Couple reasons rooted in the fact that I've used a vtt with attached display for years of in person GM'ing now.
The. Vtt use splits in two ways. Firstly you have a pretty battle mat replacement that might sport some dynamic lighting and fow, all of the game is still handled outside the vtt even if sometimes parts are still done with the vtt itself. While that battlemat replacement is more than functional enough and looks amazing it still adds some prep work on top of the usual gm prep.at the other end you have GMs who go woo out and try to configure the vtt to handle everything the vtt could manage or automate... That's an extreme timesink that collapses back to a battlemat replacement as soon as the players try something unexpected or decide to blaze their own path. In the middle is a little of each as convenient.
You can get around both of those and get more data if you build the vtt to be played like a video game with loadable adventures rather than like d&d. None of those are really going to give you great data about actual d&d play without some agi listening in to crunch the conversation for analysis though
I think you're taking an all-or-nothing attitude to metrics that WotC won't and indeed that doesn't really make sense.
The first usage you describe is fine - it still gives useful metrics, it just doesn't give 100% metrics. It's an insane gain on the "no metrics" they have right now. It would tell them a ton about what races/classes people actually playing, how classes are being played in combat, how characters that are actually played are built (something Beyond cannot tell you), what sort of spells/abilities people typically use, and a ton of other information.
The second usage is just the same but better for WotC - it's more data. You say "Oh soon as they go off-piste it's just a battlemat again", and I say that's not meaningful - because if you're using the VTT for rolls, you're using it for rolls. So you might not know exactly why they're rolling perception, and stealth, then religion or whatever, but you know they are, and that's important and useful information.
Again in the middle, that's fine, more metrics.
As for the "load like a videogame", well that is certainly something WotC seem to want to be possible with the 3D VTT, and I strongly suspect they're going to push the 3D VTT towards that, because what WotC want with the 3D VTT Is two-fold:
1) To expand the number of people "playing D&D" - right now, there are countless people, WotC believes (this mentioned with 4E and implied in some statements re: the 3D VTT), who aren't playing D&D not because they don't want to, but because they can't/won't find a group IRL. WotC believes (and indeed, has believed, since 4E) that those people could be made to play D&D by providing them with a 3D VTT which is very streamlined and easy to use and has tools to find groups and so on.
Once you've got them inside the ecosystem, then you can get cash out of them - for the subscription to the 3D VTT (remember Dan Rawson is Mr Subscription - it's entire deal in terms of his history at Microsoft - converting people from one-off purchases to ongoing subscriptions), for the cost of individual books, and for microtransactions for appearance or gameplay stuff.
2) To give WotC new ways to get money out of existing players and DMs. The first one is microtransactions, of course - literally in the first presentation of the 3D VTT, they discussed immediately how there would be microtransactions to buy character appearances, monster models, etc., and possible (they literally mused about it) board pieces for the DM to use. The second one is they can re-sell you adventures "upgraded" into 3D VTT-compliant versions, with all the work done for you - you see this as "not D&D", and I sympathize, but WotC very much sees it as what they want out of D&D. If nothing else they can say they're selling you the pieces and art. Nobody they'll take the drug dealer's approach and go with "the first hit is free" and have Phandelver or something as a baseline, and have it exceptionally well-done, so you suddenly think this is going to be great. Thirdly, they can sell you smaller mechanical packages, like microtransactions for subclasses, individual species, etc., that you just wouldn't buy with Beyond normally. They can even make stuff exclusive to those microtransactions.
And I agree - I even said, the metrics on
that won't tell you how D&D is really played, but why would they care? How much money can you get out of people playing at an actual table as compared to people who do the following?
A) Need to a monthly subscription to play (no doubt higher than Beyond minus 3D VTT)
B) Need to pay you to make their character look cool.
C) Also have to buy digital books etc. just like they were at the table
The metrics from these guys are potentially much more important and profitable than us physical slobs. Thus if the 3D VTT is a success, expect future rules design to reflect 3D VTT metrics, not what might make sense on the tabletop.
