LaraX?

[AmeliaJ08]

38 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Lol, I think it was just mistimed or a miscommunication or something like that. It seems like the updates are far along enough now that it didn't do too much damage.

I'd even say it has done good, people are talking about Maitreya.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

1 hour ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

Lol, I think it was just mistimed or a miscommunication or something like that. It seems like the updates are far along enough now that it didn't do too much damage.

They dinint wait for dah start pistow!  \o/  

It's Dah Back Boof  for dem at dah Maytweya evemt! \o/

[Ceka Cianci]

34 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

I'd even say it has done good, people are talking about Maitreya.

 

You know it's a damn good product when it only takes a breath  to set off a tidal wave.

-ConfuseUs

hehehe

[Maitimo]

I think this can go one of two ways.

1) Content creators will pick up Lara X in addition to or instead of 5.3, and it will gradually (over a couple of years) replace 5.3 as the leading non-curvy body, with Legacy remaining in 2nd place.

2) Content creators will stick with 5.3 only, or drop Maitreya altogether, resulting in a big gap in the market for a quality non-curvy body. This gap will initially be filled by Legacy, Belleza Gen X and Inithium Khara, but we'll likely see a few newcomers, of which only one will survive.  Just as we've seen with the flood of curvy bodies over the past 2-3 years, only one (Reborn) has been ultimately successful. Brace yourselves for the same happenning with non-curvy bodies.

I don't think Legacy will be the winner in this scenario. Their bodies are too expensive. The winner will likely be one that we haven't seen yet - my best bets would be new launches from either eBody or Kalhene.

Maitreya has been very clever, giving this body as a free update to existing customers.  If Belleza had done the same with their Gen-X I think they would already be the market leader for non-curvy bodies right now.

[AmeliaJ08]

7 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

I think this can go one of two ways.

1) Content creators will pick up Lara X in addition to or instead of 5.3, and it will gradually (over a couple of years) replace 5.3 as the leading non-curvy body, with Legacy remaining in 2nd place.

2) Content creators will stick with 5.3 only, or drop Maitreya altogether, resulting in a big gap in the market for a quality non-curvy body. This gap will initially be filled by Legacy, Belleza Gen X and Inithium Khara, but we'll likely see a few newcomers, of which only one will survive.  Just as we've seen with the flood of curvy bodies over the past 2-3 years, only one (Reborn) has been ultimately successful. Brace yourselves for the same happenning with non-curvy bodies.

I don't think Legacy will be the winner in this scenario. Their bodies are too expensive. The winner will likely be one that we haven't seen yet - my best bets would be new launches from either eBody or Kalhene.

Maitreya has been very clever, giving this body as a free update to existing customers.  If Belleza had done the same with their Gen-X I think they would already be the market leader for non-curvy bodies right now.

Couldn't quite believe how Belleza handled GenX... I'm not sure they appreciate that people do consider their purchases over 3000L carefully and despite Legacy's attempt to normalise dropping over 5k on a body to not even consider some sort of introductory offer to tempt people into an entirely new ecosystem was an obvious failure as far as adoption, it still seems genuinely rare today and next to nobody is willing to take the risk.

That said it does sort of beg the question of how a body maker stays in business, Maitreya must be reaching a saturation point where the number of new customers is dwindling to next to nothing. How exactly do they continue to make money? I appreciate the free update as much as anyone but I'm sure by now they can't be making a fraction of what they once were from the product.

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by AmeliaJ08

[Maitimo]

1 hour ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

That said it does sort of beg the question of how a body maker stays in business, Maitreya must be reaching a saturation point where the number of new customers is dwindling to next to nothing. How exactly do they continue to make money? I appreciate the free update as much as anyone but I'm sure by now they can't be making a fraction of what they once were from the product.

Right.  At this point, the only people who have not bought Maitreya are those who don't want it and have invested in different bodies, or have a budget that precludes buying any mesh body in that price range.

Logically, a body-maker who wishes to stay in business must diversify, and sell other products besides the body itself.  It would make sense that they should also sell a wide range of clothing (with regular new releases) for their body, at a competitive price. Slink did shoes, so does N-Core (Kalhene), Belleza does skins. Maitreya did a handful of clothes in the beginning but never really added to the collection, except when they released new chest mods.

Offering a cheapie/freebie is another option and can be a gateway into the brand.  Give it a year or so after the launch of Lara X, Maitreya should release 5.3 as a freebie or very low priced (lower than the Lucybody).

[Ayashe Ninetails]

1 hour ago, Maitimo said:

2) Content creators will stick with 5.3 only, or drop Maitreya altogether, resulting in a big gap in the market for a quality non-curvy body.

I see this one as slightly more unlikely, only because the CSR explained that this update originally came about to address rigging issues with the 5.3 devkit. They tailored this new update to what creators requested/needed.

 

From Gryphon on Discord:

"I am guessing that most creators will pick up or switch over to X, after all, the rigging changes were driven by creator requests for the most part - we based the kit off what they have been telling us they need."

[Maitimo]

7 minutes ago, Ayashe Ninetails said:

I see this one as slightly more unlikely, only because the CSR explained that this update originally came about to address rigging issues with the 5.3 devkit. They tailored this new update to what creators requested/needed.

 

From Gryphon on Discord:

"I am guessing that most creators will pick up or switch over to X, after all, the rigging changes were driven by creator requests for the most part - we based the kit off what they have been telling us they need."

The only issue I see here is that many creators don't have the official maitreya dev kit, they are relying on the bootleg.  They won't be able to switch, or may have to jump through a lot of extra hoops because they're currently not authorised creators. Will Maitreya welcome them in, or bar them because they've been using an unauthorised bootleg?

 

[Orwar]

5 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

Will Maitreya welcome them in, or bar them because they've been using an unauthorised bootleg?

   From what I have heard, getting an official dev kit for Maitreya can be quite tricky. Personally I don't see why that should be the case, surely a broad range of creators adding variety to the available content is a good thing? It's one of the points of appeal for Maitreya in particular with the vast backlog of content available for it.

   I reckon, even with 5.3 still being a thing, a lot of people won't want to have to switch back and forth in the long run, or have that extra element of work when putting together an outfit for whether it works on a 5.3 or X, if that's the case and X takes off with the big brands then a lot of current creators who only have a bootleg of the 5.3 kit will be extremely limited in what they can do - aside from just dropping Maitreya completely.

[Ayashe Ninetails]

6 minutes ago, Maitimo said:

The only issue I see here is that many creators don't have the official maitreya dev kit, they are relying on the bootleg.  They won't be able to switch, or may have to jump through a lot of extra hoops because they're currently not authorised creators. Will Maitreya welcome them in, or bar them because they've been using an unauthorised bootleg?

Well that I don't know. I've seen some wonky rigging here and there and it's possible it's from stores that don't have the official kit, but I don't bother shopping those. I'm too picky and hate having to play with alphas that much.

There are over 230 approved devkit holders online right now (can't see the offline list - server's too big), though, and new ones coming in to apply here and there, so I doubt many of them are going to keep tinkering with the old kit once this drops.

[AmeliaJ08]

2 hours ago, Orwar said:

   From what I have heard, getting an official dev kit for Maitreya can be quite tricky. Personally I don't see why that should be the case, surely a broad range of creators adding variety to the available content is a good thing? It's one of the points of appeal for Maitreya in particular with the vast backlog of content available for it.

   I reckon, even with 5.3 still being a thing, a lot of people won't want to have to switch back and forth in the long run, or have that extra element of work when putting together an outfit for whether it works on a 5.3 or X, if that's the case and X takes off with the big brands then a lot of current creators who only have a bootleg of the 5.3 kit will be extremely limited in what they can do - aside from just dropping Maitreya completely.

If anything some of the bootleg dev kits led to some pretty poorly fitting clothes, you still occasionally see them although I think the bootleg kits got a lot better since it's rare to see the tell-tale signs of the past (waist and shoulders were particularly obvious in my experience).

I hope they just realise they've nothing to worry about as far as improving availability of the official kit at this point, there's enough high quality stuff released for Lara that the bad stuff barely gets a look in and doesn't dent the brand popularity in the slightest.

 

[steeljane42]

Actually one of the earlier bootleg kits some creators still use works better than the official one. Some of my creators friends did show me the difference, but I'll skip the details/names, of course, since they do have official ones and I wouldn't want to spoil the relations with maitreya. They use that bootleg kit instead of an official one for anything that needs rigging on the back, especially upper half of the body.

Even bootleg stuff aside there's plenty of creators with official kits for maitreya and other bodies that just can't rig anything. I'll skip the names/brands again to avoid naming and shaming, but in case with those creators' clothes it's a hard pass for me whenever I try to demo their stuff again. They had bad fitting/rigging when I used Maitreya, they had as bad one for Legacy, and now after demoing a few of their latest releases after swapping to Reborn - yep, it's not any better.

But, yes, I also expect most creators dropping the non X version very soon after the update is out. If the devkit is easier to work with it's worth for that reason alone, and of course it means many creators get to either update (and put on weekend sales, like many do already) or plain redo some of the older ideas they had before and re-release them.

There's a big potential for this kind of re-releases (remasters?), especially if they'll also include other relevant body sizes. And there's definitely some of the older content from 2016-2018 years that was only made for Slink/Maitreya/Belleza that I'd also like to see remastered, improved and released again. Mesh and textures might have aged by now, that's why I think it would be a good idea, but designs did not.

Edited August 3, 2023 by steeljane42
typos

[Gabriele Graves]

There is a lot in this move that doesn't make sense from a motivation point of view from Maitreya.  It seems to me that it's likely a symptom of the female avatar content creators (clothing, accessories, etc.) collectively panicking about revenue drops that have not recovered over time and aren't seasonal.  This might be the attempted collaborative solution to desperately attempt to recover this market segment.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Gabriele Graves

[Cougar Sangria]

9 hours ago, Maitimo said:

I think this can go one of two ways.

1) Content creators will pick up Lara X in addition to or instead of 5.3, and it will gradually (over a couple of years) replace 5.3 as the leading non-curvy body, with Legacy remaining in 2nd place.

2) Content creators will stick with 5.3 only, or drop Maitreya altogether, resulting in a big gap in the market for a quality non-curvy body. This gap will initially be filled by Legacy, Belleza Gen X and Inithium Khara, but we'll likely see a few newcomers, of which only one will survive.  Just as we've seen with the flood of curvy bodies over the past 2-3 years, only one (Reborn) has been ultimately successful. Brace yourselves for the same happenning with non-curvy bodies.

I don't think Legacy will be the winner in this scenario. Their bodies are too expensive. The winner will likely be one that we haven't seen yet - my best bets would be new launches from either eBody or Kalhene.

Maitreya has been very clever, giving this body as a free update to existing customers.  If Belleza had done the same with their Gen-X I think they would already be the market leader for non-curvy bodies right now.

Maitreya non-curvy?  Seriously?  Granted I don't have T&A that goes on for days, but I have curves.  I have seen some Matreya's I thought for sure were other mesh bodies, that are even more curvier than mine.  Non-curvy?  Pfft.

[Sparkle Bunny]

9 hours ago, Maitimo said:

Offering a cheapie/freebie is another option and can be a gateway into the brand.  Give it a year or so after the launch of Lara X, Maitreya should release 5.3 as a freebie or very low priced (lower than the Lucybody).

My alts never throw away away a Maitreya freebie just in case this ever happens, including the one who won a Kupra in a raffle (she might go on a weightloss journey someday, who knows?)

[MissSweetViolet]

13 hours ago, Maitimo said:

I think this can go one of two ways.

1) Content creators will pick up Lara X in addition to or instead of 5.3, and it will gradually (over a couple of years) replace 5.3 as the leading non-curvy body, with Legacy remaining in 2nd place.

2) Content creators will stick with 5.3 only, or drop Maitreya altogether, resulting in a big gap in the market for a quality non-curvy body. This gap will initially be filled by Legacy, Belleza Gen X and Inithium Khara, but we'll likely see a few newcomers, of which only one will survive.  Just as we've seen with the flood of curvy bodies over the past 2-3 years, only one (Reborn) has been ultimately successful. Brace yourselves for the same happenning with non-curvy bodies.

I don't think Legacy will be the winner in this scenario. Their bodies are too expensive. The winner will likely be one that we haven't seen yet - my best bets would be new launches from either eBody or Kalhene.

Maitreya has been very clever, giving this body as a free update to existing customers.  If Belleza had done the same with their Gen-X I think they would already be the market leader for non-curvy bodies right now.

Kalhene actually had a non curvy body that was great, called Anya, as well as a trans one Alexa, then they combined the two some time later in to Analexa, they could wear Maitreya clothing even, and well, swimwear and lingerie even worked most of the time! I actually loved it and was a huge supporter, always telling people about it.......Then Erika came in, all the updates halted, I even asked the creator if the updates would ever come to the Analexa, I was reassured they would, only they never did. As far as I can tell they don't even offer the body anymore.

That was actually the push that took me over to Maitreya about a year and a half ago, never looked back, and haven't regretted it. I found that I actually had more features that were awesome on Maitreya, I didn't even have to edit my shape, so it all ended up working out. I do often wonder how popular Analexa might have been right now had Kalhene kept it, it was even cheaper then Maitreya by a few hundred linden. 2400 if I remember right, it could have been a nice option for slimmer market.

[Gabriele Graves]

The question has to be asked.  Would it be possible for someone to create deformers to make Lara X compatible with Lara rigged mesh clothing and accessories in the same way that other body makers have?

[Persephone Emerald]

15 hours ago, Maitimo said:

Offering a cheapie/freebie is another option and can be a gateway into the brand.  Give it a year or so after the launch of Lara X, Maitreya should release 5.3 as a freebie or very low priced (lower than the Lucybody).

I don't see any advantage for Maitreya to make Lara 5.3 free, not any time soon anyway. They might decide to include it in the Lara X packs though. As for a free version, I consider LucyBody Atenea to be their free version. Enough people get that body free, then later upgrade to a real Maitreya Lara body. Both my female alts did.

Edited August 4, 2023 by Persephone Emerald

[Anna Nova]

10 hours ago, Cougar Sangria said:

Maitreya non-curvy?  Seriously?  Granted I don't have T&A that goes on for days, but I have curves.  I have seen some Matreya's I thought for sure were other mesh bodies, that are even more curvier than mine.  Non-curvy?  Pfft.

I think 'curvy' is American for 'fatter than Lizzo'.

[Anna Nova]

3 hours ago, Persephone Emerald said:

I don't see any advantage for Maitreya to make Lara 5.3 free, not any time soon anyway. They might decide to include it in the Lara X packs though. As for a free version, I consider LucyBody Atenea to be their free version. Enough people get that body free, then later upgrade to a real Maitreya Lara body. Both my female alts did.

Lucybody Vania is interesting, as a less-curvy Petite.  The chest is not affected by the Body Sliders, so they operate exclusively on the clothing.  I actually prefer it to Lara+Petite for this reason, and it has the added virtue of no alpha-cuts, so the effect on lag is less.

[Fionalein]

6 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

The question has to be asked.  Would it be possible for someone to create deformers to make Lara X compatible with Lara rigged mesh clothing and accessories in the same way that other body makers have?

Nope. TheBrandThatShallNotBeNamed did the community a "great service" by deliberately calling body replacements "deformers". This gave the community a wrong idea what deformers can do. Deformers move bones around. As both your body and clothing are rigged to the same bones both will move. This will not fix clipping, it will just move the clipping location a bit. TheBrandThatShallNotBeNamed's "deformers" are technically more similar to the petite chest replacer. They are not real deformers.

Can someone create a body plugin that autohides your LaxaX body and makes it fit 5.3? Sure they can, but they will run into copyright grey zone at best and this question must be asked: why not straight away wear 5.3 straight away?

Now for an interesting take: Maitreya could release an upper and a lower body replacer that allows to set one body half to the 5.3 fit. That way old tops or bottoms could be recombined with another one designed for the new product. In fact customers should pressure them into releasing exactly such an add on as reaction to their folly of promising an easy transition. They promised - now make them deliver on their promise.

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by Fionalein

[Ceka Cianci]

13 hours ago, Gabriele Graves said:

There is a lot in this move that doesn't make sense from a motivation point of view from Maitreya.  It seems to me that it's likely a symptom of the female avatar content creators (clothing, accessories, etc.) collectively panicking about revenue drops that have not recovered over time and aren't seasonal.  This might be the attempted collaborative solution to desperately attempt to recover this market segment.

I think a lot could improve their sales with being a bit more original rather than following the temp trends  that last about two weeks to a month..

Many can keep blaming everything else around them, but at the end of the day, it comes down to just how good they are at creating and rigging..

The ones that keep things fresh and original and can rig really well seem to be doing good..

Right now  a lot of the market looks like a place where buzzards feed their young.. Regurgitation ever whar! \o/

hehehe

There is a lot of really good creators out there, but on the other side of the coin there seems to be a heck of a lot that either aren't that good or are learning and wanting those top dollar creator prices for their not top of the line stuff.

I think many need to start pricing their stuff right, then they might see a bit of an increase..

I'm not paying top dollar for bad rigging and an even worse paint job..I'm not paying anything for it really, I'm just walking passed.. hehehe

 

 

[pizza7]

On 7/31/2023 at 11:32 PM, Rowan Amore said:

I must be the only one who doesn't do outfits.  I have one that only changes when I get a new skin which isn't that often.  I use the same base skin, addons, etc every single day.  That's the only outfit I have.  Is that weird?

not at all, dotn use outfits, i liek the joy of making a new dress form scrath , so it is never the same, i also do not need tens of k's

amount of dresses. i think some people here have a trouble with change, life is change people, else you are dead.

[AmeliaJ08]

14 hours ago, Cougar Sangria said:

Maitreya non-curvy?  Seriously?  Granted I don't have T&A that goes on for days, but I have curves.  I have seen some Matreya's I thought for sure were other mesh bodies, that are even more curvier than mine.  Non-curvy?  Pfft.

Yeah, even the Maitreya default shapes are intensely curvy.

I think certain other bodies might be warping perceptions on this one... I know it can be far more 'extreme' but if anything it's a challenge to make Lara 5.3 genuinely slim, she definitely does not want to be.

 

[Ceka Cianci]

46 minutes ago, AmeliaJ08 said:

Yeah, even the Maitreya default shapes are intensely curvy.

I think certain other bodies might be warping perceptions on this one... I know it can be far more 'extreme' but if anything it's a challenge to make Lara 5.3 genuinely slim, she definitely does not want to be.

 

Ya, I remember the first day when I bought mine.. One of the reasons was because it had curves, just like my TMP and Belleza did..

my first body was Belleza Venus, then they gave us the other bodies when they updated.. The Isis and Freya..

I loved that body at the time, but couldn't get the butt to work for me at the time.. It had a nice butt, but not my butt.. hehehe

Then I think it was TMP and Maitreya that I got next.. I can't remember the order in which, but I remember loving the TMP butt, but not being able to find good things for it and hating the credit system and the whole everything about the shops..

Then went with Maitreya as my main after that.. It just seemed to have everything and way less headaches than the TMP..

Honestly, I think there always has been a want for really heavy bottom curve, even when it was system avatars..

Anyone remember the wide crotch avatars that had hips & butts on 100%. There was a lot of avatars wearing that look when it was trending and it trended  like old school trends.. Not these flash in the pan trends for more sales..

Maitreya had curves from the get go.. it just got covered up as you mentioned, by the extreme curve bodies..

I get mine where I like it and even get IM's about my curves.. But put me next to one of the extreme curves and I'll be looking like I need more calories.. hehehe