DGee

most points been made are very subjective and personal. I respect that other people may have a different opinion on the interface. I personally have a very different opinion. 

I love the new interface. At a first glance I wasn’t sure about the tool icons not being not monochrome… but then I realized they’re not distracting at all and I actually prefer them now because I see much quicker what the tool is about.
Personally I think it’s one of the best interfaces I have ever seen. It’s intuitive, looks great, the interaction with the tools is very responsive and smooth, and overall is very nice user experience. I just feel like creating something when I’m looking at it and I don’t get that from other apps.

most points been made are very subjective and personal. I respect that other people may have a different opinion on the interface. I personally have a very different opinion. 

most points been made are very subjective and personal. I respect that other people may have a different opinion on the interface. I personally have a very different opinion. 

IME is definitely an upgrade. But I also have photoshop because many people need to be able to open layered PSD files. 

Of course, your opinion would also be very subjective and personal.
There is no easy way to quantify these things - as I have often said, user experience is everything.
It doesn't matter how good a product is from a functional point of view if users dislike it so much they don't use it.

I can be understanding of systems failing and what not… but I don’t understand why nobody replies to our emails given the situation.

The issue is clearly with your payment platform. These problems which are widespread BTW judging from what I see here and on twitter simply don’t happen anywhere else. in my case this is probably the first time in 40 years that I have this happen. I’m pretty sure all cards in Europe are capable of using a payment protocol which is mandatory in the Eurozone.
I got no firewall here, latest safari verdion on a stable big sur version, no firewall, no antivirus, no plugins, nothing…
I emailed support 2 days ago and I still have not received any reply. That also does not happen to me shopping anywhere else given the nature of the problem: money gone and no product… 
 

thanks for the informative reply Steve, I hope everything gets sorted soon. I absolutely love the new apps btw. 

Our teams are extremely busy at the moment and trying to work through all of the email contacts (7000+) over the last 2 days. We thank you for any patience you can afford as we endeavour to answer everyone's queries as quickly as we can.
Indeed, and they do not usually happen this frequently on our site either, however the last few days have been quite unprecedented with the volume of traffic both our site and payment systems have experienced, something that most sites don't usually experience day to day.

I already did of course more than 24 hours ago. I hope they are able to reply soon but TBH it’s not my fault their team is small and they did nothing to have a functional payment system that fails consistently since 2017. My money is on hold or gone, I need it and nobody is replying.
I appreciate your message man but I’m very disappointed.

I did not received a reply either yet. I think this is not acceptable by any means TBH.  

Yeah it's really frustrating. If they don't fix it fast I'll go with a refund, I cannot trust their payment service after this.

This is what they sent me, apparently the money will be back after a certain period. 

Same issue happened to me recently. Decided to purchase another three licenses for Designer, Photo and Publisher.
Unfortunately, I got the same error message right after I correctly entered all the card details and successfully entered 3D Secure verification code.
"Your payment has been declined by your payment provider. Please change your payment method and try again."
But, the thing is: my payment provider didn't declined the payment. It was declined by Serif or their processing gate.
I was on a call with my bank assistant and they confirmed, that transaction looks fine to them and no errors were logged on their side.
In fact, the money are still currently reserved (holded) by Serif or their payment gate for 3 days. Hopefully, I'll get this amount back on my card at some point.
What's going on here, Serif? You can't even properly receive payments.
There's definitely an error or misconfiguration on Affinity store or their payment gate website which incorrectly process some orders.
Already have a couple of emails back and forth with Serif support. They simply said that transaction failed (no idea why) and money should return to me at some point.
Btw, using the same debit card, I successfully purchased a bunch of different software licenses on this week as well as arranged payments for hosting and domain services.
Very disappointing.

Same for me with a Visa card. Yet I have no problem to buy with it on other sites. Too bad.

Welcome friend, we are like 5 guys with the exact same problem as you

Same here.I was dealing with this as soon as V2 was released today. Bought from AppStore and when I wanted to open the app, its asks for Affinity ID which is different then the one I have on my AppleID purchases. After few emails with Affinity Support I was said that they cant find me in the system and I have to contact Apple. I did porvided my Bank Account slip to show them the purchase. Several hours later I am still empty handed with tickets open with Affinity and Apple. This is bad. WHy the software requires Affinity ID if I bought it with Apple? I am starting to loose patience, damn.

I totally agree. The only thing I miss with Vectorstyler is a more refined user experience and interface but it will come. The guy behind it is a genius, it’s amazing how much work he’s been able to do on his own. And, like you said, he listens to customers and cares and works his ass off to consistently improve the app.  There’s a public roadmap etc… I have huge respect for Vectorstyler TBH.

I know what you mean. I love what’s there otherwise I would not even bother to take part in the forums TBH. IMO Affinity nailed it with the UX and UI of their apps, I love using them ( it’s one of those apps you love using and that says a lot ) if was not a compromise feature-wise It would be incredible.
But I’m frustrated by the lack of development combined with misleading marketing that has not even been updated since launch. IMo would be extremely easy to listen to customers and implement at least a few features at least to keep people content, otherwise what’s the point in having a forum that’s all about user feedback. What I find sad is the fact that some people still have hope and ask for features.. it’s not hilarious it’s actually sad..
When we adopt a new software app we don’t just do it for whatever it does today we do it because we put trust in the future of that software. Mastering an app and building a reliable workflow around it takes time. Had I known what Affinity was really about I don’t think I would have bought it. I haven’t seen any progress been made in years. When I bought these apps I was able to try the basic functionality which I loved and trusted their marketing materials in terms of what the apps were capable of. I could not have imagined there was basic functionality missing.

Yea you’re right, I will definitely send him my ideas.
To sum it up, the thing with Vectorstyler is that it has a much steeper learning curve than Affinity when coming from Illustrator and we all come from Illustrator ( it’s the standard) . I felt immediately at home with AD. That did not happen with VS and that can put many people off.
I probably learnt 80 apps in my life from advanced VFX programs to video, design, web, photo, 3d apps etc… with VS sometimes you have to do things in a way that does not feel extremely intuitive or natural to me. I have encountered some apps in my career that work a bit different than what feels natural to most, and I felt this is one of those. I usually accept  that learning curve when they do something truly special (say 3d tracking back in the day for instance)  it’s like you just gotta deal with it if you want to achieve those results but VS should feel more natural to an illustrator user if it wants to succeed, or grow faster this is just my personal opinion of course…
it’s not about addressing the specifics ( yes you can hide panels ) but about having a clear plan for a streamlined workflow that puts the experience of designing at the core. That is why photoshop offers several modes ( photography, design, web etc) and it customises the experience accordingly. IMO it should launch with the most minimalistic and less obtrusive look possible and you can customise your experience to make more advanced as need. It needs to make people feel that it’s been thought by designers for designers,
if VS was as user friendly as Affinity I would no longer login here… but I still use both in conjunction. Affinity excels at that IMO.

I know what you mean. I love what’s there otherwise I would not even bother to take part in the forums TBH. IMO Affinity nailed it with the UX and UI of their apps, I love using them ( it’s one of those apps you love using and that says a lot ) if was not a compromise feature-wise It would be incredible.
But I’m frustrated by the lack of development combined with misleading marketing that has not even been updated since launch. IMo would be extremely easy to listen to customers and implement at least a few features at least to keep people content, otherwise what’s the point in having a forum that’s all about user feedback. What I find sad is the fact that some people still have hope and ask for features.. it’s not hilarious it’s actually sad..
When we adopt a new software app we don’t just do it for whatever it does today we do it because we put trust in the future of that software. Mastering an app and building a reliable workflow around it takes time. Had I known what Affinity was really about I don’t think I would have bought it. I haven’t seen any progress been made in years. When I bought these apps I was able to try the basic functionality which I loved and trusted their marketing materials in terms of what the apps were capable of. I could not have imagined there was basic functionality missing.

I totally agree. The only thing I miss with Vectorstyler is a more refined user experience and interface but it will come. The guy behind it is a genius, it’s amazing how much work he’s been able to do on his own. And, like you said, he listens to customers and cares and works his ass off to consistently improve the app.  There’s a public roadmap etc… I have huge respect for Vectorstyler TBH.

I totally agree. The only thing I miss with Vectorstyler is a more refined user experience and interface but it will come. The guy behind it is a genius, it’s amazing how much work he’s been able to do on his own. And, like you said, he listens to customers and cares and works his ass off to consistently improve the app.  There’s a public roadmap etc… I have huge respect for Vectorstyler TBH.

Have you offered your ideas as an experienced interface designer on the VS forum? The developer of VS is very receptive to new ideas and options. I would think it more advantageous for you to share your ideas and see the UI improve rather than go back to paying adobe a ton of money annually instead. Not implying this is you, but many who make judgements on VS are not in the trenches helping improve the program with their ideas and experience. They choose to wait around for others to step up and make the suggestions and help. It makes no sense to me because we all should want multiple design programs to thrive. I use VS full time but I still support and use affinity at times. Those who use affinity primarily will always stand to benefit from having a feature rich program like VS in their toolset to accomplish tasks affinity cannot. 
I agree the UI can look busy. I don't see the interference being any more complex than what illustrator presents in the UI. The major difference to me is that illustrator allows panels docked on the side to be reduced to an icon. They also allow for custom panel arrangements that can be saved and recalled at will. Those are both upgrades in the works for VS in the near future. Also some of the icons at the top of the VS UI could be consolidated under a single button, such as the Boolean operations and that would save space and make it less crowded. 
What tools do you feel are wrong for being different than the industry standard? I can't think of many primary ones to be honest.