Product Ratings ★★★☆☆
GIMLOT
Posts: 11
The ability to leave prodct ratings and reviews would be extremely valueable .
Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
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Comments
Not that valuable since it seems you have only given your own topic 3/5 stars! :)
Moved to the Commons as it is not a Daz Studio topic.
This is a somewhat divise issue - it gets suggested from tiem to time, some people want it and others don't. So far Daz has not implemented it.
It's an absolutely terrible idea.
Amazon and other major companies, with VAST resources and personnel, have extreme difficulty keeping ratings systems honest. Places like Rotten Tomatoes, whose entire business is review and ratings, get rating-bombed all the time.
It would be a massive investment by Daz for, at best, questionable information.
Great idea in theory, but not so good in practice. Stuff will get down-rated because DIM's not working, or Smart Content is scuffed, or the vendor didn't list every asset used in the promos, etc.
Ratings seem not to be beset with a lot of problems at Renderosity, but reviews are mostly 5 stars, with the occasional 1 star because it's not what the purchaser thought it was.
A rating system that could be trusted would of course be of immense value to customers but it's not hard to see where it could fall down... unfortunately.
I never give a rating to anyone. Especially the ones who email before your product even gets to you. If you're not going to give a five ,stars please contact us before you rate us. So we can improve our service.
The problem I see with product ratings is you'll end up having reviews left by BOTH individuals that know how to use the product & those that don't know how to use it. Daz is slow and bogged down enough as it is trying to keep up with tickets. They would have to get staff to take extra time to sift through product reviews for the purpose of separating & removing "angry customer that doesn't know how to use thhe product" reviews from genuine reviews.
I think that people already share their opinions on this forum and I believe it is a shame that DAZ does not have some means of monitoring prevailing opinions of their user-base rather than just ignoring us. I used to work for a software support unit and we too were told to stay away from the user forum because we had real work to do. However I used to read it in my lunch time and I would feed back complaints and just the general mood. In the end, they started allocating a time slot to a rota of individuals to keep an eye on the forum. Maybe an hour a day allocated to each member of the team in turn.
On the other hand, I like the way Rendo do it with a tab for comments from those who have purchased any item in the store. They are mostly polite but I have had some quite nasty responses from upset vendors who were very unhappy with anything less than 5 stars and a glowing review.
As for Rotten Tomatoes - I often go there but I read the professional critic reviews to get some idea of whether I might enjoy the show/movie or not.
Being able to leave actual reviews might be useful because you can ignore the "it dont work" ones. Stars or numbered ratings would likely be a real problem.
Ratings perhaps not so much because of the potential for people to downvote on reasons not the PA's own, but I've long been vying for the option to have reviews. Rendo has it, and it's extremely helpful for me. At least with the DazDeals addon (I think that's what does it) you can see forum references, which can mean buying something or not if it turns out something isn't optimised well, or on the flipside actually contains MORE than is shown in the pics (sometimes for environments, something I would have passed on has been talked about in forums, with extra pics and discussion that's prompted me into buying it).
The forums are quite old. Search engines are the only way to navigate them properly, and there are constant cloudfare errors, so I don't really want to have to rely on them. Reviews are a no-brainer to me—especially because you can see the REASON why someone doesn't like something, and if that reason is user-error, it'll be way more obvious. Plus, add an option for the PA to leave a reply if they so desire
always put a link to a product in your forum posts so people using DAZ-Deals browser addon can read what people have to say
I often check before buying something
I always thought that here at DAZ it's frowned upon to try to contact PAs, as all that feedback/complains/whatever stuff is supposed to be handled by DAZ staff?!? At least that what it seems to be from what some PAs posted here on the forum...
And as Renderosity uses a system where only people who really bought the product are able to comment on it that first part of your answer could be evaded.
the problem with this seems to be - imho - that many PA's post about their new products in the Commons part of the forum, not in the DAZ PA Commercial Products part, which, imho, clutters the forum badly, which isn't helped by the rather suboptimal search engine the forum uses.
And some - mildly said - "aggressive moderating" doesn't help either, as critical posts often seem to have a tendency to vanish.
The way how Renderosity does it, is imho way more helpful, as it allows for customers who have bought the product to share there experience with and tips for the product directly with others, without the need to search in a forum.
Those stars otoh are something that I could utterly do without.
I have to agree with the nice idea, unfortunately usually is a bad reality, viewpoint. The system not being effective on rendo seems to be proof (as nearly all reviews are 5 star, I've never seen constructive criticism). Maybe feedback without any scoring could work.
p.s. That said, some version of this is a way Daz Deals plug-in could add value to their service now Daz has cut them. Their links to forum and gallery entries are currently the closest we have for easy access to product feedback from real-world users.
I also don't think product ratings are good idea. In the extereme, let's not overlook the bigazilion dollar college ranking that spawns a cottage industry of questionable get-ahead schemes. I like art that's partly driven by commercial pressures, and partly driven by altruism and off-the-beaten-path creativity. To this end, the Daz marketplace seems fine to me as it is without product rankings.
A good way to evaluate a product is to see how others have used it. As WendyLuvsCatz pointed out, the Daz browser add-on collects mentions of a product from the Daz forum and gallery. One person's five star is another person's null star; so let me be the judge of that.
Cheers!
Also we have
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/477156/new-novica-forum-members-tips-product-reviews-pt-14/p1
in the forum, which has many reviews and opinions about products. And it is always possible to ask for a review/opinion in the forum.
The DAZ Deals Browser plugin that shows links to forum/gallery mentions has been invaluable to me-that feature alone is worth supporting them.
Product ratings often reflect the ability of the user rather than the quality of the product. It isn't fair to give a poor rating to a product just because the user isn't using it correctly.
I wouldn't be opposed to a pork chop based rating system...
Star based rating systems tend to create controversy, sadness, hurt feelings and occasionally rioting, but have you ever heard of pork chop based rating systems creating any problems?
The answer I was looking for is no... There may be a few simple reasons for this lack of controversy, but pork chops are still the best rating system devised by mankind.
7 pork chops would be the highest rating, with negative zero pork chops being the lowest... with clockwise rotation indicating fractional values in between... the pork chop oriented with the bone up would indicate a whole number and for example "6.5 pork chops" would be represented by the bone oriented down.
All I'm saying is just consider it... no pressure... think it over... you won't regret it.
Renderosity has had reviews for at least a decade. They aren't useful. Almost always routine, non-specific praise. I don't think delighted customers throwing out "Fantastic! Five Stars!!!!!!" or angry purchasers typing "Completely useless. Zero stars" tells me anything useful.
Renders by end users are a bit more useful, but not much--You're wading through renders by the technically incompetent and renders that don't use content in ways that give you useful info. about the item, like clothing which has had a completely different shader applied to it. And consumer renders won't usually show up in useful numbers until the item isn't new.
For reviews to be genuinely useful, we're going to need to see at least a couple of written paragraphs, plus multiple sample renders. We'd need a frank assessment of the problems and deficiencies of content, and I just don't think Daz would consider that Daz-friendly or PA-friendly. Even pointing out the redundancy of many of the items (e.g. "Didn't we see a paler version of this character from this PA last month?") wouldn't serve Daz's interest. I don't think Daz wants to spend time policing/curating reviews either.
Given that Daz wants a high volume of releases (dozens of items per week), you'd need either a team of renderers working multiple hours per day at a non-paying job, or be restricted to a relatively small percentage of Daz content, just the most popular items. If somebody wanted to act as a reviewer with their own blog/website, with in-depth reviews of a limited number of content items, okay. But I don't see this happening at Daz's site.
Perhaps we could get something going at DevArt? I think most of us have a login there and we wouldn't have the severe TOS that prevents customers from seeing exactly what they are buying. There's also Reddit. I'm thinking of anything from an in-depth review to just a render of the product or character. I don't look at the gallery here at DAZ but I often check DevArt for DAZ renders, freebies and tutorials.
There should be technical information as well, size of the installation file, number of vertices, RAM usage etc.
PA's have been required to list the polygon count of models for a long time now..so one day..hopefully that information will show up in the product pages
I have to admit, I also often fall in the "Nice textures and morphs" category of reviews at Rendo. Usually when there's either a) several other reviews that already say what I would/could say or b) everything important is already mentioned by the PA in the item's description.
Otoh I also often give more detailed reviews when I'm the first one to give a review or when the item is in need for a more detailed review, due to the PA giving only a basic description, while the product offers or lacks vital things not mentioned. And there have been many occasions when the reviews helped me to decide to buy or not buy a product, when such details weren't available in the description, being them positive or negative.
The big plus for me about the Rendo way of allowing only buyers of products to review them is, that there's not an army of supporters coming out of their holes when something not utterly postive is posted in this forum about their beloved favourite PA.
And, as already mentioned, the stars can be neglected as they don't offer any real information compared to texts.
There allready is a rating system - it's called the DAZ forums. If there's something wrong with a product, you hear about it in the Forums - if customers are raving over a miraculous new product, you usually get a thread in the forums.
At one point I loved coming in to The Commons when a new product was released, because there was usually a thread about it filled with people showing off the cool renders they had done and other people going 'whoa, they should hire you! That looks awesome, I'm definitely wishlisting/getting this!'
But over time new product threads shifted to commentary about how this product was 35 cents higher than a similar product two years ago and how sales are terrible and just a general tide of negativity.
It would be awesome if we could get back to that earlier form, because it was a great way to find out the possibilities of a product and potential issues when threads were about the product and not about how it is sold.
We shouldn't need to wait for someone's review to see the size of download needed. That's been available from Renderosity's product pages for as long as I remember. If a pair of earrings is a 900 MB file, that's important info that shouldn't be a post-purchase surprise. Same is true with the number of vertices.
Installed files size and RAM usage might be somewhat dependent on the end user's hardware and what the user does with the content, but we ought to be able to have ballpark estimates for the hardware demands as a regular part of the product page. It's appreciated when the PA mentions that a product may be especially demanding. But I suppose this is a matter of short-term thinking about discouraging sales vs. the long-term benefit of a base of well informed customers.
(I can usually guess the amount of HD/SSD space installation will require based on the listed features in the product description, plus or minus 20%, but there are some unpleasant surprises every now and then.)
I agree with the point of discussions being more about the sales and prices, than the products themselves. Which unintentionelly serves as a perfect example against "reviews" in the forum compared to the way the reviews are done @Rendo (directly linked to the product and only to be made by people who really bought the product).
As for Novica's and Forum Members Tips & Product Review Thread (which don't want to bash with my post): I bought the Cookie and Cocoa Outfit today. DAZ-Deals tells me, there's three posts in the forum mentioning this outfit. #1 is "PC+ Prices are higher than before" - okay, not much info to be expected there.. Post #2 and #3 are supposed to be in Novica's thread, but in the end I had to look very carefully to see where that product was mentioned. In a list of items bought. No tips or reviews involved.
So even though there ARE often interesting tips and reviews in Novica's thread - and cudos to her for the effort to put in it - they are presented in a fashion that gives not too much help for customers to find proper feedback information about products.
So it's still my opinion, that Rendo handles the rating part for their products at least 99,5% better than DAZland
personally not interested in a rating system
I started to use the Daz Deals browser add-on. Since then, I consider the number of good looking gallery entries featuring a product to be a good indicator of the quality and usefulness of said product.