Okay so I really wanted to convey my unhappiness with the current state of the Epic Games Launcher, I really dont want to go on about it so I’ll try to put across all my grievances as nicely as I possibly can in hopes they might get looked into.
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The main issue is the loading times, once the Store, Marketplace, Library, Vault has loaded its much better but getting to that point seems slow and excessively tedious.
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The lag, most of the Launcher stays unresponsive for me even when the page has entirely loaded for the store and the Marketplace. Other parts of the launcher are better but still lag greatly when doing simple things like scrolling.
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There are 2 Libraries, this is confusing, one is under Unreal Engine and the other is the Store library. When discussing bugs in the past in regards to hitting the Unreal Engine section on the side bar people got confused and it occurred to me this is a bad UX choice (similar to an issue in Steam with 2 tabs for libraries actually).
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There is a bug when clicking the Unreal Engine section where the entire side of the launcher changes font size, not overly annoying but I believe its this sort of separation and inconsistency which is the cause for alot of the Launchers issues.
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The game Store still has no shopping cart or other basic features this far along and the roadmap keeps getting pushed back for backend stuff which doesnt really affect the end user to much of a degree.
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The Vault needs to be separated from Project Library and allow for the use of tags similar to those of the Marketplace, this way I can filter just blueprint Marketplace assets etc.
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Text is being cropped for Marketplace titles, in many places there is no word wrap for titles so they are being clipped off making it difficult to distinguish what they are in some instances.
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Ability to sign out of chat while still being logged into the Launcher for Store and Marketplace etc. I honest only use the Epic chat as a joke, there are plenty of far better chat clients out there which could be either integrated or used in the Epics chats place. I really dont need another one!
As someone who has spent a decent amount on the Launcher I feel like my opinion should have some weight as I am at a point where I feel like Epic is taking advantage by not providing me with updates to the Launcher! I bought games on the Store with the understanding that features were coming, meaningful features which affect me directly as an end user. Things like Epic hosting videos really doesnt change anything, infact if I go by other services Ive used in the past Facebook, the usability of the platform got worse when they stopped allowing YouTube embedding to focus on their own service and the same could be said for Steam which I still have issues streaming nicely on.
Im really not sure what the cause of the application being so slow is, I have an i7-7700HQ, 32GB RAM and a 1070GTX, I doubt its my low specs as Discord, Chrome, etc work very snappy and I really cant blame Slate as UE4s UI has always been really snappy too.
I really dont feel like clicking on Library for my games should take the amount of time it does, those are my games and that list only updates when I make a purchase or install a game so Im not understanding the mentality behind it constantly loading and checking. The Store as well, I dont mind if its cached somewhere and maybe its the animations slowing everything down making it look like its downloading when its not, the fades, slides and little transitions. If that is the case Id like the option to turn them all off.
Im really trying to be supportive of Epic but its so difficult when the Launcher is so poor to the point it makes it difficult to justify purchases on there.
Thanks
Daniel Batten
P.S. This isnt even getting into the issue with having to login to the site all the time and constantly being told Im logging in on a new device (when Im not). This is adding needless friction for people who are part of the development community and spend large amounts of time on Epics domain.