Store is crippled without way to easily find base characters
There are thousands of items, hundreds of pages, and trying to find all of the base characters that are available is next to impossible. There is the People and Wearables category, but no way to find only the base characters. Seems this is a problem, as so many items revolve around this unknown list.
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Simple way workaround: Type "Starter Bundle" in the search field. That will give you all the figure starter bundles under "People&Wearbles", and they always contain the baise figure link. Under Artist, linit to DAZ Originals.
http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=starter+bundle
Alternately, search for "Base figure". It might show up a few more base figures, but you should be generally good there, too if you go to "People&Wearables". Under Artist, linit to DAZ Originals.
http://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=base+figure
Well, since you have the program and it is listed in your Product Library, the base figures since Genesis (1, 2 and 3) will each be listed as Starter Essentials. So those are already covered.
And for previous generations they go by name/number...like Michael 3/Victoria 4.
Also, by default, if you own them, they won't show in a store search, so things like Starter Essentials won't show up.
It works (or rather, doesn't) the other way as well — ever since the store "improvement", I've found I have to jump through way too many hoops to find the characters that go with each of the base figures. I can always find some fairly easily, but I don't think I've ever managed to find all of them first time; there's always at least one or two that churn to the surface of the store days, weeks, or even months later. It's a particular nuisance in the past few months, as I've been picking up the Generation 7 bases as they come up in various sales.
And not only the characters and base figures....
I've thought about this a bit... leaving aside better meta data and/or a better database with more fluid categorization as a core principle, part of me wants to try a third-party index: as-is, no guarantees, no warrantee, no implied affiliation etc. but I always balk at the plethora of little toy figures and fairy dollies and doilies and so on, in the Store - in this context these items just don't interest me as much as more generalized, real-world modelling. Yet if you "exclude" certain... categories some people will always howl. And little itsy-bitsy tiny bits of things can always be re-purposed in that occasional burst of inspiration and mental clarity so I guess we do want to include all of it if we can.
I'm thinking that a 3rd party index may need to be like Wikipedia (say) where anyone may contribute and/or suggest changes or inclusions, modifications etc. Monster project! I have almost zero experience with derivative Wiki's and the Wiki movement in general.
Oh well, at least it's better than iTunes, where I have seen some products not displaying at all.
I have a very troubling essay saved here someplace, a scholarly piece about "Why newspaper indexing will never be any good" or something very similar. Probably downloaded from the Society of Indexers... anyway scary topic + it kind of reminds me of searching the DAZ store, and searching things on my computer where some PA's come out top tier as opposed to categories lower down the list. Nothing against the PA's - I just wonder how that came about.
I have no idea how DIALOG is doing at this time but some organizations (the New York Times and other big newspapers come to mind, and PLAYBOY) have been struggling with this. Personally I think I can search faster and better when there's less pictures and arbitrary lines and boxes other visual material, and less WHITE SPACE but again, that's my preference; your results may vary.
Suggested reading = Wikinomics by Don Tapscott which I think analyzes some current trends.
I admit I find searching the store frustrating. If I type in a search phrase, I'm often presented with a choice of categories, a number of which might be appropriate, but no list-all option. Sometimes you just want a straight-up list of items.
I'm still surprised at some of the good products in the store that occasionally show up. I don't mean the base characters although to be honest, I'm not sure what a base character is.
My search of "Pro Bundle" with the DAZ Store search engine though did return all the Pro Bundles back to the Victoria 4.2 Pro Bundle. I would consider any character listed in a Pro Bundle or Starter Bundle as a Base Character.
Oh yeah, the range is tremendous. And more keeps popping up, like the listing of old stuff here - http://www.daz3d.com/runtimedna-blowout-sale
It says there are over a thousand items... I have to take that on faith.
It is hard to find anything. The website is a textbook example of bad design.
YAYAYAYAY!
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-8-core-figures
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-3-core-figures
https://www.daz3d.com/genesis-2-core-figures
It's now possible to find the core charcters easily!
I'm not sure how to find core original Genesis (1) characters.
I don't know if there is a way to use logic operatives like "not 8" and so on to refine the search.
I just typed in female and I got a bunch
As I explained a few times : prefer Google search engine to any other in-website search engine.
If looking for "coat", Google search by typing for example :
site:daz3d.com coat
Searching from Google rather than using websites' own search engines, you have access to the power of Google and all of its powerful operators. Some examples of operators :
to exclude something from the search : -8
to exclude a sequence of words : -"Genesis 3"
to search on a specific website : site:website.com
to search for a sequence of words : "Genesis 8 Female"
to combine multiple searches into 1 : male OR female
to search for pages that need to include a word : allintext:dforce
etc.
You can use that in the Google images search which will give you much pertinent results and a huge list of image previews related to what you're looking for.
Google is powerful, why not take advantage of it?