Support? I want to SCREAM!!!!!!!!

Did you get the automated reply with a bug number? (Depending on when you submitted there was about a day over the holidays were some reports failed to get to us)

 

Its very normal that if you need extra support you will need to buy it.
If you are not happy with the free support you are getting out of the community spend your money on some help.

Nicely said.

 

What about this [Unity guys]?

 

We've just made a company policy that we will NOT update to newer versions of unity unless we have a specific problem that requires it. The quality control issues with new versions is ridiculous. Literally (and i am NOT exagurating) EVERY time we have updated to a newer versions of unity since 5.2 we run into new bugs that keep us from publishing updates. Regression is ridiculous with unity. And the icing on the cake is that support is nonexistent. And others in the community can give there opinions but i do not feel unity as a company really cares.

 

Pro or not people should be nice enough to help out if people have a question and post it on the discussion board. I haev posted numerous questions up here and I cannot get a straight answer, my development is at a halt because I cannot get my large world working, A problem I am sure people have encountered before and should be able to take 30 seconds to respond to. A bad community is a terribly sad thing...

 

You're running into floating point limitations, and Unity doesn't natively support origin shifting. There's nothing anyone can do. You have to design or come up with something.

Also you just offended everyone who has helped anyone. Nice one.

 

That is some you should have already been doing, it's pretty standard practice (not just for unity). It is recommended by unity to not upgrade unless it is necessary.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-patch-releases.246198/

 

No just browsing through the forums I decided to respond to this one, did not mean to offend anyone, was just saying that I was having what seems to be a common problem and used the solutions I could find online but they didnt work so I posted a discussion. That is not the only post that went unanswered just the latest so it got mentioned here, but I can see I am (unintentionally) offending people so I will shut up now.

 

I don't think it's any worse than any other third party software that I've used.

 

I'm part of this community and wasn't the least offended, next time try not to be so inclusive

I empathized with his frustration, maybe you just had a bad day.

 

Yeah it's probably a more relevant comment for anyone actively helping out on the forums.

 

Maybe our projects are more complex so we hit regression more often?

 

Possibly. Amount of regression definitely depends on how many features you have in a project. I can only speak of my experience relative to other engines and middleware that I've worked with as a hobby and in the large studio I worked for, and I would say that the factors that play into updating your codebase include the number of engine features changed, the amount that those features have changed, and the number of features in your game that use those features.

So, reading your statement again, it also depends on what you mean. Are you saying that UT's regression is ridiculous, in that it's not as effective as it should be, since new bugs get introduced, or are you saying that your own regression of project features is ridiculous since UT updates many of the engine features frequently enough?

Well, either way, this is the nature of software. It's an ever moving target, and things need to be fixed whenever middleware upgrades happen. That's why near the end of any software dev cycle, it's highly inadvisable to upgrade to new middleware, because it can be completely different from what you expect.

 

I mean that unity creates show stopping bugs when new updates come out..

 

example.. 2 of my threads... no-one from unity has even responded... that's poor support when the forums ARE support.

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/opengl-3-bug-on-galaxy-note-4-only.378136/

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/failed-reading-from-xxxxxxx-error.382628/

This seems to happen about 95% of the time

 

another example
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-slow-to-open-vs.354119/

another example of major regression...
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-5-3-performance-issues.372648/

So far i can't find a version of unity that is stable and workable.. Really hard when you have a game in production and you spend half your time fighting your dev environment.. Is it to much to ask for a stable version? And if you won't do that, for gods sake give us decent support!

 

I only found this thread by actually having few issues opened and unanswered (well documented, but no feedback), and was wondering what is going on with Unity support. Thats that.

My current impression, and following suggestion would be - since these forums are already so well visited and full of able developers - to motivate or further establish helping attitude in the visitors, so they are eager to help others as much as they are willing to help themselves with posting their own issues.

Empowering events made public
Bits of love gone inspirational
Smiling expectationless

 

I think the fact that almost everyone at unity is here at this thread really speaks to how great their support is , if you dont get an answer to a question just bump it , or just ask again but ask it better , also if you're using unity free , the right to complain is low like very low , i mean you can't get better than free .

If you have a problem with unity post a bug report or get support or buy a support license as has been mentioned .

Now i'll agree that unity the engine , is terrible , i mean it's very bad , fps dropped seriously , lots and lots of errors with some of their own assets , water pro just lags and spams errors , particles cause massive lag spikes , physics and networking show up in profiler as generating garbage ? didn't know that could happen.

But i think we forget that unity is busy overhauling their engine , there are going to be problems along the way ,I do think unity's doing some things wrong in their testing of games , i think that they should vet the release to pro users if they want before releasing to everyone to make sure they don't miss any errors or something .

Also I don't want to be rude , but the new ceo of unity is worrying me quite a bit , as the state of this engine , seems similar to the state the battlefield 4 engine at release , everything feels a little rushed currently , call me paranoid but that seems strange , right after the new ceo takes over unity nose dives(in terms of usabilty ) ? , might just be me but anyway i say slow it down a bit wait till unity 6 to release these features , fix unity now , add cool features later.

 

Might help even more if you have some of your test suites/scripts (those docs that QA uses to verify pass/fail, not to be confused with auto test harnesses or anything) publicly available. That way, it not only serves as documentation for late-breaking changes, but also gives beta users a chance to get an idea of extended features beyond the documentation. Not saying that UT's QA staff is not doing their job. Just saying that more eyes that are aware of where all these changes are occurring, "the merrier."

You can argue that release notes serve that purpose, but if there's truly still a divide between UT development and its users (and those users aren't the ones bitching for bitching's sake), exposing test suites might help.

 

wait...

wait... wh... wh... what? The fact that a thread about how poor the support is and the fact there is a guy from unity posting on it occasionally is proof of.... Good Support?

I hate to disagree here, but if they took our complaints and actually DID something, or even tried to do something to remedy the situation.. that might be something. I have posted several examples of issues with no responses and no help yet..

but this i will agree with 150%.. How about regression testing the living daylights out of it before we call in a major release... say 5.1, 5.2, 5.3... so that people who's lives depend on unity being stable and dependable, can have at least a little bit of trust in it. Or at least make the focus a bit more on quality. There ARE competitors of Unity coming out of the woodwork. If unity is not careful, they will loose there free ride.

Also, if unity has the idea that they will let the unity community "support" themselves... i think i should get points towards discounts of our pro licenses for spending time doing what paid unity staff should be doing

Oh, and in case anyone has not figured it out.. I got upset enough about this unity support/unity regression issue that i am willing to fight long and hard to try to get some changes made.

"Its the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world that actually do."~Steve Jobs R.I.P.

 

I have been CTO at a big software company for 11 years. My conclusion regarding QA (and this applies with more intensity as more complex/more customers/more people get involved in a software product) is that it's the whole system (including customer's premises) which should be the surface of testing, not just the software.

Reason is QA is based on assumptions and those made by just one faction can't cover the whole use cases.

So yes, don't upgrade per sé and try to actively collaborare with Unity Devs and the community to make YOUR deployment/product stable enough.

I'm sure QA and Devs at Unity are under high pressure, and they deserve our highest respect for their difficult work. I know how it feels having thosands of customers asking from the dark for solutions as if you were God with all answers!

btw: regressions tests are not bullet proof!

 

yea, but... if they had support staff that ACTIVELY monitored all the discussions and were helping, even if the answer is. "It is a known issue" is a 5000% improvement... then at least you know.. as it is now, we have these issues and they never get answered at all..

 

The problem is that Unity is a massively complex piece of engineering, and problems are best answered in an ideal world, by the developer of that area of Unity. I doubt aras knows the ins and outs of the fmod implementation or the physics. He has ballpark knowledge of some parts and in depth knowledge of other parts.

So when you apply that rule to all the Unity staff, you get to the conclusion that your special staff answers require pulling people off their main job of development and having them waste all day, every day, answering trivial questions a google will throw up the answer for.

I don't see how that works. You will need to pay for support. When you buy a car and you don't know how to drive it, who's fault is it? Should Ford teach you?

When it comes to bugs, there's valid complaints. When it comes to "general support" well, frankly, there isn't a software company out there which has this solved (Unless only a handful of users). That's why there's paid support. When you buy a car from Ford, they don't teach you to drive it.

 

Well at least with the car I bought (it wasn't a Ford though, not sure if the analogy only works with Ford cars ), the docs were pretty awesome.

I can't say the same for Unity's.

 

This is my beef. Reproducing bugs is UNITY'S problem. Not ours. I have my own job... I don't need to waste time creating a new project and files to reproduce a bug for them. I should be able to just file a ticket explaining the process like every other bug on the planet and Unity should figure it out from there. Unity gets so much free labor from the community...

 

Consider this. I don't remember the exact percentages, but one of the Unity employees stated that the vast majority of bugs submitted aren't Unity bugs, but a bug in the developer's code. Just because something doesn't seem to be working correctly doesn't mean it's a problem with Unity. The act of narrowing down a project to the bare minimum necessary to reproduce the bug is a valid debugging technique, and will often show you, the developer, what *you* have done wrong in your code. 99% of the time it will be *you*, not the tool. You say that Unity wants you to do their work for them, but in reality you're asking Unity to do your work for you.

 

You're absolutely correct when this is the case. The problem is Unity's mentality. They have straight up said that they'll never look at an issue without a bug submitted, but they'll also rarely open that bug if there isn't a project attached. So we can't submit any bugs at all, even if we know it's not our code, without making Unity a repro scene for them when we should just be able to detail the case and move on with our own work.

 

Making a repro project takes no time at all if you have already narrowed it down and are 100% certain it isn't your code. In fact making a stripped down repro project is a common practice in debugging anyway. Decoupling the issue from your whole project will tell you a lot more about the bug. If you isolate it is a Unity bug, you can just submit that project. Really, it should't be more than a few minutes of work, and it will help ensure that your bug is addressed.

 

This isn't always true. It depends on the complexity. I agree with you for the most part. But my main gripe is that Unity requires a repro project to even consider the bug.

 

Even paid support seems to be hit or miss. Or at the minimum, unity sales team has no need/desire to sell it. I have asked sales for info on paid support and all i get is a one sentence response with no real answers. So from what i know about paid support, it is not much better than free support. Either that or i have gotten on unity "Pay No Mind" list. haha I can't even get a phone call from sales about it..

 

I can confirm that premium support is fantastic. (Big props to Mark from UT!).

 

Hmm that seems strange, who were you in contact with?

 

Yey! Will pass it on, we love Mark.

 

Man there are some really salty people in this thread! Relax!

The bottom line is that if you give Unity the means to reproduce the problem, file a clean clear and simple bug report with a repro project then it will be looked at seriously. I've done this myself numerous times, in fact their fastest turnaround rate was one day. My longest was one month - it was a bug, but I didn't send a repro with it and it was on a Beta version.

However if you are unable to do your part and reproduce the problem on your own in an isolated environment and give that to them so they can do the same then you cannot expect them to take your report seriously. If you expected them to look at your 'problem' (which they cannot have for some reason), analyze it and begin to speculate on what could be the problem without truly knowing that there even is a problem with unity in the first place then you are mistaken. They can't do that, it is a waste of time because of the sheer volume of 'bug' reports that are not bugs.

They get thousands of these reports and prioritizing the highest quality reports is critical if you want to actually get any work done. This is probably why people complain about long turnover times with their bug reports.

So, if you want 'support' you are better off asking the forums where you will get answers typically in a matter of minutes as long as you clearly express the problem. This is a great way to smoke screen issues that you are having before you move toward contacting Unity Support with the problem. The community of developers here is actually quite capable of analyzing issues and pointing you in the right direction. Most times you'll find an answer pretty quickly, other times you'll be directed to a Tutorial or API segment, or online Docs that explain how something works. Rarely, people will find that your problem truly appears to be a bug and urge you to contact Support by sending a repro project to them.

 

I have been in contact with several salespeople.. If there is one that is willing to discuss paid support, give me their email address

 

Can i get a URL to this forum where this happens? That would be Soooooo Helpful...

 

Sure

 

Haha touché... But seriously... that does not happen from my experience.. I have yet to get a response or see others get a response to a post in minutes.. I have many that are weeks or months without any response at all... not even a response asking for clarification or asking questions..

 

I'd prefer a name so I can follow up with them, you should only have one account manager as it's based on location, so you should have had one contact. Or you can PM me your location and I can send you the correct email address.

 

I'm in idaho...

 

I'm so extremely frustrated with unity. Seems to me like the the most bug riddled software in the world. Never and i mean NEVER have i had such a horrible experience with a piece of software in my 25+ years as a developer. Im SERIOUSLY regretting choosing unity as a platform.. But now i am stuck... and the great part is.. Support is so bad i can't get help. Today i tried updating unity and i can't even get unity to activate. Even the manual activation is failing... and seems i'll be waiting at least till monday to be able to get back to work... EPIC fail... Every time i turn around i hit a major bug in unity that shuts be down for days if not weeks..

 

I think you probably should consider using a different engine if you feel that it is as bad as you say. You are clearly communicating this is the worst software experience you've had in 25 years, therefore it is illogical for you to continue using it.

 

Not everybody that's knee deep in an engine can just up and switch. I think really what ev3d wants is some assistance, not some Spock-like logical hoopla about switching engines. He may not be in a situation in which he can do that?

ev3d, I felt much the same way and contacted email support until somebody helped. When it was not helpful or seemed to glaze over 90% of what was said in the initial couple of emails, I bitched back and forth a few times until it was elevated to somebody that I felt could actually understand the frustration. It took a couple of long, griping emails to get somebody's attention, and by the end of it at least one of the longer emails was eventually forwarded to the head of customer service. I was careful not to personally insult anyone or be abusive, just explained my feelings, and it eventually got the results I was hoping for, including a couple of bug fixes that had been plaguing Unity for nearly a year that a lot of people had been griping about. Perhaps you could do the same?

 

He the problem is, that isn't really asking for assistance, mostly just complaining or giving too vague descriptions for people to help. Several have tried, or tried to point him the right direction, but more vague complaining. Hippo's point is valid, Unity is clearly not for him, either not understanding how it works, or simply not his ball of wax. Unity support is supporting the application, not directly helping people learn how to make games. Learning how to make games and using the engine is done through the learn section and forums. If he his have the extreme problems he claims, he needs to try other tools.

 

I've been using Unity since 2008 and I never felt that I was absolutely alone withy any problem.
Unity has documentation, answers, the forums, tutorials, training videos ... and if there is a bug a bug tracker. They also have paid support if needed but the project has to justify it.

These things have all been said several times in this thread, though.
Unity staff - several unity staff have chimed in to offer help - which is what was aked for, wasn't it?
A thorough, definitive problemdescription on the forums usually gets a fast response by someone on the forums.
A severe and reasonable complaint about a bug on the forums usually also opens up a discussion with people from the forums and from Unity.
Regarding Bugs - I've always had a reply to my documented issues within a few days. But it's bugtracking so of course it takes some time.

Bottom line: The Unity engine is used by several Million people now. Considering this there's still quite a lot of personal support from the Unity people. And that's a good thing that helps the company as a whole as well because the community can feel it. But as a user you always have to help the helpers as well by being precise.
Without a precise and ideally isolated problem nobody can offer support. Projects are just too different from each other to be able to do this. After all Unity isn't a sigle purpose game maker.

 

Here is my most recent issue.

I am having an issue activating 5.3.4p5. I launch unity and it checks the activation/license. Then it shows the selection between unity pro or personal. I choose Pro... And enter my serial number. It puts the checkmark next to it so i click next... It goes to a screen that says "updating license" then flashes a screen that says "activation" then goes right back to the same screen asking me for my serial ?(that is profiled with my serial).. but the next button now does nothing...

So i send an email to support (and i posted in the forums here). No response yet on the forum topic, but i get an email from support. You know what the response was? A link to this http://unity3d.com/unity/activation. I detailed exactly what i was doing and it is exactly the steps in that page... but now i will need to wait (i'm betting at least another day)... Support (his name is Oscar Pett) just responded asking me a question i had already answered?

1. He did not actually read my email
2. He did not give me any helpful information based on the email i sent..
3. I included step by step screen shots of the entire process i was following so there was no confusion.
4. It seems this tech support (and all others i have encountered) simply want to get through as many as possible not really trying to help each one.
5. i even tried disabling my internet and forcing manual activation but the manual activation fails as well.