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You're asking us to jump to conclusions that favor Daz, without sufficient evidence and contrary to all history of the software industry.
I'd have given them the benefit of the doubt had they not bungled the launch so badly and if they hadn't gone with an upgrade offer based on the absolute minimum possible. May look fair to the accountants, but I think this thread has shown it didn't feel very fair to the customers, and the continued responses that pretty much say "If you don't like the offer, tough luck, we think it's fair." haven't helped. It just creates a sense that those not happily falling in line with the new plan are going to be treated with thinly veiled contempt until we leave.
In addition, some of us remember the Connect Encrypted Content debacle and after seeing what we thought was Daz finally accepting that it was unpopular, seeing it brought back in an even more anti-customer fashion is disheartening. But it seems once again customers have to do whatever they can to make Daz understand that some practices are going to be bad for business. Ideally they'd listen at the early stage and nip things in the bud, but considering how long it took to kill Encrypted content last time, and how the company keeps going after get-rich-quick schemes like NFTs long after they've failed, I'm not feeling hopeful that they'll pull this out of the trajectory it appears to be on.
They clearly think subscripton-based features and content will be popular and sell subscriptions or they wouldn't have done this. All we can do is try to make it as clear as possible that they might have misinterpreted the results of their surveys. (Perhaps through either too small or too skewed a sample since they didn't seem to be sent to most customers, I know I didn't get one.) I've seen a few comments that indicate folks thought Daz was asking about plugins that would process on external servers when asked about suscription features. Not plugins that don't have ongoing costs for the company.
(Looking at the premier plugins, none of them are processed outside a customer's computer. Daz isn't hosting servers to run them, if they removed the subscription requirement, they'd all function exactly the same. Contrast this with the AI character creator plugin, which is clearly sending requests elsewhere to be processed. A subscription makes sense for it, as you'll be accessing external resources every time you use it)
I've been doing my sums, and I get this
To get the discounts with the monthly codes, you need to spend $18 less six each month, so £12. Add to this the $70 annual fee, gives $214 to access the minimum cost
With Premium, monthly only subscription, plus needing to spend $25 to get 10 off, so $15 per month to get the saving. Annual cost of $240 (on monthly basis) plus 12 times the $15, basic minimum cost $419.40.
That's effectively a further $205 just to access the savings. That's a significant chunk of my current annual spend, and I therefore expect, even with discounts on other products, this spend will leave me with fewer products for the same cost.
Now, undiscounted pricing leaves me with even less, but up to now the effect of membership has been to cause me to spend more than otherwise would have done, to DAZ's profit. I therefore expect that if I allow my membership to expire, I will spend less than I would have done if it continued.
Even staying as it is will cost at least $50 more through the move to only charging on a monthly basis just for the same benefits, and given that I have often renewed using sales, more like $75. That is a big price increase, and I'm not sure it's worth it. Just repeating the sales patter for an over-priced and unconvincing offer doesn't make it true. The offer needs to be good. It needs to be amazing. It needs to be access to resources as free offers, not rentware.
Every time I think about the free access to the exclusive content, I wonder how many months it would take for me to have paid for the full price version of the content. And that is why I find rentware that locks us in in a "pay or lose your ability to re-access your work" to be effectively scammy behaviour, and I don't use this kind of provision elsewhere.
I had found myself thinking that I ought to see if there would be any sales offers on an annual renewal, and if there weren't then I would only have myself to blame for not taking a previous one and that i could probably bear the full $70 cost. The extra nearly $50 arising from the annual being withdrawn and only monthly subscription being available.
I don't think there has been any recognition of why this change has not gone down well. Simply stating the transfer offer is based on what was paid rather than the long term value of what we were sold for a price DAZ considered reasonable enough to offer (for the presumably sound commercial reason that it increases spend generally) doesn't make those offers right. Just removing the option to renew for 12 months (even if there are no more sales prices) with no notice means that we don't have a chance to set ourselves up with options we prefer. Going on about all the discounts isn't convincing unless we can properly calculate for ourselves that the discounts leaves us spending less overall for the same amount of content. Tokens often feel like an pressure point to spend more money rather than a useful way to save money.
If the product is that fantastic, let it speak for itself, not gouge extra money from us for the same service for the DAZ+. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, making me disinclined to want to spend that extra $205 on Premium. It never felt like a good offer, and finally being able to do the sums today, I don't think it is. The likelihood that my spend here decreases once my membership expires is quite high. That is DAZ's loss, and if enough of us find ourselves in the same position, the loss may not be covered by the increased take from those who do stay.
It does feel as though a lot of long-term customers are feeling less than valued by these changes. Glistening sales patter about amazing offers and great discounts does not deal with that. If anything, I think it is contributing to the sense of being ignored and devalued. It certainly hasn't pursuaded me. And what has happened to the NFT nonsense that they was the last big "look at this amazing thing" DAZ were trying to sell us earler? Dead and gone, as far as I can see.
No, I am asking you not to jump tpo the conmclusion that this is an attempt or prelude to making DS (more or less) unusable without subscription. You may think it probably but that does not entitle you to say it is so without qualification.
None of which has anything to do with the assertion to which I was replying. Premier (the topic of the post) offers extra percentage discounts as well as coupons and freebies, most of which relate to the sale of 3D content (or the odd Photoshop brush set etc.) so clearly it is designed to, hopefully, offer a win-win for customers (more for their money) and daz 9..leading to more money being spent on the bargains). It certainly won't be a good balance of cost-vs-benefit for all, and if you are one for whom it does not that is fine - I wouldn't dream of trying to persuade you to sign up anyway. But it is not in accord with the asseretion quoted before my reply, quite the opposite in general.
I have looked at the new DAZ+ and the Premier membership for my hobby usage, and compared it to the old DAZ+. I believe the new DAZ+ is better vfm than the Premium membership for my usage. The old DAZ+ was better vfm than either new option for my very small scale usage, and even then it was insufficiently good vfm to tempt me. So, thank you, but no.
It's funny that NFT's have been mentioned. There was a lot of uproar at the time, iirc, and the critics were told they were unrepresentative of the general run of customers. Hmm. Seems to me they were not that far different from the general run and NFT's seem to be a tiny part of the sales effort now. In the light of the longer term 'success' of NFT's, and the appreciation with which they were met, it would be a prudent business executive who took note of the responses of the more committed customers who also wish to engage with the company. The prudent executive would give a considered response to the general trend of the views expressed. In my experience, active shareholders would expect no less. (I have the fun of talking to an active shareholder at work on a weekly basis)
Regards,
Richard
@crosswind Thanks very much for the testing and info/links - very kind of you to do and post these
Is it worth $19 a month to me?... Not sure given I can get a similar result in Hexagon and I can use Blender well enough if I want too (has been quite some time, but even so) and would figure MLP if I need to - but would have been great to do all in one "environment"
You're welcome ! Then, TBH, if only for using this plugin, personally I don't think it's worth $19 a month... unless you're a routine buyer as well as use other tools frequently.
I'm a tech-driven guy first of all, and want to know how DS de-activates Premier exclusive content when the subscription expires... so I just paid one month, haha ~
...however "basic" members (non PC+ or Premiere) get short-changed. Before the new subscription policy, each 10$ in purchased awarded a token for everyone, be they Daz+ or not , Now those who do not subscribe to either of the more expensive subscription plans are required to shell out 15$ for each token.
That is counterproductive.
..posted on the Microsoft Community site last year:.
So it is no longer available.
I never went for the original upgrade as at the time (2015) I was on Win7 Home Premium and would have received Win10 Home Edition which at the time was very limited like you could not turn off of like auto updating which could happen at any time resulting in random reboots of your system *MS later relaxed that policy on Home edition). Also as they went to a bundled update setup (termed "rollup"), so any individual file in the bundle that may have a bug or introduce an instability would download and install. Before that change (October 2016), in Win7 and 8.1 users were able to scan and review each individual update file for potential issues This way "buggy!" or unstable security update files could be avoided until a fix was issued. At the time this also allowed users to ignore unneeded or unwanted feature updates as well.
Yes it was a little more work each Patch Tuesday, but doing so kept my system running smooth and clean for many years with nary even a BSOD.
Personally I considered Win 10 a step backwards particularly for experienced users such as myself.(as we were lumped in with "newbies") while useful tools (such as the start menu which i still use) were eliminated and a lot of (what i considered) unnecessary features were added on, some which you could not uninstall (like Cortana) without compromising system operations because they were integrated into OS core functions.
I still have a some trepidation about moving to Win11 as the feature bloat is even worse (including an AI "assistanr" bot), but to be able to use updated software and drivers, it is an "unfortunate" necessity now as I have hit the upper limits as to upgrades. This includes memory (24 GB) along with installing newer hardware like RTX GPUs (my motherboard's BIOS is so ancient it will not recognise the 3060 I have).
Richard, I know the mods must be in living hell right now, and I'm really, truly sorry for you guys. But maybe a little less severe pushback on customers voicing their valid fears and concerns? We are not speaking up here because we hate DAZ and want it to die a horrible death, it's quite the contrary. But DAZ doesn't exist in a void, and so we bring our experiences with the way other companies handled things along to the discussion, of course. It would be lovely to see DAZ prove our worst suspicions wrong. But the way our excitement for MG 4 was misused at least seems to point in a completely different direction.
It's not about being 'entitled' to speak our mind about these things here. We are pointing out valid concerns and telling the company that we're not happy with the changes. Trying to make us stop doing this is not gonna change our feelings, or at least not for the better, see. Why not have an open and honest discussion about things? DAZ can and will still do whatever they see fit. But should they not be interested in what the customers think, and why, instead of trying to shut it down? Why would you want to do that?
Today I am said I have an offer and that I can convert it to Premier but when I click the button to see it, there is no offer...
Very disappointing!
Yeah there is a new button which redirect you back to membership screen... its a progress!
I am not sayinf you cannot have or express your - understandable - concerns, I am saying you need to distinguish between those and actual facts.
Respectfully, the plugins I paid for are practically abandonware now unless I pay for a subscription, and those are - the actual facts -, so unless you're willing and able to say with 100% certain that Tafi/Daz aren't leaning toward a subscription model of Studio with the next major x.0 update, I don't really think you're entitled, or qualified to tell us what concerns of ours are - understandable -.
I'm still feeling glum about the Premier upgrade offer to Daz+ subscribers. Stuff I would've bought this week that I haven't because I thought my sub was supposed to be the top tier for the duration of the sub. I appreciate that it's difficult to give us an equal amount of Premier months to our Daz+ months, but we weren't the ones who decided to add a tier above Daz+. What has been offered in no way meets customers in the middle, and for that reason I'm not spending. I'll use my vouchers to the get the value out of the agreement I entered into, but I'm really struggling to motivate myself to spend time on the Daz store. I've spent most of my time in the other places the past week.
I still may accept the upgrade offer, but I will do so as an exit strategy if I calculate that I can make off with a lot of swag in one fell swoop. I suspect that will be the critical part for the Daz store - what happens in the new year when the majority of ex-Daz+ members are faced with a monthly sub. If sub numbers are on the floor by then, then the most most important people to keep happy, ironically, could well be those who didn't trade in their Daz+ subs because they felt betrayed by the offer.
The software part to Premier just makes me plain pessimistic.
And if they stop working like some things have with every single version of DS then you shouldn't update to the new general release and only use the beta to see if they do still work and if they don't and they are important to you do like everyone else does and don't update.
That doesn't make any sense - assuming that they will do what they have said they will not do should not be the default, and scertainly is not a fact. It is the last bit that I am stressing - no one is aaying that you should not have these concerns, about the future status of DS or especially about future work on the plug-ins you own.
In general PA plug-ins do not need to be recompiled with each DS update, they are compiled against the 4.5 SDK or thereabouts and should work until that is no longer the minimum version (thatv is, DS 5 - though DS 4 will remain available, so people will still be able to use the old plug-ins where it is practical to switch versions or work entirely in 4.x).
Hello,
I'm a bit confused about the new Daz3D offering and its "Premier" version:
Exclusive assets available only via subscription: What happens if I use these exclusive assets to create a character, export it to Blender for adjustments, and then import it back into Daz3D? Does this mean that if I cancel my subscription, my work will become unusable because it relies on these exclusive assets?
Does it really make sense to lock some content behind the "Premier" subscription, making it unavailable for purchase in the Daz3D store? Wouldn't it make more sense for the subscription to cover the software itself, to fund its optimization and improvement (for example, when can we expect multi-core CPU support for the viewport and other core features)? If this approach continues, what guarantees do we have that the most interesting resources do not end up locked behind the Premier subscription, to the detriment of the store?
Personally, I don't like working online and I hate paying a subscription fee for assets that don't interest me. Can't you offer a subscription for the software only, and of course at a price adapted accordingly?
I think some of us will have had that exact same thought about exporting an exclusive asset elsewhere. The follow on thought I had, and I'm certain others will have had too, was if you use an exclusive asset in a commercial product, what license does it fall under and is that license perpetual based on one month of Premier subscription during the month it was exclusive?
I've more thoughts too, such as does someone who subscribes to a month of Premier in 3 months time get the previous months exclusive assets and, if not, when someone takes a break from Premier and resubscribes at a later date, do they get back the exclusive assets of the months during which they were previously subscribed.
I'm sure there are answers to all that, but it's all rather complicated to navigate from an end-user perspective.
I wouldn't be so sure that there ARE answers to those questions yet. This whole thing feels like it was pulled out of some early development stage and tossed into the marketplace long before it was ready. I mean, the product features aren't even complete, the upgrade process was broken from the get go, and, as many have pointed out, a lot of the math really doesn't make much sense from a consumer POV. To top it all off, for a "Premier" sale, there's been surprisingly little "sale" in the pricing when it comes to DAZ Originals, and it's beyond extremely unusual for DAZ to launch a new program without some super-introductory discount price. No annual pricing discount as a step-up incentive even goes against the usual logistics of a subscription program. My guess... and to be clear, this is purely a guess based on logical extrapolation and is not by any means an assertion as to what actually happened... is that they might have slotted the Vicky 9 and FIlatoon releases for this sale at some point in the past and only realized that it meant that DS4.23 HAD to be in the system for those to even work relatively late in the process, which meant Premier had to be launched ASAP. Again, just a guess, but the whole thing does feel like it was unnaturally rushed.
Commercial/3D printing use of the exclusive assets is something we will ask about - though you would need to have the license, from membership, to use them at all. Still, they do not have product pages from which one could order the additonal licenses so it may be that the question is moot unless a way to add the extra licenses is provided.
A week into the sale and I've bought one beagle (with my DA coupon) and five LDs. I was so annoyed with the whole premier rollout that I took my moneies to the local garden centre and spent up large there. I now have many containers of many veges and spend my time out in the fresh air instead of parked in front of a screen. It's been a pleasant week.
Skipped the dogs completely as they're absolutely certain to be cheaper in the near future... and totally perplexed as to why there was no bundle My overall purchases are way down as well due to the deals being so meh. As it stands, there have only been two doorbusters I didn't already have, and I've been lucky to find between 1 to 3 "DAZ+for a day" items that a.) I didn't already have and B.) that were cheaper in this sale than they have been in regular sales in the recent past. On many days those for-a-days and one cheap DO to trigger the discounts have been it, and on the heaviest day I think I bought six items total.
Would that maybe mean that with no way to get the needed for such uses even owners of the Premier tier would not be able to use any of that special products for such uses, even when they still are at the Premier tier? That might make the Premier tier less attractive even for professional users, mayhaps?!?
I don't know, we have asked.
...I wondered about that as well. It would have been one of the few bundles I would be interested in purchasing. as everything in it would be useful. So often character bundles include content (like skimpwear and genre based) I have no interest in.
As to "facts":.
The new Daz+ tier is way overpriced for what one gets. If there was new incentives that would be different but it's essentially the same plan, just 50 USD more per year.
"Basic" members get the short end when it comes to Tokens. Before these changes, each token required spending 10 USD in the store whether one was a Daz+ member or not. 15 USD for those trying to save a few "zlotys" is poor marketing if one wants to attract new customers. (as well as keep some of the old ones).
I don't trust this new offer at all. It reminds me of the time I decided to pay extra for DAZ 3D Advanced. Awhile later, DAZ Studio was free. I stopped buying any DAZ software or add-ons.
So now we have a choice to pay extra for a few features?! And we have yet more confusion when it comes to saving money on special deals!?
Give me a simple sale, a simple deal on stuff I want. I won't deal with DAZ Premier.
I don't mind funding the development of software, and I'm not keen on the rental model, but I use Daz enough to justify it. But it was handled so appaulingly, I can't consider it.
I am disgusted that they are not honouring past sale prices when calculating upgrade. Mods can tell me that it's fair to pretend the sales didn't happen as much as they want. I don't care. It's my money, and it's what I think that counts. Their upgrade offer is analogous to me buying something in a sale, requesting a refund, and expecting the full price. They sold me Daz+ to the value of 18 months. They can't now pretend they sold me less.
It's also ridiculous to convert me to a Daz+ membership that's monthly and costs double without bothing to tell me in advance, or even when they did it.
A perfect lesson in how to annoy your best customers...
I am happy with what I already have.
One big change is that almost all discounts for non members are gone, before about 1/3 of all content in my wishlist had some discount at least, today there is about 10 items I think out of 834, this is of course to push users into one of the subscriptions, I get that, just saying that "everything is like before for non subscribers" is kind of untrue.