Don´t like the new AssetStore!

Audio
Textures
3D Models
Animation

?

 

Images listed vertically needs to go and so does the lightbox window. Just display them in the image box, and have a lightbox when clicking that. Also, you need left/right arrows to flick through.

I'm assuming the main image is not 16:9 because of backwards compatability, but you should just email asset developers to fix that.

The favourite button shouldn't be layered on the image.

Horizontal scrolling boxes on the main page is just annoying. I guess it's just copied from Google Play, but even they don't use it on their desktop version for good reasons.

It would also be better if it wasn't a full-width design.

 

Lol, this must be Unity3D 2017 right? I still have 5.4.2f2 installed because I can't update.

 

Those screenshots were taken from Chrome.

https://assetstore.unity.com/

 

My biggest issue is that the links in the Notifications section don't work anymore.

I used to be able to jump from the Notification link directly to the asset page. Now the links do nothing.

I submitted a bug report to Unity but haven't heard back.

I also am not impressed with the design. The site does seem faster though.

@Ryiah, thanks for explaining how to revert to the old Asset Store.

 

Thanks by the way. However, I still got that blue-ish Asset Store design like so. Hopefully it stays like this.

 

I also do not like the new asset store design. It is so much harder for me to view assets. I think its more clunky and non-intuitive. I'll still use it, but I vastly prefer the old design far better. It was so easy to find assets using the filter system.

 

Just tried it and I see exactly what you mean that Rewired is completely hidden with their current setup.

Since they have Amazon as a good model of how a store should be like they really have some work to do. One of the most useful things on Amazon is to search items based on best seller status. The limited subset that Unity provides in their store of simple list. I would like to be able to browse from the best selling list for all assets in the unity asset store.

 

Which creates a a kind of filter bubble – like the German saying “Fett schwimmt immer oben“ (fat always floats on top).

I would prefer to benefit of a diversity of assets which all have the same good chance to become successful just based on their quality and usefulness. Once established, such a list does the opposite.

 

Do you have an example on-line store that works that way you mentioned. It would be interesting to see such an example.

Everyone agrees that finding things in the asset store is not easy. But the goal is to be able to find all types of assets using various methods. The problem with the unity asset store it is difficult to do that with the limited subset provided even with this "new" asset store. I like the Amazon model because I have so many ways to find things easily including by sales.

 

One thing I hate is now if you add a free asset to your downloads section or if you buy an asset it no longer shows up in the downloads section of My Assets. You can still get it by going back to its store page and clicking the download button, but it should also be in your My Assets area for ease of use.


EDIT: This seems to now be working correctly.

 

? I just said your kind of list would to the opposite of what I would prefer. The problem is not to find assets, the problem is when some lists and featured slots draw away all of the attention.

 

I think you nailed it. The Unity store, by its´ very nature is for techies who want to be efficient. The new marketplace seems like something for ebay or amazon with mass market consumers in mind who are shopping on mobile devices. They are taking generic design ´rules´ and putting them on a non-standard store.

I have not found anything that seems like an improvement. The two big things I do not like are the huge amount of scrolling and wasted space and also that ( unless I missed it) you can no longer sort a publishers pages with the same options you can sort a search page. ( last updated, price etc). You go to a publishers page and see all their products, and that is it, no sorting at all.

 

I just had a panic moment when I couldn't revert to the old asset store. After logging out and back in, it's working now, but who knows for how long. I don't really get the new design, it has a confusing vibe with its big areas and harsh bw contrast. It definitely seems less inviting than the old version to me.

 

Also, it seems to favor already popular assets at the expense of new ones. So tools for mobile, terrain, etc., that are popular, get featured all the time. But modular packs that do not attain as large of sales because they are more specific to a game or genre are not noticed. The old store was much easier to search and I often found gems I did not notice. Now, the front page is all about the ones I already own. Rarely does something new show up.

I suggest that asset store publishers start being more aggressive in forums to market their products. I hate the thought I might miss something good. The search function is now so terrible on the new store that I do not trust it. Many things do not show up unless you know the exact name.

Sad that they changed it although maybe better for my pocketbook.

 

I'm in general agreement with everything posted so far. My first thought on seeing the new store was, "Is this going to be like the forum revamp?" And the answer is, "Yes."

I'm in favor of updating and improving, but I get the sense that the people making the improvements don't understand why the old version was working.

If they need to change things on the back end, then do so while preserving as much of the old store as possible.

And beyond that, I have to think the daily deal was a better strategy for getting eyeballs on the store every day. If they want to advertise more than one item in the deal, they could always include a preview of "tomorrow's daily deal," with the item being listed but not showing a sale price or discount amount.

But I'll bet the reason for going to weekly deals had nothing to do with sales strategies and was probably motivated more by something in the office like needing someone to load a new sale item into the system every 24 hours (which would explain why on the occasional Sunday the daily sale was omitted). If so, the correct solution is to read the daily sales from a list, and not to have week-long sales.

 

This.

In the past, I would check in every day. Later, I checked in once a week. Now, I go days without even looking at the asset store. I buy a lot of stuff, and some of that stuff I did not see until it went on sale. Now, all that I see is the featured stuff, most of which I already have.

They lost something here...the ability to bring people to the store, where they see something they missed and buy it. It is what retail stores do all the time. How many times have I gone to the grocery store with a list and see something I did not know existed that I need, or a bogo sale where I buy more than I would have otherwise. When the clerk says "Did you find everything you needed?", I almost always say back that I found more than I needed.

I feel for the devs as I think they are going to see lower sales. Featured is nice, but once you buy it, you do not need it again. So unless there is a steady increase in new developers willing to spend money on featured assets, which often are not cheap (worth every penny though), their sales will decrease. We will lose more developers like Quantum Theory rather than gain more.

 

In the old assetstore I also bought more than I needed. But no more of that! Thanks to the new assetstore I think I'm finally over it. Right now when I click on it, all I get is a blank white page, same with the unity3d.com main website, all white. They sure love their whitespace in Unity's design department ^_^.

 

I still use the old one! lol

 

One million times this. Hide purchased stuff option or even ability to mark assets and say “don’t show this again for 1 month” (as I’m currently not interested) will probably skyrocket discoverability.

 

@Thrawn75
If it were not for your twitter posts, I would have missed so many of your assets. I guess this means publishers need to advertise more. If only I could add them all to my twitter! lol

 

AFAIK the Asset Store gears to an user-centric approach. At least this is what it being discussed. So if you are heavily interested in 2D it will feature 2D assets for example. We all just want this happen - more filters, more .. just know what I’m doing!

 

I just tried to make a purchase on the asset store, something simple to test things, and I honestly could not even make it through the checkout. It just sat there and spun its wheels for minutes until I finally gave up and made the same purchase through the old store, a process that took maybe a few seconds.

 

I had the exact same issue during the last mega sale. I had to make all my purchases through the old store.

 

From a web developer point of view, I can see what they were going for. Looks like Amazon Prime, Netflix - style movie displays and genres. I will genuinely be floored if they did not consider that a major inspiration for all this.

That being said, there is way too much going on here at once that isn't visually grouped in a way that makes it all flow together.

Honestly, if they had kept with the inspirations, they would have put the names of the categories of content to the left of the slideshow scrollers, like the movie genres to the left of the movie choice scrollers. And these categories would be the type of content. Maybe alphabetical. And they wouldn't be nebulous like "Top Paid". Top could be highest rating, or most downloads, for example.

I understand it all after a few minutes, and could use it, and it is visually more modern. But it seems to be modern for the sake of being modern, rather than focusing on appealing, congruent pieces of related functionality. I think I will continue to use the old store until this store combines the modern appeal with an approach that makes all of the scrollable content immediately obvious, and more logically grouped.

Another suggestion is categories images appearing below the store. When you click on the category, it brings you to a page with all of the slideshows of available assets. To the left of the assets are headers defining what is in each row. 5 star at the top, then 4 star on the second row, etc. (defined by filters at the top).

 

Yeah, but they focus on the best selling. Once I own the best selling stuff, I want to see the stuff I have not seen before or those little gems that are niche or stuff I did not know I needed.

Just told my team that we will be buying less on the asset store from now on. I buy when I need, on or off sale. From now on, I will spend more time asking friends for suggestions and following new assets to see which ones look good on the forums. No forum post, I may miss you.

Sorry, but searching the store is a headache. It is too huge and too cumbersome. And splashing the front page with featured tools I already have really does not inspire me. I guess if it is already on my wishlist I will see it but will be adding much less.

Sad, cause I always felt that spending on the asset store would sort of pay for using Unity Personal. We are going to release a few assets this year, but I imagine they will be lost and buried by the splashy featured items and never noticed. I think we may make our own store too.

 

Agreed. Spot on.

I don't really have much specific feedback, it's just all so generally unpleasant I don't really know what to say about it.

 

Lol I agree. They have indeed cut down the avater tree, the magic is gone!

 

new asset store is great for buyers, now they can easily find great AAA quality assets by top sellers but not so great for many asset store sellers who aren't top sellers. . .

I must admit the new asset store looks attractive, messy sure but attractive.

 

I prefer the old search options, the new one is obfuscating, used to be able to see how it worked with the search functions and proper categories. I also use noscript on firefox, the old version works fine with just enabling unity.com, though the new one is more entwined with analytics which is hit towards our privacy. Why do I have to enable a tracker so that I can use the nav bar?? Why does the new one have to reload the entire page when selecting reviews. Why do i have to waste time clicking on tabbed packaged contents and release notes? Also I have a large monitor its frustrating having everything to the left when the older had everything neatly centered and concise, it was an optimal viewing experience. Yeah excessive white space like someone else mentioned. me: Functionality > Appearances, unity: consumer tracking data + appearance > Privacy + Functionality.

The only reason why they're doing this is to implement stronger analytics. They could easily give a facelift with css and still use the html infrastructure.

So annoying, they're redirecting when just yesterday I was able to use the old site. Why cant I chose to use the old site, at least till they get out of beta, fixed these issues? Going to boycott the asset store till then.

 

I'm not going to boycott, but yeah it seems like a few steps in the wrong direction. If they are trying to improve analytics at the expense of quality and sales, that is a curious decision.

 

How so, I'm getting redirected every time. I used this link https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/

 

Yeah a bit harsh, and by the sounds of others it seems like the asset store boycotted themselves making it more difficult. But as a consumer, the definitive way to produce change, to say if one supports it, is decide weather to invest or not. It would bring more immediate change than saying our opinions and supporting them at the same time. If everyone does it collectively, its immediate and wouldn't take long for an option to revert. Again I am being forcefully redirected.

 

Getting the same. I guess they've officially shifted over.

 

Ah, don't know if there was a change or not, but on my desktop I can get to the old store by clicking the "old store" link. That's handy, since I had stuff sitting in the cart.

 

Crisis averted, I hate the redirect though xD I'm pretty sure that wasn't there before... Err, getting redirected back to the new store though lol....Also have to enable the tracker to even use the button. smh

 

I advise all who think this forcing of crap on us is bs to boycott.. I had 5 assets in my cart that will no longer get bought right now...
Power to the people....

 

I have ~230$ worth of assets, on hold.

 

It's definatley made things difficult to find, the old one was straight forward.

 

Just a note, if anyone is considering any of my products they are also available on my own website
(And if you think you guys are unhappy with the new asset store, you should see the s h i t s t o r m going on in the publisher's forum.)

 

The way I see it is unity uses the asset store as a band-aid, a temporary solution for their lack of development in certain features, among being a place to profit from talented dev's. Primarily terrain, since those are on average the most costly and highly sought assets universal to all games that want a world. As more devs come with smarter solutions, unity will opt to take a back seat and let devs do the work and get paid for it. At this time I wouldn't mind finding a 3rd party asset store.

 

Maybe it would be advised to start a forum thread for asset owners willing to sell assets elsewhere... Avoid the long patch update cycle, though security of assets would fall on the buyer.

 

Doh! Missed that. Thanks!

 

By the way, any idea where one can find that revamped forum complaint thread? It was epic, especially at the end, and should be saved for posterity. (I need a feel-good distraction from this asset store fiasco).

 

Has anyone actually tried to use the store on a mobile device. I used to follow links in the asset store section of the forum on my smartphone. It became nearly impossible to take a look at assets. You can't even scroll the view...

 

I feel for the store dev(s). They're just not very good at UX; sorry to say, but it's S***.

 

I don't feel for the devs. This was the whole point of having the site in beta, to work out obvious issues like this. The problem is the beta only lasted a couple days and then exactly zero was done to improve/fix the design after that. This thing sat in limbo for at least 6 months with no effort being applied to it. Then it is just suddenly foisted on everyone, which is 100% incompetence.

 

Maybe they all were opposed to releasing it like that and one person higher up forced their hand on this (knowing full well that the blame can always be passed down to the executing dev team if it isn't well received)?

 

Yeah, sounds likely. Dumb corporate decision, yet still doesn't excuse the poor design execution. Web design is not rocket science and there are countless examples of successful sites that do it right.

 

Looks like they've added the button to revert to the old store when not signed in. Yay, looks like they've fixed the redirect issue of that button. Though this maybe country restricted changes since I use a vpn. I wouldn't be surprised if they are forcing certain countries with less traffic (the odds of people complaining is less likely if there's not as many).

They added a url function: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/?stay#!/

Maybe this whole fiasco was a result of bad coding lol? Nah, it looks like a band-aid solution to a corp decision. Unity corp manager: "We will give them no resort but to conform to the all mighty law's: cost/analytics > people/privacy, appearance > functionality, my authority > concerned employee's. Mwuahahaha!", *places pinky to corner of lip*. There's no mention of users (dev's) explicitly. Yep, I'm pretty sure that's how it went down.