Other About these feature request threads..

I hate to be the person saying this aloud but I'm frankly surprised that these threads are not cleaned or moved already since they are quite clearly against the beta forum guidelines:

While I do think we should have some nicer way to provide feature requests, having all the feature requests on specific Unity alpha/beta forums does bring a lot of noise and drowns actual discussion around that engine version.

Currently half of the 2021.1 threads are about feature requests (and most of these are not about 2021.1 specifically).

PS. I can see the irony on creating a thread in the beta forums which also goes against these same guidelines.

 

It is because there is no better way to get some eyes on feedback. The feedback website has been closed for 1+ years now, and most of the subforums here are devoid of developer eyes.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/the-future-of-unity-feedback.633241/

Our choice is to request features masquerading as bug reports via bug reporter or try out luck in one of the many Beta & Experimental Features forums as those get lots of developer attention. There is a deeper issue here, the feature request posts in the beta forum is just a manifestation of it.

 

When they took down the Feedback site they said that "the alternative" was going to be writing in the forum and interacting with Unity staff but the reality is that most of the interesting threads get lost in the forums without anyone reading them and it is impossible to reach anyone and the requests get forgotten...

For me that decision of Unity was because "it was ugly" to see requests of thousands of votes to which they did not pay attention and gave them a bad image. By removing that website they have hidden the problem.

 

I don't in particular disagree of either points made here as we definitely do lack a proper feedback channel right now.

I knew these things would come up when I made the thread as well but it doesn't change that these threads don't really contribute to 2021.1 alpha testing subforum in any way and at some point they almost completely hid the actual on-topic things here.

 

I wouldn't agree that Unity needs another feedback channel. However, we need Unity staff on each subforum to cover all relevant topics. This would also mean introducing at least a new "build workflow/pipeline" subforum.

This idea of getting into some discussion with Unity developers over the forum works great in some places already. For example, the new input system or UI Toolkit. I also know that Unity staff visits certain specialized forums like 2D or platform-specific forums often enough.

However, I'm missing interaction with devs in other areas like Editor Workflows, general editor topics, general/broad feature requests, or especially, the build pipeline minus Addressables (this forum is still missing completely).