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Well, I can speak on it a bit, from what I know. Bear in mind that I do not deal with how packages are set up or the store or any of the architecture there, which are all also major parts of why it's structured the way it is as well. But that said, I'll give you all my usual speaking my thoughts knowledge of it.
A large factor is the increasing integration with the character side that I mentioned we've been working on, which has been the goal from the start (but required getting the vault reader stuff set up first). Basically when looking at a thing on your character or when deciding what to add, it'll present as it is in the vault. So looking at feats for instance, you could click links for references and such to get more information. Yeah, you can have tabs and search AoN or whatnot, but we're trying to enhance both the presentation of the information and the utility we provide for immediate access. It does add a chunk more work to each book though, hence the price increase.
Not the crux of the decision, but a side factor is also that distinct purchase options would triple the content in our store, having both content, vault upgrade, and content+vault options for each book. So while mainly it's a number of mechanical aspects of them being rather integrated into the packages going forward, there's also a bit of a logistical side concern with not having a bunch of potential confusion from different purchase options.
There's vault entries for content you already own in the store to enable that for content you already own, but going forward new content will be fully integrated. I believe there was a bunch of extra work that went into making those distinct, but not really any option there for existing content.
I know it's a bit contentious on the feedback, with some not finding it useful (at least in its current form) especially here on the forums, while we've also got some very positive feedback from people who do use it as a reader. Personally, while I've used it in that I've been working on the integration with the character side, outside of that I haven't really used it very much yet in my games. So I'm not here to say oh this is the greatest thing ever everyone is going to use it all the time. It's a nice tool, certainly, but varies from person to person. What I am hoping though is that the integration features will prove far more valuable at large. That's what I especially enjoy from it and am looking forward to us rolling out to you all.
So yeah, I get that a price increase to the content is never really going to go over well, and the feature is currently hit-or-miss from user to user. I'm sorry if that makes people feel like the functionality of the product is no longer worth it, both from the employee "I hope we deliver a product that you find useful and worth the investment" standpoint and just the "I've been a user for much longer than I've worked here and have enjoyed sharing this with people and I hate to see anyone unhappy". But my suggestion is maybe ride it out a bit longer before rendering judgment, let us finish getting this integration set up and take a look at that. We've got some stuff to get hooked up still, but it's looking like in the next couple weeks (barring any unexpected turns or something like a lot of extra attention needing to be directed to SF Enhanced or PF2 remaster stuff - I don't expect either, but just saying because there's always a chance).
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