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Animation HUD and head should be divided. Overpriced bento.


eretyd
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Animation HUD and bento heads should be separated. With the advent of the bento system, the variety of mesh heads became really many and more interesting. However, on the wave of the newest system, the creators clearly overpriced their products. In contrast heads with a frame system, where the animation needed to be created for each head, the bento system simplified this by applying the same animation to any bento head. Earlier, frame heads were sold separately with animations and I think it's right to also divide and animation to bento heads. The first to decide do this was LAQ. At the beginning their heads were worth 5000L each. Now the head costs only 1500L and the HUD is sold separately for 3000L. It is very convenient if you want to have many heads. With other creators(Catwa,Lelutka,Vista,Logo,Akeruka) whose heads cost 5000L and are inseparable HUD to buy another one is not profitable, you overpay for the same HUD and animation to each head. May I hope to change this system of the future?  Can we change this?  I understand that the creators are interested only in profit, but.

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creators in SL can price their items as they want.
If you don't like that, solution is quite easy : do not buy the product.
SL has a free market.

You say things should be seperated...huds and heads, but the same time, whén they do it's not ok either?...

"We"can't change that.
And yes of course creators want profit, perhaps we should put that in TOS ?... : no profits anymore, just offer your service...
i think that's not how things work.



 

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Sorry more than one bento head is luxury... for some of us even one is. I happily payed 5000 for my head because I thought it was worth it. Just because others went cheaper does not mean all creators must adapt. While LAQ switched from head to head + seperate identical animation HUD, Akeruka switched from head + head specific animation HUD to just head distribtion method... all ak heads now share the same animations. Is that bad now? No idea, folks still buy them.

Edited by Fionalein
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LAQ head for 1500

The hud is 3000

Skins are 990..

= 5400.00

I've demoed every head on the wall when I went and got mine..There is really only a few heads there that I need to buy to get every look on the wall..The rest I can get with slider changes  and a skin and maybe a brow..

The thing I look for when I repeat buy from the same place is,if my shape changes or not and if it does, how much..If I can get that same look with the sliders,skin and maybe a brow change,then I'll do that instead of buy the head..

I like to spend,but I love to save hehehe

 

ETA: Let me just add this before I jump back in world and forget.. I think it's great what they are doing with their universal hud and they have some really nice skins and heads that make some really pretty looks..

It takes a lot of time to create certain looks that draw people to them..And that's what a lot of people are buying are the certain looks..Me included..;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Ceka Cianci
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   So, you sell the car and the car keys separate? The animation HUDs within a brand are practically just alike from one head to the next, within the same version - what you're paying for when you're buying a high-end bento head is just that - a bento head. The development 'cost' for a new head isn't in re-doing yet another, just alike HUD as so oft before - you just, change the script to address the head it goes with and any actual development is in creating a bento-compatible mesh head that may appeal to potential buyers.

   And, as Ethan said - free market. I've seen people trying to sell plain prim cubes with the standard plywood texture on the MP - if someone wants to buy that, let them. We can't force people to hand out free/cheap prim cubes just because you want a prim cube. Either you buy the cube, or you don't, and that's that.

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1 hour ago, Ceka Cianci said:

LAQ head for 1500

The hud is 3000

Skins are 990..

= 5400.00

I've demoed every head on the wall when I went and got mine..There is really only a few heads there that I need to buy to get every look on the wall..The rest I can get with slider changes  and a skin and maybe a brow..

The thing I look for when I repeat buy from the same place is,if my shape changes or not and if it does, how much..If I can get that same look with the sliders,skin and maybe a brow change,then I'll do that instead of buy the head..

I like to spend,but I love to save hehehe

 

ETA: Let me just add this before I jump back in world and forget.. I think it's great what they are doing with their universal hud and they have some really nice skins and heads that make some really pretty looks..

It takes a lot of time to create certain looks that draw people to them..And that's what a lot of people are buying are the certain looks..Me included..;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

^^^^^What Ceka said......Demo relentlessly...........?

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5 hours ago, eretyd said:

Animation HUD and bento heads should be separated. With the advent of the bento system, the variety of mesh heads became really many and more interesting. However, on the wave of the newest system, the creators clearly overpriced their products. In contrast heads with a frame system, where the animation needed to be created for each head, the bento system simplified this by applying the same animation to any bento head. Earlier, frame heads were sold separately with animations and I think it's right to also divide and animation to bento heads. The first to decide do this was LAQ. At the beginning their heads were worth 5000L each. Now the head costs only 1500L and the HUD is sold separately for 3000L. It is very convenient if you want to have many heads. With other creators(Catwa,Lelutka,Vista,Logo,Akeruka) whose heads cost 5000L and are inseparable HUD to buy another one is not profitable, you overpay for the same HUD and animation to each head. May I hope to change this system of the future?  Can we change this?  I understand that the creators are interested only in profit, but.

Logo just changed their pricing structure to one similar to LAQ's, and Vista's heads are and always have been L$2000 and Vista makes a variety of separate animation add-ons.

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5 hours ago, eretyd said:

Animation HUD and bento heads should be separated. With the advent of the bento system, the variety of mesh heads became really many and more interesting. However, on the wave of the newest system, the creators clearly overpriced their products. In contrast heads with a frame system, where the animation needed to be created for each head, the bento system simplified this by applying the same animation to any bento head. Earlier, frame heads were sold separately with animations and I think it's right to also divide and animation to bento heads. The first to decide do this was LAQ. At the beginning their heads were worth 5000L each. Now the head costs only 1500L and the HUD is sold separately for 3000L. It is very convenient if you want to have many heads. With other creators(Catwa,Lelutka,Vista,Logo,Akeruka) whose heads cost 5000L and are inseparable HUD to buy another one is not profitable, you overpay for the same HUD and animation to each head. May I hope to change this system of the future?  Can we change this?  I understand that the creators are interested only in profit, but.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Creators sell and we buy.

Animations created for one head does not look good on other brands. So creators should sell cheap HUDs separate and include different versions for all heads? Why not, since we can demand and demand. /eyeroll

They don't work for free. I love to get offers, promos and sales, but it is up to the seller.

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Also,just because one or more creators felt they were charging so much for their animations, doesn't mean that's what the others are charging 5k or whatever their price is,for..

Many heads come with much more than some others do..Like skins and rigged or unrigged options for parts,extra gesture packs and so on.

I doubt they are all on the same page when it comes to figuring their value on each thing in pricing..

Just as customers are not all on the same page when we buy the different heads.. We all have our reasons for buying the different ones..I know animations are not a selling point for me other than maybe a blink..

I can put just about any expression on my face with the Axis hud for pictures..

 

 

Edited by Ceka Cianci
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The Laq pricing scheme is designed to make swapping heads considerably cheaper than their rivals. The "complete package" of head + HUD costs the same as their competitors - in the region of 5k - but if you wanted to change your looks, then that is considerably cheaper than, for example, buying a second 5k head from any of the other 'major' brands. Laq's HUD also contains all animations made by the creator, unlike eg Catwa that sell those packages separately on top of a 5k head+HUD package. 

It gives the customer flexibility, and avoids unnecessary repeat purchases, so it makes complete sense to me. Unfortunately, many people are idiots. I've lost count of how many people have complained in the Laq group chat about the head not coming with the HUD - despite the multiple and highly visible warnings about this. Having worked in retail before, I don't blame the other creators for assuming that every customer is a moron, and thus being pleasantly surprised when they show more intelligence than a gerbil.

On a side note, you need to stop using "b-b-but muh free market" as a way of sweeping any and every criticism of a creator under the rug. Yes, they can sell whatever they want for however much they want and with whatever permissions they want. None of that prevents me from call their decisions dumb. Just because you technically can do something, doesn't shield you from the consequences of doing so.

Edited by AyelaNewLife
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I've actually found several mesh heads I really like but unfortunately I really dislike the animations that come with those heads. So I'll gladly pay the extra price to get a head that has animations I like. I really like natural looking looped animations now. I don't think I could go back to a basically static head with just a blink.

The best way to let a creator know what you like or dislike is with your pocketbook. As long as the "expensive brand" keeps making money, and she will get mine, then there's no reason for her to change her marketing plans.

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Ethan is just right in that a creator can charge what they like, you are under no obligation to buy the product if you don't like the price, I would not force any head brand to do separate head and HUD only nor would I want it for first time buyers. If the HUD's for a head brand are universal across all that brands head's I would welcome the brand having a head only option available to buy for existing users like what LAQ do. In the future when I buy my first head I'd ideally want everything included in one package even if that means forking out L$5k

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As the CSR for a major mesh head store, I usually avoid posting in topics like these, that concern pricing etc. My opinion (even before I began work for that store) is that - just like in real life - different brands in Second Life price in different ways. If you dislike the way that one brand prices its products then there are many other brands out there that may cater to your pricing needs.

However I do have a small anecdote to offer up to this thread; one that might give people an insight into what mesh head creators sometimes receive in return for the months of work that they put into their products. The anecdote is as follows:

To be fair to the OP, at least they haven't demanded that mesh head creators offer a 'pay the difference' system, as did one customer of the store that I CSR for the other day. That person wasted 40 minutes of my (and another CSR's) time because she insisted on being given a Bento head for L$500. She claimed that, since she had spent L$4500 over the past few years on a Basic (non-Bento) head and all of its add-ons, she should be able to 'pay the difference' and get a Bento mesh head. That difference, she insisted, was L$500.

Once again: she was demanding a brand new Bento mesh head (normal price L$5000) for L$500.

This customer knew nothing about Bento, about how it worked, about what it was, about how it was different from non-Bento. We gave her links to read up about it, but she told us she didn't need to read them. She 'knew' that Bento was 'just an update', and that we were using it as an excuse not to give her the 'update' she deserved.

She gave us (repeatedly, for 40 minutes) that 'just an update' line, and insisted that the Bento head she wanted so cheaply was just an update of her old Basic head (which it is not; it's an entirely different head and doesn't even look like her original purchased head), and in the end she informed us that she was reporting both of us CSRs to Linden Lab, for 'being rude' (aka: refusing to give her what she wanted) and reporting the store owner for 'cheating her'.

All of this, apparently, had to be carried out at the store's busy landing point, in open chat, because her translator wouldn't work in IM and she also wanted everyone in the store to know that the store's CSRs were rude and the store was cheating her.

The irony of the situation was that, after the fact - when we spoke to the store owner, who checked the transaction records - we found out that the customer had actually spent a total of L$3100, not L$4500. So her L$500 'difference' claim should actually have been L$1900. Funny how she forgot to mention that...

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   When I was in high school, studying a modern trade (baking), our commerce teacher told us the whole 'the customer is always right' drill. One of the first things mentioned when I began studying this trade (bookbinding), was that 'the customer is hardly ever right, and rarely knows what they want - show them their options, let them decide, and write a contract before you even touch the work'. Skell's story pretty much explains why.

   Also, working with non-virtual products that can't be copied with the click of a button, every minute of work has to be accounted for - you need the legal protection of a contract, and whether the customer is 'satisfied' or not, the 'quality' of your work isn't taken into consideration by a court of law (unless it's obvious you've been negligent). The only reason we would ever have to do a 'good job' is because we want the customer to return, and to tell others that we did a good job. Reputation is important, and unfortunately that's the one thing customers tend to understand. 

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In addition, with regard to the 'separate animation HUD' question that the OP posted: we get a lot of queries in our support chat from people who are using another brand's AO (one that contains a 'Bento face animation' version as well as a 'non-Bento face animation' version). They ask us why their faces are animating (and usually they are contorting and grimacing in a non-natural manner) when they don't even have our mesh head's animations enabled. Invariably, when we ask them the "are you using a Bento AO?" question, they tell us they are, and it turns out that the AO (from a different brand) is the problem. Using the non-Bento face animated version of the AO fixes the contortion issue.

Different heads are rigged in different ways, so what animates one brand of head perfectly will have peculiar results on another head brand. I have a Bento AO from one brand that I use with my Bento head from another brand. I was lucky in that most of the facial animations work really well, but there are still a couple of 'eyebrow raise' parts of that AO that make me look like an evil genius who is plotting to take over the world. :ph34r:

(The Lelutka Axis HUD that has been mentioned here is great for photo-taking [I own it and love it], but it's not intended for general use as a face animator; it's just a static expression creator.)

To contemplate an additional (and similar) posited theory: imagine someone asking why hair creators don't just offer a single colour HUD that works across all of their styles. Pay once for a fatpack, and then every style in the store would, essentially, be a fatpack to you. Great for the customer (cheap fatpacks!) but not so great for the store-owner.

Edited by Skell Dagger
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I think the OP has a pretty good idea, although it'll never happen. I think what she's saying is: You buy Brand X head A for 5000. Then Brand X comes out with head B and C and D. You like Head C, but don't want to pay 5000 for the whole thing again when you know the animations from Head A will work with B,C, and D. Why not sell the basic head for 2500 (it could be any discounted price, I just threw that number out there)? You're still going to buy the head and use the hud. Later, when Brand X comes out with head J,K and L you can get that one of those too. It makes sense in the idea that you've gotten someone to pay 5000 again, where they normally wouldn't have or just spent the 5000 elsewhere to get a different head.

I think its a great idea, actually. Never gonna happen, but it's a good thought. 

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I recently made an alt a few days ago and when I was trying out heads, I went and grabbed a few heads from LAQ, Lelutka and Catwa. Once I was ready to try the LAQ heads, I forgot to grab the demo hud from the store and that's one of the many reasons I didn't choose one of her heads. I always try makeup, eyebrows, and lashes when I demo heads, and since my computer is a piece of junk, I didn't want to bother with the loading time just to grab a stupid demo hud  for something I wouldn't have actually liked in the end.

 

Edited by Satsu Faith
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30 minutes ago, Satsu Faith said:

I recently made an alt a few days ago and when I was trying out heads, I went and grabbed a few heads from LAQ, Lelutka and Catwa. Once I was ready to try the LAQ heads, I forgot to grab the demo hud from the store and that's one of the many reasons I didn't choose one of her heads. I always try makeup, eyebrows, and lashes when I demo heads, and since my computer is a piece of junk, I didn't want to bother with the loading time just to grab a stupid demo hud  for something I wouldn't have actually liked in the end.

 

If you are still looking at heads ,you should take a look at the Genus project head..

It's in beta right now but they have a demo..

There is not much you can do with the demo as far as trying on skins and makeup since the demo is not omega compatible and doesn't come with a hud..There are three heads in the pack with a different skin tone each..

But you can see how it works with the sliders..

A lot That i've told about it have liked it a lot..

Just figured I would give it a mention,if you hadn't tried it already..

Edited by Ceka Cianci
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2 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

If you are still looking at heads ,you should take a look at the Genus project head..

It's in beta right now but they have a demo..

There is not much you can do with the demo as far as trying on skins and makeup since the demo is not omega compatible and doesn't come with a hud..There are three heads in the pack with a different skin tone each..

But you can see how it works with the sliders..

A lot That i've told about it have liked it a lot..

Just figured I would give it a mention,if you hadn't tried it already..

Thanks! I actually have a Genus head on this account and don't like it. I ended up buying Lelutka Chloe 7 days ago and yesterday bought Catwa Uma. 

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