Official The Future of Unity Feedback

I put up 3 feedback posts since Feb 28th, one of them got a reply but the other two remained without a response even after 2 bumps each. This was frustrating but I thought maybe Unity was getting flooded with feedback requests and so couldn't possibly get to them all.

So I counted.. Since Feb 28th:



..These numbers are not good enough, and it has really compounded my frustration.

Not only are the response rates really low, the total number of threads are not even that high. Do you guys not go through 'Feedback' prefixed posts daily? Or even weekly? This isn't some huge backlog. It is a few dozen posts that just require some feedback, some response, some acknowledgement of being heard. But instead they get completely ignored. It is really discouraging and really toxic - I've noticed that lately just thinking about having to post about something on the forum makes me feel angry and upset, and have noticed it comes through in the tone of my posts too. This feeling of talking to a wall just breeds such toxicity.

I feel this has also confirmed my thinking that posts outside of the Beta sections simply dont get as much attention, so it becomes a waste of time to post a new thread unless you can somehow contort your thread title/content to kinda fit one of the beta categories.

I also noticed that some 'Feedback' prefixed threads were just people asking for help with a bug. So not only does Unity seem to miss a majority of threads, but the posts seem to slip by the moderation team as well. Things will naturally slip by - the mod team definitely has their work cut out for them, but I figured maybe the Feedback prefix'ed posts would receive more attention since they have an explicit purpose (To provide feedback).

PS Some notes:

• I do not have mod tools or anything to search for feedback threads automatically, so I counted by hand. Numbers may be off slightly, but should be accurate enough.
• Some forums had preexisting 'Feedback' prefixes, I only counted posts newer than 28th.
• Some forums had preexisting 'Feedback' tags, I didn't count those since this isn't the same as the new 'Feedback' prefix

 

Why Addressables ONLY async ??
Very uncomfortable!
Add the ability to download non-async pls.

 

Better post your feedback in the dedicated addressables forum:
https://forum.unity.com/forums/addressables.156/

 

Perfect example here of at least one major reason why feedback is not always answered.

The forums are a mess...

You've got threads like: https://forum.unity.com/threads/feedback-wanted-visual-effect-graph.572110/

where it sprawls over 10 pages (this is relatively short compared to some) with questions scattered throughout.

But then on the parent forum you've got neat "1 question per thread" pages - which go unnoticed because everyone is bundling in the long thread where all the action is. Good luck finding something relevant to your topic in there...

The latter approach is probably better - but the former was instigated by Unity themselves.

Here's what should happen (in my view obviously but I have been using forums and the like for nearly 3 decades so I might have picked up a thing or two along the way)

1. Strongly encourage a single question per thread
2. Enforce this where possible. Delete and move posts that are in the wrong place
3. Stop creating threads that request people to post multiple questions. Create a new forum for that.
4. If we're going to have more forums then keep the structure sensible. Don't nest categories too deeply and have conventions around category and forum naming
5. Too much work? Use trusted volunteer mods. Communities love organising this kind of stuff themselves. But keep some oversight to avoid mod-privilege abuse.

Forums need care and maintenance. They need established conventions and community norms.

(Stack-style sites need this even more - which is why Unity Answers is such a mess compared to Stack Overflow)

 

That's because of several factors:

1. Lack of moderation of Answers. Compare with how carefully (and sometimes overzelously) things are moderated by the community on Stack Overflow. Stack type sites need constant weeding.
2. No effort is made to encourage people to move good questions and good answers to Unity Answers. So people continue to post here because that's where the action is and the forums continue to be a big albeit useful mess.
3. Where's the statement about what's appropriate to post here as oppsoed to post to Answers? It should be clearly stated at the top of the forums.

Online communities don't self-organise without a little help.

 

I agree with this and your previous post so, so much.

I know that Unity is "aware of the problems" ... but do they have a Community Lead? One that both has a vision and the power to organize and enact solutions?

The totally random state of their community tools makes it look like either there is no leader, or they don't have the ability/budget/experience to make decisions that improve it.

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Related, but somewhat tangential rant:

We've got this new, weird "Connect" site (connect.unity.com) that is some mutant version of LinkedIn + MeetUp + chat rooms. Does this actually fill a need?

The Connect site feels like somebody at Unity got sold on an "enterprise" solution that promised to solve all their community woes. But, it does NOT have the functionality to fill the roles of Unity Answers, Forums, nor Feedback. Sadly they don't even post content to it, like any of the talks from GDC.

Issue Tracker is literally unsearchable and lacks critical metadata.

Some of the Blog content is amazing and fantastic, but feels like it should be easier to search or cross-reference from Documentation.

On the upside, it does feel like Documentation has been improving over the last year!

 

... and, if i may give one suggestion, please, that new asset store look is ridiculous and offers no screen estate, and we (the community) don't want you to remove the old asset store, or it will be no purchases from our side over here, and we will advise everyone else to do the same, yep we all hate the new store so much already. It's disgusting, made unhelpful way100%, and offers no screen estate, and no style, so it has nothing that old store has, and we all need. Learn to appreciate the input of community guys, and we all say: the old store (and it's style) STAYS, if you want to sell any thing to most of the Aussies over here,and i believe this is for the rest of the world, as well. Either do the new store with the full features, and helpful screen estate of the old one - or don't touch it. Period.

 

Hi, I use the Blacksmith environments/models in a college course. I am very much interested in seeing the package updated to the latest 2018 release to extend its useful life. Also, I am still hoping to see the Screwie characters from Book of the Dead released as well. Thank you, Unity demo team, for making great materials that make teacher's jobs easier!

 

why do people think this is a thread for giving feedback about editor features?

 

The official thread about "deprecating Asset Store v1" topic is here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/v1-of-the-asset-store-will-be-deprecated-soon-wait-what.644065/

 

It's always smart to shut down something without to have a working replacement.

--Hell yeah! Let's just suspend democracy until we've invented a better solution!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HA HA HA! ha.....

 

Because Unity feedback was the pillar of the democracy in the world. *khm*

Wait, wut?

 

2019 !
Why is the document not yet Chinese?

 

I feel like the fact that everyone is flooding this thread and asking for features shows that there needs to be somewhere for us to ask for features. I agree that the current implementation is not the best, but I'm not sure that forums is a good replacement...

For example, there are several massive threads that have been going on for a while (baked prefabs, chunked navmesh) that have consisted of people trying to figure out how to get something working due to a missing feature. As far as I can tell, a unity developer hasn't once commented on either of these threads. It's simply us struggling and trying to find our way in the dark, for literal years.

Obviously I'm not saying that unity has to add either of these features, I guess I'm saying it's frustrating that there has been 0 feedback from unity about our issues on those threads.

 

Why does every feedback page redirect to this thread?

 

I'd just like to voice a quick complaint and how super annoying it is that Unity broke all the links to the feedback pages. Several Answers pages and various other websites referenced those issues and some had actual useful information. Unity could have easily made the site read-only, so I'd like to know why they simply redirected it to the forums.

 

Woah, I didn't realize they actually did that for the answers site. That's erasing a vast pool of information and solutions from over the years...
EDIT: Wait the answers site is still up

 

Yes, I didn't say the answers site was down,just that several answers there had links to the Feedback site. And all those now redirect to this forum post...

 

Ahhh okay. Not nearly as scary as I thought. I agree that it's weird that they simply... deleted the site. Especially if there was helpful information there

 

At the very, very least they could have redirected to Archive.org.

But it would have cost peanuts to put the site into readonly mode and host the old content as static HTML.

Not doing so is pretty much vandalism. Grrrrrr.

Hey Unity. Cool URI's don't change: https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

 

Yes, agreed.

It was a better site for learning about long standing "Known Issues" and quirks than their actual "Issues" site.

 

Olá, meu nome é Rodolfo; eu quero aprender a jogar jogos, mas não sei onde, quando há um pouco? Sou brasileiro, e o Senhor Jesus permitem, eu vou abrir minha empresa de jogos este ano, na cidade da qual moro; preciso de ajuda, posso contar com voçês?

 

I believe many people don't understand for what the feedback tag is meant to be used.

Just look at the "Made with Unity" forum, there are many "feedback" threads that have nothing to do with providing feedback to Unity.
https://forum.unity.com/forums/made-with-unity.11/

If people use the feedback tag incorrectly, I imagine Unity Technologies isn't going to spent time to actually handle those feedback items, as you can't identify the actual feedback items.

 

@Buhlaine would be able to answer this better than I.

 

Rule 1 of UX - the user is never wrong. You need to design and manage things in such a way so that people use them correctly.

This forum is brain-meltingly complex and looks like it escaped from a late-90s time capsule. If people use it incorrectly that's because it's poorly designed.

 

Yeah tags are new tho...

 

I don't think I would want to support people using Unity if they can't get over this simple forum software. Good natural barrier.

 

I have already loginned with hub but when i want to dowland package in asset it say "You must install the unity hub..."

 

Ah. You've fallen into the typical "Users who misunderstand the UI are stupid" trap. It's not about being smart - it can be about being busy, unfamiliar, unlucky or simply coming from another similar forum with different assumptions.

Bad UI is bad UI. Don't blame the user.

 

There is a group of users, who simply does not have the capacity to comprehend a simple application like forum. They aren't too many, I wasn't talking about them.
There is this second group of people, who simply don't care. They don't care anything only themselves. These are the people whom you tell twice to navigate to the proper topic and ask the question there, because for example the general topic isn't support topic, and you just give up after the third time and you simply don't answer because if they can't invest the time to check out how the community and its tools work, then why bother? They are lazy and they are selfish.
It has nothing to with the UI. They would and they are doing the same thing where the UI is dumbed down.

Yes, having a streamlined UI is good, but a forum engine is basically this, you can dumb it down, but it will end up as either a chat or twitter or Reddit page. It's not the same, different feature set. Don't blame the tool, blame the person.
So imagine you need to support these people who can't and don't want to find the proper tag for their own thread in Unity.

 

From the perspective of a superficial user such as myself, Unity is in complete decay. The job forums was the best thing about it and it was removed for some horrid alpha of a website with abysmal functionality. People keep saying that Unity Answers is done for. The new version of Unity threw the mono IDE out for external solutions which are unsupported and much more complicated to use. New features keep being added to Unity while its foundation of usability and good community are falling apart fast.

In this light this thread about feedback is extremely worrisome in its disarray. From declarations that democracy "does not function" by a moderator, the general agreement that almost no community feature or site for Unity actually works as intended (or at all), useful and vital information such as feedback threads and properly labeled threads receiving no acknowledgement since the beginning of the forums, and finally a critique of users not "caring enough" to use the forums properly. In no way i can see a way this thread will lead to an actual solution to the feedback problem, since no one seems to be responsible for that happening.

By using common sense, the solution to something like communication is always simple:
someone has to be responsible to collect feedback and convey it reliably to the Unity developers. Someone who is himself reachable for feedback. Upon feedback collection the person or people who left the feedback have to be notified. Finally, the users have to be periodically presented with the changes/consequences their feedback has caused, even if it's a rejection of their views and proposals.
Whether it's the forums, a feedback website or anything else doesn't matter. No system is going to work flawlessly, but it will work as long as the exchange of information is 2-way and there is accountability for the process. The problem is i don't see any such accountability anywhere in the extended Unity community features. Things are not falling apart as much as they are allowed to fall apart.

 

Where, precisely, in the forums is this feedback to be posted?

 

Feedback for what?

 

I suppose it's just meant to be mixed in with the hundreds of help posts?

 

ADD FONT SIZE, as an option on preferences please!
+2000 devs been asking this since 2011 my eyes are bleeding all over the place, unity actually brings eye health issues because of the blurry and small font on high resolutions.
P.D.: HELP!

 

I'm guessing the new UI will allow for this hopefully

 

Hi; Not sure if you have addressed this yet or not.
I'm a Visual Consultant and work with a bunch of programs...the very first thing I do on a new package is change it to a dark theme so it doesn't burn out my eyeballs.I work from a photographic/rendering point of view ( 20 years plus)
If I see a grey scale theme on anyone's machine; I instantly know they dont spend 12 hours a day in front of a monitor.(ie they havent done the 10,000.This is a simple fix.i'm trying to examine unity's potential ( i have avoided it for several years)... and the very first thing I want to do is not available....
For Visual Clients UE4 comes across as a better option ; I'm trying to promote Unity as a tool but you guy's are not making it easy...Please fix this..Today.

 

So any news on how feedback is supposed to work for unity? I'm a bit confused, since all the wold forms of feedback have been shut down without any form of replacement.

 

Your heuristic might be faulty. I spend 12 hours a day in front of a monitor and have chosen the light theme in several apps.

Those generalizations, eh?

 

Do we have enough proof that the quality of feedback wouldn't improve by restricting it to the forum...?

 

That really doesn't make sense. At all. I have plenty of friends who use the computer for more than 12 hours a day and use light themes.

 

Today I am unable to access Old Asset Store (Edit: the button to switch Old is removed. You can still access via: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/?stay#!/404)
Very sad indeed.

There were many features that Old Asset Store has and New has not had yet. Without adding them to the new, I do not understand and support moving to New. I see regression in Unity Asset store.

For example I was using "Lists" function in categorizing Unity assets I own or I am considering to buy. Let's say there is Low Poly Space asset. I put it to both Low Poly and Space Lists I owned. So if I am going to make a space game, I open Space Lists and see it there.
Now in New Asset Store, I am unable to create new Lists (A list can not have more than 100 assets, so you have to create a new one) and I don't see all the lists I created (but a fraction) when I want to add an asset to a List (by Add to list button through Page of an Asset).

It seems Unity is pushing us to save our own assets outside Assetstore, huge inconvenience. Now I have to create my Excel tables to list and categorize assets I own. This is a regression.

 

Tags are superior in every level. Use it to categorize your assets you own.

 

Yikes, Unity is really pushing their new store, without a single instance of communication. This is quite frustrating.

 

Either store is unacceptable to me because they are so damn slow. I use the Asset store as a last resort if I can't find something any other way.

 

Please add depth only mode for camera in HDRP/LWRP .

 

Thanks for the suggestion, BUT before tags were suggested or implemented, I already had created dozens of lists. Now I have thousands of assets, I can not start using tags now, sorry. I want Old Asset Store (with its cons and until its pros are added to the New Store).

 

So you can start to use an excel table but you cannot use the tag system? Well... the "I want the old XYZ back" is normal whenever a service updates its UI/service, you will get used to it.

 

"You will get used to it" is kinda a weird response. It's true, we will eventually get used to an inferior product. But that's sort of irrelevant.

Removing/breaking parts of the list feature hurts people who relied on them. Sure, tags my be better, cool. But maintaining old features is important for products.

 

It's the truth. Proven by many times.

Depends on the interpretation. In my opinion the new is better on every level.

Nope, it does not work like that. If a feature is used by the majority of the users, then it worth keeping. If a feature is used by a small minority of the users, it worth to drop (does not worth the effort to maintain and support it), if it's in between, then it's a judgement call.
You know, I liked the old Gmail UI, where you could stick the calendar below the inbox categories and stuff. Now, it's gone. I got used to it more or less. And I was angry, because I could see my appointments by just looking at it, now I have to open it with moving the mouse and click. But I understand that G* decided there is not enough users use the feature, so they dropped it. I develop application and software for too long to agree with you that we need to keep every single bit of features all the time. Nope, that is the sign up for a disaster.