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It seems to me that it really circumnavigates some of the complaints about having to do the search in the store though. I'm not sure anyone expects people to do all their shopping from that little in program window but it is handy to have a flash look for something you may be thinking about looking for.
I always got the impression that people didn't like the search in the store because they could never find what they wanted or the terms they wanted. That means fixing the website, not giving up and building a new mini version of it.
Personally I see that flash look as a massive waste of resources for a just in case for a few people and it's also really distracting, which means you close it, which means it no longer really has a point. The effort of mousing to its specific tablette and clicking it and navigating to the thing you want is more effort than alt tabbing to a browser for me (also I do my shopping when the day's new releases and sales appear but I don't know if that's the norm?)
Personally other than the improvements I listed above, I think the web store is great. The product index hosting and search function and forum search is a whole 'nother story, but I can usually find products I want in the store if I know the name. Still wish the store and wishlist had more ways to filter and organise products specifically though.
I understand you don't see a use for it but I do. I also stay up and shop when the new stuff comes in but that isn't the same as setting up a scene and having something you need and going "I wonder if they have a ..." I check for stuff a fair bit actually.
As I've said make an option during the install so that those of us who don't want or can't use it don't have something else thats useless to us installed. We get enough of that from Microsoft
I funnly understand the need for acquiring content mid-scene. What I don't understand is what sort of valuable shopping information that tiny corner of the client offers that alt tabbing to the much more complete web store does not? If you've got time to open the store tab and populate it then you've got time to open your favourite browser and look at that, and in every sense that I can think of, the web store gives a better experience.
I'm not sure why your having to wait for it to populate. It is pretty much there when I click the tab. It is just super easy to glance down there than to pop into the store to check. I'm not talking about a big shopping excersion or the sort of "oh look as sale what might I want" shopping. It's just a quick look to see if there might be something that fills what I am looking for right then. I just find it a bit more bite sized for a quick look.
yeah it was late. I tossed out some confusing points in the previous post.
Still what bothers me is that the results of the filter do not show up in the smart content tab directly next to All, installed, available in a store filter page but somewhere below in a separate window.
Yes, you can make that store window larger. But when you make the store window larger you also make the category selection smaller.
I guess DAZ3D wanted to make the store as unobstrusive as possible so people can hide it.
But this also has the effect that those people who do want to use it have to access it in an unefficient way.
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Here is a composition created in photoshop how the store filter page could look like:
You could still add an option to the DAZ Studio preferences to hide the store for those who really do not want it.
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That's a great mockup of the sort of thing I originally suggested: the store should be its own thing (although personally I don't want to give my Content tab half the screen real estate so it'd be simpler for me if it was completely separate a la Content Library and Smart Content are, so I could put it somewhere else.) By default it's a tiny corner and making it bigger ruins trying to work but then otherwise it's too small to do anything.
Agree with all this (bold).
I'm going to take a guess that many of the folks visiting the shop, know they are after something. (Daz may know differently from the figures for new visitors and existing.)
Personally, alienating existing customers is never good.
All the flash and bling is kind of nice, but ultimately to the majority of existing customers, more than is required.
What we do require is what Ix said.
I'm not interested in it in Daz Studio; I've disabled aspects, or uninstalled the SQL components (in 4.8 and 4.9). Those that like it there, cool, they can use the software as they wish; I like to do the same - not as Daz things I should.
A more helpful browser experienc in my real browser is what I require. The search and filter options suck. Yeh I know, I've repeated what's been said.
... Maybe someone sometime is going to not just listen, but hear what all of us that are saying.
Just noticed that three of the encrypted products released yesterday have made it onto the "What's Hot" list, so it appears that encryption has not cut into their sales significantly. Or maybe the greater than usual discount helped offset the fact that they were encrypted?
The discount defintly made some of the items tempting. Actually, that G2F outfit is still a bit tempting. Resisting the temptation is easier as the price goes up.
Or it could be that the knowledge that it will be available in an unencrypted format in a year has people buying now because they know that they can just download the unencrypted version in a year and store it as a backup copy?
The horror of the unSMART pane with its eight billion thumbnails and you find yourself scrolling down... scrolling... scrolling... will you ever find that one single element you wanted to find 40 minutes ago.
And folks will curse Connect... but go right back and buy more encrypted stuff on sale.
...and like an addict... make thier scrolling even more horrendous.
They'll have to go to google to find the name of that item they're looking for... and then again... scroll.. scroll through all the pirate sites until you can find the damn name of that item.
Then go back to the unSMART pane and try to find it.
It's all making sense to me now... DAZ customer service
They did okay, but not spectacularly. For a discount of nearly 80% for PC+ members for three items I would have expected more takers in ordinary circumstances. I remember many of the items offered at 75% off around Christmas shot to the top of the What's Hot list. A better test will be when encrypted items appear at just 30% off.
Hmm ... don't use G3 stuff but that living room set looks good. Won't work in Poser, though, so it's no sale. Not even wishlisting it, why would I when I can get something elsewhere that I can use right away in either program? If I need it now, I need it now. A year's time, who knows?
Is that what that "Whats Hot" section is all about? I just figured it was a compilation of whatever Daz was desperate to shift - like bubblegum at the supermarket checkout lol.
Yeah, considering the ridiculous discount on them and the freebies that came with their purchase it doesn't look like they did all that amazingly. But who knows....?
The theory is that "What's Hot" represents around $1000 going towards purchases of that product (due to various observartions.) Whether that's true, or if it's list price or discounted is unknown.
Again, I doubt we'll know anything until products arrive without discounts.
Well anyway, selling off all future new releases at a 70% discount is not a sustainable business practice for Daz, so it probably doesn't really tell us a whole lot more than the freebie give aways did. Plus, the compromise on content becoming unencrypted after 1 year might make such heavy discounts look worthwhile even to those who don't intend to use it while its still encrypted.
Our guess (and it is only a guess, we could be miles out) of 1000$ would be for the item at the top of list, something 10th or so would be far less than than.
Not if the damn thing doesn't even work in the first place. I've got a huge runtime, so I have DS on my C drive, a flash 240GB SSD, for speed while all of my content is on my F drive, a 3 TB raid-5. Unfortunately, DAZ Connect insists on installing to the C drive, but apparently then tries to read everything on the F drive first and chokes up, as none of the handful of free Connect files I've picked up will actually install when I click install. Ironically, I can see them in Smart Content BEFORE they install, and I can see the folder where they are, but once I've clicked to install, they just vanish as far as DS is concerned...
So, for me at least, anything that only works with DAZ Connect is basically worthless whether it's encrypted or not.
That would be far too logical and sensible, but at this point I think we're just
Connect defaults to using a location in your Documents folder. if you haven't moved that (at the OS level, by right-clicking on the actual folder, selecting properties and going to the Location tab) then you will need to use the Content Directory Manager to change the folder used.
Except that Content Manager can't see the files once they've been installed. I can see the downloads in the C:\Users\Documents\DAZ 3D\Studio folder, and CMS showed them in Smart content PRIOR to when I hit "install." At that point, though, they disappear from CMS and smart content and are simply gone. No Smart Contact icon, let alone an option to uninstall. The orignal .enc files are still there, but it just doesn't seem to install them anywhere, and since the only files I can find are still encrypted, CMS doesn't even register the C drive as having DAZ content on it. Fortunately I haven't paid for any of those items, so what it's mainly cost me is lost time searching the drives, but needless to say, if a paid product is only going to be available via DAZ Connect, it's easier to just not buy it.
Suspect you right as common sense and logic are always in short supply
Robert, only if saving a few hundred kilobytes of space by ripping out functionality and putting it in a separate file is worth the time and effort of testing to see if it still works as intended. I suspect that's pretty much the amount of savings you're goig to get, since much of the additional stuff to make smart content work is optional anyway.
Probably some combination of and variation on the "Trending Now" and "Most Popular" categories, perhaps with a different time sampling scale and perhaps with an emphasis on new products (for DAZ to know and us to speculate upon). The items in the encrypted promotion are trending quite well but are some way down in popularity. Stonemason's "Under the Overpass" has romped past the encrypteds in both categories, despite being released later and being more expensive / less discounted. Trending gets you into "What's Hot", but selling well (popular) can keep you there longer (e.g. FWSA Finley).
Watching the "Chantelle Outfit" and "Rustic Living Room" and seeing how well they do in the longer term popularity stakes compared to, say, the "Sassy Girl Shirt", "Sexy Secretary Outfit" and "i13's Dean's Office", might offer some insight into any impact of encryption on sales.
And I have to take this opportunity to point out one consistent good perfomer in the "Most Popular" and "Trending Now" camps - "Bryce7 Pro". This despite being ancient and receiving no promotion from DAZ. I've seen it in the "What's Hot" lineup before, too (but maybe in a previous store system). They must see this.
I bought Bryce! Mostly because I remembered it from many many years ago, but sad to see it's not being updated or really supported. It's even less desirable to get into now that Daz are going all encrypt Studio only land (same feelings about Cararra and I looked at Hexagon a few times but seeing zero support update things for it and a lot of bug complaints I skipped that purchase.) I guess they just don't care much about the software they sell? Sure that's speculation but it's assembled from what we see.
a) Bryce-format content cannot be installed with Connect, so no change there.
b) The Bryce bridge and export to .obj work the same on encrypted content as on unencrypted content, so no change there.
c) Poser-format content is not encrypted, so no change there.
Yeah, I notice that the encrypted items have now exited the Whats Hot list, so they didn't stay there long. Obviously we're all just speculating here because we don't really know what criteria gets a product onto that list, but whatever it is those items did not fulfill it long enough to remain there very long, which is surprising to me considering the sheer level of incentive they came packaged with (Fast Grab-level discount and freebies included). And thats incentive that Daz can't possibly keep offering every time.
Whereas something like M3D Jesse, which has a fairly low price as well, has been right up there for a few days now by comparison.
Jesse has some seriously impressive promos though. They include all the things I keep asking for and am getting told "don't sell figures."