D&D 5E D&D Beyond: No More À La Carte Purchases But US Customers Can Buy Physical Books

WotC has announced some changes to D&D Beyond's marketplace. These include physical products (for US customers), the removal of à la carte purchases, and various navigational changes.

You can no longer buy individual feats, subclasses, etc. -- you'll need to buy the whole book. The full list of changes includes:

• US shoppers can now buy physical books
• More info on product listings, including previews
• UI improvements to makee finding your purchased content and redeeming keys easier
• No more à la carte purchases (though your previous ones still count)

 

[Mistwell]

IMO. The fact they hadn’t and weren’t complaining about the current ones sent that message.

How would WOTC know that and why do you think they're thinking that deep about it?

On one hand you're arguing WOTC knows what you're thinking even if you don't say it, and on the other you're saying they know the microtransactions they're currently offering people are not the kind you're complaining about when you make a generalized complaint about microtransactions. Why wouldn't they assume you mean the ones they're doing?

My guess is the sales of those microtransactions were not great, they kept hearing general complaints about microtransactions, gave out the general "how do you feel about WOTC these days" survey and got a lot of general negative responses, and started to make changes in reaction to the general complaints which included cutting the microtransactions they were doing in response to a general complaint about microtransactions.

 

[Parmandur]

How would WOTC know that and why do you think they're thinking that deep about it?

On one hand you're arguing WOTC knows what you're thinking even if you don't say it, and on the other you're saying they know the microtransactions they're currently offering people are not the kind you're complaining about when you make a generalized complaint about microtransactions. Why wouldn't they assume you mean the ones they're doing?

My guess is the sales of those microtransactions were not great, they kept hearing general complaints about microtransactions, gave out the general "how do you feel about WOTC these days" survey and got a lot of general negative responses, and started to make changes in reaction to the general complaints which included cutting the microtransactions they were doing in response to a general complaint about microtransactions.

Honestly, simply "these microtransactions don't sell well" combined with "it costs us time and money to prepare the pieces" probavly explain it in full, without taking internet arguments into account.

And they probsvly still sell dice and other visual doodads...because people probably buy them.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

This is only the beginning. I expect the whole site will be updated by the end of the year.

This would not come as a surprise to me. I think that what the originators of D&DBeyond set out to do and what the site has evolved into are not quite the same. I seem to recall when it was first announced many years ago it was intended as a book reader.

I seem to recall, quite a long time ago, folks at DDB (before WotC bought them I think) saying that only a very small portion of their customer base used the ala carte options, and that this surprised them. I've been expecting DDB to stop offering ala carte options for a long time, as I suspect it adds work for minimal benefit for them. Sure, maybe they also think more people will now buy the whole book rather than not buy anything, but I suspect if it were a heavily used option, they'd have kept it. At any rate, I'm bummed to see it go, but I'm not surprised.

AD

Again, I am not surprised at this. Ever sense they stopped adding UA material to the database I have suspected that D&DBeyond has a content management issue. So, the idea that the effort of splitting out micro-content is more work than the sales revenue covers.
I am somewhat surprised that they are abandoning it now before the VTT appears. I wonder at the status of the VTT and how they plan to monetize that. Since it would seem to be an ideal way to push the sort of microtransaction they are now walking back from

That said, I think that Beyond could do with a UX update. Better content filtering, DM prep took and some way to pin articles of interest.

 

[bedir than]

Take it with as many grains of salt as you do or do not need.

As a reminder, DnD Shorts, during the OGL crisis, admitted to fabricating sentences and then passing those off as "quotes from insiders"

There's no reason to trust an admitted liar who used generative AI to drum up a controversy, even if they were right about the OGL crisis.

 

[Meech17]

As a reminder, DnD Shorts, during the OGL crisis, admitted to fabricating sentences and then passing those off as "quotes from insiders"

There's no reason to trust an admitted liar who used generative AI to drum up a controversy, even if they were right about the OGL crisis.

Wow, seriously? I don't watch the channel just because I don't care for his content, but I had no idea of his fraudulent activity. Jeeze.

 

[Parmandur]

Wow, seriously? I don't watch the channel just because I don't care for his content, but I had no idea of his fraudulent activity. Jeeze.

Yeah, he allegedly had insier sources thst gave him information, and he ran it through an AI generative system to paraphrase and hide his supposed source. He ended up saying "nobody at WotC reads any of thebplayer surveys!" and all sorts of former employees came out of the woodwork on social media to clarify that they spent hours upon hours reading and parsing survey responses.

 

[mamba]

My guess is the sales of those microtransactions were not great, they kept hearing general complaints about microtransactions, gave out the general "how do you feel about WOTC these days" survey and got a lot of general negative responses, and started to make changes in reaction to the general complaints

my guess is they saw that it does not generate a lot of sales and decided those sales are not worth the increased effort on the backend. Complaints about microtransactions were never part of the equation.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Yeah, he allegedly had insier sources thst gave him information, and he ran it through an AI generative system to paraphrase and hide his supposed source. He ended up saying "nobody at WotC reads any of thebplayer surveys!" and all sorts of former employees came out of the woodwork on social media to clarify that they spent hours upon hours reading and parsing survey responses.

He never retracted anything though, even after wotc employees told him they definitely read the surveys, he maintained that his source told him that nobody read the surveys and that he had no explanation for why his source said something completely different than what former wotc employees were saying in public.

 

[mamba]

He never retracted anything though, even after wotc employees told him they definitely read the surveys, he maintained that his source told him that nobody read the surveys and that he had no explanation for why his source said something completely different than what former wotc employees were saying in public.

so either he lied or his ‘reliable’ source did, neither helps him much at all…

 

[bedir than]

He never retracted anything though, even after wotc employees told him they definitely read the surveys, he maintained that his source told him that nobody read the surveys and that he had no explanation for why his source said something completely different than what former wotc employees were saying in public.

He also never corrected suggesting that the "quotes" were authentic, when in fact they were created by generative AI with all of the potential for hallucinations -- notably, if you ask gen AI what the ten most popular shows on TV in the US are it gives you a list of the ten shows people talk about the most, not the most viewed.