at all, since everyone could share one $15 account and not worry about eating into each other's character limit. Curse would also have to limit the number of devices that can access it, and since DMs are likely to use more than one device to plan and execute the campaign, that would eat into that limited number, whatever that might be, not to mention how many devices each player logs in to. If every player logs into their computer and their tablet, you've limited the subscription to six people, including the DM. Basically, especially in concert with the lack of unlimited characters, even if the limit is closer to 18 characters what that means is that you're paying $15/month for each campaign, which will get exceedingly expensive very quickly, unless you're running more than one campaign with the same people.
Secondly, the subscription model takes away player options. $15/month is a good price for absolutely everything, but it's only worthwhile if you want or need to gain access to absolutely everything. If all you really want or need is the PHB, then the $15/month model loses it's worth after the first two months. Even if you want all the books with player options, that's six months worth of subscription fees (eight if you in Xanathar's). The subscription model also takes away the flexibility for every different type of player. For less than $15, you can buy the individual class, race, and background bundles from whatever combination of books, to create one character. For those that are only playing in one campaign, and want to customize across the books, that's all they need to pay forever. A subscription model hurts them, especially if the campaign runs over the span of many months or years.
The subscription model harms those that are looking to bridge access. As a DM, I can choose to buy everything, and unlock all of that for up to 12 characters for players who don't have that content. If I want my players to try the game out before they decide to buy into it, they'd have to create their characters on my account, but if they decide to buy in, they'd have to create their own account, and transfer everything over, especially if they started expanding to other campaigns than our own. With the current model, I can give them access to it all, and they can then make their individual purchases as they can afford it the time, or they can hold off until there's a sale, or as gifts from others. And, at that point, I begin opening up slots for other new players that I want to introduce for the hobby.
Finally, the sharing of a subscription adds other potential levels of harm, especially if there's a group falling out, or someone leaves. What happens to them? What if the've been contributing to the subscription, but now their characters are held hostage? What if someone gets mad at the others and messes with their characters, or deletes them? What do you do then?
The model as Curse has developed is built on providing a wider range of options for players and DMs, and why comparrisons to services like Netflix or Spotify fall short, because there are many, many more differences between the very nature of the services. Frankly, they're just different enough that it creates more problems than it solves. I believe that the current system is what's going to work best. The free 12 character slots even works a little like the family sharing system that Apple employs for itheir App Stores, iTunes, and Apple Music, which is an amazing service.
That was incredibly well thought out and could easily be the final word on the subject. Congradulations.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
The only way I could see a subscription method working to unlock all content is to remove offline accessibility to that content. Like netflix, you'd be required to access that content exclusively online.
I'm ok with that, but offline access has been one of the biggest selling points so far.
Not true at all. Spotify has offline access. You simply need to connect the device once a month to renew the license/subscription.
This is a solved problem if they look at other industry examples.
WotC has unfortunately never proven themselves to be able to "look at other industry examples."
When it comes to the internet and internet business strategies, I fail to think of any company worse at it than WotC.
I don't think a subscription service that gives full access to everything is a good idea. I know it seems counterintuitive, but subscription services, like Netflix, often come with a lot of restrictions that you don't think about. I pay for the full $12 tier of Netflix, which grants five profiles, but it also locks you in at four active screens. They do that to limit the number of people who can access your subscription, to incentivize your to keep your subscription within your family. If Curse were to include a pure subscription plan, they would have to find a way to account for the way that people use their service. The first thing to go would be the unlimited characters option, regardless of any subscription level, because allowing for unlimited characters would mean that there's no incentive for a majority of people to invest in the product at all, since everyone could share one $15 account and not worry about eating into each other's character limit. Curse would also have to limit the number of devices that can access it, and since DMs are likely to use more than one device to plan and execute the campaign, that would eat into that limited number, whatever that might be, not to mention how many devices each player logs in to. If every player logs into their computer and their tablet, you've limited the subscription to six people, including the DM. Basically, especially in concert with the lack of unlimited characters, even if the limit is closer to 18 characters what that means is that you're paying $15/month for each campaign, which will get exceedingly expensive very quickly, unless you're running more than one campaign with the same people.
Secondly, the subscription model takes away player options. $15/month is a good price for absolutely everything, but it's only worthwhile if you want or need to gain access to absolutely everything. If all you really want or need is the PHB, then the $15/month model loses it's worth after the first two months. Even if you want all the books with player options, that's six months worth of subscription fees (eight if you in Xanathar's). The subscription model also takes away the flexibility for every different type of player. For less than $15, you can buy the individual class, race, and background bundles from whatever combination of books, to create one character. For those that are only playing in one campaign, and want to customize across the books, that's all they need to pay forever. A subscription model hurts them, especially if the campaign runs over the span of many months or years.
The subscription model harms those that are looking to bridge access. As a DM, I can choose to buy everything, and unlock all of that for up to 12 characters for players who don't have that content. If I want my players to try the game out before they decide to buy into it, they'd have to create their characters on my account, but if they decide to buy in, they'd have to create their own account, and transfer everything over, especially if they started expanding to other campaigns than our own. With the current model, I can give them access to it all, and they can then make their individual purchases as they can afford it the time, or they can hold off until there's a sale, or as gifts from others. And, at that point, I begin opening up slots for other new players that I want to introduce for the hobby.
Finally, the sharing of a subscription adds other potential levels of harm, especially if there's a group falling out, or someone leaves. What happens to them? What if the've been contributing to the subscription, but now their characters are held hostage? What if someone gets mad at the others and messes with their characters, or deletes them? What do you do then?
The model as Curse has developed is built on providing a wider range of options for players and DMs, and why comparrisons to services like Netflix or Spotify fall short, because there are many, many more differences between the very nature of the services. Frankly, they're just different enough that it creates more problems than it solves. I believe that the current system is what's going to work best. The free 12 character slots even works a little like the family sharing system that Apple employs for itheir App Stores, iTunes, and Apple Music, which is an amazing service.
I don't think the people calling for something in the vein of a $15 monthly all-access subscription are saying it should be instead of the current options, I think they are saying it should be in addition to the current options. Plenty of people have come out and said that they prefer the current D&D Beyond model to a monthly all-access subscription and would not want the subscription model as a replacement, and that's fine, but I don't think anyone has come out to explain why we shouldn't have it as an additional option.
I think we also need to remind ourselves that the new paradigm in 5e for WotC was listen to the customer
It is possible or even probable, that what goes live, may evolve...
I think ultimately, options are best, and let each person pick what meets their needs. If anything, the class packs, race packs, etc. show a commitment to being flexible. Lets give the final wording a good review, and then give feedback.
And, when we give feedback, lets pretend it is face to face and not over the internet. Let's actually assume the people at Curse and WotC are humans and treat them with respect, and not assume worst motives, throw overarching rhetoric, etc. No plan is going to ruin anyone's life and no one is forced to do anything. I have seen posts on this thread that embarass me. We are such a great community, we can do better!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Staff is always listening, and this is a good conversation at this point. Its made me curious to the reasons why more options would be bad.
Basically, no one has addressed this.
Not yet, no. It's still early enough for change, but late enough to be comfortable in the options presented. If a staff member says this will never happen - it will never happen. As it stands, it's best to leave the option open in case it can happen. They also wouldn't want to raise hopes and say they're going to try to get it to happen because if it doesn't, it turns into a lie in the eyes of the public.
Look at it this way: The tools are weeks away from release and there's a lot to do before they're released. The current revealed payment models have been approved by all parties involved. Surprising them with another payment model that is not being used by any other 5th edition partner, weeks before release, might not be a good idea. It's a decision they will have to make, but it's best not to burn those bridges with the public or with other parties involved. Badeye has heard the calling for a subscription plan, so he knows there's interest in it.
Staff is always listening, and this is a good conversation at this point. Its made me curious to the reasons why more options would be bad.
Basically, no one has addressed this.
Not yet, no. It's still early enough for change, but late enough to be comfortable in the options presented. If a staff member says this will never happen - it will never happen. As it stands, it's best to leave the option open in case it can happen. They also wouldn't want to raise hopes and say they're going to try to get it to happen because if it doesn't, it turns into a lie in the eyes of the public.
Look at it this way: The tools are weeks away from release and there's a lot to do before they're released. The current revealed payment models have been approved by all parties involved. Surprising them with another payment model that is not being used by any other 5th edition partner, weeks before release, might not be a good idea. It's a decision they will have to make, but it's best not to burn those bridges with the public or with other parties involved. Badeye has heard the calling for a subscription plan, so he knows there's interest in it.
Has he heard the calling for a "Lifetime Subscription"?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
I don't think a subscription service that gives full access to everything is a good idea. I know it seems counterintuitive, but subscription services, like Netflix, often come with a lot of restrictions that you don't think about. I pay for the full $12 tier of Netflix, which grants five profiles, but it also locks you in at four active screens. They do that to limit the number of people who can access your subscription, to incentivize your to keep your subscription within your family. If Curse were to include a pure subscription plan, they would have to find a way to account for the way that people use their service. The first thing to go would be the unlimited characters option, regardless of any subscription level, because allowing for unlimited characters would mean that there's no incentive for a majority of people to invest in the product at all, since everyone could share one $15 account and not worry about eating into each other's character limit. Curse would also have to limit the number of devices that can access it, and since DMs are likely to use more than one device to plan and execute the campaign, that would eat into that limited number, whatever that might be, not to mention how many devices each player logs in to. If every player logs into their computer and their tablet, you've limited the subscription to six people, including the DM. Basically, especially in concert with the lack of unlimited characters, even if the limit is closer to 18 characters what that means is that you're paying $15/month for each campaign, which will get exceedingly expensive very quickly, unless you're running more than one campaign with the same people.
Secondly, the subscription model takes away player options. $15/month is a good price for absolutely everything, but it's only worthwhile if you want or need to gain access to absolutely everything. If all you really want or need is the PHB, then the $15/month model loses it's worth after the first two months. Even if you want all the books with player options, that's six months worth of subscription fees (eight if you in Xanathar's). The subscription model also takes away the flexibility for every different type of player. For less than $15, you can buy the individual class, race, and background bundles from whatever combination of books, to create one character. For those that are only playing in one campaign, and want to customize across the books, that's all they need to pay forever. A subscription model hurts them, especially if the campaign runs over the span of many months or years.
The subscription model harms those that are looking to bridge access. As a DM, I can choose to buy everything, and unlock all of that for up to 12 characters for players who don't have that content. If I want my players to try the game out before they decide to buy into it, they'd have to create their characters on my account, but if they decide to buy in, they'd have to create their own account, and transfer everything over, especially if they started expanding to other campaigns than our own. With the current model, I can give them access to it all, and they can then make their individual purchases as they can afford it the time, or they can hold off until there's a sale, or as gifts from others. And, at that point, I begin opening up slots for other new players that I want to introduce for the hobby.
Finally, the sharing of a subscription adds other potential levels of harm, especially if there's a group falling out, or someone leaves. What happens to them? What if the've been contributing to the subscription, but now their characters are held hostage? What if someone gets mad at the others and messes with their characters, or deletes them? What do you do then?
The model as Curse has developed is built on providing a wider range of options for players and DMs, and why comparrisons to services like Netflix or Spotify fall short, because there are many, many more differences between the very nature of the services. Frankly, they're just different enough that it creates more problems than it solves. I believe that the current system is what's going to work best. The free 12 character slots even works a little like the family sharing system that Apple employs for itheir App Stores, iTunes, and Apple Music, which is an amazing service.
I don't think the people calling for something in the vein of a $15 monthly all-access subscription are saying it should be instead of the current options, I think they are saying it should be in addition to the current options. Plenty of people have come out and said that they prefer the current D&D Beyond model to a monthly all-access subscription and would not want the subscription model as a replacement, and that's fine, but I don't think anyone has come out to explain why we shouldn't have it as an additional option.
Staff is always listening, and this is a good conversation at this point. Its made me curious to the reasons why more options would be bad.
Basically, no one has addressed this.
Adding that subscription tier is only going to add further market confusion. Just look at how many people are confused about the current plan, which is basically just, "Buy the books and/or subscribe to the services." Also, if you're adding the subscription, are you doing a $15 subscription for just the books, or do you want to add the services to that amount, too? Is that $15 just for one player? What kinds of limitations to you include on the service? Do you have multiple book subscription services? What do those services include, and how are you going to mitigate the abuse of those services? Are you going to create overly restrictive rules for one type of customer to balance against the services for other the other types of customers? How are you going to address customers who want to switch from one type of service to another? I'm not talking about billing. Are you going to tell the person who has been subscribing for two years that what they spent is null when going to buy them? If you decide to offer some kind of incentive for subscriber customer, what kinds of incentives will you provide for purchasing customers? How are you going to market your systems to the customers in a way that will both make sense and fit within the attention span of them? Basically, how to you formulate your elevator pitch to include additional systems like that? In today's market, you have to have a clear vision that can be easily understood by all that needs to be viable for the current one as well as the one for the future.
Adding that subscription tier is only going to add further market confusion. Just look at how many people are confused about the current plan, which is basically just, "Buy the books and/or subscribe to the services." (1) Also, if you're adding the subscription, are you doing a $15 subscription for just the books, or do you want to add the services to that amount, too? Is that $15 just for one player? What kinds of limitations to you include on the service? Do you have multiple book subscription services? What do those services include, and how are you going to mitigate the abuse of those services? Are you going to create overly restrictive rules for one type of customer to balance against the services for other the other types of customers? (2) How are you going to address customers who want to switch from one type of service to another? I'm not talking about billing. Are you going to tell the person who has been subscribing for two years that what they spent is null when going to buy them? If you decide to offer some kind of incentive for subscriber customer, what kinds of incentives will you provide for purchasing customers? (3) How are you going to market your systems to the customers in a way that will both make sense and fit within the attention span of them? Basically, how to you formulate your elevator pitch to include additional systems like that? In today's market, you have to have a clear vision that can be easily understood by all that needs to be viable for the current one as well as the one for the future.
1 - The $15 number was just a random number I plucked out to signify "a price higher than the current subscriptions." You act like this is confusing but I think you're overcomplicating things. It would break down in 4 tiers: the non subscriber tier (which is what it is), the $3 a month tier, the $6 a month tier, and then this new tier which would be everything in the $6 a month tier with full access to all of the published content so long as you have an active subscription.
2 - Look at how Sony does Playstation Plus. There are free games offered all the time. So long as you are a Playstation Plus customer, you always have access to those free games so long as you are a subscriber, if you unsubscribe, you lose those games. This is not rocket science. Other companies have already mastered this business model. Stop acting like it's some impossible scenario.
3 - You're overcomplicating things to try to invalidate the original point of discussion.
Adding that subscription tier is only going to add further market confusion. Just look at how many people are confused about the current plan, which is basically just, "Buy the books and/or subscribe to the services." (1) Also, if you're adding the subscription, are you doing a $15 subscription for just the books, or do you want to add the services to that amount, too? Is that $15 just for one player? What kinds of limitations to you include on the service? Do you have multiple book subscription services? What do those services include, and how are you going to mitigate the abuse of those services? Are you going to create overly restrictive rules for one type of customer to balance against the services for other the other types of customers? (2) How are you going to address customers who want to switch from one type of service to another? I'm not talking about billing. Are you going to tell the person who has been subscribing for two years that what they spent is null when going to buy them? If you decide to offer some kind of incentive for subscriber customer, what kinds of incentives will you provide for purchasing customers? (3) How are you going to market your systems to the customers in a way that will both make sense and fit within the attention span of them? Basically, how to you formulate your elevator pitch to include additional systems like that? In today's market, you have to have a clear vision that can be easily understood by all that needs to be viable for the current one as well as the one for the future.
1 - The $15 number was just a random number I plucked out to signify "a price higher than the current subscriptions." You act like this is confusing but I think you're overcomplicating things. It would break down in 4 tiers: the non subscriber tier (which is what it is), the $3 a month tier, the $6 a month tier, and then this new tier which would be everything in the $6 a month tier with full access to all of the published content so long as you have an active subscription.
2 - Look at how Sony does Playstation Plus. There are free games offered all the time. So long as you are a Playstation Plus customer, you always have access to those free games so long as you are a subscriber, if you unsubscribe, you lose those games. This is not rocket science. Other companies have already mastered this business model. Stop acting like it's some impossible scenario.
3 - You're overcomplicating things to try to invalidate the original point of discussion.
To start, I'm not confusing anything. There have been a number of people who have come in this specific thread confused about the current pricing scheme, some of whom have asked if you have to have a subscription in order to buy the books, despite it being very clear that the subscriptions and the books are two completely different things, so I'm not trying to confuse things. I'm bringing up the very valid point that market confusion is easy, and it can be a problem for a number of companies. If you provide the book subscription tier in addition to purchasing books, it looks like this: "Non-subscriber tier (free), which includes all SRD and free materials. Hero tier ($3), which turns off the adds, gives you unlimited characters, and alllows you to download homebrew content. Master tier ($6), which allows you to provide up to 12 free characters the content you own or subscribe to. Book tier ($?), which allows you to gain access to all books. You can also purchase books for $25-$30, or specific character bundles for $2-$5." You will have customers confused about buying books, but also getting them in the book tier. What about customers who buy some books? Are they going to be granted a discount of some kind?
The PlayStation Plus model is a false equivalency. That is an online service that affords you the ability to play games with other PS4 players, and they use games as an incentive to stay subscribed to their service. Even if you don't download their games, you still have access to their primary service. Also, if you let your PS+ service lapse, then bring it back, you don't get those games back. I don't get access to every game that PS+ offers after the fact, either. Finally, like Netflix, Sony has negotiating power with those developers, because there is market competition within their ecosystem. Curse is limited to WotC. They can't offer Pathfinder stuff in the subscription in order to create negotiating power against WotC, nor can they drop WotC material from a book subscription service in an effort to get the most preferential liscensing prices during negotiations.
As with the other things that didn't advance your agenda, the confusion also doesn't address how you're going to curb abuse. Why do you need to share characters if everyone can just access the same account? I don't mean everyone in terms of everyone ever. I mean in terms of your group or groups. If you play in three different games, with three different sets of groups, what's stopping you from just having one account, and everyone just accessing it? What's stopping at least one of the people in those three groups using the login info to create another campaign with a fourth group? How are you going to address device management?
I'm not overcomplicating anything. These are legitimate business questions that need to be addressed. In fact, there are significantly more complications that I haven't brought up. How do you manage profiles, for an example? How many do you allow? How do you restrict those?
Since your $15 price tage was an arbritraty value, how are you going to calculate the most effective way to price the system? Is $15 enough? Is it too much? How often are you going to raise the price to account for the new material? How are you going to deal with customer backlash? How are you going to manage subscription projections? Since you're beholden to WotC to produce new material, how are you going to deal with people feeling like the subscription isn't worth it after a dry spell? How do you diversify your market when you're reliant on one source? What liscensing agreement structure do you work out with WotC? After all, for every new product they produce, they're going to want more money for sustained licenses, which you won't be able to support. Sony only pays a one time licensing deal with those companies for each month they release it for free. They don't pay every month for the Assassin's Creed game they gave you for free every month. Netflix is basically in constant contract negotiations, which is why you see content come and go.
Even if Curse had the power to pull content over licensing fees, what happens if they do? What happens to those characters? This isn't like a movie, where it can come and go without worry. If you're playing as an Aasimar, and Curse pulls the Volo's book, what happens to your character? Who do you blame? Who gets hurt? Who suffers the biggest customer vengeance? Do you complain to WotC or Curse for the problem?
I didn't overcomplicate anything. I've only begun to shine a light on the surface.
Adding that subscription tier is only going to add further market confusion. Just look at how many people are confused about the current plan, which is basically just, "Buy the books and/or subscribe to the services." (1) Also, if you're adding the subscription, are you doing a $15 subscription for just the books, or do you want to add the services to that amount, too? Is that $15 just for one player? What kinds of limitations to you include on the service? Do you have multiple book subscription services? What do those services include, and how are you going to mitigate the abuse of those services? Are you going to create overly restrictive rules for one type of customer to balance against the services for other the other types of customers? (2) How are you going to address customers who want to switch from one type of service to another? I'm not talking about billing. Are you going to tell the person who has been subscribing for two years that what they spent is null when going to buy them? If you decide to offer some kind of incentive for subscriber customer, what kinds of incentives will you provide for purchasing customers? (3) How are you going to market your systems to the customers in a way that will both make sense and fit within the attention span of them? Basically, how to you formulate your elevator pitch to include additional systems like that? In today's market, you have to have a clear vision that can be easily understood by all that needs to be viable for the current one as well as the one for the future.
1 - The $15 number was just a random number I plucked out to signify "a price higher than the current subscriptions." You act like this is confusing but I think you're overcomplicating things. It would break down in 4 tiers: the non subscriber tier (which is what it is), the $3 a month tier, the $6 a month tier, and then this new tier which would be everything in the $6 a month tier with full access to all of the published content so long as you have an active subscription.
2 - Look at how Sony does Playstation Plus. There are free games offered all the time. So long as you are a Playstation Plus customer, you always have access to those free games so long as you are a subscriber, if you unsubscribe, you lose those games. This is not rocket science. Other companies have already mastered this business model. Stop acting like it's some impossible scenario.
3 - You're overcomplicating things to try to invalidate the original point of discussion.
To start, I'm not confusing anything. There have been a number of people who have come in this specific thread confused about the current pricing scheme, some of whom have asked if you have to have a subscription in order to buy the books, despite it being very clear that the subscriptions and the books are two completely different things, so I'm not trying to confuse things. I'm bringing up the very valid point that market confusion is easy, and it can be a problem for a number of companies. If you provide the book subscription tier in addition to purchasing books, it looks like this: "Non-subscriber tier (free), which includes all SRD and free materials. Hero tier ($3), which turns off the adds, gives you unlimited characters, and alllows you to download homebrew content. Master tier ($6), which allows you to provide up to 12 free characters the content you own or subscribe to. Book tier ($?), which allows you to gain access to all books. You can also purchase books for $25-$30, or specific character bundles for $2-$5." You will have customers confused about buying books, but also getting them in the book tier. What about customers who buy some books? Are they going to be granted a discount of some kind?
The PlayStation Plus model is a false equivalency. That is an online service that affords you the ability to play games with other PS4 players, and they use games as an incentive to stay subscribed to their service. Even if you don't download their games, you still have access to their primary service. Also, if you let your PS+ service lapse, then bring it back, you don't get those games back. I don't get access to every game that PS+ offers after the fact, either. Finally, like Netflix, Sony has negotiating power with those developers, because there is market competition within their ecosystem. Curse is limited to WotC. They can't offer Pathfinder stuff in the subscription in order to create negotiating power against WotC, nor can they drop WotC material from a book subscription service in an effort to get the most preferential liscensing prices during negotiations.
As with the other things that didn't advance your agenda, the confusion also doesn't address how you're going to curb abuse. Why do you need to share characters if everyone can just access the same account? I don't mean everyone in terms of everyone ever. I mean in terms of your group or groups. If you play in three different games, with three different sets of groups, what's stopping you from just having one account, and everyone just accessing it? What's stopping at least one of the people in those three groups using the login info to create another campaign with a fourth group? How are you going to address device management?
I'm not overcomplicating anything. These are legitimate business questions that need to be addressed. In fact, there are significantly more complications that I haven't brought up. How do you manage profiles, for an example? How many do you allow? How do you restrict those?
Since your $15 price tage was an arbritraty value, how are you going to calculate the most effective way to price the system? Is $15 enough? Is it too much? How often are you going to raise the price to account for the new material? How are you going to deal with customer backlash? How are you going to manage subscription projections? Since you're beholden to WotC to produce new material, how are you going to deal with people feeling like the subscription isn't worth it after a dry spell? How do you diversify your market when you're reliant on one source? What liscensing agreement structure do you work out with WotC? After all, for every new product they produce, they're going to want more money for sustained licenses, which you won't be able to support. Sony only pays a one time licensing deal with those companies for each month they release it for free. They don't pay every month for the Assassin's Creed game they gave you for free every month. Netflix is basically in constant contract negotiations, which is why you see content come and go.
Even if Curse had the power to pull content over licensing fees, what happens if they do? What happens to those characters? This isn't like a movie, where it can come and go without worry. If you're playing as an Aasimar, and Curse pulls the Volo's book, what happens to your character? Who do you blame? Who gets hurt? Who suffers the biggest customer vengeance? Do you complain to WotC or Curse for the problem?
I didn't overcomplicate anything. I've only begun to shine a light on the surface.
I congradulate you, sir. Well done.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
The PlayStation Plus model is a false equivalency. That is an online service that affords you the ability to play games with other PS4 players, and they use games as an incentive to stay subscribed to their service. Even if you don't download their games, you still have access to their primary service. Also, if you let your PS+ service lapse, then bring it back, you don't get those games back. I don't get access to every game that PS+ offers after the fact, either.
Er, actually Playstation Plus is *just* a games service Sony offers -that is, the games are the primary service. The ability to play games with other PS4 players is the Playstation Now subscription, which also includes access to special Sony tv shows for the incentive.
Playstation Plus DOES allow you to lapse your sub, sign up again later, and regain access to your games, and you do get to access every game they have in their Plus library so long as you maintain an active subscription. You don't pay a higher subscription for new material offered in the service, as games are added to the library you continue to pay the one subscription price.
A sub system could work - my main concern would be having it coexist along with purchasing. I don't use PS+ (or other Netflix-like game subscription services) because I like to own my games and I don't want to have to pay a monthly fee to access them.
I wonder what exactly do we acquire when we purchase the books through D&D Beyond?
Is it a right to browse the contents in their digital form or do we purchase the contents itself? How will the future be handled, is it "just" for as long as D&D Beyond servers are up and running or indefinit, what happens if something happens and a mod of D&D Beyond decides to ban the account ? What do we do in the case of an outage (we or you) is there a possibility to access it locally?
Wait, I don't know if this has been answered but I'm sitting around playing our Friday night game and this popped into my head thinking about 3.5. In the future will older Editions be offered for sale through D&D Beyond? I know that it is made for 5th Ed, but I think that would be awesome. Having all my Eberron books in one place would be really helpful, especially since I am working on a 5E campaign there.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"...Debts must always be paid, sometimes in more than blood and gold. But this is Ordo Ursa," Ren places his hand on Erakas's chest, right where the Dragonborn's heart is. "Right here. And it always has been and always will be. Don't ever forget that. Because I won't."
Serandis Mendaen (Aereni Elven Rogue/maybe one day Wizard)- Project Point Playtest
The PlayStation Plus model is a false equivalency. That is an online service that affords you the ability to play games with other PS4 players, and they use games as an incentive to stay subscribed to their service. Even if you don't download their games, you still have access to their primary service. Also, if you let your PS+ service lapse, then bring it back, you don't get those games back. I don't get access to every game that PS+ offers after the fact, either.
Er, actually Playstation Plus is *just* a games service Sony offers -that is, the games are the primary service. The ability to play games with other PS4 players is the Playstation Now subscription, which also includes access to special Sony tv shows for the incentive.
Playstation Plus DOES allow you to lapse your sub, sign up again later, and regain access to your games, and you do get to access every game they have in their Plus library so long as you maintain an active subscription. You don't pay a higher subscription for new material offered in the service, as games are added to the library you continue to pay the one subscription price.
A sub system could work - my main concern would be having it coexist along with purchasing. I don't use PS+ (or other Netflix-like game subscription services) because I like to own my games and I don't want to have to pay a monthly fee to access them.
Wrong. PlayStation Plus (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Network#PlayStation_Plus) is required to play with other PS4 players, although it does offer free games and discounts (just like Xbox Live Gold). PlayStation Now (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Now), not to be confused with the PlayStation Network, is the service that's like Netflix for games, or Xbox Game Pass, which you can use on TVs. As far as the losing and regaining of games for PS+, that was my understanding of it, although I don't want to experiment with it, but that goes to exactly prove my point about market confusion, especially since Xbox lets you keep those games, no matter what. With PlayStation Now, I don't use it, but there's no guarantee about access forever. Like Netflix, games can be added and subtracted at will. I'm not sure if it's happened, since I don't subscribe to that service, but that is the case for sure with Xbox Game Pass. However, the big difference is that if a part of the books is dropped from the D&D license, players lose complete access to their characters, which isn't the case with movies or video games. Not having Iron Man 2 on Netflix doesn't stop Iron Man 3 from being functional.
Why on earth do we have to pay to have these books digitally?
1. You don't have to. You can enter all the data by yourself and share it as private homebrew with your players. And you don't need a subscription for that.
2. You bought a book. Not a right to any intellectual property.
This thread is like a kitten chasing its own tail. No offense intended.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
I don't think a subscription service that gives full access to everything is a good idea. I know it seems counterintuitive, but subscription services, like Netflix, often come with a lot of restrictions that you don't think about. I pay for the full $12 tier of Netflix, which grants five profiles, but it also locks you in at four active screens. They do that to limit the number of people who can access your subscription, to incentivize your to keep your subscription within your family. If Curse were to include a pure subscription plan, they would have to find a way to account for the way that people use their service. The first thing to go would be the unlimited characters option, regardless of any subscription level, because allowing for unlimited characters would mean that there's no incentive for a majority of people to invest in the product at all, since everyone could share one $15 account and not worry about eating into each other's character limit. Curse would also have to limit the number of devices that can access it, and since DMs are likely to use more than one device to plan and execute the campaign, that would eat into that limited number, whatever that might be, not to mention how many devices each player logs in to. If every player logs into their computer and their tablet, you've limited the subscription to six people, including the DM. Basically, especially in concert with the lack of unlimited characters, even if the limit is closer to 18 characters what that means is that you're paying $15/month for each campaign, which will get exceedingly expensive very quickly, unless you're running more than one campaign with the same people.
Secondly, the subscription model takes away player options. $15/month is a good price for absolutely everything, but it's only worthwhile if you want or need to gain access to absolutely everything. If all you really want or need is the PHB, then the $15/month model loses it's worth after the first two months. Even if you want all the books with player options, that's six months worth of subscription fees (eight if you in Xanathar's). The subscription model also takes away the flexibility for every different type of player. For less than $15, you can buy the individual class, race, and background bundles from whatever combination of books, to create one character. For those that are only playing in one campaign, and want to customize across the books, that's all they need to pay forever. A subscription model hurts them, especially if the campaign runs over the span of many months or years.
The subscription model harms those that are looking to bridge access. As a DM, I can choose to buy everything, and unlock all of that for up to 12 characters for players who don't have that content. If I want my players to try the game out before they decide to buy into it, they'd have to create their characters on my account, but if they decide to buy in, they'd have to create their own account, and transfer everything over, especially if they started expanding to other campaigns than our own. With the current model, I can give them access to it all, and they can then make their individual purchases as they can afford it the time, or they can hold off until there's a sale, or as gifts from others. And, at that point, I begin opening up slots for other new players that I want to introduce for the hobby.
Finally, the sharing of a subscription adds other potential levels of harm, especially if there's a group falling out, or someone leaves. What happens to them? What if the've been contributing to the subscription, but now their characters are held hostage? What if someone gets mad at the others and messes with their characters, or deletes them? What do you do then?
The model as Curse has developed is built on providing a wider range of options for players and DMs, and why comparrisons to services like Netflix or Spotify fall short, because there are many, many more differences between the very nature of the services. Frankly, they're just different enough that it creates more problems than it solves. I believe that the current system is what's going to work best. The free 12 character slots even works a little like the family sharing system that Apple employs for itheir App Stores, iTunes, and Apple Music, which is an amazing service.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
I think we also need to remind ourselves that the new paradigm in 5e for WotC was listen to the customer
It is possible or even probable, that what goes live, may evolve...
I think ultimately, options are best, and let each person pick what meets their needs. If anything, the class packs, race packs, etc. show a commitment to being flexible. Lets give the final wording a good review, and then give feedback.
And, when we give feedback, lets pretend it is face to face and not over the internet. Let's actually assume the people at Curse and WotC are humans and treat them with respect, and not assume worst motives, throw overarching rhetoric, etc. No plan is going to ruin anyone's life and no one is forced to do anything. I have seen posts on this thread that embarass me. We are such a great community, we can do better!
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Bran -- Human Wizard - RoT
Making D&D mistakes and having fun since 1977!
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Please feel free to message either Sorce or another moderator if you have any concerns.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
Site Rules & Guidelines --- Focused Feedback Mega Threads --- Staff Quotes --- Homebrew Tutorial --- Pricing FAQ
Please feel free to message either Sorce or another moderator if you have any concerns.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Tooltips (Help/aid)
Playstation Plus DOES allow you to lapse your sub, sign up again later, and regain access to your games, and you do get to access every game they have in their Plus library so long as you maintain an active subscription. You don't pay a higher subscription for new material offered in the service, as games are added to the library you continue to pay the one subscription price.
I wonder what exactly do we acquire when we purchase the books through D&D Beyond?
Is it a right to browse the contents in their digital form or do we purchase the contents itself? How will the future be handled, is it "just" for as long as D&D Beyond servers are up and running or indefinit, what happens if something happens and a mod of D&D Beyond decides to ban the account ? What do we do in the case of an outage (we or you) is there a possibility to access it locally?
Wait, I don't know if this has been answered but I'm sitting around playing our Friday night game and this popped into my head thinking about 3.5. In the future will older Editions be offered for sale through D&D Beyond? I know that it is made for 5th Ed, but I think that would be awesome. Having all my Eberron books in one place would be really helpful, especially since I am working on a 5E campaign there.
"...Debts must always be paid, sometimes in more than blood and gold. But this is Ordo Ursa," Ren places his hand on Erakas's chest, right where the Dragonborn's heart is. "Right here. And it always has been and always will be. Don't ever forget that. Because I won't."
Serandis Mendaen (Aereni Elven Rogue/maybe one day Wizard)- Project Point Playtest
Well, apparently, I'm paying for the wrong damn PlayStation subscription! Which just goes to show how little I play online.
Why on earth do we have to pay to have these books digitally?
Don't squeeze your fans for more cash !!!!
Ads to support the site, fine. 3$ Monthly fee to get rid of ads and grant access to PHB sure!
pay a higher fee 6$ for Master tier that grants access to PHB MM DMG great!!!
Charge for campaign stuff, like curse of Strahd, Princes of the apocalypse