Yeah, 'try before you buy', acquiring assets by other means first, rather than having to deal with returning an asset via Daz Customer Service, well this is a buccaneer forum...
As for the whole 'selling costumes as pieces', well usually the associated bundles can eventually be acquired for cheap, but this all comes down to how stingy the Daz sales team is feeling with their sales at any given time.
As a number of you know, my target price at Daz3D.com is $2 or less per item (average). The problem here is that Daz Customer Service has trained a few of us to wait until prices drop to around $2 or less (average price in cart) before we consider buying stuff. This means more complicated sales and discount stacking.
I still say that rather than playing this game with the Daz3D.com customers, if they just priced stuff lower to begin with and had more straight up sales, without tokens and such, then I MIGHT consider a 70% off discount. Other stores often have the base price set lower, which makes me a bit more willing to break the $2 average rule that I have for Daz3D.com.
Other software product stacks (say 3DSMax, Maya, etc.) often have MUCH higher base prices for assets, which is one of the things that makes Daz Studio a bit more compelling. Even the Blender store has slightly to much pricier assets, I'm not sure what level of discounts are offered at the Blender store.
Blender is useful if you want to take the time to learn it, but the other beauty of Daz Studio is how easy it is to throw characters and scenes together, assuming that you have the associated assets. In a lot of ways, Daz Studio has helped 'democratize' rendering for a lot of people, which is a good thing.
Blender does this to an extent too, but in my experience it's not as newbie friendly, if you are just looking to tell a story with characters, outfits, props, and environments for cheap.
It IS possible to go the 100% free route with Daz Studio, without acquiring assets by other means. Your product library won't be very big, but there's enough there, along with the 'legally free' freebies that you can find on other sites, to tell a story if you want.
But of course, it's the 'other' paid assets that suck us all in.
The sheer number of 'relatively more reasonably priced' assets in the Daz3D.com store is the other main selling point. But of course you should never pay full price at the Daz3D.com store, 'cuz of the sales. So this means cart jenga and a lot of patience spent shopping that could be spent creating and rendering instead...
But of course, people burn out on Daz cart jenga eventually. I did a while back, and these days I just watch the lightning deals for decent discount stacking (around 90%+), and watch the posts here for sales I should pay attention to. I have a LOT of assets in my Daz Studio library already, so I have pretty much all I need now, I'm just watching for interesting new assets for cheap. Others here have smaller libraries of course, so it's more worthwhile for y'all to play the tokens game etc.
In the end, you just need to find your comfort zone r.e. how much you are willing to pay on average (i.e. cart total price divided by # of assets in cart) for each asset, and stick to your guns on that.
I almost never buy poses, 'cuz I have a decent pose collection already from freebies, pose packs found in bundles, etc., same for lighting EXCEPT for HDRIs of course. I'm mainly interested in outfits, environments, props and to a slightly lesser extent new characters for my Daz Studio harem of hotties and to a lesser extent dudes to strap Dicktator on to... also creatures.
So yeah, it is what it is, so you play the Daz3D.com cart jenga game or you don't. Just pick your comfort level and always remember that there is always another sale, unless an asset should end up disappearing from the Daz3D.com store before you end up buying it of course.
I just wish that Renderosity would drop their Prime membership prices to what they were before, I don't shop there very often but I do have a somewhat sizeable wishlist over there... Renderosity cart jenga is a bit more straightforward, but of course being a Prime member does help with pricing a tiny bit, plus those coupons and cash back points...
A number of Renderosity vendors have been moving over to the Daz3D.com store recently, which has helped with this, but this makes me sad as it gives me fewer reasons to shop at Renderosity (i.e. wishlist stuff moving over to Daz3D.com), and I'd like to see the Renderosity store stick around, which means they need customers...
