What you’ve mentioned has limited impact on a quality product. I’ve already addressed everything, including how it won’t affect star ratings, and you know it’s a small group of people causing trouble for everyone. I believe you’re still exaggerating and overreacting to the impact on the vast majority. Regardless, I’m glad to see feedback like yours on marketplace practices and hope they take it seriously in the future by finding solutions rather than passively removing all text reviews and sacrificing all users’ rights.
I haven’t used Unity yet, but I recognize the strengths of its engine. If they communicate more effectively, why wouldn’t I consider switching? For example, at least they improved their pricing model after criticism from users, unlike FAB, which refuses to make any changes by far.
Epic could also create an automatic topic in this forum for each assets and link it to the asset page or event embed it since they are using Discourse as their forum platform.
Still have yet to see any evidence of this whatsoever. Unless you know this for certain I suspect it’s more likely you are just getting trolled by some kids, and taking the bait hard.
Serious game devs aren’t going around conniving to bully artists into lowering their store prices. There isn’t an evil cabal of game devs out there scheming to harass marketplace sellers into low prices.
Well, “good news” your next clients can’t even add new reviews if, like me, your asset doesn’t have enough reviews. The more I dig, the more I’m depressed
Upvote so epic see it
But to be fair, there are people who are selling environments and props for hundreds of dollars. Of course, it’s no reason to blackmail them into getting an discount when they can easily report you for it.
Most of them in my experience fit the price better in quality and quantity than certain loud individuals.
Demonizing their own market over trivialities is a great way to never sell anything. Pricing things to where the buyer could commission better (and exclusively) also accomplishes this greatly. Some people never seem to learn that the marketplace doesn’t exist in a bubble. No reviews and QA is just lost sales.
I’ve only left one bad review and have never asked for a refund. Epic would make a very big mistake losing a customer like me Edit: Sorry, that sounded like a threat. I’m just very LOYAL. Things keep changing. If I need to change my priorities then so be it.
Honestly, text reviews are a key indicator for me when deciding whether to buy a product.
For example, there was a 5-star product with “support” for Unreal 5.4, but when I looked into the text reviews, several people mentioned that the product requires Apex destruction. This was a dealbreaker for me since Apex is no longer supported by Epic.
If there hadn’t been any text reviews, I wouldn’t have known and might have spent 50 USD, only to request a refund a few minutes later.
Ah, so it prevented a sale! We should delete the text-review feature then… /s
In all seriousness…there are many scenarios like this where I have also seen a low star-rated asset, but bought it anyways because of text-reviews clarifying the limitations and finding that they don’t apply to my use-case. So it goes both ways.
Another fun fact- We can’t edit ratings in Fab. How could anyone think it’s a good idea to prevent users from editing their ratings on top of no written Review?
Another Little Request, Will Fab Team Remove the Fake Reviews (Especially Discord Verification) that are now Shown as Rating? Since those Ratings are Really Misleading (Especially for 100+ Reviews)
Just trying to help the desperate souls like me. You can still go to this website and see the reviews: https://orbital-market.com/, just search for the assets.
A reliable and trustworthy review system only needs 4 features:
• User name
• Mandatory review text
• Review score
• Reporting feature to handle unfair reviews and trolls
The Unreal Marketplace review system already had all these features.
In fact, the Unreal Marketplace review system and FAQ section were already reliable and trusthworthy as they were, if Epic just transfer these features and migrate the missing information I garantee 80% of the sellers complaints about FAB will go away.
The other 20% of complaints can be solved by improving the product search filters and bringing back the wishlist (also migrate the missing info from the Unreal Marketplace).
The minimum 5 reviews should also be dropped, as it only hinders the progress of serious sellers that pour their heart and soul to publish a good product.
Clients are smart enough to decide for themselves if they want to buy a assets that only has 1 positive review.
And even worse, having only a star rating makes FAB suscetible to review bombing, either to improve a asset rating or to decrease competitors assets ratings.
This “new review system” only achieved one thing: it affected the clients and sellers trust on Epic Games, but it is not late to listen to the feedback and fix the situation.
This is an immense step-back even from the internet itself, it look like 1970 catalog now and stars review without comments have no value at all.
Communication is a key for a lot of things: pride and motivation of authors, user purchase even with mixed score, finding answer, giving feedback, explaining the review given, quickly reporting a problem.
Technically migrating the old marketplace review and comment database to fab is almost nothing to do, so it’s a political decision.
Why ?
But just adjusting the rating is not enough to handle the situation.
The review text section was key to gather feedback, sellers could also respond clients that needed help to orient them on what to do or where to open a support ticket to solve any issues.
But now, unhappy clients are must likely to just drop a 1 star rating and NEVER get in touch with the seller to inform what is the problem. And since there is no username on the reviews either, there is no way for the seller to track down the client to offer support.
Mandatory reviews text must come back, as the ability for sellers to reply to the review text directly to address any issues and offer support.
This new review system lacks transparency and reliability, since you can’t verify who left a review its impossible to distinguish bot reviews from real clients.
This sounds like complete fantasy. Only customers can leave reviews, and for Q&A, which developer has time to create a fake account, leave bad comments, then wait weeks for the price to go down? Most add-ons cost the same as 4-10 hamburgers. This is ridiculous.
Last but not least, It’s technically ultra simple to detect fake accounts with zero purchase and such unique activity. I don’t buy this explanation.
Edit: Sorry, that sounded like a threat. I’m just very LOYAL. Things keep changing. If I need to change my priorities then so be it.