You've been heard. Response re: 4.9 and Encryption
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Polls can also give the answer you want just by who you sample.
I keep seeing people respond that they don't feel heard because Daz has not done a complete 180 so I have to ask does listening to someone so they feel heard mean doing exactly what the other person tells you to do? Is that even a fair concept? If you expect that behavior of others should you not expect it in yourself?
Fair point, Khory. Maybe some people think the 2 or 3 points they "addressed" were cherry-picked. Yeah, they were - that's how business works.
BTW, here is DAZ_Steve's comment about there not being many of us Poser users http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/991159/#Comment_991159
"all of our polls"? I only remember seeing just the one.
(using frown guy here cuz me no can find confused guy smiley)
Editing cuz byrdie can't spell right tonight either.
Daz doesn't own Poser though, Smithmicro does.
What is Daz supposed to do about Poser's issues when they don't own the program?
I could see a problem if customers here were buying content advertised as being Poser compatible and it wasn't.
I don't know, is that the case? I don't have Poser so I don't go shopping for content for it.When I see something is for Poser I just skip over it. I don't expect Poser stuff to work in Studio.It might, but I don't want to have to deal with it if it doesn't.
edit: spelling
We buy content here that is compatible with Poser. Store item descriptions will detail whether ther are Poser companion files, materials, or shaders included.
I think the issue is one of being disappointed to see products that could have been usable in Poser being crippled by DRM preventing it from being as usable in Poser at it would have been without. I've not tried the whole DSON thing but as I understand it, it can normally transfer Genesis 2 stuff, so while Poser users might not miss Genesis 3 stuff that was encrypted, they do miss out on the Genesis 2 clothing. And things like props and scenes...
The encryption thing isn't a big deal to me, but the DB is. Fortunately, I kept 4.8 on hand, but in 4.9, none of my personal saved files—including the props and morphs I made in Modo and brought into DS, appear. Worse, when I go to the Content Library, anytime I try to categorize them, it doesn't stick.
If you want to introduce a big change that's guaranteed to be controversial, you should combine it with rock solid performance from the rest of the app. Fixing the DB will help smooth over most of my disguntlement.
Sales: Is it ready yet? We need to get it to market!
Engineering: Not yet, there's a weird bug we can't get under control.
Marketing: No problem! We'll call it a feature. In fact, we'll design our whole marketing push around the "feature".
I keep seeing mentions of "all of our polls" - but I don't recall ever actually being asked anything.
I certainly didn't respond to any poll for the blinding white website with no option to change it. I didn't have an option to say that I don't user Poser (though I'm sure others do.) Nor was there any poll to ask if DRM was going to save the universe from maybe profits and losses.
In fact, I don't think I've ever been asked about anything. Maybe I was too busy spending every last cent I had at the Daz store at the end of the year during all those sales. Well, lesson learned.
I'm not expecting Daz to do a 180 (it'd look really bad if they did, too) but several times in a row now, they've offered these great sounding answers for people to lap up, only to be later forced to admit they were just guessing but have made all these decisions based on them anyway. All I'm really looking for is a reason to buy encrypted content / unse Connect. I thought marketing departments were meant to sell you things? No one's making any real effort to sell this new locked into Daz system, other than to say that it's great for new users, or will be better in the future.
Yeah, Poser users are a small group... so are Carrar users... and folks only using pre-4.9... and...
You know, eventually that adds up to a lot compared to 'maybe people will buy more stuff if it's slightly harder to pirate it!'
Earlier someone said that those coming from gaming and outfit DLC type things may see 3D Assets here as being expensive: As someone who did that, I would agree (especially when you can get the entire game for the price of say, a trenchcoat here) however - the key point is that all you can do with a game (in general) is play it. Most of the time you don't get to change things in it and make a profit from it (making videos is a grey area obviously.) Buying a product here gives you a licence to make further things with the product - it's not just an end product in itself. That's what you're actually paying for (at least in my eyes.)
Unfortunately since there do seem to be a lot of people who use products solely for personal amusement, that licence is worth a whole lot less. Now with encryption, that licence is worth even less, since no matter what terms are in place, they can be changed. So the price stays the same, but the only thing that changes is the thing many honest customers were paying for - the unchanging rights to use it with the terms they paid for - is now reduced. So a user downloading a pirated copy for personal use did not care for the licence anyway still has no reason to want to pay the official price for a worse licence, and the legitimate customers now have less reason to want to pay the legitimate price because the product is less valuable to them. So the entire system doesn't work. Instead of making the product less valuable to all customers, a way to improve things against piracy might have been to make products more accessible (with fewer licencing rights somehow) to a less money filled audience.
People keep posting about subscription models and how unlikely they are to happen here (which I agree.) But I also think that, done right, this is a situation where having the OPTION of a subscription version makes sense: This is exactly what the pirate stores are doing, supposedly, right? So offer a better deal (ie you have better content than they do) at a low subscription rate but somehow slightly adjust the products so that they are not commercially viable (not with massive watermarks but I'm sure there's some happy medium) while keeping the full versions that we can use in renders on sale as normal. That's a gamble, too, but I'd rather take that one than aggravate my existing customer base.
*shrug* The whole matter just became academic for me at this point.
I won't be able to buy anything encrypted or otherwise for the foreseeable future so I'll work with what I already have since it all still works (well except what kinda doesn't. Sorry tech support, I'll still be tossing bug reports your way.)
Here's hoping this matter is all settled by the time I can come back. Well especially hoping DRM is gone. :) while I'm at it, I'll wish for a miracle where the pirates stop ripping off credit cards and otherwise causing problems.
"other than to say that it's great for new users"
It isn't just great for new users. I've been using studio just over 10 years and having smart content that actually works has speeded up my work flow. Downloading a product in 12 seconds is also much faster than via even dim. 4.9 has rendered faster for me with both cpu and gpu. I find the visual component to be much better and I've found loads of things I forgot I owned. I also like that I can click through to the readme from inside the program. Connect also means I can check for availability of a product type much easier than having to hunt through the store. Those are just the +'s off the top of my head.
History is full of companies that have done a 180 based on customer feedback.
Although this is my plan too, I must say very vocally that this is not the best plan for everybody. I'd even go so far as to say that this may not be for the great majority (I'll say it's not for 80%). Not yet, and for any of these very good reasons. Unwillingness to risk damage to known processes, lack of time to help debug vendor problems, lack of technical ability in dealing with vendor problems, low levels of patience for either of these, or the high-strung stress of impending due-dates for deliverables.
There's always a risk when taking on something new. Adding a hard drive, upgrading a CPU and motherboard, changing or adding a GPU, or applying Windows updates, upgrading to Windows 10, or applying the dreaded Nvidia driver updates. Any changes can break something, and that can knock you down for days. Major changes like these DRMcrypt changes recently announced by DAZ can have the chilling effect of sitting on a brass toilet seat in December. Outdoors. In the Yukon. At night. Without a door to close.
Each time we propose an added "thing" will scare the bejesus out of some artists and PAs, and sometimes even technogeek (but artistic pikers) like me. Even though I'm comfortable enough with tearing down and rebuilding my systems, I know how long it REALLY takes to fix stuff. About 4 hours or 32 times longer than you thought it would take, whichever is greater.
So to all those saying "No DRM for me" or "no encrypted for me", I get what they're saying. Yes, it's a visceral response, but that doesn't mean that it's an inappropriate response, because look at what could happen! And yeah, they do use Steam, cell phones, and banking sites, so yes they're using encryption and DRM already, with many of the same risks (company could get bought; bad updates could be released, OS might go out of support).
But it's bad form to criticize anybody because all that other stuff has been vetted, tuned, fixed, and tuned and fixed more. So it all mostly works fine and does not require an average bub to open up their new car's brain to fix a problem with iTunes, or get out their repair kit for an ATM because their withdrawal transaction is failing.
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"What's in it for me?", you may ask. Actually, several people already HAVE asked in this thread.
It's a good question. I have an existential (but excellent) answer:
Securing the sales transaction and the underlying intellectual property will ensure that going forward from today, DAZ and DAZ's great PAs will continue to have an environment that is suitable for economic activity. In the absence of reasonably secure and satisfying economic activity, nothing else can happen. This is true of ANYTHING that humans do. Without economic activity, even survival is eventually threatened. This goes for group survival from the largest corporate entity down to the smallest tribe, and eventually to the individual.
Banking entities know this, and that's why they continually work to protect their assets, from alarm systems to protective glass and vaults in their brick and morter locations, and now the investigation of cyber crimes.
Look at any place in the world that has resonably secure economic activity, and you'll see that these are the places where humans thrive. Compare these to places where economic activity is hampered or outright squelched, and you will find a stagnanting human condition, and maybe even a lot of poverty too.
Even without knowing precise financial numbers from DAZ, it's as plain as day to me. Something must be done here. DAZ knows this, and has decided that something must be done or eventually there will be nothing left for any of us. There will be risks. Some stuff won't work, until it's fixed. Some people will be inconvenienced, until it's fixed. Others will be angry, until it's fixed. Some will quit DAZ. Until it's fixed and these people see that it's not so bad, and it's even better because people here will be thriving, customers and PAs alike.
Anger and people quitting will happen. But fear of that does not absolve DAZ from doing whatever it can to protect itself, its PAs, and its customers by ensuring that there is a viable, secure, and satisfying economic ecosystem, for DAZ, PAs, and customers.
Having said all that, I must insist that not everybody should be expected to take on these risks. We're in early times and there's gonna be some pain. I think it's unfair to expect everybody to willingly become an early adopter.
SnowSultan, the geek in me has been awakened and I am curious to see how DAZ has implemented this thus far. I'll try to find the time to start digging into 4.9, as I'm sure others will, too. Oh sure, I won't buy anything right away with Connect, and 80% of the user community will not even use it for free stuff. I actually think that's appropriate.
Because this is not for everybody. Not yet.
It's great that Smart Content works for some, but it doesn't for me. It was also available in 4.8; only the products have now been updated. Downloading a product faster is to do with you now downloading it from CDN servers rather than Daz. 4.9 rendering faster is great, but B being better is not a compelling reason to want A. I don't have any issues with 4.9 (assuming they fixed the many bugs) only certain parts of it. I know I can ignore Connect and the store etc. The reason I haven't upgraded is that I've heard a lot about custom categories breaking and not being able to be remade or saved (which I use to organise everything) as well as the updated Iray, which while better, only has a very few products updated to use it.
The only part there that actually requires Connect is checking for availability of a product type faster than hunting through the store, which is great, but I don't think I'd want to install an extra store inside Studio just because the search on the webstore sucks.
Look at Coca Cola and it so called new taste, I think that lasted less than a year
Yep count me in the pre-4.9 catagory. Until I can get a new computer I'm pretty limited and haven't gone past DS 4.7 and I don't plan to in the near future. If I could somehow use the encrypted content in DS 4.7 I'd probably buy it. But I can't; so its no use to me. I expect this is true for a lot of other people like the Carrara and poser users as well.
Less than 3 months. Maybe we'll see a DAZa-Cola Classic in less time.
Very dramatic, but I did try 4.9 - for several versions of the beta - and tested it with both my content and encrypted content. I also sent in reports about fixes and suggestions. It broke my organisation system over and over again, and I kept fixing it and trying new things with each version. I tried many different render settings to see what happened compared to 4.8. I looked at the store and suggested ways to improve it. So I have tried to live with the new system, and nothing about it made me want it for myself.
"It's clear that Daz must do SOMETHING"
No, it really isn't. You have no evidence whatsoever that Daz is in trouble, what sorts of losses they're suffering, or that the try something anything approach is going to address those issues, if they exist.
There are two types of emotional frenzies going along here: the "I will never use DRM ever Daz is evil" type comments, and the "guys Daz had to do SOMETHING so lets give them a chance and braid each others hair" types. Both have their merits, but in the end are emotionally charged. Personally, I'd rather a middle answer.
- If Daz has a problem, they probably can't admit it to the public, which means we don't know they have one.
- If Daz does have a problem and needs to act on it, doing ANYTHING is not the ansewr. "Oh my God it's raining, quick set the town on fire!"
- What we are observing (not speculating) is that Daz has an issue with fraud occuring and therefore is choosing the same old, proven to fail, hated by customers method of trying to protect their content for a time (which does nothing to stop fraud but may lower desire for their products for as long as the system is not broken.)
I'm not refusing to buy anything from Daz. I'm just disappointed that their solution is the same old boring one the money people always make that does nothing to help themselves in the long run while hurting their customers. It's unimaginative and I'm never a fan of negative-themed "take things away from all" type decisions.
True, but don't you think they took everyones feedback into account as well as other factors? But maybe you didn't hear what I was saying with my post....
LOL
I can't begin to count the number of times a co-worker in the engineering department would quip, "If you can't fix it, feature it!" (That was back in my days as an electronic technician... long, long, time ago.)
I have read the relevant part of that link (as I had forgotten a lot of the original story), and perhaps the one on topic thing worth mentioning, is that when Coca Cola did u-turn they actually became even more popular than before they announced the new taste in the first place. Food for thought for DAZ maybe :-)
Yes, smart content has been available for a long time but 4.9 is the first version it has worked on any of my computers (3) so yea I am pretty excited about it. Your respond to my saying that I can look at store contents easier via connect was to indicating your displeasure at the store search rather than acknowledging that I found an easier way than to use that search in the store. My faster downloads are dismissed as where they came from rather than accepting the fact that faster is faster and time saved is time saved. So my good experiences are waved away again in favor of potential bad outcomes. Just why is it that good experiences have to be treated as less valuable or even in some cases less honest than a bad experience?
New coke remains one of the best marketing stunts that was ever pulled off. They sold coke original in droves when people stocked up on it and then sold new coke in droves when they said they were dropping it. They made a mint off that one.
I would like some official clarification on the extent of the original encryption plans because I believe confusion about the scope of the original plans may be one reason for misstrust.
What exactly is meant with "encrypt everything"?
1) Did DAZ3D originally plan to encrypt textures?
2) Did DAZ3D originally plan to block export options to other software?
3) Did DAZ3D originally plan to encrypt old products?
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My subjective impression:
@ 3)
I was under the impression that the "original" plan presented with the first 4.9 beta versions was to encrypt old products.
Then there was protest and they realised that encrypting old products would be troubling from a legal point of view because you cannot limit access to a product someone allready purchased a license for.
@ 1)+2)
Nevertheless I was under the impression that it was never publicly considered to block export options to other software and encrypting textures.
Did I catch that wrong? I thought I read trough most of all the posts on this topics but now I am not sure if I probably missed some of the first posts?
- - -
Can official DAZ Staff clear this up?
Or can someone provide links to the first posts in which the original intentions are clearly stated?
No, I'm saying it's more complicated than that. I said that 4.9 itself is fine. You don't need Connect for the updated smart content - it's the content that got updated, not Connect changing something. Download speed is the result of the server they're now coming from - which DIM could take advantage of (not sure if it does or not currently.) The specific software used rarely affects download speeds all that much; it's all about the connections online transferring it. Those connections are what changed and have nothing to do with which program is using them.
A good experience is not less valuable than a bad one, but logic that says "well new program was released and now a thing works, so new program must have done it" isn't necessarily right. There are often more factors. It's great that 4.9 works for you when none of the earlier versions did, but all of the earlier versions worked for many, many users before. The new version works for many of them too, and not for others. So the point is moot.
I have never said that no one should use 4.9 or that it will be bad for everyone. I said that my experience has shown it being bad for me at this current point in time. If the broken things are fixed then 4.9 would be good for me. This is a separate issue to Connect/encrypted content altogether though.
Let me just say a few things about "the Cola Wars" and the histpry of companies doing a 180.
Coca-Cola didn't bring back Classic Coke because of people saying "I will never let New Coke pass my lips on principle". It listened to a lot of people trying it and telling them what they liked or disliked. They didn't drop New Coke right away, either. They kept both New and Classic for a while to see the results before deciding whether to keep both or not. So as 180's go, it wasn't a "people are complaining so let's drop it", it was a slow, gradual, deliberate process in which they observed the results and made a series of decisions which eventually, in hindsight, could be seen as a doing a 180.
What Daz is doing is actually quite similar. They aren't immediately dropping DRM, but neither are they immediately encrypting everything. They're listening to what people are saying and making accomodations as a result. Just because "dropping DRM completely without even trying it for a while" isn't on the table doesn't mean they're ignoring what people are saying.
And after a couple of months of trying out having some encrypted products, what will Daz do if it isn't working? Obviously they can't discuss it now, because that would distort the results. But historically I haven't seen a reluctance on Daz' part to drop an idea that wasn't working out. So we may end up with DRM being dropped, but it likely won't happen tomorrow, it will happen after a couple of months of seeing how New Coke and Classic Coke are selling. Just like it did with Coca-Cola.
And while I don't have any statistics one way or the other, there are plenty of companies who destroyed themselves by doing a 180.