Hi everyone, following this Cyber Monday deals on the bundle prices, I want to start a discussion regarding the way dnd beyond handles bundle pricing.
The current system works so that the bundle price is a fixed amount and any amount spent on content covered by the bundle is subtracted away. This works both for full book purchases and for individual items being bought. This seems reasonable, except that problems can arise if individual books are bought at a discount.
My experience comes from this Cyber Monday deal. I've previously bought the PHB with 50% discount from the essential kit. Initially the sourcebook bundle was not discounted so I bought all the 19.99$ books individually. The only two sourcebooks I did not buy were wayfinders guide to eberron (19.99$) and tortle package (9.99$). Afterwards the sourcebook bundle pricing was updated to include Cyber Monday pricing of books, and the total I had to pay to get the bundle was 34.98$. This confused me as the individual price of the books was lower than the bundle, and today I found out the difference was because I bought the PHB for 5$ less than the CM price. Now that the sourcebook bundle price is back to original, the price I need to pay for the bundle is 101.98$ while the remaining books are 29.98$. There's no way anyone would buy the sourcebook bundle at this point, as the 72$ difference will only bring the 10% discount on future sourcebooks. If the books are 29.99$, at 24 books we would get even.
So the long story brings me to the following question: why doesn't dnd beyond use a different bundle pricing based on the books unlocked on the account? For example, if steam sells a bundle of two games where each is priced 30$ and the bundle is 40$, this means the bundle provides a 33% discount. If I buy one game for 5$ (summer sale :)), I can still buy the bundle where the other game is still discounted 33% for 20$. Why doesn't dnd use a similar system, so that the bundle prices are calculated automatically? There would be less hassle if there is a system wide sale AND buyers would not be punished for buying books on discount. I think the 10/15% discounts on the bundles are rewards for loyal customers who decided to spend their money buying all the books on this platform and not somewhere else.
Is there a downside to such a system? It could be argued that users who don't use a discount get cheated, but honestly I would say that discounts are a limited opportunity and if someone had the patience to wait until the right moment deserves to get a better deal, the other guy can buy the full price anytime, even months before the one waiting on the discount and that is his benefit.
Is there an upside to such a system? I believe customer satisfaction would be better and more people would be willing to buy more books if they see they would get a saving. Also people who bought all the books but did not use a bundle to buy them would no longer have to look at 70+$ empty bundle offers.
What do you guys think, would an automatic pricing system for the bundles be better or worse than the current fixed system? I'd like to hear your thoughts :).
Thanks to everyone who reads this post, it was bugging me since Cyber Monday ended and I had to write it down. I hope this will start a constructive discussion or maybe a change in the system being used.
It is no secret that this is how the bundles work (and have always worked). I think it may have to do with the bundles not just being a bundle but separate product, but that is just a guess.
You can also just avoid the problem by buying the bundles when they are reasonable (like they were when it only cost 5$ for the 10% future discount). I saved up and bought the legendary bundle with a coupon.
It is unfortunate that the way it is set up, it is most beneficial to buy the bundles earlier and gets less beneficial the more books you buy first.
Sure, the way bundles are handled is not a secret, but it isn't really obvious what happens until you start looking at cases with discounted prices. There were several questions in https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/21324-what-are-the-current-active-d-d-beyond-coupon regarding this. Usually people expect the item based approach similar to the steam example in OP, and it gets clarified in FAQ under Billing questions when you dive into the comments there.
I'm asking if you think this is an ok approach, or if you believe it could be better? Do you have any suggestions as to what can be changed? For me personally, having 5$, 30$ or 70+$ empty bundles seems very strange and unfamiliar.
Also it seems that with the current system they have, it is possible to get a discount for unlocked content which is not paid. On my account, the legendary bundle is discounted to 340.63$ from 615.97$. So far, I have bought the Starter pack (14.99$), PHB 50% discounted (14.99$) and eleven books at Cyber Monday deal (219.89$). The total amount I have paid is 249.87$ and yet the amount I am discounted for is 275.34$. The difference comes from me using the Redeem a Key feature to unlock the essential kit on dnd beyond. I paid 0$ in dnd beyond, yet my legendary bundle is discounted for the unlocked contents (0.85x3x4.99$ + 0.85x14.99$). Since in the case of reedeming a key it is possible to get an item based discount, it should be possible to have an item based discount in the bundle if a book is bought individually with a discount code.
The only downside I see to an item based approach vs the discounted-by-what-you-pay is that if you bought a full price book in the current system the legendary bundle gets discounted for the full book price (e.g. -29.99$), while in the item based pricing it would get discounted for full book price x 0.85 (e.g. -25.49$). If the point behind the bundle being discounted by what you paid is to never force the customer to pay more than the bundle price, an alternative could be to calculate the discounted price as min ( full bundle price - paid price , remaining items x bundle discount ). In this alternative, if someone is buying full priced books, their bundle discount remains unchanged from the current system, while for people who bought books at a greater discount than the bundle offers, their remaining bundle price won't be higher than the sum of the remaining books x bundle discount. I'm just looking at a way to remove the pay X for empty bundle while not negatively impacting anyone who has benefits from the current system. What do you think about this approach?
Kinda resurrecting a dead post almost a year later but I just can't believe this is the method they've chosen to implement for bundle pricing and that they've stuck with it. It punishes consumers for using coupons. Currently I'm in the position that I don't want to buy the individual pieces because I want the discount for future purchases and I don't want to buy the bundle as it's significantly more expensive. I'm being driven away as a customer because of this dumb system. My purchase is around $150-200 that just won't be going to them until I've got a better option and I'm positive that I'm not the only lost revenue they've got over this weird pricing quirk. A bundle shouldn't be more expensive than its constituent parts
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Hi everyone, following this Cyber Monday deals on the bundle prices, I want to start a discussion regarding the way dnd beyond handles bundle pricing.
The current system works so that the bundle price is a fixed amount and any amount spent on content covered by the bundle is subtracted away. This works both for full book purchases and for individual items being bought. This seems reasonable, except that problems can arise if individual books are bought at a discount.
My experience comes from this Cyber Monday deal. I've previously bought the PHB with 50% discount from the essential kit. Initially the sourcebook bundle was not discounted so I bought all the 19.99$ books individually. The only two sourcebooks I did not buy were wayfinders guide to eberron (19.99$) and tortle package (9.99$). Afterwards the sourcebook bundle pricing was updated to include Cyber Monday pricing of books, and the total I had to pay to get the bundle was 34.98$. This confused me as the individual price of the books was lower than the bundle, and today I found out the difference was because I bought the PHB for 5$ less than the CM price. Now that the sourcebook bundle price is back to original, the price I need to pay for the bundle is 101.98$ while the remaining books are 29.98$. There's no way anyone would buy the sourcebook bundle at this point, as the 72$ difference will only bring the 10% discount on future sourcebooks. If the books are 29.99$, at 24 books we would get even.
So the long story brings me to the following question: why doesn't dnd beyond use a different bundle pricing based on the books unlocked on the account? For example, if steam sells a bundle of two games where each is priced 30$ and the bundle is 40$, this means the bundle provides a 33% discount. If I buy one game for 5$ (summer sale :)), I can still buy the bundle where the other game is still discounted 33% for 20$. Why doesn't dnd use a similar system, so that the bundle prices are calculated automatically? There would be less hassle if there is a system wide sale AND buyers would not be punished for buying books on discount. I think the 10/15% discounts on the bundles are rewards for loyal customers who decided to spend their money buying all the books on this platform and not somewhere else.
Is there a downside to such a system? It could be argued that users who don't use a discount get cheated, but honestly I would say that discounts are a limited opportunity and if someone had the patience to wait until the right moment deserves to get a better deal, the other guy can buy the full price anytime, even months before the one waiting on the discount and that is his benefit.
Is there an upside to such a system? I believe customer satisfaction would be better and more people would be willing to buy more books if they see they would get a saving. Also people who bought all the books but did not use a bundle to buy them would no longer have to look at 70+$ empty bundle offers.
What do you guys think, would an automatic pricing system for the bundles be better or worse than the current fixed system? I'd like to hear your thoughts :).
Thanks to everyone who reads this post, it was bugging me since Cyber Monday ended and I had to write it down. I hope this will start a constructive discussion or maybe a change in the system being used.
Best Regards, Pilliy.
It is no secret that this is how the bundles work (and have always worked). I think it may have to do with the bundles not just being a bundle but separate product, but that is just a guess.
You can also just avoid the problem by buying the bundles when they are reasonable (like they were when it only cost 5$ for the 10% future discount). I saved up and bought the legendary bundle with a coupon.
It is unfortunate that the way it is set up, it is most beneficial to buy the bundles earlier and gets less beneficial the more books you buy first.
Sure, the way bundles are handled is not a secret, but it isn't really obvious what happens until you start looking at cases with discounted prices. There were several questions in https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/general-discussion/21324-what-are-the-current-active-d-d-beyond-coupon regarding this. Usually people expect the item based approach similar to the steam example in OP, and it gets clarified in FAQ under Billing questions when you dive into the comments there.
I'm asking if you think this is an ok approach, or if you believe it could be better? Do you have any suggestions as to what can be changed? For me personally, having 5$, 30$ or 70+$ empty bundles seems very strange and unfamiliar.
Also it seems that with the current system they have, it is possible to get a discount for unlocked content which is not paid. On my account, the legendary bundle is discounted to 340.63$ from 615.97$. So far, I have bought the Starter pack (14.99$), PHB 50% discounted (14.99$) and eleven books at Cyber Monday deal (219.89$). The total amount I have paid is 249.87$ and yet the amount I am discounted for is 275.34$. The difference comes from me using the Redeem a Key feature to unlock the essential kit on dnd beyond. I paid 0$ in dnd beyond, yet my legendary bundle is discounted for the unlocked contents (0.85x3x4.99$ + 0.85x14.99$). Since in the case of reedeming a key it is possible to get an item based discount, it should be possible to have an item based discount in the bundle if a book is bought individually with a discount code.
The only downside I see to an item based approach vs the discounted-by-what-you-pay is that if you bought a full price book in the current system the legendary bundle gets discounted for the full book price (e.g. -29.99$), while in the item based pricing it would get discounted for full book price x 0.85 (e.g. -25.49$). If the point behind the bundle being discounted by what you paid is to never force the customer to pay more than the bundle price, an alternative could be to calculate the discounted price as min ( full bundle price - paid price , remaining items x bundle discount ). In this alternative, if someone is buying full priced books, their bundle discount remains unchanged from the current system, while for people who bought books at a greater discount than the bundle offers, their remaining bundle price won't be higher than the sum of the remaining books x bundle discount. I'm just looking at a way to remove the pay X for empty bundle while not negatively impacting anyone who has benefits from the current system. What do you think about this approach?
Kinda resurrecting a dead post almost a year later but I just can't believe this is the method they've chosen to implement for bundle pricing and that they've stuck with it. It punishes consumers for using coupons. Currently I'm in the position that I don't want to buy the individual pieces because I want the discount for future purchases and I don't want to buy the bundle as it's significantly more expensive. I'm being driven away as a customer because of this dumb system. My purchase is around $150-200 that just won't be going to them until I've got a better option and I'm positive that I'm not the only lost revenue they've got over this weird pricing quirk. A bundle shouldn't be more expensive than its constituent parts