D&D General Is D&D Beyond Exclusivity Bad for D&D?

[DEFCON 1]

But why not? To me that seems obviously non-rational and ahistorical. People didn't abandon 3.5E when 4E appeared. Quite the contrary in fact - indeed the problem was WotC stopped supporting 3.5E leading people who wanted to keep going with it into the arms of Paizo.

Nor did people abandon 1E when 2E came out, and 4E seemed to have adherents for a number of years past 2014.

If we look at the DDI, it only got shut down in 2020. That was making them way, way, way less money and they kept it going for 6 years after 5E was released. Why would they be more suicidal this time?


Okay so your whole thing here is to assume WotC are (in my words) absolute morons who don't know how to run a business successfully.

Now, you can point to some evidence to support that conclusion I will admit! But mostly they've been pretty successful! I don't think they're dumber than Blizzard, say, and I don't think Blizzard are special super-smart guys.


I don't think you understand how cheap it is to support stuff like this. It's really cheap. Like you would be astonished cheap. But fine, you think they're basically incompetent and so poor they can't do this, okay at least that explains things!

Again, I cannot 100% refute "incompetent" when they dropped at least several and perhaps tens of millions on the disaster that was the 3D VTT/Sigil. I guess I'm assuming they're less incompetent.

The trouble with your incompetence theory (again, cannot 100% refute it lol) is that if it's right, incompetent people never know they're incompetent nor understand how they're about screw themselves, so I don't think them being incompetent actually makes 6E any less likely. On a certain level it might even make it more likely!

Yep! There's no way to really know until eventually it happens (if it happens) so our opinions are merely just that. Our gut feelings on the matter and whatever reason and logic we are using to get there. And that's fine! We will just have to wait and see.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yep! There's no way to really know until eventually it happens (if it happens) so our opinions are merely just that. Our gut feelings on the matter and whatever reason and logic we are using to get there. And that's fine! We will just have to wait and see.

I get it but I mean there's more than gut feelings here man.

Theres at least:

A) Basic business logic. That supports keeping things going during an edition transition.

B) The history of WotC's behaviour. And they kept the 4E DDI going for like 6 years into 5E.

You don't throw money away.

Wait...

I mean you shouldn't throw money away. Okay yes history does show WotC sometimes throws money away... but they shouldn't lol! That is the one significant countervailing argument I see. WotC's unerring deadly aim for their own foot.

 

[AlViking]

I'm sure they would. But that would take time to make their own product lines for 6E and get them accepted and loaded up on DDB. All the while all their previous products lay fallow because no one will buy new 5E material for not only the 2 years or so that 6E has been announced and is in playtesting and development, plus however long it would take for those companies to get their new material designed, printed, and then posted up to DDB.

Why go through all that if WotC finds that a new refresh on 5E would be just as viable, and it keeps all the product the 3PP have made and are up on DDB still worth purchasing? Personally, I don't see any definitive advantage to moving onto a 6E economically speaking in the next 5+ years (unless the new refresh of the DDB code crashes and burns for some reason.)

Now if the current D&D production team wants to design a 6E to put their mark on the D&D game and they can get WotC/Hasbro and all their 3PP DDB partners on board with that... then sure, maybe they will make 6E in the next handful of years. But I don't personally think it's necessary. Especially considering it seems like most people who are actively looking or wishing for 6E are those for whom they have never liked/played 5E in the first place, or have grown bored with 5E and just want "new for the sake of new". Which is fine if people feel that way... but to me I just don't see it as a good enough reason to do it. Especially if it reduces the financial levels WotC has been and will be achieving with DDB and their 3PP partners (plus of course Maps now that I think about it).

Seems to me that many of the people wishing for 6e don't play 5e and quite likely wouldn't play 6e, or if they did play 6e would soon get tired of it as well and move on to something else. Why would WOTC chase after that minority? So I'm with you. I doubt they'll do anything significant for at least a few years and even then it will be as backwards compatible as they can make it. If they're going to take a risk, I'd expect it to be into other genres like sci-fi with Exodus or maybe a new take on a modern day D&D.

 

[AlViking]

The server load for something like Beyond is incredibly less than what is required for a MMO like WoW. Multiple orders of magnitude less.

Despite how WotC has made it look, it's not that hard to make a character builder. Hosting two versions is just a toggle switch on the page. Hell, I could code pretty large chunks of a 5e character builder, and I'm a crap developer.

Are you in software development? Have you ever tried to model out how you would store the data with the flexibility and rule weirdness that we have with D&D?

 

[Belen]

Are you in software development? Have you ever tried to model out how you would store the data with the flexibility and rule weirdness that we have with D&D?

Yes. Peer review systems are worse though.

 

[mamba]

Yeah, but how much of that stuff is actually going to be worth keeping?

that will very much depend on what your interest in it is. Archeologists would love to have a ton of stuff that the people back then considered pretty worthless and made no attempt to preserve

 

[TwoSix]

Are you in software development? Have you ever tried to model out how you would store the data with the flexibility and rule weirdness that we have with D&D?

Yes and yes.

 

[mamba]

Even if that's planned and succeeds, which is two pretty big ifs (esp. the latter), it's still a death spiral.

why is it a death spiral, can you make a case for it? The way I see it, it it had to be one, 5e would have had to spiral to its death years ago already

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah, but how much of that stuff is actually going to be worth keeping?

You know, that's a good point. During 3e"s era WotC put out a bunch of web supplements and adventures on their website, for free, in PDF. How many people still have all of those? How many people still USE them? How many people even remember them? You can find a lot of it on the wayback machine or stuffed in PDF troves, but I wager most people simply forgot they even existed.

 

[SteveC]

I think this "walled garden" is a great idea for WotC. In fact, if they'd done this instead of the OGL, there would likely never have been that controversy. "Sure, make your OGL game, but if you want it in D&D Beyond, here's what we get."

Now that's very different than for me. I'm not buying into the Beyond ecosystem. When I play online, I'm playing with Foundry. And whatever isn't available there might as well not even exist for me and my gaming crew.

So we're in a situation where there is more and more content for the game that I can't use in my game. And that means I am pretty much leaving 5.5E behind (or, in my case, never adopting it).

I'd pick up some PDFs of products (and have) but if I have to use Beyond, that's not happening.

And this is just my opinion: I'm not throwing any shade at people having fun with D&D in any way. You do you. The situation is just another part of why WotC really doesn't have me as a customer anymore, despite having some 5.5E stuff.