@Unreal_Josh, I’m sorry but this is absolutely pathetic. There is no need to disable or remove existing features and content prior to the release of these “improvements”, which haven’t even been outlined.
- Don’t disable existing features.
- Don’t delete existing content.
- Develop a proper migration strategy for the upcoming “improvements.”
If you’re really looking to improve the marketplace, take some ideas from Unity and combine it with the feedback the community has been spamming you with and you’ve continued to ignore… Also, be transparent about what you’re planning and get feedback on it before wasting the time building it out.
Some Ideas:
- Improve performance
- The marketplace site is often a bit slow
- The Epic Launcher itself is bulky and slow, even on high-end machines, making the marketplace unbearable
- Improve search/filter options.
- Add the ability to do exact or fuzzy searches
- Add the ability to combine or negate words and/or tags
- Add the ability to include, exclude, or show exclusively ‘Owned’ items
- Add the ability to sort by initial release date OR last updated at date
- Add the ability to search by author name
- Improve the Wishlist
- Remove the 200-item limit
- Allow users to create multiple, named, wishlists and easily (AND INTUITIVELY) place items in 1 or more lists
- Don’t remove items from wishlist when purchased, but provide a filter to show/hide them or a button for the user to have all ‘Owned’ items removed
- Better yet… rename “wishlists” to just “lists” and use those “lists” as categories in the user’s ‘Owned’ library so that their library is automatically organized when they purchase items and it’s no longer some insane disorganized mess of hundreds of assets.
- Improve Seller Dashboard
- Give sellers access to the information they need to provide the support you expect them to provide. In other words, give sellers access to usernames, order numbers, or some verifiable piece of information that they can query the buyer for when they seek support on another platform without having to ask them to spam the Reviews/Questions… The spam is a direct result of YOUR failure to listen to the needs of sellers.
- Seller API
- Same as above… give sellers access to the information they need, but through an API so it can be automated by their site, support system, Discord bot, etc.
- Anything a seller can do on your site should be able to be done through an API. Let them automate their releases and price changes if they like.
- Public API
- Create a public-facing and documented API for fetching product information, prices, etc. Encourage blogging about popular items and empower authors by giving them the ability to fetch current information about that item. Might be a good idea to create an affiliate program and provide affiliate links to each product too…
- Again, anything a buyer can do on your site should be able to be done through an API. Let them download their owned assets to an external storage device or for another program to manage. Not only would this help manage personal asset libraries, but also when working on a team.
- Buyers should be able to subscribe to ‘Owned’ product updates… update notifications should be delivered via email, on the site, in the launcher, and/or through a pubsub API.
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Require semver versioning of every product update and a listing of what engines each version should be compatible with. Allow buyers to download any version, not just the latest.
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Create a designated place for sellers to add change logs for each release and a way for buyers to be able to see a full history of the change logs.
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Update the marketplace layout… compared to Unity’s Asset Store, the Unreal Engine Marketplace is a mess. Update the design and add helpful features like “Quick Look” to avoid having to load the full project page for a preview.
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DON’T REMOVE REVIEWS OR QUESTIONS. They are an integral part of the buyer experience and any decision to do so will ultimately hurt your sales… which will drive away creators.