DAZ is losing me
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I have to agree..... The prices keep going up and many creators seem to have run out of ideas for new material. The stained glass trinkets in the Freebies section is a great example. I buy much of the new items at other sites where price is often lower than Daz..... I hope things improve soon or I may return to the other 3d software program.
It's simple, buy what you consider a need - in some form or other - at a price you are happy with.
No one forces you to buy at a price you're not happy with.
If you wait until items start going in fast grab, and only buy when there, you'll find you have a regular supply of items - new to you and at a nice discount. It takes a bit of time when you first do that, but after that - happy days.
Then there's psuedo shopping; put it in the cart, wait a while and the urge to click purchase goes away.
I've bought a few new items recently, but I've consigned almost all to the 'I can wait' catagory. I'm more likely to buy non-generational items at release.
I hate the new bundles with old items. Since DAZ introduced them my spendings have gone down 80%.
Same with me.
As excited as I am for Genesis 9 (or 8.1+ for that matter), Im not going to make the assumption that my ageing computer will even be able to deal with the requirements.
Ive actually been purchasing with an exit plan in mind. Ive invested so much into G8 that I cant really justify the cost of next generation models. I buy at 50%+ off and I purchase from my wishlist. I still add an item or two to the wishlist here and there, but I remove more items than i add.
Daz cost got really high after they started charging taxes. I realize that wasnt a choice they wanted to make, but the impact on purchasing was immediate.
Daz is losing me in that they just keep cranking out new characters. They are all great and I haven't seen one I didn't like, but I don't need more pretty girls and square-jawed men. The vast majority of new stuff is sci-fi or fantasy and I have more than I need. If PA's are starting to see a decline in income, it's because you're cranking out the same thing, day after day. The market is bloated with pretty faces and sfi fi monsters. 3D is kind of like playing with dolls. You buy a doll and then you start getting assessories. You don't buy 25 dolls and one dress. If you're a PA and want to make money, then start thinking outside the box. First of all, the future of 3D is going to be photorealism. Time to pay attention to details and use quality textures. What HASN'T been done yet? I can tell you what >>>I<<< need: 1950's kitchen, realistic operating room, dForce Santa Claus outfit that doesn't look like a cartoon, vehicles with wheels that are not plastic and glossy, PROFESSIONAL business suits that don't have cleavage hanging out, clothing from the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 1700's, vintage hair styles, ambulance, garbage truck, 1930's small town main street and square Americana, a poodle for Daz Gog 8, and don't put your frikken artist name on anything. That's just a start.
With removing an item from the Battle of the Moon Bundle and stuffing in an old item I already own without increasing my discount, they are working hard on losing my business too.
Looks, like you just grown up in 3D area. Let some other 3D kiddies get stuff from here. Nothing wrong with that.
I have spent a fortune here, but it is just me, and no one needs to have the same priorities in their life...
Yea I agree I did mention back in January when I was started being charged tax that taxes were going to have a chilling effect on buying power. My comment was poo pooed. . Tennessee Sales tax is 8% that is $8 for every $100 spent. I know its not daz fault but it still hurts.
What? Only 8% sales tax?!?!?
You lucky things
We have 20% sales tax on almost everything, though at the moment we don't yet seem to have to pay it on DAZ downloads. It'll come eventually I am sure.
I couldn't do this if I didn't make a living with the art I make with it.
Where you located at? We don' have any income tax either .
my tax is 5.5% but the state just gave a law that individual counties can increase it if needed.
The other issue beside price of items is looking for a specific type of clothing item, such as nurse, doctor, police officer and so on.. While for male clothing they are what you want, for female clothing about 85% of what is out there is something you would see a stripagram worker wearing and not a proper nurse, doctor, police officer so on wearing..
a simple solution, monetize your renders as comissions,
that's how I buy all the expensive bundles...
Someone created a lovely looking character for free, did an excellant job on it. In order to use it, you needed to buy 3 other characters and 2 morph packages. That would have put the price over $100us in order to use that character. The one's in the stores may not have that many morphs attached, still need to buy extra for a good many of them though.
Then there's the bugs with the software and plugins that need work, not to mention products that do not work..all while the price in the store keeps going up and people keep buying. It use to be if a company constantly pushed out broken products and software, they would quickly lose business, have a bad reputation and eventually go belly up. These days, people buy no matter the condition of the item and then complain about it later. Except, why would they fix it if they already have your money from the purchase. Before anyone says they are complaining and Daz does respond...how long have people been waiting for an auto response and maybe it will be fixed months later, if you're lucky.
3 characters and 2 morph packages
That's a lot of dependency! I think, if I ever do a character, it'll be a custom sculpt from a base character. I despise dependencies.
Software: I am still on version 4.10 . It may be old by current standards, but it's reasonably stable and it handles my content without issue. Obviously, that means I'm not using newest content. I usually buy content from the back catalog, anyway. Like others, I've got enough stuff that I could work for a long time without buying anything. Right now, I'm not buying anything; but that's me, not Daz. Yet, there are plenty of items on my wishlist, and I actually want a lot of those items.
I could not even begin to speculate on Daz's sales figures and pricing policies. I'm sure they're doing what they need to do to stay solvent. I think Covid has taken a toll on a lot of businesses. With the vaccines in distribution, hopefully we'll finally be able to put this pandemic mess behind us. Then, we'll see what happens.
...yeah would like to see more connected sets like the old Dream Home and West Park series. Would love a series based on an old English Country Manor theme (was hoping that Jack's Anderson Hall and Anderson Hall Vestuble would have been the start of such a set).
...seconded.
Part of the reason I haven't bothered to update is the version I currently am using pretty much does what I need. Like some here I have old hardware (24 GB of DDR3 memory) and not into waiting 10 - 15 min for a hair sim to complete (cloth sims are not quite as bad but still slowdown the process). Nvidia is also part at fault by pulling Iray support for older GPUs. I believe now both Fermi and Kepler are no longer supported, my GPUs, which are Maxwell, are likely next in line. I certainly don't look forward to going back to rendering on my decade old 6 core CPU.
...yep, still on 4.12 (the 0.47 beta) as well.
...indeed, Protozoon saved me over 100$ as I was saving up to purchase a model of an accurate 9' concert grand piano from Turbosquid
...yeah purchasing has been down (already was rather meagre for years as I was on a low income). There are people here who haven't been around as long as I who have larger content libraries than mine. Part of itis that I'm just not into horror, classic fantasy, and "sexy" which have been staples here. Also couldn't justify having to purchase a lot of items all over again for a new figure (G8 - even Fastgrab is pretty much all G8 save for the occasional prop or set). Oh I have a few of the more unique characters (which I use the G8 - G3 converter for).and some clothing (though it seems the conversion script for that is somewhat hit or miss, and forget footwear). Oh I picked up few of the more "interesting" characters to convert to G3 (I have the script) and a bit of clothing I liked (also for conversion). However having to sink a tonne into all the morph, shaping, and vendor resources again is just too much anymore
Actually made one of the bigger single purchases in a long time tis past weekend (about 25$) as several items on the wishlist ended up in the 70% off coupon sale. Seems they're revving up for MM again (seeing lists of PA stores being discounted on various sale promotion pages) which probably will kick off this Thursday or Friday.
I have a serious addiction and some of the new characters are just amazing ... I like to render in many genres. The price of EVERYTHING has gone up and I'm happy that the artists and the company can expect to see some money come their way. It's an expensive hobby, but so is photography or skiing or quilting... My computer has multi uses and I just upgraded, mainly so that I could accommodate the newer products ... like the fur! I really wanted fur and now I'm buying up all the fuzzy things I can find. I have soooo many female characters, but they all have their own personalities and applications, just like real people. All round this is an amazing hobby and yes, if you're on a serious budget, definitely wait for the sales, but the artists have to pay bills too. And I'm on a pretty low income, but can make it work. We all pick our priorities.
The joys of living in the UK. We are not as high as some EU countries with our sales taxes. I used to do pen part exports around the world, and had to pay VAT (Sales Tax) to the various EU governments chargeable on items bought by their citizens over the internet. I exported at one time or other to all EU countries and according to the exact wording of the directive I had to charge VAT at the rate applicable in the purchaser's country - and in all countries, except the UK, there was no minimum payment threshold. So, I had to pay 22% of £2.50 to the Greek & Spanish Governments, 21% to the Italian, 20% to the French etc etc. In the end I gave up exporting to the EU because it was not worth the effort on my part to stay within the law. Paying tiny payments in Euro's was costing me as much as the tax paid in conversion fees, and finding where to pay it was a nightmare. I did check with my employer's tax auditor when he came round if there was a minimum threshold in various EU countries, and he just looked pained & confirmed my reading of the situation.
As for no income tax.. Simply amazing. The temporary measure introduced in the UK to pay for the war against Napoleon seems as if it'll be around for a while longer.
Regards,
Richard.
West Park will be continuing :)
The major issue I see is not the pricing, but the value you will get for it. There are some great vendors here with high quality content, but others lack quality and are thus too expensive.
I also miss some unique content. If I look at most of the characters, they are just another version of others. Sometimes the skin is too flawless and not realistic.
There are some great buildings out there, but only a few of them are unique. I like the modular ones that can be reused in different ways.
I also like assets with a proper mesh and UV layout. This helps to combine assets and texture maps to new unique objects.
That's because the actual purpose is to pay interest to Lord R---s----d as owner of the Bank of England.
I thought Daz was losing me too, but my monthly spending is still near last year's levels. If only they would change the store search back to a sitewide full text model, but no word on that.
So have I.
Remember how the base mesh and texture map came separately for Victoria? For a price that, adjusted to 2021 dollars is what we pay these days for a pro bundle at intro price with base figure (with texture and a ton of JCMs), 2-3 HD variations, 3-4 outfits, 2-3 hair dos, and anatomical elements.
That is not really "these days" as you are refering to an old style pro bundle which we have not seen now for 6 months or more. At that time a pro bundle had 11 or 12 items (note that back in Genesis 2 days pro bundles had 16-17 items and were 10 dollars cheaper). DAZ has cleverly split pro bundles from one $135 bundle of 11 items into two bundles of 8 items each, of which there will only be 15 unique items since the base character will be in both bundles. So they only need to commission 4 more items than before in order to charge twice as much.
something I've never thought of ... but then I wouldn;t be a hobbyist if making cash flow from my creations
You're right. It would be a side-hustle or something.
today perfect example with Black bundles. I got a 20% off deal for owning i-2 products from the bundles.
The male bundle I have 4 of the 6. Female 2-6. with all discounts I get 6 products at $73.83 after tax ... that's $12.31 per product. plus much of what is in the bundles I've passed on before. So obvioulsy it is , why you even talking about it? Don't buy them. Conclusion: I won't.