buy outs and Unity...

It'd be nice if Unity focused a little more on their bread and butter - getting the tech stable - as opposed to trying to make Unity a social thing like Twitch since frankly most people in that targeted demographic are too lazy to pay or do anything really. If Unity is to become a beacon it must do so with technology and results, not trying to constantly prove how diverse it is nor trying to have rock star evangelists or promoters. That sort of thing is very fleeting and doesn't translate to money any more than being featured by a popular streamer.

What would I like?

• Monthly DOTS blogposts on code and stress tests. Constantly dazzle with perf
• Monthly Shader Tricks blog posts. Constantly dazzle with FX and more
• Free ongoing monthly film making learning course linked to and bumped by blog
• Monthly XR news blogpost

This will massively boost Unity in my view over just the freaking frustrating and vague social noise it's making right now. Honestly.

The world is full of people selling snake oil while looking pretty or whatever. People are training themselves right now, to avoid that.

Hit people with real, consistent, monthly results and updates. Be strong.

 

Unity needs to be more robust. There were occasions where in 2019.x.5 lightmapper has some glitch then in 2019.x.8 this bug gets fixed with new bug which doesn't let you build the project.

In mathematics there is discontinuous function when you change small amount on x axis there is huge uncontrollable change in y or z axis. Unity 2019 incremental changes feel like that.

Hiring additional team would help to ensure future reliability and robustness.

 

Just for awareness, we officially started a thread on Reddit to request your help with feedback regarding the interface and its usability. Would be really helpful if people filled out the form or commented on it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/e5g5u2/top_5_unity_annoyances_tell_us/

 

Is there a similar thread here on the Unity forums?

 

That thread points to a Google Form anyway...

 

Yes, but a forum thread allows for a full dialogue that goes in-depth about the nature of the issues in a public facing way, which comes with a lot of benefits.

 

Oh, I was agreeing that there should also be a thread here. Since the OP in the Reddit thread is basically "please fill out this form and talk to us" there's no reason not to have the same here, and it feels a bit odd to make a post in their own forums telling us to go elsewhere to discuss their product.

 

It tells me they don't want a discussion, they want data that they can mine and put into graphs for an internal powerpoint presentation for some suits that already are waaay too disconnected from the users of their software and making games in general. At least that's what it sounds like to me when filling out forms is prioritized over public discourse. Not to mention that there probably is very little insight that couldn't be gained from having a human read all the effing complaints on the forum that already are there.

Either that or it's another desperate attempt of a brave soul that wants to do the right thing but can't due to corporate bullshit and internal politics, and the last ray of hope was to throw out a vaguely worded question with a form attached, in the hope that the data will confirm what already may be glaringly obvious to the people wanting to fix the problems, but not to the managers that have to greenlight these projects?

We'll never know, which is another common frustration that we see time and time again from UT.

 

A benefit to forms is that you don't need a Reddit or Unity or any other account to fill them in. It could just be a matter of trying to cast as wide a net as possible.

 

I am also surprised, Unity decided post such form request away from actually Unity oriented audience.
That means, anyone even none Unity users can bomb such form with anything.

On other hand, I think all major issues have been already addressed on forum here, in one or other form of communication. Via official and user based threads. So I got feeling, like such online form link, just ignores any feedback received so far here on forum.

I don't know, but feels very unprofessional, or at least very bold approach to me.

 

Is the regular forums users representative of the core user base? I mean this is a really small group of people. And probably not the big money earners making the engine earn it's respect in the game industry.

 

What is the core user base?

 

I mean like, the biggest game companies using Unity as its engine and earning money.

 

For instance, I am here a lot. But I am a hobbyist with one game to my name. I can say lots about what I'd like unity to do, but why should they care?

There is some people here posting on the regular who I know have a lot more experience. Some with professional backgrounds. But like, is this this the central hub where unity is collecting end user feedback? I figured they have direct channels to their biggest customers.

 

I'm not sure that's right and I don't believe that's who Unity is going after these days.

But even if that's correct, I believe the forums are a better representation of that userbase than reddit.

 

@BIGTIMEMASTER if you deal with technical issues related to Unity, where will you search? Reddit? Or official web/forum? If you use web search engine, where it points? Most times here to Unity forum. If you market your game, you probably will use different forum. But gamers and trolls are not your Unity user base audience. Developers are, who know how to use search tools and where most relevant data is. If not for this thread, I would never know about fill form existence.

Mind, most of people just search and browse, but don't participate actively. Still, they are, where relevant information are.

If you do 3D graphics modeling and texturing, is reddit where you search for answers?

 

I dunno anything about reddit TBH. I usually start with google search, and then I can end up anywhere. If I can't find a specific answer, I usually go to polycount.

I am asking a question more than making a statement. I mean I don't see like regular engagement from unity engineers here. I figured the actual work being done is not based on raw, direct public feedback. I don't have any idea how it works, but I'd imagine -- if I were in charge of Unity -- I'd have "field operatives" who are imbedded with whoever the biggest money earning customers are and they'd be taken feedback directly from there.

Because it's hard data you want right. Not just a gaggle of opinions from people you got no idea who they really are.

 

And that is why you want to avoid generalized forums like reddit, if you want reliable data on a software. Specially if software has mature community and forum like such. Otherwise, there will be lots of unrelated noise. I.e. Fanboys of competitors.

You see yourself, when polycount will be your first choice, if comes to 3D. It's community is strictly oriented around it.
They know best what is needed to improve moving vertices workflow as example. Not the user, who uses end product for the game, or vid.

But yes, if suddenly search engine would start suggesting me on every question, go to reddit or similar, then I may consider collecting data from there.

On side note, there is some engagement from Unity engineers. Depending in which forum section you are.

 

This, definitely.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with companies, but it seems that once a company becomes more or less successful, they try to become facebook of their own. This usually goes badly.

 

Good to see you back, you've been gone for a while. Welcome back!

 

Reddit is a really small group of people too. Wikipedia mentions the last time they gave an estimate number of developers it was around 5.5 million. I'm willing to bet we've grown to at least six million by now. Counting both the Unity3D and Unity2D subreddits and assume no overlap there are 210,000 developers on reddit. That's only 3.5% of the total audience.

To be honest Unity would have been far better off emailing everyone a survey rather than polling a single community.

 

But they are unable to make an email of that kind not look like spam/phishing attempt.

 

They are barely unable to do anything sensible with community.
Looking only for low effort utilities.
Put answers ... It worked, until it didn't. I mean near 0 maintenance.
Put forum, at least this works (until total switch over), but there is nothing new about forum, other than shifting forum sections about. No noticeable improvements, if any. Even spam bots love it.
Put discord, different audience all together.
reddit form - obviously, whoever put some random form there to fill, don't want Unity developers to be involved, hiding it in obscure place. I am not even attempt to look there btw.
That all avoiding whole redesign Unity services topics ..

All smelly to me as hell.

But yeah that how it works, when there is no real competition, who cares about community.

 

Unity already has all that nailed and has for a while. There's first party communication for that and they will ship staff for hands on workflow testing on site to see what companies and successful studios want and do. This is not new. They also have proper roundtable meetings often.

This other stuff here is just generally for hobbyists, casuals and indies / small teams.

 

You are correct that we rely heavily on community to handle engagements in the forums - that's why it's public. But I will politely disagree that you don't see the devs in the forums. It's actually part of our mandate to be community-driven and a lot of the support comes directly from the devs in their dedicated forums.

 

It was also posted here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/fiv...e-improved-in-the-editor.787301/#post-5240474

 

I'm specifically talking about advancements to the engine.

 

@AskCarol thank you.

Again, that is not the official way, but by mile better. At least around major Unity community. However, is just linking to someone thread, which is easy to miss. What if thread wasn't crated? No link at all? We got official threads talking about potential / suggested improvements of editor.
If not use these, why simply not create survey thread "Please help improve Unity with completing this survey". Or something similar.

Then we could have dedicated discussion on improving survey itself.

Personally I really don't like the way, how this survey matter is approached to the community. You could even pin it, for duration of survey, if is such important for Unity. Then you could simply lock the thread and unpin, when survey is done. Now link will be floating about and soon probably will be dead, when survey is done.

Fair enough, if is just my impression, but I will take that on me.

 

All valid points that you should express directly in that post.

 

I'm struggling to make this not sound grouchy, as I really mean it constructively. If you think it's worth mention in the other thread then why not do so, rather than asking a customer to repeat themselves?

 

post it in the blog

 

I started this thread suggesting tools which Unity might like to 'build a closer link with' after Quixel was snapped up by Epic... One of the tools I mentioned was from Reallusion - well, they've just mentioned that their Unreal Livelink has just been released free to indies... (!)
I'm not interested in any Unity/Unreal fights - so come on Unity - why not create/build stronger links with Reallusion as well - a New/Free Unity Live Link would be cool...

 

Why? All this does is lock Unity in where they're trying to ensure compatibility with a specific software set, something we're kinda already seeing problems with the Allegorithmic.

 

People seem to forget that Unity can be both the individual caring to improve matters and the big company it undoubtedly is today. I don't forget that. I've seen people like Will, or Aurore or even Joe just push and push, I know I named the most recognisable faces, but when you dig deeper there are many more with no less passion for making a difference.

So what if things are bought and sold, the people are what carry the light in the dark and illuminate a path we can choose to follow or not.