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There are three major sales events over the course of the year. There is the PA event in September, the PC Anniversary event in October and the DAZ Original event (i.e., March Madness) in March. The way that they are run varies every year, but all of them tend to include flocks of new releases, usually with deeper than usual discounts. The way one gets those discounts will vary by the year acto that year's rules.
For the past couple of years, the event has opened with a punch card component, where you get a punch for each new release purchased up to a maximum for the week. An additional percentage of discount was added to one's purchases acto the number of punches at the end of the week. Punch cards are never popular with the customers, but a sufficient number of them have usually been willing to play along.
Therefore, when the punch cards were eliminated at the end of the first couple of weeks of the event, those who did play along got to keep the extra amount of discount for the rest of the whole event. Which was well worth it.
However, there is no guarantee that they will do it that way again this year. However, March is the month where DAZ always releases a lot of new DAZ Original content, which historically included a lot of buyouts in addition to their usual stock of commissioned products, some of which have been stockpiled for months. If you've been following various vendors' Facebook pages or whatever, some of the WiPs may be making an appearance.
I would not necessarily expect a pair of DAZ original base characters to be released during March. But it's always a possibility. All I can say is that they didn't do so last year.
The September PA sale is the one where most of the store can be counted upon to go on sale over the course of the month, but the March Madness does include a lot of featured vendor sales as well.
I have no clue as to just what tweaks will be given to the rules of the event for this year.
And if general expectations hold up, by next year we will be trying to regain our current functionality for G4. And who knows how well G3 stuff will work with whatever shifts and changes they are diddling with in G4?
I really do hope that DAZ won't see any burning need to introduce another game-changer with G4.
I know last year, and possibly the year before, March Madness ended up going well into April before it finally trailed off.
The "month-long" sales sometimes start a bit before or after the first week of a month, but only occasionally last longer than five weeks. Usually, we don't know for sure until we see what turns up in the rotating banner.
Things did get a bit complicated one year, when the PA sale started late and ran a bit long, resulting in the PC sale almost colliding with the December sale (I think that was the last time the Christmas/New Year sale lasted the whole month).
Sigh I have been losely following this and I was getting my hopes up I could buy at Daz again since there wasn't an encrypted Item coming up for month.
Oh well hopes crushed, back to the other places again.
Gee seems they even ramped up on the encrypted releases.
Thanks again for keeping the list Kerya.
G4 and Daz 5 would be a scary combo. :) Fortunately that is not even speculation; there is no evidence. Then again there never is, Daz play things close to their chest.
Thankfully it was only Daz Originals, (The PA products Daz pay for and own) that were encrypted yesterday. Today all the new items are back to normal (not encrypted) so once more, shopping can resume again.
Except for some it didn't resume again, because they saw a big new push for encrypted connect only and decided to dedicate their funds elsewhere (big new font bundle here I come~) While there is certainly plenty of older content I'm still interested in, and a few things I'd like to see made (that are well beyond my personal abilities) knowing that this concept has been revived has given me serious pause about moving into any future generations of content.
+1
G3 works for me. Better hair and cloth dynamics would be great, but VWD is very good.
This push for encryption again is a concern, so much so, I'm shopping elsewhere. I have a large credit balance, but that is fine, my wishlist of old items will take care of that; I'll save it for March, and likely beyond.
+1
This basically, I can't spend money on Daz with a good feeling atm, so elsewhere it goes.
That is why my friend have not invested in genesis 3 at all after being burned with incompatibility issues with genesis to g2 then to g3. and from my experience working with daz in animation( which is my only interest with daz) those kind of incompatibility issues are a real turn off. that is why i skipped genesis for genesis 2. until compatibility work around were available. so far the work around for g2 to g3 have been minumal. So if g4 is not compatible with g3 then i will properly skip g3 all together... Not to mention that all the encrypted stuff I had in my wishlist that has become unlocked. I removed it from my wish list a long time ago. because I found other items similar that was not encrypted and was cheaper to boot . But what worry's me is if daz is going to buy up the other 3d stores that were competition like RNDA , then that is getting harder to to do.
I'm expecting to skip G4.
I can achieve what I need now with G3; I don't see how G4 is a requirement for better hair and dynamics on clothes and hair. It can of course be made to be, and if there was an encrypted component, well that would make skipping easy.
G4 encrypted = no buy (if that happens)
not encrypted better hair, no matter what generation = buy (still waiting fo it)
dynamic clothes and hair script for easy working inside DAZ = buy (still waiting for it)
The following characteristics are pushes to adopt it, for me:
Really new things G4 can do that couldn't be done/couldn't be done easily before
Compatibility with Genesis/Genesis2
Not encrypted
I can, simply because I trust people to find the things I don't want and notify others about it. I also trust Overdrawn and Ati to add features to the DAZ Deals addon for browsers that will be useful to warn us of such things.
After what happened yesterday, I am half expecting Genesis 4 to be at least substantionally encrypted (at least V8 would be), in which case I will likely wait for at least a year before seriously considering Genesis 4, which is not too bad a thing given it takes that long before the male version + the Zev0 essential packs make an appearence.
In reality most of the encrypted items so far have hardly been a real test of adoption since they are mostly items that we can get elsewhere, particularly the characters. Yesterday gave us 2 more Genesis 3 dark skinned characters, but there are plenty more around, and the most important part of those characters, namely the skins, were not encrypted anyway. As such anyone who were likely to prefer pirated content are not really going to cross over to the good side (ie start buying content), unless it is something significantly different from what they can get for free (ie illegally).
As such encrypting V8, and all characters based on her, sort of makes sense, as then the people that want everything for free would have nowhere to go to obtain her.
Whether that increases revenue for DAZ, given the large number of "proven" DAZ customers that will not adopt encrypted items, remains to be seen.
Agreed. If they decide to start selling encrypted new releases from now on, I'll adapt my purchase patterns. Meaning: No spending on new releases, but if I'm still interested in the item in a year from release, there's always some sale going on. DAZ3D has shown reliable in that they kept their side of the bargain; I'm not blaming them for trying what they think is best to protect themselves, but the result is that I'll spend less money, even if I might still buy the same number of items in the end.
Well they clearly haven't yet given up on it, and are still without a real test imo; it has cost a significant amount on Daz's behalf implementing DRM; I can't see it going away unless it shows them it will cost more to use it than if the remove it. I just object to its presence in the software; personally it makes me 'uneasy'.
I'm not so sure; about there not having been a real test and about how much it cost to add the DRM. I think the still need some data, which will probably mean that there will be a lot of Ecrypted content released during March Madness (when better to have such a test). And the total cost of adding the may be much lower than you think, simply because they may have already been planning the hardware for the Connect subsysstem and decided to add the verification parts to that server and the code for Connect. But then, it's speculation, since nither of us actually work for DAZ in a programming capacity.
Hope they don't go full on encrypted with new DAZ Original releases, especially when they release the next Genesis 4 or whatever it might be. However if they do, like others have noted,I will probably save a lot of money since except in rare cases, I'd be waiting a year before purchasing. After a year, the chance of a big impulse buy, except for killer sales, will be very very low (actually, it's pretty low for me anyway)
On the upside though, I finally got Lindsey for G3F "free" (was actually 57 cents due to strange DAZ math - but I won't complain) when she was "unlocked", and they had the special $12.00 off DAZ originals with the purchase of a new item. Funny thing is, I would have paid the full introductory price for her a year ago, but a year latter I just waited for the "right" price. The new item I bought, I had planned on getting anyway, so this was a win for me, but not so much for DAZ.
Well complain as we might, in the what's hot rolling banner, the first three items contain 2 from the recent encrypted releases, so looks like the majority of DAZ shoppers don't care one bit, LOL.
Well we know that more are buying, not how well it's doing.
Personally, I'd expect them to be doing better if they weren't encrypted.
At the price they were, I'd have picked up something and maybe the bundle (maybe not tbh), but there's some great stuff in it, that doesn't immediately shout stereotype
FWHoney is an amazing lookin character and a great texture; i would have got that. Likewise for the male character too.
They aren't even in my wishlist. In twelve months? I don't care.
Agreed, I really wanted that character, but in 12 months, who knows if I will even still be using G3F.
I hear what you are saying and I am sorry if my comments gave the wrong impression. To clarify, I meant that shopping at Daz would resume again for me.
I have no intention of ever buying encrypted content, but if I see anything new and useful and it's not encrypted, then I will still continue to buy from Daz for all the same reasons why I have been such a long standing Daz customer. Hopefully for me this will continue.
That is not what I am seeing, they are third and sixth. You likely own the items that are above them. The bundle was number 1 for a while yesterday (although it took a while to get there), which is not bad, but not great considering the discounts on offer with them, where 7 new items could be grabbed for around $35. Fantasy Hair, which is a single much cheaper item has already jumped in front of it. In short, it is a mixed picture, and not too much can be determined one way or the other (particularly by us, as we do not have the real numbers)
I wanted the male and female characters for their skins if nothing else, but encrypted content has me a little shy. I'm not currently buying anything that is encrypted. It's just sad that there are people who are hurting DAZ's profits enough pirating content obviously that DAZ feel that they have to encrypt content.
You're making the classic mistake of equating an illegally downloaded copy of an item with a lost sale; it's nowhere near that simple, since there have been times where people later decide to actually buy the item, and there are a lot more folks that simply do without something if they can't acquire it for free. In other words, the've lost far more in real sales by encrypting these items than they have from people downloading from a torrent site.
These 'people" are hurting us, not just DAZ
There, fixed it for you.