Do be aware, some characters sold at DAZ look like crap in 4.9 because of the big change in IRAY. I have 3 or 4 G3F characters that look awful.

On the figures mats issue, there should be updates being rolled out for the figures with new Mat presets that have settings for both 4.8 and 4.9 IRAY which should help with the issue. It's an unfortunate side effect of corrections been made to the IRAY render engine which does bring some significant improvements as well as hurdles.

In general it is early days for Daz Connect, hopefully as people can highlight their individual issues, as you have done here. There can be solutions found that can help mitigate the issues and find individual solutions. I see you have raised the issue with Rawb so hopefully he is working on something to help with networking content.