Hello . . . March Madness 2024
ArtAngel
Posts: 1,694
in The Commons
Hello . . . March Madness 2024 has arrived, on cue March 1st. Will it be March Madness or March Sadness? What if it's the best MM ever, stacking like 2017?
Comments
Well the beginning is everything but encouraging.
I bought a gift card together with some cheap textures to use that 20% off option. But apart from that...
- The Kara 9 Pro Bundle which was $25 on Thursday was $40 yesterday and is $62 today with all initial offers (buy together with other new releases, get expressions for free) gone after the 1st day. Ouch!
- Mad Grab is $3,99 and does not apply Tokens
- Although between 68-72% new releases are far away from cheap and for me not being impulse purchases at > $5 each
My tokens are valid until Sunday. Might be mad enough to let them expire.
I am confused by the Daz strategy on bundles. Kara 9 was in my cart but keeps getting more expensive. Empty cart time!
Please remember to report any actual store issues in the https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/8610276/#Comment_8610276https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/8610276/#Comment_8610276 thread. The fewer threads we have to monitor, the less chance of things falling through the cracks.
The start of the sales wasn't that good even last year, but they got better towards the end, except for the christmas sales.
Let's not decry the entire sale on its second day
well I didn't buy the Pathfinder Mech or Scifi Suit on day one when they were $6+ added a bundle that was on discount too but couldn't use either of my monthly coupons so I waited till next day for a fix but on day two they jumped up in price at $10+ and the bundle was full price then, but on day one of March madness they had that Heat Animation Pluin for free so I chucked it in my cart cause it's free even if don't use it and then chucked in the Mech and Spacesuit and it knocked the prices back down to first day release prices so worked for me there plus got extra textures for the mech
I can get some reasonable savings on a bunch of Stonemason items I want but am waiting for things still to come off my bank balance from previous purchases so unsure how much I have left to spend
PayPal is slow and been caught out before
I also need something in there for food
I would not decry the sale. I will say, at this moment, my store credit is in no danger of getting spent. But then, this is normal for me at March Madness. It's never really been the sale that gets me. I expect there will be a few offers during the month that will attract me. They haven't arrived yet.
it looks same o same o to me
My tokens expire tonight, too. Unless someone posts some hidden treasure of a buy, or an irrestible MM flash sale appears, I may just shop a decent DAZ original and use the tokens along with the March DAZ+ Coupon and call it a day.
Remakes of existing products? Well, in the sense that it is mostly hair, characters, clothing , or props I suppose that is true - but beyond that, not really as far as I can see.
I like this https://www.daz3d.com/armored-personnel-carrier-suricate . I don't know if the turret is adjustable, if the gun elevates, is wheels turn, if wheels steer, or if the suspension is in any way adjustable. The movable parts list says some of these components are movable, pictures don't show. Still, the hatches and doors all open and the interior has an authentic look to it. Much better than other such vehicles I've seen in the store recently! Looks like a quality job.
I for one hope there isn't a massive sale of goods I want until the 15th because that's my payday. That being said I'm not even sure what I want to buy. I mean I usually end up buying discount stuff (mostly from my wishlist) but at the same time I have come to realize that most of that discount stuff is really not something I use as it is somewhat lower quality (sometimes much lower!) than the products I *really* want.
Like no offense to Jerry Jang but those constellation warrior series I originally drooled over are a potential minefield if they are anything like the Black Turtle or Knight Series, and you want to use them with anything but the basic G8M shape. I mean most of them list The Brute as a supported shape but try actually using it and they deform badly. Plus the textures don't feel high quality.
Compare this to, say, Luthbel's works which are pricey but dang good (albeit they too have some trouble with the brute and swole shapes).
I know for sure what I'd *like* to buy but those are not available for the G8 and I still don't want to switch over to G9. I wish DS had zbrush style integrated painting tools so I could make folds and wrinkles for my bought clothing instead of relying on DForce - because DF kinda sucks... resources, that is. I haven't quite gotten the grasp on Blender either and all this bridge stuff and the language around it makes my head spin. I don't need complex super real physics accurate folds and wrinkles. I just want something that is easy to do and looks good.
Eh, I'm getting off tangent here.
Perhaps you should focus on the products you really, really want. That would be a sensible and disciplined approach. What you're saying about quality also makes sense. If you're talking about clothing, perhaps https://www.daz3d.com/mmx-genesis-9-clones-for-all will let you do what you want without using G9.
You can stick the heat plug-in in your cart to get the grab bag items for $3.99.
What is this "discipline" thing you are talking about? I mean it almost looks like an English word but I do not understand it... but I'm very frugal in my spending if that's what you mean, and my 147 page Daz product library agrees with this.
Never mind. It will be much better for you to wait for the right sales and get your page count over 150.
That doesn't appear to be working for me today.
And that makes it very easy for me to not buy. $3.99 is just cheap enough for me to be tempted on the odd thing, $5.99 isn't
This is also true for me because, frankly, a lot of the stuff in that category is older products. Doesn't mean they are bad, but it means I've bought most of the stuff already that I wanted from those times. There are only "oh this might be nice to have but I don't really need it" stuff left with a few new G9 products tossed into mix. I'm not gonna get any because I made the conscious decision to not jump into G9 and because I've seen those products around with 80% discounts.
That being said this is in a way only a good thing! It means I'm not spending my money on something I don't actually need... though, if you want to pick nits, strictly speaking not a single purchase here is based on a real need. This is just a money sink masqueraded as a hobby for me.
That's disappointing, or it would be if there were grab bag items I wanted...
$3.99 does not really tempt me to guy something just to have it. That was different once we had DAZ+FAD for $1.99 which even sometimes got stacking applied. Anyhow, think that is the past.
Me, I really don't like the structure of this years MM and the conditions.
We are still on tokens, right. So with the x2 Monday/Tuesday and the 4-days duration one is "forced" to buy for $120 per week to stay at 8 tokens all the time. New products are really pricey nowadays. Now with older sales Still Mad was similar discounted than newly mad giving one the option to wait to make the purchase. Now the discount for Still Mad is less. But I cannot cherrypick 1-2 items every second day since this would kill my tokens.
And am still frustrated that a new bundle got it's promotions removed after day one and skyrocketed to $65.
But hey, I don't have to spend, right. As only 2 of my tokens would have expired today, I did a perfect $20-cart to hold them at 8. So I might see what Monday brings. Maybe a litte real Madness :-)
I don't really play tokens. I never have more than one or two and they often expire on me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In these cases, patience is usually the key. I remember being on the fence to get Death Pro Bundle when it first released, and didn't get it, because the price was just a bit too high and I was waiting for my payday. A week later, with some stacking discounts, I got the pro bundle for $40. Same with Walter: loved it, but it was too expensive for me. Two weeks later, during the Lunar New Year Sale, I got the pro bundle for $20 (plus some five bucks of buy ins).
Sure, it doesn't mean that the new bundle will be discounted equally generously and soon. But there's always a new sale, and if you miss the release sale, some stacking sale will come around. And personally, though I sometimes regret not having bought something, if I want it badly enough, I get it on the date where the price is what I'm willing to pay, so if I don't get it, I just shrug and wait for that another sale that's bound to come sooner or later. :)
Same here. I get one or two here and there, but since they expire so quickly, they're somewhat useless to me. And I'm not a person to be pressured by "buy something today, even if there isn't anything you want or discounts aren't good, because if you don't, you'll loose your 7% discount!"
I wish to buy a ton of items, the problem is the exchange rate, this double more the amount to be paid, there are no savings.
With that scenario, I am discouraged to buy anything at Daz Store :(
Unless there is a rethink on how to make the store more atractive to be engaged without having to spend a fortune,
Wish Daz could offer real items in the freebies, not useless gimmicks, I don't care if the items for free are for 1 or 3 days only.
I mostly shop on a tight budget. That's just the way I roll. And I tell you, you must be patient! The sales you want will come around. Good freebies also come around. There are good freebies on other sites, too. The store is very attractive, even if you don't spend a fortune.
What I'm personally feeling right now is the general hike in prices here. I'm seeing older items at 72% off that still do not go much below 10 dollars. And the buy-in is rather high as well, and we're supposed to buy new EVERY single day. That's just too much for me to be getting into any serious shopping spirit.
There are probably valid reasons for this, I've no doubt - but mine are valid, too I suppose. I'd love to play at MM, but at these prices, I can't and I won't.
I agree with @tsroemi . I would only add, buying more stuff every day is usually not a thing for me. Spending a few $$ a day in December to keep my advent calendar going looked really weird on my credit card bill, so I bought a fairly hefty (for me) gift card in the 30% off sale. Still, MM is historically not an attractive sale for me. It's true again so far this year, so store credit is not going anywhere.
A little over two weeks ago, I had my back-up 18 Tb external hard drive go poof. Nothing could resurrect it. The best we could figure was that a surge in electricity spiked due to a light bulb (one of those new ones, which was deep freezed when my bedroom was frozen when we hit negative temps here). I have gone through so many external drives it is crazy. This one was working like a champ when I had last opened the computer, and four days later it was gone. Dead. Bought a new surge protector. Holding off on a hard drive until there is a sale.
March Madness is at a bad time for me. I did get a new Gift Card and want it to last. I have bought some of the 'normal' clothes for G9, since they have been hard to find. But the overly expensive buy-in for today, where hair is clipping into the body of the character in the promos, was too much. I want three other items, will hope for the best tomorrow. But may go back to heavy wishlisting. I did get five old Stonemason Sci-Fi items yesterday for under $5.00 and the buy-in was okay.