Your Recent Survey….

[Fridayvfx]

Hey Guys, long term freelancer here with >30 licenses.


I‘ve started to fill out your recent survey, but after about one third into the survey I‘ve stopped filling it out because it was not a survey about Vray and it‘s upcoming features, but seemingly only about E-Commerce and it felt like the questions where designed to figure out „just how much can we increase the price without you leaving Vray“

In the past I actually liked to fill out these kinds of things because as a user you would get a bit of an insight about what might be up and coming and a rough idea of the direction where it’s going in terms of development.

I know building a brand has become super important to you and I understand the economic pressure of having this many employees and responsibilities in a tough market. But yeah, I just wanted to give you some feedback on your way of collecting feedback I guess.

Thanks!
-Robert

[racoonart]

Since this is coming up, I guess I can add to this. I also didn't finish the survey because I could not get past the question with "what are my problems with subscriptions". The answers were all missing the point (and quite frankly that's part of the issue), I also couldn't skip since it didn't let me nor could I add a custom answer. I find it rather odd that it was either omitted or forgotten to add, but I think most users problem with subscriptions is not one of these technical details but simply the "giving up control". I can elaborate on that but this is not a thread about that (also I'm getting tired of repeating this) but about a survey that is rather pointless in this state.

Apart from that, the same feeling as the thread starter has came to my mind: this isn't a survey about a product, this is a survey about sales. The questions are put in a way that it reads like "how angry will you be if we do x". I love chaosgroups product(s) but I can't shake of the feeling that the "brand" is taking over.

[Michael Plaengsken]

I stopped the survey at the point were I was asked to rate the "value-to-money" ratio of Vray. Is that to check if I'm willing to pay more? TBH, Chaos feels more and more like one of thoses Corporations, were shareholder value becomes more important than the product itself. I know,There are no shares of Chaos yet. Our Studio alrerady suffers from Stockholm Syndrome from our relationship with Autodesk. We use 3ds max and see that there is not much developement going on anymore, and small enhancements get hyped to "killer features", while other packages (#blender) get closer and closer. But we cannot simply switch to a different package, because our whole infrastructure is based on Max (and Vray). I have to admit I find it always suspicious if a company starts to tell the people how great they are instead of just beeing great! I understand, it's called "building the brand" and I guess there are a lot of people now, whose purpose is just that. But I don't care. If the product is really good, you don't need all this apple style keynote and marketing survey BS. Believe me, we are very loyal customers, just for the great products, that Vray and Phoenix are.

[vlado]

There is no point in beating around the bush so I'll be blunt.

As you can guess, the reason for sending the survey is because we are reconsidering our product offerings. The reason to do this is the drastically increased cost of doing business over the past six months or so with expectations of things becoming even more difficult. On the one hand we have soaring inflation and on top of that we have drastically increased salary expectations in the IT sector - our developers have many other options available to them. Rendering is not a terribly profitable business so we have to take measures. The survey is an option for you as a user to influence how we approach this - your opinion does matter.

Best regards,
Vlado

[racoonart]

Thank you vlado for your honest reply, this is very much appreciated (and frankly why we post here after all). I would suggest to go that route then, the survey was titled "How do you use V-Ray", but the survey doesn't have anything to do with it, so if this is what you need to know and get an opinion about it, please put it out like that as well. I know this is probably not how business in this scale works but I prefer being talked to with open cards so we can have an honest and productive discussion about it. The "read between the lines" stuff just doesn't go down well with me.

[Vizioen]

Yeah,... I finished the survey even though I didn't really like that it was so long and some questions were a bit weirdly phrased.

But in all honesty, this is the first time a company asked "me" about its pricing model / prices. And so I tried to complete it as truthfull and honest for both sides as possible. It's a hard nut to crack, and I appreciatie you guys wanting to hear our side of things instead of just bluntly raising the prices or changing to a complete different model that I might only use for 20%. So I hope you at least gain some insight of my fellow users and find common ground to handle this volatile economy.

[luisgamino2]

Hi guys
I Began with the survey with some hapiness and then the survey was really too long, i couldnt finish the survey since every question was harder than the last one and very confusing questions... It was a survey like for 30 or 45 min.

I understand your point here chaos group or vray team, i would like too to keep My perpetual licence since i use it for more artístics ambitions, for architectural spaces i don't do renders for others, i want to play with My own spaces in something i believe in architecture.

Since the pandemic of covid 19 everything goes up in prices, everything is more expensive since 2 years ago, everything, steel, oil, food, servicies, rent, and don't forget the war Ukraine-Rusia, so probably things are going to be harder than Even 1 year ago.

So probably this goes for the software, lets see if the perpetual licence for sketchup cost 750 dollars well probably You can charge another 100 dóllard or the next Big update if You want to upgrade from 5 to 6 if the upgrade cost 450 dóllard then charge 100 or 150 dollards more, everything is expensive and probably is time for the software to get a charge, so if vray 4 to 5 was 450 the upgrade for perpetual licence, since this brutal times can be 550 or 600 dollards.

So with this charge we can keep our perpetual licence, i really would like to keep it i use vray everyday and then You get more money.

The minor updates that You bring between a major versión are great and i really appreciate the Big effort You spent on vray, i use vray gpu... So for me i can pay more money for the next Big update, please remember the pandemic everyone i think are a little bit poor for that reason, so if it is going to be a little more expensive please consider a reasonable amount, between 100 or 200 dollards...at least i can bring an example...


Thanks
Best regards