Getting the Paragon Store working RIGHT

I21 had a ton of new content. It's no surprise that there are some things rough around the edges, simply due to time constraints.

One of the areas that continues to need work is the Paragon Store. It will likely continue to need work the entire time its in operation, just like the rest of the game. There are some serious shortcomings in this sub-application that really should be addressed.

Please note that this is not a 'You're doing it wrong! Fix it or else I'll leave!' post. This is a critique of data flow, e-commerce site design, and usability.

Some of the things I mention here may already be in development. If so, great! Some may have been mentioned before, especially during the VIP beta.


- "Sort by" currently has 4 options: "Best Selling", "Lowest Cost First", "Highest Cost First", "Alphabetical by Name". The options its missing are "Newest Items First" and "Sale Items First".


- The Item List contains 4 items per page, despite there being plenty of space for scroll bars. Instead, we have a page selector below the four items to jump to different pages.

This is not ideal for players or sales. Players should be able to browse more casually and scroll between two different items to compare them if they want. They're more likely to see items they want and therefore more likely to purchase those items if they don't have to hop around or try to remember which page they're on.

I recommend also adding a 'Show X items per page' widget next to the page number indicator. There should be a 10, 20, and 50 selector here.


- Detailed View isn't very. It contains an expanded textual description of items, but misses a lot of other stuff.

The screens for purchasable enhancements don't contain any enhancement data such as 'This enhancement boosts Accuracy by X% at level 30 and scales to boost Accuracy by X% at level 50.'

The screens for purchasable costume pieces merely contain a larger version of the icon for that item. There are no 'in-game' screen shots of the item in use.


- Detailed View doesn't have a 'Back' or 'Continue Shopping' button. Players have to re-navigate to where they were if they decide not to put an item in their wish-list or cart. That's bad flow. It means it's that much more likely that a player will give up shopping rather than continue browsing.

Note that there IS a '<-' button at the top of the shop browser window, but that it does NOT return the player to where they were. It returns them to the beginning of the category. It works like a browser 'back' button until you're actually depending on it taking you to the last page you saw. Then it doesn't work that way any more. Inconsistent controls are design flaws that needs to be fixed with high priority.


- There is no purchase history. If you navigate to the 'My Account' area and go through the confusing hassle of logging into the NCSoft website, you will be shown a purchase history of things you have bought with your credit card... subscription time or points.

What you are not shown at any point is a history of what you've bought with your Paragon Points.


In a similar vein,

- Bundles don't seem to indicate any sub-items you may have already purchased. It makes sense that a player might buy an item as a once-off, decides he likes it so much that he wants the bundle, and then buys the bundle to complete the set.

However, there doesn't appear to be any place that shows a player which or how many items he has already purchased in a particular bundle.


- Actually, There is no indicator that you have already purchased an item by itself or as part of a bundle at all. Again, this gets doubly confusing and is inconsistent because VIP players have 'Buy Now' buttons removed from items they received as part of their VIP subscription. Those buttons are not removed from items they've already purchased.

Likewise, if you've purchased a bundle, items that are part of that bundle still appear to be purchasable.

Even if you purchase an item or bundle, the 'Buy Now' button does not disappear.

Again, this is an inconsistent control and needs to be fixed with a high priority to avoid making potential customers confused or angry.


I think that, overall, the Paragon Store is going to be a great, profitable addition to the game. It has the potential to be a great resource to players, and a great resource for NCSoft to help encourage players to part with their cash. However, it needs work. It's ALWAYS going to need work, but right now it's in a 'barely finished' state and needs a lot of polish and love before it can live up to its potential.

If you're going to reinvent the wheel and lock people into your own custom browser, instead of just doing an HTML website like everyone else on the Internet, your browser has to be accessible.

Basic accessibility features your browser must have:
1) Zoom. (Alternatively, use the player's Window Scaling option.)
2) Window resizing. (Alternatively, don't let the window be larger than the game window.)
3) Scrolling and scrollbars.
4) Keyboard navigation (Tab key, etc.) with highlighted active links.
5) ALT text for screen readers.

The current browser is 0 for 5 in basic accessibility. (1/2 for 5 if you count the browser allowing Tab navigation but no link highlights to see where you've tabbed to.)

The Market is inexcusably awful.

I know that programming is hard, and the Paragon studios employees all seem like lovely people, but on-line stores are not new technology and it just should not be as bad as it is. From the ugly, clunky interface to the missing basic functionality, it should never have been sent live.

Tweaks are warranted, I understand some people have trouble keeping up with what they bought already, but it's fine as far as live goes.

I still think they might as well hire a bunch of nutless monkeys to replace the UI design team. It would yield the same results, for less cost.

Why yes, I hate the more recent UI changes (market, store), why do you ask?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Still waiting for the /pizza command...

I agree with all of the OP's critiques in regard to the Paragon Market.

I'll particularly emphasize that they will *never* sell me an IO or costume piece
if I cannot *see* the values or looks IN the interface at Point of Sale time.

The market is supposed to encourage and capitalize on impulse buying.

So, during those rare moments where I'd actually peruse the store in the first place,
if I have to resort to jumping into the costume editor or surfing the web to see a
picture of an item (or look up stats for an IO), guess what?

You just lost the mood moment AND the sale.

One hopes for improvement, but heck - the crappy UI is saving me money!


Regards,
4


PS> So why did I post? I'd like the game to continue to succeed and for that to
occur, they need to continue to make money - A decent UI that facilitates
purchases is obviously a key part of the new business model... The current
UI (like *many* of their UI's) leaves much to be desired, so far...

What Amazing Moo has said about the history of purchases in the Paragon Market is SPOT ON!

We need to know what we have purchased with our Paragon Points from the store in addition to our ACCOUNT CC purchases. At this point I am taking screenshots of my Final Transactions Every! Time! I buy something from the store since there isn't any history of purchasing a power set, costume piece, emote in my account.

This is frustrating and not a good shopping experience. Any other business that does any transaction on line - real money involved or not - will give you a receipt emailed to your address of record with what you purchased recorded in the email.

If this is in the works Fantabulous but could you let us know if it is in the works PLEASE!

When 21 went live I made a list of all the things the Paragon Market UI needed. Most have been stated or are obvious but maybe I'll post it later.

That said, the current UI, the whole entire thing, is or should be an embarrassment to Paragon Studios. It's so superbly awful and I can describe my experience with it to not exceed "frustrating."

It's like web design circa 1999.

It wouldn't surprise me that someone has "history of previous purchases" patented and even though they are mostly virtue items, the fear or lawsuit or continuous royalty payments is something most item shop or hybrid F2P MMOs aren't looking to find out.

OK I've checked the notes I scribbled down and this is the list I came up with. I'll attempt to translate into something resembling coherency.

No Stacking Tiers: By this I meant that the Storage upgrades appear as X number of separate purchasable items in the store. So for example, there are 10 separate Recipe Storage increase items. Because of this the storage increase section is like 9 or 10 pages long when it could just be ONE page long. Solution: Have 1 icon for each type of upgradable storage. Every time you buy one there would be a counter somewhere on the icon that changes depending on how many you've already purchased. So 1/10, 2/10 etc...

Filter Reset: IIRC I wrote that down because I noticed if you set a filter such as "Price: Lowest First" then click on an item, then click back, the filter will reset to whatever the default is.

Same items showing up under multiple sub-menus: I think this one is pretty self-explanatory.

Max Level Filters for Crafting Make No Sense!!!: OK I have no idea what I meant by that *loads up game to find out* Ok I think it got it. Showing me sets based on their max level doesn't do me any good if I don't know what sets are available in what level range. Also, any set purchased would be attuned anyway, so the max level is irrelevant. All the buyer needs to know is "Can I slot this item" and in order to know that you need to know the minimum available level, therefore they should be arranged by minimum level not maximum. Alternately, the crafting items could be arranged by the standard level ranges that IOs are available in so:

10-25
15-30
20-35
25-40
30-50

They could also remove the filtering by level range entirely and implement a slider akin to the sliders on the Merit and AE reward tables and solve this problem entirely.

And to make matters easier they should rename this section to Set IOs since as far as I can tell there aren't any other items in here besides enhancement boosters. They also need to cut down on the damn sub menus and just put every category right there instead of burying it under menus that split up damage/buff/healing/etc. Just list every category right there the same way they are listed on the Alignment Merit screen for example. So you would select Set IOs > Melee Damage > 20-35 > and here's your list.

Of course to do that they would need to IMPLEMENT SCROLLING, which was the last thing on my list.