I just feel in a realistic market place to consumer relations, there is a large inequality. The price point seems too high for what is available to the customer without prior comprehensive experience. NO ONE will be able to come here familiar, or a professional, in other programs, and be able to go through documentation, and in a reasonable time make back that money. Products should be worth their face-value, not potential. There are very few professional terragen artists, and like I mentioned, what they discover for professional quality in scenes, they don't often share. I can easily see why, though. Being that person, with the level of quality in your work, and knowing how to do it, leaves you open in the market for prospective contractual work, like some undertake here. Or, from what I see in the industry, Matt himself does. While that's their right to their work, it leaves the community lacking.
Purchasable presets are very nice, but there needs to be more, and feel also encompass larger scale work. I mean, look at other companies and software, they'll provide even commercial assets for testing free of charge, especially for improvement in their software and future methods to improve render times. Disney/Pixar are really big in sharing certain high-stress and complicated scenes because understanding them, and mastering them, is key to improving the whole field.
Like I've mentioned, I've gone through everything that is free, and it's highly unconstructive content that doesn't offer much in the terms of education, but asset picking. For example, it's easy to spot here when other people reuse assets from previous projects over the years without much variation in settings. This isn't because it's fun to use, but because a lot of people, who have even admitted, are still simply confused by much of Terragen that is not even thoroughly explained, or even provide examples on. So when something works, or look good, they save it to clip file or whatever to reuse. This is intended behavior, but I don't think it was intended to be so heavily dependent on other peoples clips. I think this trend is heavy, even outside Planetside, because of lack of resources to properly learn from.
This is why with some of my work I provide a disclaimer for education use. I try to make sure the node tree is straight forward and shader names explain any complex work being done, or add notes. The ultimate goal is that by being able to "read" out the tree, and what's happening, it will stick in peoples minds and provide them a "method" to do something without much experimentation or trial and error.
While I do have these concerns though, like I said, if I had the money, I would gladly support Terragen and purchase a copy. I advocate for something I don't even own because the power and potential in Terragen in my eye is "astronomical". I routinely come up with ideas to push Terragen, and while a lot are not even worth a share, some stuff I have discovered is pretty cool, even if I found it was attempted before. Sometimes I achieve better! Which I feel proud about.
That being said, I strongly feel this potential is being hidden or overlooked when a prospective customer reviews the software and what it has to offer them as far actually learning and using the software. The price tag next to the desert that is the Planetside "University" is disconcerting. I feel that a lower end-price (and lower maintenance) together with the support of the community support, there would be a large flux of trials and purchases, which would subsequently translate over to community engagement, tutorials, etc. Maybe a open tutorial campaign? Or private (membership based until complete) wiki project for select members to start building a comprehensive documentation on? I'd definitely volunteer in areas I feel I can appropriate add too. If need be I'll volunteer web development time to develop necessary secure features needed for a public Planetside wiki if need be.
Maybe for the next milestone there could be a promotional period of highly discounted creative licenses to get people engaged with Terragen. I'd love for my friends that were overwhelmed to come back. Especially when their work in other software puts my entire artistic endeavors to shame.
I feel I should note that my opinions about the price of Terragen are based on Non-Commercial copies, for I hope apparent reasons. In-fact, I feel the commercial license is relative cheap, especially in contrast to some of the software. Last I checked one of the commercial licenses for a engine I wanted was 1,400 USD (annually).