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I recently found the other, other store. It has social media style interactions these two don't. Wonder if it's pulling from Daz and the other store. Side note if someone's listening.. unlike art, it's ok to copy webstore features.. especially if they are good.
I think the sheer volume of products being pumped out might be partly to blame. A new DAZ character used to be an *event*; people would be eagerly anticipating it, and there was even a popular thread trying to guess what character woudl be next through hints from things like morphs included of clothing that came before the launch. If you put out a new character once a month, there's a whole month of people discussing the character, showing what they've done with him or her and so on.
Now?
A new DAZ original character comes out this week, you've got a week or so before the next one hits, so purchase, install, render and post quickly before the next one hits.
With one new base character a month, I think a larger percentage of the users purchase it; simply from a fiinancial viewpoint, it's easier to purchase every new base character or their bundle once a month than once a week, so more people will do it.
As mentioned above, how often does anyone who's been here for any length of time really want to join in on another "what is art?" thread, be it 3D, DAZ Studio, AI, etc. Hard pass.
I was excited about the Filament renderer, but as a Mac user I'm still waiting after three years, so that enthusiasm has wained.
I was excited about DAZ Studio 5 possibly making it possible to follow through on my plans for animation but, again, *years* go by and it's hard to maintain any enthuiasm or even hope that it'll do what I need it to. I thought I might look into switching to Maya and asked yesteray if the bridge still works, as there's been no response to other queries for months but I'm not holding a lot of hope there either.
If DAZ Studio 5 came out tomorrow, I expect things will be fired up for a while but I'm not sure if even that will be sustained once bugs are found and fixed and people relax back into just doing their own thing. With no official posts regarding what to expect it's difficult to be enthusiastic. I mean, so far, years later, all we actually know feature-wise is that Mac users will have Filament and we all get Omniverse. I'm finding it hard to whip up any enthusiasm any more and without even any hints, speculation is not only no longer fun, it's descouraged because without details from the company, speculation these days tends to turn darker much faster. That might be in part to the tone of the world itself these days.
The best part of the forums these days -- besides seeing people helping other people with their problems -- is new artwork being posted in a handful of ongoing threads. That's always a plus in my day.
Every now and then something acutally, really new, usually a utility or plug-in is released and that causes a bit of buzz, but a new DAZ base character? In most cases, it's not really an event worth celebrating.
UPDATED TO ADD: The ONE new feature announced as "coming soon to DAZ Studio 5", Omniverse, has a thread posted about it that garnered 19 comments in roughly 24 hours, then... nothing since September 25. I really hope they've got something else up their sleeve to get us excited because if that's all the excitement their only new feature announces so far gets, DAZ Studio 5 might not get a lot of buzz going either.
-- Walt Sterdan
I know I am posting way less than before. One of the reasons is the nature of this forum, its TOS. I'm one that likes to say whats on my mind, on many topics, which is overall not allowed here. Its a smothering feeling.
DAZ has a serious problem with its interactions, or lack of, with its customers. It also does not appear they listen, as their methods just keep marching on, while the customers have been complaining about it, like the convoluted sales for instance, lack of certain products, styles, the redo over and over of specific genres. The tech suppport, or often lack of. Forums not working, galleries, etc. It is looking like screw the customers wants and needs, we're going to make money.
This apparent attitude reflects in the forums as it gets really tiring asking, suggesting, etc without getting positive results. Its been said multiple times that DAZ does not read the forums, so why continue to post about DAZ related things that affect us? I think it pretty obvious G9 is not getting the attention of other gnerations of releases. There are so many G8 products that serve the purposes of the art created here that why buy more and more of basically the same, plus what I think one of the major problems with G9 is its incompatibility with other generations. Sure, some PAs are creating products to allow use, but then that involves even more money to do things.
That's partly what I see as an original customer on this site.
Yeah, Jack Tomalin is about the only one from Daz that comes here and talks to us... Others may come and make some announcement of "Great Things", never to be heard again and the promoted things turning out less great...
I'm not 100% positive, but I believe Jack is not a DAZ employee. He oversees DAZ+ and moderates that forum, but not actually emploed by DAZ.
That used to be the case; but he has assumed new duties and is now DAZ Jack Tomalin.
Tragic events have always been happening around the world. There is something bad going on somewhere at any given moment, and with 24 hour instant news, we all know about it, too. There is war, hunger, natural disaster, ect. So this might sound cold, but I rather doubt world events are actually distracting most people from the forum. We can get our news in an instant and still post here. The only exception is COVID, but the effect was an increase not a decrease. COVID put more people in front of a computer screen at home than perhaps ever before. PC gaming skyrocketed as Steam reported multiple record breaking days in its history, more people were actively using Steam than ever. Steam has been around for 20 years, so that is quite an achievement.
These forums did seem to get busier during COVID, but they were already very active before COVID was a thing. So I would expect the post COVID era to see a slight drop off, sure, but not as dramatic as what we have observed.
Inflation is terrible and that squeezes on a customer's budget. GPUs prices have been out of control for some time, though it is fair to point out how much worse it was during the mining boom, yet the forums were still moving along at a brisk pace even when GPUs were always out of stock to scalpers and sold at triple their already high MSRP.
That's correct.. :)
Hm, Daz Sven...kinda like the sound of it
, but can I atleast be Sir Sven for a day?
There have been a few Sir Sven over the years :)
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=sirsven&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
You fool!
Good to know that an actual DAZ employee is here and reading our posts.
So, *Jack*, any updates on DAZ Studo 5, like when we should be expecting it and what new features we might be expecting?
-- Walt Sterdan
Oh darn...but admittedly I'd make a jolly good moderator
, don't you think?
We could try inserting ou into a nuclear pile and test that.
So you're going to go easy on him for the test?
-- Walt Sterdan
well, we could pile on then, I guess. Can he handle it?
Which would be part of why Daz people rarely post in the forums, of course.
I didn't know (or I forgot) about that one!
If one wishes to know why fewer people are reading the forum, then read the forum.
I'm not always successful but I try to adhere to a few simple rules, try to be helpful when you can, don't post when miserable, don't post when a cat is sitting on the keyboard or has it's claws in your leg and if in doubt think, what would Billy Butcher say?
I told a colleague the other day that the issue he was having was because he was old and miserable. Also fat. A little constructive criticism goes a long way.
Also the forum needs more cat pictures. People like cats.
Right. Richard is a cat. I like Richard.
I think older style bulletin board forums are dying out internet wide, and have been for a while. Which is a shame, I hate seeing information dissappear behind gated communities
I miss the active core character threads. I always try post pictures because I remember how much those threads helped me when I had less $ and was just getting started.
From a tech point of view there's been some hugely helpful posts, but they're hard to search up, even from the search engines now. Maybe that results in less traffic.
Miss Molly is judging you.
One thing I am finding, across the information media generally, is that everything is exaggerated beyond reason, Where someone might have previously been described as 'annoyed' or 'concerned', they are now 'furious'. While this might be intended to draw attention, to me it just makes me switch off. As an example of my response, I have today cancelled my UK Televison license because I can find very little watchable content that is not filled with hyperbole and rubbish, including the so called British Broadcasting Corporation news service.
So it's not just in the DAZ forum, I think the whole world of media has really lost its way.
I have always had the impression that the various DAZ communities I've seen, including the actual company, are tight-lipped and/or cliquey. The members leave and no one really jumps in to join, it's a hostile setting. So in a sense all their closedness is quickly catching up to them.
My futile attempts to be "open," are usually to help others identify assets used in renders. But such questions seemed to be better received on other sites, such as Reddit, than on here. People want to share their individual work, not ways to help others in their own projects. (And yes, basic things like unable to post pics are a hindrance to users who still search forums to for information. Though the biggest one is the Art Gallery and how we have to rely on some 3rd party extension to see how the products were used from the product page.)
Yeah, I'll certainly concede there are some broken features that won't be helping engagement - aside from the forum having attachment, search and notification issues, I don't believe you can get notified about any gallery activity right now. No way to follow someone, no notifications of comments (I know before it was overzealous to the point of emailing me to tell me I'd just replied to someone, but this is too far the other way), and when an image gets moderated, you can only find out by spotting it's missing and checking your gallery edit page for the moderator notes to know what they took it down for and what needs fixing.
The site overhaul was supposed to be a precursor to gallery integration on the store pages, but that's quite some time ago now. I don't know if there's a disagreement with PAs about having a gallery section on product pages, or whether the trouble is with the payment processors (it's possible gallery rules would have to get stricter, they are currently more lax than promo rules) but it does feel like a missed opportunity.
There's certainly products I've only bought because I saw how other people had made use of them, either because the official promos didn't showcase the product features that well, or because someone had showed a less obvious use for a product.
Either way, I'd be interested to know either whether that plan has been abandoned or is just delayed.
I have always been a champion of having a degree of OT discussion, if it is all strictly on-topic then it limits what people who are not currently having an issue and don't feel able to help those with issues can contribute. Bread and cake without froth have limited appeal.
The forum issues should be resolved, as far as attachments and notifications go (well, the new ones - if you add an attachment it still stays attached to the entry box for your next post, which can end up with its being deleted).
Personally i would like more non DAZ subjects since there doesn't seem to be enough DAZ subjects to talk about lately. Then again, I spend way too much time on the various social media and media sites discussing political and social topics. so I like a more varied topic selection.
Feel free to discuss the relative merits and drawbacks of different designs of steam locomotive valvegear.
I don't see how that would help anything. Those posts are always clearly labelled and if someone's not intersted, it just means not opening the thread. It doesn't really impact anyone who's not intersted in the topic in any measurable way but does allow people who do want to connect with others who are interested.
-- Walt Sterdan