Dear Veve and Vevefam,
Wow, I haven’t done one of these since December, and that was to ask for indicators for what I bought and for sets to be fixed (which got rolled back last update, but hey, at least we got a sneak peak and know that it’s coming now.) Except for that lag that was driving everyone crazy, things have been going very smoothly so far this year. Communication has gotten way better, interactions with the community have been productive, accountability has been improving, and the Veveverse rolled out without any catastrophic crashes. The economy is in the dumpster, but then what else is new? At least digital collectibles have no tariffs (Please don’t get any ideas.)
So what’s this one about then? Well, it’s another one of those elephants that I’m having trouble getting out the door. Because now that the Veveverse is here and the big kids have their playground… we gotta talk about the big blue button.
Because frankly, AR needs some work and the showrooms need a rehaul. Because even if you do want to be complacent, neither of them even come close to being at the complacent level of ‘good enough’. In fact, I went back to see how long I’ve been joking about how bad the showroom tools are and it went back to Blog #8 two years ago. The only thing that’s been fixed since then was some of the showroom crashing. So! I decided not to joke around this time and do a letter instead. (Besides, this being the tenth one makes it easy for me to figure out when I hit my 100th blog.)
Let’s do AR first, that one’s easier.
AR:
I very rarely use AR, and it’s not because I don’t want to use it more often. It’s because it’s too damn slow. I never have an opportunity.
First off, I have to wait for a “find a surface” which works about as well as “find a surface” worked in the first few months of Pokemon Go… which is downright painful, especially if you’ve played any AR games and know just how far things have come since then.
Unless I’m putting a car down, I don’t even use the floor for ninety percent of collectibles I’m pulling off the app. Even if it is something like a car where I want it to look like it’s on the ground, I have to trick the Veve app into finding a surface so it lets me put it down anyway. It never wants to believe that where I want to put it is a surface. But most of the time, I don’t even want it on the ground. I want it on a nearby wall, or flying in the distance, or above me (good luck with that one.)
Meanwhile, my family is looking at me like are we ever going to move from that spot and how long are we going to stand around, while people passing around me are looking at us wondering if we’re secretly taking pictures of them or doing something illegal.
It’s embarrassing as all hell. It’s not fun. And I just don’t have time in my life for all these elaborate setups I see other people doing.
What I want is to be able to think, “Hey, that’d be a cool place to hang my uncommon Spider-Man on.” Load Veve, select the collectible, and then go. I don’t have fifteen minutes to stand around and load it, try to find a surface that it accepts, move it where I really wanted it to go, wait for the area to clear, and take it. It’s just not going to happen.
That’s why you’ll never see AR shots in my “I went somewhere cool” posts on X. There are no candid shots I can do and get away with it.
Suggestions on how to make it better:
1. Make ‘find a surface’ optional. It doesn’t work well, so how about just letting us get the collectible on the phone screen so we can manipulate it, especially since a lot of collectibles aren’t meant to go on the ground in the first place.
2. Give us a way to make it sticky if we want. Once we position a collectible and have it the size we desire, etc, a toggle to keep that collectible right where it is on the device screen itself, even if we move our position. That would give us not only better control of how it’s going to look on the screen, but it’ll also make it way, way faster to take shots when we’re on the move.
3. This is more a wishlist thing, but eventually, I’d like to see a photoshop-like edit ai tool that sends collectibles to the back of the field so that we can put our kids in front of a collectible automatically without having to do multiple shots and splicing them together.
SHOWROOMS:
To be clear, and for those who haven’t read previous blogs, I’ve never been a fan of showrooms and have been waiting for years for the Veveverse to get out in hopes that something productive would be done to fix them, because they’re totally missing the boat. Or perhaps they’re missing the train?
When it comes to electric trains, there are different kinds of people. You’ve got the people who just want to see the train run in circles or under the Christmas tree. You’ve got the people who spend a lot of extra money for the complete set with the fake trees, people, and picture of the train station on the back of the train box so they have something to interact with. And then you have those people who go out of their way to commandeer the garage or attic, put together every folding table they can find, and build elaborate sets, make bridges and hills, fake water, paint their own figurines, glue fake grass to fake hills, and then start adding accessories like water towers and working signals and smoking engines.
It’s also similar to dollhouse modelers, who build each house from scratch, or perhaps renovate all dollhouses they find, then spend hours making furniture, designing wallpaper, finding lights that work and making sure that everything is to scale. Then there are kids who just want somewhere to put furniture in. Half of the stuff is painted on the walls so they know which rooms are which, and all they really want is a place to put their dolls in and play house. Then, there are people who buy dolls and leave them in the box.
In both examples, Veve has two things covered. They have the enthusiasts willing to glue fake grass, and they have the best toys for people who just want to look at it. But for the people who just want ready-made kit to play with, they’re all being left out.
Fine, you have that mansion thing for the Veveverse people who don’t want to build houses. To me, that’s just an acknowledgement that there are people in the middle. And they’re not all willing to take that step.
The obvious solution:
The Showroom should be for the people in the middle. It should be the train set with the train station painted on the back, and no assembly required. It should be the dollhouse with the painted rooms, where people can just put their dolls in and play and not feel like they need to do anything else unless they feel like it.
It also should be so easy that anybody opening the app on the very first day and buying their first collectible can go into the showroom, feel accomplishment, and have something to show to their friends beside a bleak vault they don’t even know how to get inside because the controls are too complicated.
First fix: Cardinal arrows and movement. I’m sorry, but those two movement circles should be for remote control cars, not people getting around. I have been here over three years now and still haven’t gotten comfortable with it, do you really think new people will be? Having them for the Veveverse mobile app is one thing, we’ve already established those are people who are more savvy to this technology. But how about some basic movement commands to get around, at least as an optional feature.
Second fix: Collectibles should always face you when you drop them when in the showroom. When I’m in my vault, I am facing the wall that I want to put a stamp or poster on. When I drop it, it should be facing me, so that all I have to do is put it on the wall, not turn it around and pray it’s straight. Most of the time it isn’t. Which brings me to the next point:
Third fix: An easy mode for vaults where things stick on walls, floors, etc. without having to align them yourself.
Example: Everquest II which has a superior housing system, as well as crafting system for an MMORPG. When you first get a house, you get a ceiling item, two wall items and a floor item. When you place them, the ceiling item highlights when it’s on the ceiling, you pick a spot, click and done. Wall items, same thing. You point to a place on the wall, click and done. There’s no stress involved; I’ve gone inside and placed a dozen items in a minute and left.
They also have a decorator mode which… surprise surprise… works exactly like the showroom vault does with the stupid rotation wheels that never want to be as straight as you want them to be. It can be toggled on and off.
When I’m decorating a guild hall in Everquest II (something I always end up getting stuck with because nobody else in my guild ever wants to do it) I use a combination of those two modes. The vast majority of time, it’s on the easier mode. That is because 95 percent of the time… I want a painting on the wall, and not on the floor.
The fact that there is no way to quickly drop my stamps and posters on the walls is the number one reason I don’t use the vaults. Of course, having a good painted background also helps…
Last problem: The showrooms are not really showrooms. There are no painted walls. There is no station on the back of the train box. There is nowhere to play but an empty room. A person who doesn’t want to go to the Veveverse and wants a backdrop to play in doesn’t have a dollhouse for their dolls.
Solutions:
1. We need more backdrops. A generic dollhouse backdrop. A generic action set backdrop. A generic city backdrop. A generic reward ceremony backdrop, or a museum backdrop to display our stuff. ANYTHING is better than that stupid vault and a blank space that petrifies new people who just want to put their new Blackpink dolls at that's cute.
2. What if buying a diorama gave you a showcase version? Could you imagine a Beauty in the Beast showcase version, for example? Or the Ariel diorama opened an under-the-sea themed vault? I don’t know about you, but it’d definitely give me a reason to both buy it and HODL it if that were to ever happen. Adding the diorama perk would give a reason for even people who’ve been here for three years to actually use the vaults again.
In conclusion, I want to say this one last thing. I don’t think Veve’s AR is good enough. I don’t think showrooms are good enough. And I think Veve is too good of a company to leave things the way they are right now.
Every time we open the app, we see in the middle of the screen a blue button leading us to showcases and AR.
If Veve truly wants them to be at the forefront of the app, they have a lot of work to do.