Since UEFN launched, I’ve had some complaints about it. Those complaints I feel, are blocking creators from truly realizing their potential and creativity and making content similar to what Epic showcased when UEFN launched. One of the posts that I made in 2023 was bumped recently and I ve read it again, just to realize nothing has changed really.
Here is the thread (written on November 2023): UEFN is not fun - my thoughts
When is Epic going to start to lock in and start making UEFN fun? When are we going to look past all the technical difficulties and start making the editor better? Seems its only the creators that have to do this today, with all the problems that have been passed to us.
More specifically:
- Only half of the issues we report get actually looked at. Most of them get lost in some part of the process, ESPECIALLY feature requests. I don’t remember how many times I’ve reported that the overall editor UX needs a major overhaul, or that the forums are broken, but it seems nobody listens in specific departments.
- Anything released is not tested at scale. Every update we are like “here is this cool shiny thing that we can all play” but the moment we start using it, it fumbles. That’s because there isn’t a good QA process before something gets locked for release, and there isn’t a good process from keeping something from regressing. Epic hasn’t figured out yet how to keep things stable in a live service UGC tool. This causes impossible resources to have to be applied from both sides to keep things playable.
- We don’t have access to simple things still. No player control, no “tap” interaction for Scene graph, no custom NPC posing that’s simple, half of the workflows are still weirdly locked and require workarounds to do (which makes me think that nobody inside Epic truly builds examples to check those), full tool suites are busted beyond recognition (sequencer, UMG) and using them is like using experimental features (when they used to work mind you).
- All while expectations are rising and we are all wanting to work faster with the same processes, and even though we’ve got Python editor scripting (which is a great start btw), its still very limited, especially when it comes to drawing content for editor tools (like creating a list with thumbnails, or visually representing something in the viewport).
Around 3-4 months ago, I made a list of all the issues I had while I was in the editor building, in a 2-week window. The list turned out gigantic, but Epic did look at some of the issues and documented them, and even though some of them were major for me building, I only saw 1-2 getting addressed; others were stuck in repro steps with QA or in unknown status. And what annoyed me the most is that Epic completely ignored all the feature requests that will make the editor more agile, even though this is the biggest weakness of UEFN. I ll keep saying it until it gets addressed, the editor is slow and unfun. I don’t want to open it every day to build, unless its a new project (because that makes a lot of things work faster). I’ve deleted all the cache folders now, which fixed some of my issues (the ones that I mentioned above that were fixed, it was my actions that fixed them), but it still feels slow, broken, and now it also crashes very frequent as well, something that didnt happen when I wrote the original post above. Which makes it for me that we are 2 steps back from that time.
Nothing has improved, it feels like. Discovery is still broken, UX has gotten worse than what it was (with the exception of Python scripting) because Scene Graph is not user-friendly for artists (so anything new feels useless to non-coders) and also broken (cause as I’ve said above, it’s not tested at scale), and our input does not matter either. So really, idk how this editor is meant to not downspiral even more, if our input doesn’t matter and everything is getting worse.
Where is the strong lead like Zak to organize and plan teams, to avoid manpower from working on irrelevant things or not working at all? I 've seen one lead leave after the other, in an already unstable environment. Can we just lock in and use our potential, both Epic and us, through those tools? We want to build something currently, and we can’t. We are blocked. The regressions are too many to build something worthwhile, and we are constantly on fire as creators for not building good-quality content. Epic still uses C++ to build its modes. DevRel avoids telling us how much manpower Epic really has on UEFN. Like, what is this state? If this whole thing fails, this is justified now.
But enough with the problems, we need to all get to work and bring back UEFN to its reputation from 2023, so we can finally move forward.
- Remove spamming from Discovery. Make bans permanent with a more sophisticated appeal process.
- Remove the leeches from the platform, or force them to work instead of copying whatever BR is doing. We’ll never be able to stand on our own feet if everyone just adds the latest weapons on every update and calls it a day, and both parties will be losing money for no benefit. Flip discovery visibility, make the niche come forward, and ditch FOMO, leave FOMO for friend/matchmaking systems.
- Let creators form organic communities, and let players communicate within discovery to push bad content out themselves (with written feedback, not arbitrary analytics).
- Provide great content with exclusive cosmetics, like you used to.
- Care for the creators, they are not competition, we are all here to help. Let’s do events together, like before.
- Keep.Engine.Stable. Idk, find a way, slap the wrist on whoever touches code company-wide on specific things, modularize UEFN logic, and isolate it. Stop breaking things like lighting every season, and devices when a new item is being added. Track down mistakes and do postmortems. Whatever it takes, you have to improvise with new workflows, as this is a unique problem to Fortnite, and needs a unique solution.
- Fix Creative and live edit existing issues, and stop breaking it every update. Those two are both great tools to be agile, the thing that UEFN is really bad at. Oh, and add some QA to it cause its clear nobody is testing it, or they are not being thorough (I can tell from the reports when I provide simple steps to repro, I manage to repro on a new level, and then I am told “we can’t repro”)
- Stop all the marketing for creator earnings, we don’t need any more leeches in the space. Start promoting quality and what the editor can do (and be truthful, don’t show broken or obscure workflows that take more than 2 weeks to pull off)
and finally realize this,
UGC means building a game within hours or within 2 weeks for larger projects. If the tools do not allow that (and they don’t), they need to change so they do. Simple as that.
PS. Here is the UX list that I made 3 months ago: UEFN Friction Issues List - Wert - Google Sheets