Quote from: Matt on July 27, 2018, 04:26:35 AM
While I appreciate the support, I don't think the "one man" or "small team" argument is very compelling here. To the buyer, it's about value for money. A possible response that argument is "that's fine that you are a small team with fewer new features, but you should charge less". The current pricing is a weighted consideration of many factors. The truth is that many of our users do see value for money and anticipate return on investment at the current prices. But many people won't. That is actually one of the main reasons we decided to switch to a Maintenance model. Previously, if you wanted upgrade from Terragen 3 to Terragen 4, you had no choice in how much you paid. Users who are using it everyday professionally would pay the same upgrade price as a casual user, and that didn't seem fair in our view. Now with Maintenance you get to choose how often you update your Maintenance. Those customers who are really benefiting from regular updates are paying the $249 per year. While those who are less enthusiastic can choose to pay however frequently they want. I think this is fairer. But it's a complex topic and there are various viewpoints on this. We're listening, and we'll consider making adjustments.
Matt, the big difference now is that current "perpetual" license owners no longer receive bug fixes without maintenance, so it isn't quite true that "perpetual" are same as before. In order for perpetual license owners to get bug fixes, etc. we have to pay for maintenance.
Previously, we'd pay for version upgrades, but we would also get the interim fixes and updates throughout the version as part of our upgrade cost. The upgrade cost still occurs, but us "perpetual" license owners are now actually getting
significantly less for that upgrade cost because we're only receiving a year's worth of fixes. That's less value for cost received.
If the upgrade were significantly cheaper, the annual maintenance cost would be more tolerable. However, the combination of the relatively-high upgrade pricing (in % of new license cost),
and the new addition of relatively-significant (in % of new license cost) annual maintenance cost to obtain ongoing fixes beyond a year is asking a lot. That's especially true given the annual maintenance cost does not
guarantee covering a new version upgrade.
In fact, based on prior length of version development cycles (and current position in v4's cycle at 4.2), it is actually unlikely my next year's maintenance cost (if purchased now) will include a new version upgrade. It wouldn't be until the
following annual maintenance period a new version upgrade would likely be covered. That means I'll pay the v3->v4 upgrade cost plus (at least)
two annual maintenance period fees to get to the next version -- that adds up to more than the cost of an entire new license, which IMO is asking too much.
I really hope that helps explain where I'm coming from with my complaint about the pricing structure.
Also, I'd love to use a Creative license, but it is missing critical (basic, IMO) 3D IO features, thus anyone who needs to interact with other 3D content/apps (like me) is more or less required to purchase the Professional license. The Creative license is also missing EXR output and image-processing capabilities, and that
seriously limits Terragen's ability to produce decent images at all, IMO.
I use Terragen as a hobbyist, but were I restricted to just what the Creative license offered, I probably wouldn't use Terragen
at all. Unfortunately, that appears to be where the Professional license pricing structure is pushing me anyway.