D&D Beyond Drops: Update on the Program

Ugh. I need to ensure I have control over this sharing. So far, at best, I would want to share one spell form the Drops. Honestly, I don't need that granular level of control, I just prefer to have to option of not sharing any Drops (the most likley outcome), or sharing specific months worth of Drops. Of course, its possible you could just do better with these, but honestly, I'm not interested in poorly QC'd bloat (I alredy lived though the nightmare of 3E). 

A drop to fix the Ranger class. If you aren't going to fix it, then just get rid of it. 

Maybe once the packs are available to buy then they can be shared?

you still have to pay for the bundles so you might as well just sub which sort of defeats the purpose of having non-sub drops.

Quote from Bohr14 >>

Those guys are very kind. But, still I think that they shall give like the 20% or the 15% of the content for free, for those with no big budget(like me).

 omg same!!!!!! you still have to pay for the bundles!

Quote from Tate96924 >>

A drop to fix the Ranger class. If you aren't going to fix it, then just get rid of it. 

 Irrelevant to the topic but agreed lmao. I want to be a ranger but compared to other classes it falls behind 

Answers to the above criticism is a good start, but there has still been no addressing of the main criticism for the D&D Drops... Why get even greedier? WotC, D&D Beyond and Hasbro have had a 30% increase in profit the last few years, so why now try to take even more money out of your loyal fans pockets? Just stop... Put the content in books so they're not so anemic and bereft of substance , and leave the frames and other D&D Beyond cosmetics as Subscriber perks. This kind of predatory fiscal "Live Service" strategies only ever backfire in traditionally analogue media, as clearly evident by the current backpedaling and attempt at damage control.

It would also be nice if what we got from the drops would actually sync with our account so we can utilize the spells or feats easily.

Quote from AndyBoy >>

Answers to the above criticism is a good start, but there has still been no addressing of the main criticism for the D&D Drops... Why get even greedier? WotC, D&D Beyond and Hasbro have had a 30% increase in profit the last few years, so why now try to take even more money out of your loyal fans pockets? Just stop... Put the content in books so they're not so anemic and bereft of substance , and leave the frames and other D&D Beyond cosmetics as Subscriber perks. This kind of predatory fiscal "Live Service" strategies only ever backfire in traditionally analogue media, as clearly evident by the current backpedaling and attempt at damage control.

 Because not everyone can afford physical play in a tolerant atmosphere.

*I* am confined to digital & online because physical books cost $30 more than they should on average for the industry, and I don't have a safe and reliable group or place for me or my roommate in a town of hateful God-fearing rednecks, let alone anywhere to drive to within affordable gas cost, ESPECIALLY due to my country's actions spearheaded by the senile hateful brat playing Supreme Premier CEO McPresident while shitting himself, & the bed, in every conceivable way.

& I know I'm not the only one who can't afford physical books+pen(cil) & paper and/or has safety & reliability concerns w/in-person games.

I love what you are putting out with the new drops. I personally test drove the new feats and spells with a bard who battled a devil in fantasy Georgia for a golden fiddle and had a ton of fun. I also have had zero problems sharing this content with my players, both by using the homebrew tools and by directly editing character sheets. I am glad you are continuing to provide interesting toys to play with and that the negative comments are not discouraging you from doing so. I freaking love that eternal chalk.

I have had an account here since the beginning, and I have had a master tier subscription for a while now. Subscriber perks never got me excited until this new direction. I already had most of the stuff that was released in the first batch, but I still thought it was awesome of you to make it all available for every subscriber. Also, I'd like to add my voice to the others in this thread who have vowed to purchase a PoD drops compilation on the DM's Guild. I love holding physical books and have a number of them from that site (Ed Greenwood's Thay sourcebook is worth the read).

Regarding cosmetic options, it would be really cool if you added all the pre-5.5e Era character sheet frames, backdrops, and themes from the pre-order perks, like DDB started to do when we got things like the nine hells frame from BGDiA and the spore cloud frame from ERftLW with our subscriptions. I didn't start buying or pre-ordering books on this site until after Wizards put a coupon for the DDB PHB in the Essentials Kit, so I missed out on the earlier frills.

Thank you for these fun additions to our games. Please keep them coming and don't be afraid to get weird with it. The pact seeker concept and those new angels are super fun and different. My only complaint so far is the lack of a narrative with the encounters and the maps not always making sense for the situation. The ambush map in particular comes to mind. I know it was mentioned in one of the AMAs that you're working on this,  but the encounters would be a lot more useful to me if they were fleshed out a little more. 

Quote from MaedraDawnkeeper >>

Quote from MilhouseBaxter >>

Quote from StoneRyno >>

Quote from MilhouseBaxter >>

One concern WoTC\DND Beyond should consider are the fact when you "buy" it online you can lose access in the event of the company shutting down the servers. People like me will spend thousands on books but aren't really inclined to buy something that's actually being leased with no real means of ensuring ownership of what I paid for. If you dedicate to providing a PDF of paid for digital content in the event of the sever\services being shut down, or allow people to buy annual or quarterly printed versions even if it's a soft back I'd buy it. As it stands I don't do subscriptions for access, and if I bought it digital only I'd need guarantees about not losing access because of bankruptcy, corporation businesses decisions to shut down services, or other legal trickery.

 I would hope if DDB were to end in the future people could get some sort of digital copy of the content they purchased. Unfortunately when it comes to electronic anything future availability is a risk. For example I own a series of PC games that I cannot play on newer versions of windows. To play them I would have to have a setup of an old windows version or something to play those games again. So even in those situations my ownership wasn't a guarantee forever in the respect of not having to go through a bunch of trouble to retain said ownership.

 
It's worse than that which is why I brought up stop killing games, company's disable their activation\DRM servers\services and suddenly a disc you bought and paid for stops working. Which is why like you I'd HOPE they'd do the right thing, but I'd also need them to make an affirmative declaration of such or make a physical medium available. I'm not going to try and get an AI to pirate my purchased content like we've seen so many AI firms pirate literally all known literature, movies, shows, etc. I want to buy, and I want to own. Not spending a cent of those two conditions can't be met.

 You don't own anything under capitalism. But indefinite rent is close enough.

 
Agree to disagree, no society is free from taxes, but the physical tangible books are a lot harder to take away than access to remote resources. Also bold of you to assume I don't live in the People's Democratic Republic of Korea.

Quote from ahmetzaferyilmaz >>

Quote from MilhouseBaxter >>

One concern WoTC\DND Beyond should consider are the fact when you "buy" it online you can lose access in the event of the company shutting down the servers. People like me will spend thousands on books but aren't really inclined to buy something that's actually being leased with no real means of ensuring ownership of what I paid for. If you dedicate to providing a PDF of paid for digital content in the event of the sever\services being shut down, or allow people to buy annual or quarterly printed versions even if it's a soft back I'd buy it. As it stands I don't do subscriptions for access, and if I bought it digital only I'd need guarantees about not losing access because of bankruptcy, corporation businesses decisions to shut down services, or other legal trickery.

 

While your argument about renting vs buying applies to most subscription services, it does not work here. The content on D&D Beyond is not audio or video. It is TEXT. You can just COPY AND PASTE / SCREENSHOT whatever content you have access to, save it to your own computer and "own" it forever. 

I am genuinely surprised by the amount of people apparently missing this.

For the same reason, you do not even have to wait for WotC to make the annual D&D Beyond Drops content purchasable. You can simply "subscribe" for a single month, pay USD 2.17, save whatever content you like, and cancel your subscription, thus "owning" everything available on D&D Beyond Drops at that time.

 
I'm plenty aware how to pirate\rip web pages however that's not a legal avenue and it far from meets the "I want an official physical solution not something I have to hack together". There's far better tools than copy\paste for backing up the digital content you buy, but considering that's illegal I'm more inclined to buy physical content and if I'm going to break the law straight up find someone elses rip of it online. I'm not paying for digital only content for something that should come in print.

Also I play on FoundryVTT and export my purchased content (I buy digital and physical if physical is available) and a crude crappy screenshot means losing content as they release major updates. Obviously physical media doesn't fix this, but it relates to some of the "We should get an official DRM free export" if they ever decide to shut the servers\services down.

I think being able to connect with individual players as "Friends" or some other easily accessible connection would be great. Instead of only inviting people through a link. Or sharing content by selecting a friend instead of using a campaign.