The new website is somehow a downgrade.

[Rosita the Riveter]

I've been saying for a long time that Paizo really needs to switch to an off the shelf solution for the website, because having your own hasn't really worked for years. I was excited to see Paizo change to a new store website, but so far, this has made things worse.

To start, I can't use the Paizo forums on a desktop, now. It just ends up in an endless login loop where I constantly enter my username and password, it says it logged me in, and I'm not logged in. It only works on my phone, meaning I have to type this post on my phone.

Meanwhile, I want to shop PDFs in the store. I've been taking a break from Pathfinder, and I don't remember exactly what I own, and I want to browse for newer releases that I don't own. Well, the store does not tell me if I own a product or not when looking at the product page, something every other pdf vendor does.

So I go to my library, and I can't apply filters or sorting because those features don't work on my phone, as the menus can't display properly. My phone is a modern Samsung Galaxy running Firefox, so not anything obscure. I don't know how trustworthy search is, as I had some trouble finding my copy of Guns and Gears, something I knew I owned. Searching the full name doesn't bring up results, I had to search just "guns", which makes it seem plausible search may fail to find something I do own.

So I'm left wanting to spend money except I can't figure out what I already have (do I have the remaster of Guns and Gears), which kind of dulls that spending mood because it feels like these are basic user experience issues that just weren't considered. I don't want to be harsh or mean like that, but I have to say I'm kinda disappointed and didn't expect this.

[Kadasbrass Loreweaver]

I gotta agree with this. I find the new store frustrating and felt like someone new would be turned off from walking in to this. It feels like the store only works if you already know what your looking for and if you don't have that insider knowledge already, good luck.

[Jim Butler]

Thanks for your feedback. We're listening and working on these issues daily as we work out the rough edges of the new store.

Quote:

To start, I can't use the Paizo forums on a desktop, now. It just ends up in an endless login loop where I constantly enter my username and password, it says it logged me in, and I'm not logged in. It only works on my phone, meaning I have to type this post on my phone.

This is unrelated to the new ecommerce store and has been something we've struggled with for years. The link below will help you resolve this issue.

Login Issues

We've heard a lot about PDFs and are looking for ways to improve their visibility and discoverability. We had originally planned to include them on the same page as their physical versions, but the store doesn't support physical products being mixed with digital.

We've added last purchased/this product is in your Library functionality to the roadmap, but haven't determined a solution as of yet.

-Jim

[xanstin]

I dreaded even getting the humble bundle being offered because of having to deal with the new store. It is an absolute nightmare to navigate, download and deal with. Duplicate items for the same product due to how they are split now in no real order, no memory of what you own and have downloaded prior to the change. I still get the bug I have to change browsers for large files as edge tries to download an XML file. Clunky slow interface just to download a product which after the multi click method of the old system I couldn't dream of it getting worse, but here we are.

[Ajaxius]

Honestly, I'd prefer to return to the old store at this point. I know that's not a feasible option, and Paizo would likely be out a lot of money to whoever they paid for this site, but... man this blows.

Every single feature of the old store was sacrificed solely to make automated subscriptions mildly easier to manage.

Was there no world in which this new store became the "physical" storefront, and then the digital storefront stayed the same?

[Grumpus]

Pretty much every product they sell has a physical and digital version, so I wonder why they chose a solution that couldn't handle it.

[Thebigham]

I play on Foundry and just have the exact opposite experience with the Foundry Store. I have just transitioned my spending over to that marketplace thankfully. Maybe Paizo should call them for some help?

[joeparis]

Jim Butler wrote:

...but the store doesn't support physical products being mixed with digital.

In the year of our lord 2025 the store can't list both physical and digital products on the same page? That is absurd and, frankly, hard to believe.

[Gisher]

joeparis wrote:

Jim Butler wrote:

...but the store doesn't support physical products being mixed with digital.

In the year of our lord 2025 the store can't list both physical and digital products on the same page? That is absurd and, frankly, hard to believe.

It is very hard to believe.

And if true, it's even harder to understand why Paizo would choose a store with such a limitation.

[Gisher]

I'm happy that the tracker thread seems to suggest that progress is being made on some issues. :)

[Scooter999]

Seconded! Downloading content is a nightmare admin duty - random Zip names, random download order, some download to file path, some direct to browser. I want to read the books not spend time trying to organise them into slightly less of a blazing mess.

Also can you please clearly label your Version 2 - REMASTERED books. It should be on the front cover, not having to search through copious description text to garner whether a book is implied as ORC friendly and therefore remastered or not. It was previously difficult enough to search for products that weren't version 1. It is super frustrating and quite frankly almost enough to want me to go to a system where I can see which version of the game I am playing.

Maybe in light of fact you have failed to do this thus far - a nice easy to find on website cheat sheet showing current status of books that are current. I know 'Easy to find on your website' is your antithesis
but for the love of the gods try!

Especially as everyone has to buy remastered books to get you out of your jam! Learn from your mistakes.

Maybe a little less time patting yourself on the back and more time actually checking the quality of your product and ease of use. Great books - 1980's customer service mindset.

[Meddlemaker]

Scooter999 wrote:

Also can you please clearly label your Version 2 - REMASTERED books. It should be on the front cover, not having to search through copious description text to garner whether a book is implied as ORC friendly and therefore remastered or not.

I share many of the same frustrations you have, especially the current state in having to manage the files and downloader... though I do want to point out that all the remastered books have a forest green backgrounded "Second Edition" label on their covers, at the top right, where as all the legacy 2e books this label this was a golden/yellow color. (Uh, actually it is 'parchment'.)

[MIK0]

Scooter999 wrote:

Seconded! Downloading content is a nightmare admin duty - random Zip names, random download order, some download to file path, some direct to browser. I want to read the books not spend time trying to organise them into slightly less of a blazing mess.

Also can you please clearly label your Version 2 - REMASTERED books. It should be on the front cover, not having to search through copious description text to garner whether a book is implied as ORC friendly and therefore remastered or not. It was previously difficult enough to search for products that weren't version 1. It is super frustrating and quite frankly almost enough to want me to go to a system where I can see which version of the game I am playing.

Maybe in light of fact you have failed to do this thus far - a nice easy to find on website cheat sheet showing current status of books that are current. I know 'Easy to find on your website' is your antithesis
but for the love of the gods try!

Especially as everyone has to buy remastered books to get you out of your jam! Learn from your mistakes.

Maybe a little less time patting yourself on the back and more time actually checking the quality of your product and ease of use. Great books - 1980's customer service mindset.

I agree. It seems the new site has been made with the intent of making it even more difficult to reach your content and developed by someone who never used the site before.

It's a pain to download you content, expecially if you want to download a batch of them. There's no consistency about the download format (some has zip files, other only pdfs), you can't download pdf without opening them first, you have to rename the files because they are saved with the product code (I assume) so you cannot even download them in batch otherwise there's no way to know their content without opening them. If the contents are on more than one pages and you select one of them it revert to the first page when you are done. The number of clicks to reach your content has multiplied, which is an achievement considering how task heavy was the old system.

It's hard to suggest improvement at this point, it's easier to scrap this and revert to the old system as there not a single good point about the new one worth preserving.

[Beothul]

First time back to site since before Thanksgiving probably. Definitely first time seeing new library. Didn't know the site was getting a change. I am in the "wait and see" mindset at the moment; hoping there will be changes, improvements and upgrades in the near future. Have not attempted a purchase in the store yet. Came to check on my library and found everyting 1e has been truncated. Found the link to the old library list and see that I have already downloaded everything pre-2019 so that's fine.

My main comment is that the new library leaves much to be desired. Less flexibility in sorting items (by pub date, by update date, by purchase date, alpha). No sections or groupings of similar items. And most notably, some of the items have no information except a number where the title should be, presumably a document or publication number, which is virtually meaningless to me. I have to download it to see the doc, to know whether it is one I want to download or see. I am guessing this will be fixed but figure maybe wholesale changes shouldn't be done until all functionality can be replicated in the new system.

Anyway, don't want to be totally internet troll complainer until there's been time to fix these things. Hope that's coming soon. Don't want to be a were-troll at the next full moon, ya know.

[BigNorseWolf]

I for the life of me can't figure out how i'm supposed to get the modules I own. I can get the cover and a few random pages but not the actual module.

[AFigureOfBlue]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

I for the life of me can't figure out how i'm supposed to get the modules I own. I can get the cover and a few random pages but not the actual module.

Which module(s) are you seeing this with? If I have any of the same ones I can check and see what it does when I try to redownload them. So far as I've been redownloading things to get the un-watermarked version I haven't run into this at all. Except with specifically Dawn of the Frogs, which for some strange reason unintuitively has the adventure's cover and interior as separate files even though no other box set's PDF that I've seen is set up that way.

As one possible explanation, a lot of adventures have two downloads, one that's a single file version and one that's a file by chapter version... unfortunately the library page so far doesn't indicate which is which, but when you click on the book title it'll show you what files are included in the download. Is it possible that you're just downloading the first file or two of the file-by-chapter version rather than downloading the single-file version?

[Yoshua]

More I sit with it the less likely I am to buy singles or additional boosters or any mini's not part of my subscription from the site now. Losing that 30% discount for being a subscriber is a big hit for adding mini's to the side cart. Hope you guys decide to bring that back. Having a lower discount on the epic monsters than the booster cases when we used to get the premiums for a huge discount originally, over time the benefit to subscribing to the booster cases is a lot weaker than before.

hope you guys reconsider this and re add the 30% discount to case subscribers who want to add singles and other in stock battles items to our side carts. I used to sing accolades on other sites and promote your battles sub because of the benefits. Its still a great deal for the case itself, but sad that we have lost so much of the other benefits over time.