Dear Unreal Engine Support Team,
I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to express my appreciation for the remarkable assets available on the Unreal Marketplace. The creative offerings from developers are truly exceptional and contribute immensely to the Unreal Engine community.
However, I wanted to share some observations regarding the current state of the Marketplace’s search engine functionality. In my experience, the search engine’s effectiveness leaves much to be desired, often leading to a frustrating and time-consuming process of finding the assets I need.
In comparison to the quality of assets present, the search functionality appears to be reminiscent of early search engines like Altavista from the late 1990s. This discrepancy diminishes the overall user experience and the efficiency of navigating through the Marketplace.
An illustrative instance is a recent encounter with a captivating asset: Scifi Beast04 Whalesnake. In an attempt to locate it, I experimented with various search terms, only to encounter suboptimal outcomes:
- “robot fish” - no results
- “robot shark” - no results
- “shark” - no results
- “robot whale” - no results
- “mechanical shark” - no results
- “mechanical fish” - no results
- “mechanical whale” - no results
- “sea monster” - no results
- “whale” - successful outcome
It appears that the current search engine heavily relies on an exact match between the search query and the item description. This approach significantly hampers discoverability, especially when variations of keywords are involved. For example, terms like “robot whale” did not yield any results, despite the presence of a relevant asset.
I truly believe that the Unreal Marketplace has the potential to provide an outstanding user experience, both for asset creators and consumers. Enhancing the search functionality to accommodate more nuanced search queries and synonyms could greatly contribute to achieving this goal. A search engine that can intelligently recognize related terms and variations would undoubtedly help users explore and discover the wide array of assets more effectively.
I understand that refining search algorithms can be a complex undertaking, but I am confident that by making incremental improvements, the Marketplace can offer a more user-friendly and efficient search experience.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I genuinely value the efforts of the Unreal Engine team and look forward to witnessing further enhancements that contribute to the growth and success of this incredible platform.