Quote - What hurts Dawn is she only works in Poser 9 or higher... not older Poser and not DAZ 3. Some long-term DAZ users have not upgraded to DAZ 4... for the same reasons folks from Poser 8 and older have not bought Poser 9 and up... it forces the user to have to change the 'ease of use' they came accustomed to.

Couple of points, and just my opinion, not to offend/berate/etc.  If you are happy with Poser 5-8, as they are and they do what you want them to do, then that's completely fine :)  However...

You can't have new program features without a new version of the program.  A WM figure can have a spherically-rigged counterpart but you are doing two things: you are yet again dividing content and there would be DS 4, Poser 9+ and Legacy splits, which is triple work for standard items and then complete re-rigging of other content which previously needed tricks and tweaks (capes, skirts, etc).  Second point: you are detracting from newer features to settle for P4 style features.

You could go with only a spherically rigged figure but, again, nothing new to see.  No real tech improvements.  There's no need for P9+ to exist at all.

We had the same issues back when Poser 5 came out and everyone was going to stay with the P4/Pro-Pack features.  Folks avoided Material Room nodes, the Cloth Room and the Hair Room.  The legacy stuff just kind of held us down.  Things really didn't start catching up until we got into Poser 6 and more-so when we got into Poser 7.

At least on the Poser side of things, there's no loss of ease of use in Poser 9+.  There are new things to explore, but figures bend like figures.  Conent conforms like it has conformed. Content is loaded like it has always been loaded.

In fact, some of this is a lot easier now:  You can go to the library, highlight 10 clothing items and drag them to the scene, release your mouse right on the figure and they all conform automatically.

The direct manipulation tool makes it easier than ever to bend body parts.

I could probably list off many more "quality of life" improvements that are in there and that's not even touching the technical tools like the Morph Brush, Grouping Tool and so on that have been massively improved.

When Poser Pro 2010 came out fully 64 bit... THAT was the absolute dream most Poser users had been waiting for.

Can you remember trying to render complicated scenes in Poser 4 thru 6? If you had a scene with 4 or more DAZ figures you basically had to layer render every scene. Otherwise you'd risk Poser just dying halfway thru a render.

Most skin breakthrough is far more easier and faster to fix with photoshop. Why spend hours and hours trying to learn the morphing tool? Screen? Surface? size of brush? Why? When photoshop has a magic brush.

3DSmax and Cinema4d and Lightwave... these are motorcycles. Poser is a bicycle. We're trying to add a motor to the bicycle. How about we embrace the glory of the bicycle. The 3dsmax crowd has complained about Poser for years because Poser offers something they detest... and this thing is the VERY thing that made most of us get involved with Poser in the first place.

I'll stop - I'm done - clap your hands - screw this forum interaction. I like to argue more than contribute. Back to lurking.

I bought Poser pro 2012. I'll buy Pro 2014... to support the Poser staff. But to be damned honest to actually use them would be more of a pain in the rear than continuing to use Pro 2010 which I will. But, I won't bore folks anymore with these boring rants of mine