Official: How Can We Serve You Better?

That is why I wrote that you should be selective. Support in my world is not helping people learn, they should do that on their own or pay for an education.

However, I DO think that pro customers should be able to occasionally fire off an email regarding an engine *problem* and get a relatively swift reply (a day or two)! Even if a year has passed since we paid a sh*tload of money for several seats of Pro + iOS Pro + Team license etc. Feel free to weed out users not on current versions, but if we pay for continued development you d*mn well should communicate with us, without asking for money *first*.

The support plans should be for teams needing ongoing support, not for the rare instance when you need help with something really strange going on. I have yet to receive a quotation for the plans in our case, but what is having me on the fence is that we usually do not need even one hour of support per month. So should we be on a plan just in case we might need some help with something at some point? I do not think that makes sense.

So, in a nutshell: We most often do not need support. But one the rare occasions we do need help, you do not seem to care one bit (= no reply to email, no replies in the forum, no replies on Answers).

 

This would have the caveat that there would be no free version anymore with which you could earn your pro version with. You can earn money with the current free version.

I'm more for an additional non commercial Pro version to the current strategy. I would even pay for it when it's not too expensive.

 

To quote yourself: "With all respect, this is a really bad strategy."

I am frustrated by companies who do not listen to bug reports, as well. Especially if the software is actually pretty good but there just are a few things that are annoying and often the official response is just - "well. it's just like this. I don't see your problem." (that wasn't a Unity example, BTW ).
Yes I know that I'm just a pretty small customer with my single licenses. That's why I am also really fond of companies that make every customer feel like he's just as imporant as the ones investing hundereds of seat licenses (Allegorithmic and Maxon are good examples from my experience so far ). I know the large ones are more important by business standards and I absolutely understand that - but I still invested my money and I want to feel like I am heared and not ignored.

BUT (back on track) - if you don't submit bug reports in the first place how do you expect things to change? No matter how large the company they simply cannot test everything and every hardware setup in-house. It's not possible. "I'm not being paid for it"i s really a dickish excuse. I'm not getting paid for a lot of things but I invest time because I want them to change. It's called communication and if you ignore Unity by not sending bug reports then don't complain being ignored yourself.

 

As a long time customer (8 years) it has really been the other way around. If you notice that UT is ignoring you, sooner or later you will not bother to try to communicate with them. We did not cease communication - they did.

 

Yes - I understand that. I'm also on the side of simply canceling bug reports because I sometimes got the impression that I'm more of a hassle than actually contributing or helping. Sometimes I simply did not care any more either. I understand it and I sometimes am frustrated as well.

Still - the reasoning of not contributing because one is "not paid for bug reports" is simply nonsense. If both sides (customer and unity) start ignoring each other then there's no reason to go on at all. Just leave it be and lean a different software. Brick wall VS brick wall is simply twice as invaluable.

 

so there will be a change to Particle Shading in Unity 5.0 ?

 

I don't expect it anymore. I'm done with that

Change did not happen in the past anyways when i did report bugs. And it will not happen in the future neither. So why should i bother? Why should i waste my precious spare time with doing the bughunting job for Unity, just to get ignored then? That's the point. And the answer from Graham shows me that there will be no change in this strategy. I as a hobbyist am not worth to report bugs anyways. Just big companies gets listened at. Means Unity doesn't even want me to report bugs when i count Graham's statement for real. I still hope i got him wrong there.

To be fair, it is not that every bug gets ignored. But it is simply too much open and unfixed stuff around. It's much more than just a few things. Which is caused by the current system how bugs and bugfixing gets dealt with.

We are all developers here. How do you deal with your customers? I for myself can say that i try to tackle every known bug for my games and apps. And will fix them when i am able to. That's how it should be.

 

I'm a semi-pro developer, in that I sell games alongside my actual job. I'll be releasing two F2P mobile games next month, and converting other projects to F2P.

The only serious thing I want to see changed is the pricing. With the current pricing, including my $750 or $50p/m discount, I don't see any real reason for me to upgrade past 4.6. This is coming from someone who bought 3.x and 4.x pro licenses.

PBR, GI, etc, are nice, but the PC market is of no interest considering the lack of an open app store, and not owning W8 yet. The PC market seems to be "get on Steam, or make no money". WebGL is the most interesting thing, but it's an addon.

Software subscriptions don't interest me, but people like to say it's "the way things are going", so maybe it is, but the Adobe's of the world don't exactly have serious competition, and I don't see you beating Epic's price. If it would kill a free version then I'd be against it.

Ideally, Unity would be free, and Unity Technologies would make the amount of money they're making now, or more. I wonder how Unity being free would affect UT's revenues from the asset store, especially if the architecture of Unity allowed Mecanim-type additions to be official plugins bought from the store. Aside from that, an ad-supported editor seems trashy, but if it could make you enough money to make Unity free it would be worth it, but that seems impossible.

Feature-wise, a minor thing I would like to see added to Unity is actual saved game support. Unity Serializer should be in Unity by default. And serialization of everything in the inspector, as with Full Inspector.

What are my biggest problems getting my games done? There are none, hence why I'll never really need to upgrade from Unity 4 unless it was so dirt cheap that it was a no-brainer.

 

Nice!
Any chance Unity 5 gets shadow quality improvements?

 

Engage with us, make yourselves part of our community and our teams!

​

Recently you've made a few attempts to tell us what you're doing, why you're doing it, and how you are doing it. This is excellent!

Keep it up, and start taking our feedback and idea's on board. Once you've reestablished a constructive relationship with us *then* you can start working the backlog of concern - as you can see there's a lot of issues that are unresolved.

 

From PhysXInfo.com

@bibbinator is there any chance to see APEX and/or HairWorks in Unity 5.0? or even in any 5.x version?

 

No, that got denied elsewhere.

 

where?

 

I hoped you would just believe me
Somewhere in the 500 page long threads or in the blog was an answer that you would have to implement it yourself and that wouldn't be easy.

 

Speaking about fixing bugs. Yeah, it is always smart strategy to ignore some reports just because it doesn't contains full stack trace plus memory dump plus proposed solution. Not even closing them because of that. Let it be there as 'active' for a few years, why not? Don't bother to instruct user 'do that and that to supply us the information needed'.

For last couple of weeks my enthusiasm for Unity engine has changed from quickly growing to below zero. Because I've found there are actual bugs nobody gives a S*** for, because there are features that just outdated, because there are simple things that could be there, but no one bothers to implement for a years. Use the Asset Store, Luke, it will give you all functionality we aren't bothering to implement.

By the way, for how many years multithreading is exists? How many years 64-bit is there? New-born children grew up and already are making their own games since then, but in Unity even editor is still 32-bit. Using Unity, could you build your own Crysis? You know, the very first one? A 7-years-old game? Well, with CryEngine or UE4, for 10-20 bucks per month, you probably could. But not with $75/month one.

Not like I desperately need all that cool stuff those engines offer. Nor I'm going to make my own crysis. It isn't even about money. It just shows how outdated your engine is. Looking forward, I see the only thing Unity could still keep as an advantage - its wide cross-platform range. Not for long, probably.

 

I believe you, I even saw it myself, I'm too curious about any physics related changes, I thought there maybe other official places you read them.

 

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/235119-Unity-5-and-Physx-3-3-0-details?p=1603093#post1603093
Here is one of the answers which says something like "no new features"

 

It's the way things are going because Adobe are in a position to dictate that. And they know very well that if things are just there long enough customers will adapt to it and not see anything bad in the whole thing, any more.

Epic may go the same route as standard but they are making two major changes to their policies:
a) A customer CAN negotiate a flat-fee if they want or need to.
b) after payments stop the software can be used in the last upgraded/known state without limitations.

Where Epic's subscription model is much more fair to the customer Adobe are pretty much just going the "take it or leave it" route. Not that it matters but I went the "leave it" route for my business and did not upgrade after CS6 - and I won't if I am not forced to. That's a different duscussion though and pretty off topic.

So far Unity stated they are going to keep the perpetual licenses which is what matters to me. I can understand that the subscribing customers might want different conditions. No matter if it's a subscription or not I want to have an option to keep using my software after payment ceases.

 

One further problem with adding a watermark is that those companies that truly stand a chance of competing with Unity do not include them. Adding one would simply give those of us who hate them yet another incentive to consider an alternative such as Unreal 4.

As for lose of revenue, you are neglecting to take into consideration the asset store. While I cannot justify the steep cost of Unity, I am willing to invest in asset store resources and have spent at least $200. Given that Unity takes a 30% cut, that means they have made $60 from me. That is $60 more than they would have made had they been using a watermark.

 

That's great to hear, Our team will really need alot of Physics, and CUDA was one of our main worries in Unity 5, and Cloth integration with Mecanim is a hit ,

 

One thing people aren't aware of is the fact that a lot of people say: Great, this is part of U 5... sounds great to have that feature...

I say: Wait and see... wait and see... U 5 will *not* solve all the problems you currently have, nor will it magically work...

 

My Last Hope in Unity is 5.0, that will decide on the fate of unity for me.

 

@unity_officials will SteamWorks SDK be available in-core?

 

Which engines that can compete with unity pro moving forward are free for non commercial use, and have no watermark?

You bought those while using the free version of unity, not an unlimited watermarked pro trial, and in my scenario you would continue to be able to do so, so that's a non point.

 

They do not necessarily have to be free, they just have to be reasonably affordable. I have no problems spending $19, as I did not stay subscribed for more than a single month, to obtain an engine that is easily on-par, sans the middle-ware, with Unity Pro and does not have a watermark.

Speaking of which, middle-ware is currently the only reason I would consider Unity over Unreal 4. That may change though as both Epic and the middle-ware providers themselves have been very open about wanting to support Unreal 4's subscription license.

My point still stands. If the engine were watermarked, I would not be using it. As such they would lose any purchases I would have made during and after the watermark would be present.

 

Right, and nobody needs to pander to people who aren't willing to spend any money because they are either a net loss or the profit margin is so small that it's not worth while to chase.

Most people who liked the idea of a watermark pro trial didn't say that the price shouldn't be changed as well.

 

I see there is mention of reflection probes. Are light probes still present in Unity 5, or will they be removed?

 

This from the Teleporter blog comment section (UT employee):

So I'm willing to bet they will be available in Unity 5.

 

I am not asking for special consideration nor am I asking to be pandered. I am simply asking Unity to consider that when you have two products of similar capabilities that they should be similarly priced. Given the features and cost, particularly for non-commercial and hobbyist uses, the comparison of Unreal vs Unity Pro is looking quite similar to PC vs Mac.

As for income and expenses, you can pretend that keeping a user such as myself around incurs a net loss but it simply is not true. Only one resource is consumed by me and that is the bandwidth usage from downloading the client and my asset purchases.

As someone who has experience running web servers and hosting sites, I can assure you the bandwidth costs incurred from my presence are nowhere near the $60 cut they made from my purchases.

 

Thanks a lot.


Oh, For the Store, the price displayed in the list of assets owned would be nice. I have no idea of ​​the amount spent to date.

 

Aren't you a ray of sunshine , all they have to get right at the core level for me is what they already have and 64-Bit editor / Enlighten. Make sure there aren't engine breaking bugs in it..

 

Like a clock in a casino

 

Those people who don't spend money on Free may buy Pro someday. It is comments like the above plus all the horrible things I am reading about Unity here that make me really not want to invest money in Pro. It is difficult enough to spend that much money on developing a game that may never go commercial but if you add the comments in this forum, all the bugs that are not fixed, the misdirection and miscommunication, promises not kept, etc., I am not sure it would be even sane to invest in Unity Pro at the moment!

Honestly, we are here for uLink and if something else comes out in the next 6 months to a year that will do the same thing for another engine, we will go to that engine. C++ doesn't scare our programmers and Blueprint sounds amazing for a non-programmer like me.

And no one will care if they lose people like us, except maybe the asset store developers.

We ARE willing to spend money, but I want proof that Unity 5, Pro Version really will be that great solution before I invest money. Based on what I read here, I think that is valid. I certainly do not think Pro is worth the current cost right now, not with all the problems here.

I have to thank the developers who were honest. I had no idea there were this many problems with Unity.

 

Almost a direct quote of what I've already said.

Your game may never go commercial, you like blueprints, your programmers like C++, you want something with a low upfront cost that can be evaluated, you haven't invested a huge amount of time and money into unity.. The choice seems obvious to me..
It's NOT sane for you to invest in unity pro at the moment, how can you not be sure?

An unlimited watermarked pro trial would allow you to evaluate pro for as long as you'd like. UE4 doesn't offer that. You need to subscribe, you need access to a credit card, and if you unsub you don't get access to updates or the asset store.

It wouldn't be there to pander to you though, it would be there to try to make you dependent on it, so that you buy or subscribe, so the engine makes a profit and continues to exist and get enhanced.

I'm not here to sell unity, they must adapt or die, that's the law of selection..
If they adopt a strategy which doesn't make enough money, they die. So stop giving them bad ideas.

 

Exactly. This is why I made it so it was more expensive up-front, but didn't include the royalty fees in my alternative.

 

It sounds fine, but I doubt Unity will go that route.

The purpose of a watermarked pro trial would be to allow us to evaluated the engine before we invested and prior to publishing, if we get that far. We are much more likely to publish using Unity if we have access to a pro version (our game requires some of pro's features). Within 6 months, we will be forced to choose because the Free version will reach it's limit for us. We will either have to abandon the project partially finished or move on to something else.

 

Graham, I'm not sure how familiar you are with Unity engine, or how long you have been with Unity QA but I feel insulted by above. You are insulating that we are bothering support with silly questions. We are not, many of us have over 10 years of engine development experience and we say there are issues with Unity, this is your response. With that kind of attitude, I don't have confidence that things are going to improve.

Guys, this thread is about improving Unity service to use, not to ask what features U5 is going to have. please keep on topic

 

If you're not bothering support with silly questions then he's not talking about you, is he?
Having worked with software customer support, his post almost isn't even a joke so much as a lighthearted look at the truth. If you want the absolute best example of this, take a look at any "game kit" thread on these forums. It's full of people who have never touched a line of script asking the asset developer to write their entire games for them.

 

+1. Graham is simply pointing out that they have to sort through many support tickets like this to find the ones that truly are things Unity should be working on. It might be more PC to say that the customer is always right, but the truth is, customers often are very uninformed and post questions similar to what was posted. I don't think his point was that all issues brought up about Unity are silly, but that they often need to wade through a mass of poorly worded or uninformed tickets to get to the issues that matter.

Honestly, I am on the fence still with Unity 5 Pro. I am not claiming Unity to be perfect here, but I think a lot of people have some unrealistic expectations when it comes to supporting a large piece of software or running a business.

This is an information gathering thread. While Unity members can come in and respond to specific issues people are bringing up, and continue dialogue, do not expect an immediate response on an overhaul to pricing or other similar, huge decisions. Its just not going to happen.

 

We've needed a pricing overhaul for a while now though, and not just when it comes to the subscription model. The very nature of the mobile pricing structure is mind-bogglingly terrible.

 

Fair enough - and until now, it appeared (at least to the customers) that they weren't really considering it. Now they are asking for feedback. My only point is that something like pricing is NOT a decision that will be made lightly, and probably not something that will be announced in the middle of a feedback discussion thread, only one week after the topic was brought up. Its ok to demand that the pricing structure be looked at. Now, they are finally acknowledging that they are looking at it - but a business decision this huge will take time. I wish they could just meet for 30 minutes and make a decision, but I am a realist.

Honestly, I doubt any changes to pricing, if there are any, will be announced until Unity 5 has a scheduled release.

 

That's logical. In that case, the features aren't actually ready yet because they have to be integrated with other features. I was thinking more along the lines of features actually being ready and integrated. But if every feature's implementation depends on every other feature's implementation... that is, every single feature of Unity must be influenced by in some way every other feature of Unity, then this system makes total sense. I didn't realize that was the case.

But I probably just have the wrong perspective. I haven't worked on something as large as Unity, with a large team of people

 

in 5.0, are the PBR and IBL affect the Terrain quality too? as every feature is 'kind of' based on another.

 

The magic of values ...

It's not more than a few hundret bugs to fix. Not a few tenthousands as you make it look like here. When Unity would really have this much flaws then it would be gone. You get hundrets of reports for the same bug again and again because you don't fix them. The user has no way to check if the bug already exists. So he happily continues with reporting.

The high report count is wanted by Unity. That's the design mistake in your bug fixing strategy. Graham even said that the number of submissions is what makes a bug being fixed or not. It is your explicite strategy to collect as much bugreports as possible. And then you blame the huge number of bugreports for not fixing the bugs. That's crazy.

You make yourself lots of unnecessary work. No wonder is no time left to fix the bugs. You are busy with sorting, counting and categorizing them, with managing the reports instead of fixing the bugs. And the longer you wait with a fix the more reports will add to this bug. The same existing bugs will be reported again and again.

Yes. Bug fixing costs time. What a surprise. But not fixing the bugs costs even more time. And it costs jobs when the product starts to suffer. A disfunctional feature that just exists at the paper is no feature anymore.

The issue tracker was a small step towards the right direction. Not long ago users were not even able to check if their bug already exists or not. The issue tracker is again not fully transparent, you cannot browse the bugs really. But at least you can search for the terms now. Which could reduce the number of reported issues quite a bit. A link to the issue tracker should be integrated into the bug report module too in my opinion. First have a look if the current bug doesn't already exists. Then report it when not.

When an open source software like Blender with just a handful developers is able to do the fastest bug fixing on earth, fixing bugs in hours, and delivering nightly builds so that you get your fix the next day, then a multimillion dollar company like Unity should at least be able to fix the showstoppers like the gravity for gamepad or the crashy treemaker in years.