Unity forum satisfaction

Hello everyone,

I've been working with Unity for the last 2-3 years and from time to time I have questions that seem to be in the category "someone must have had this issue before" but which finally don't get any answer solving the issue on hand.

Personally, the most recent questions are about batching and Unity Editor GUI. A bit longer ago it was about Mecanim and asset bundles, performance, editor bugs, etc. NONE of the questions have been answered in a satisfactory way. For some, Unity stated to have found the problem, but they haven't yet deployed (performance problems with HUGE amounts of objects, Mecanim and asset bundles).

I can understand that the forum can not answer all the questions, but not so long ago, there were qualified Unity company members who actually handled those questions and gave qualified answers. But even those seem to have disappeared and forum members try more or less help each others the best way they can. Since most of the users seem to target the mobile market, their knowledge about issues that may arise if only the PC/Mac market is targeted, is sparse.

Unity, in the last year and a half, seem to have turned from a community friendly company to a money making machine, producing a new Unity version now and then containing half-finished features which take another 6 months to a year to get fixed and made usable (if they get fixed). There is no open communication about the bugs in Unity, no communication when the next patch will be delivered, no clear communication what is currently being fixed and what will be the content of the next release.

I'd like to push Unity to review some of their politics in order to improve the communication with their community so that we all KNOW what is coming up, what is going to be fixed, etc. And I would like to push them to a stronger commitment to the community by providing actual help and supervision in the forums.

So, I suggest that the first step is to see what is your impression of the current state of the forum and the satisfaction you get from it.

Note: The poll is anonymous.

 

One of the things we try to do is comb through the forums and forward problems onto devs for them to answer, while they may not have time to read the forums as much as those dedicated to monitoring the community site, they do get round to answering. That said we recognise that more of this could happen, so if anyone has a problem and googling, YouTubing, posting on here or Answers really has not solved the issue then don't be afraid to PM me the thread and I can throw it at someone relevant. But with the community growing it is more likely that threads can get buried and Unity's voice does not appear to be as loud as it used to be.

We always have and still are doing everything to listen to the community and take your views into account when making development/business decisions. I know it may be frustrating that you don't get feedback on what we are doing exactly, even though we have confirmed that we are listening to you. But the fact is, due to the nature of development and not wanting to disappoint everyone when we don't deliver fix "X" at time "B", we cannot always confirm fixes/features and release dates in advance. The development team have been working hard to improve development schedules and release fixes a lot faster.

Things can be improved on the interaction front and not just from the familiar usernames, we can't always see everything though, so again, adding on to our combing of the forums for issues, if anyone has a problem and searching, YouTubing, tweeting, carrier pigeon, posting on here or Answers really has not solved the issue then you can PM me.

 

I feel your pain Metron, I too have had no luck getting any questions answered around here. All but one of my issues received zero replies (except from myself). I dont think its really the fault of the Unity moderators however. Without wanting to sound insulting to anyone, the real problem is that the forums are continually over-saturated with noobs posting the same old basic questions and who aren't themselves able to contribute towards answering more advanced queries and issues. The massive noob traffic results in questions from more experienced users getting buried before other experienced users can see them.

This problem only seems to get worse with time since Unity attracts more and more noobs all the time, the majority of whom dont end up becoming experienced users before giving up. On the opposite end, experienced users get more disillusioned with the forums since they rarely get back a fraction of what they put in and hence stop visiting as often or at all. As a result the forum population seems to get more and more skewed towards the noob end of the spectrum, ie: people who ask a lot of questions but aren't able to answer them.

In my opinion this is happening because there is no barrier to entry for Unity and so everyone thinks to give it a go if they're genuinely serious about learning and sticking it through or not, and these people tend to give up just as easily. If Unity went back to charging a couple hundred pounds or so for the basic edition of Unity I think you'd also see an increase in the quality of the community and support. Alternatively providing a private forum for pro users might also help solve the problem.

 

I'm with you Metron. I've lost count of the amount of problems I've had that I can't get a decent answer either here or on Answers. I don't consider myself a noob anymore as I've been using Unity full time for 2 years now with 3 commercial games on 2 platforms now so feel I mostly know what I'm doing, BUT
occasionally I get stumped by something that holds me right up and there seems nowhere to get the answer. I've taken to emailing support now, but the last answer I got from them was basically "you can't do that without writing a native plugin" Which was great but took too long to get that reply, meanwhile I wasted days trying to get Unity to do something that it almost seemed like it could, but Unity hadn't implemented the full feature set of something.

I agree with Nullstar, there are so many noobs on here (no offence I was one) that serious developers with a problem get missed. I think we need some kind of VIP place to ask questions with some guarantee of decent answers that fix the problem. I'm a Pro user and feel very un supported on here for the money I spent. Why can't buying Pro get you VIP access? surely that would help out?

 

That's been asked for basically for the last 4 years, and it usually causes an uproar. Pro users feel piled in with the rest, and feel like they are getting shafted for not getting enhanced support when they really need it. While non-Pro owners feel like they will be left out of some special information if there is a Pro only section.

The only way a Pro Section would work is if it was viewable by all (to allow non-Pro users see all the information), reply-able by all (to allow non-Pro users to take part in discussions), all comments and replies to be self-moderated by the OP (to prevent thread hijacking by non-Pro and Pro owners alike), and to limit starting threads to only Pro licensees.

 

I am voting for a PRO only section, where paying customers can post questions and users of free edition can only browse.

 

And let the uproar begin!

lolol j/k

 

I don't care. If I could buy a license giving the fact that I my income is much lower than the income in Germany, UK, US, Canada, Australia and so on, I really don't care about free users who can buy it but wont because they spend the money elsewhere.
I would like to see that UT values the paying customers over the crowd of free users with this public recognition of their status. But then again, if they create the section of PRO users then, there is no excuse not to get more involved in replying to customers. That means dedicated staff to read and answer.

 

Being a Free user does not necessarily make you a noob, additionally this would be the same as us charging for use of the community site which is something we would never do. Maybe something less hostile like a beginner forum should be discussed.

 

I've wanted to make a "beginner's section" for years, but it has always seemed a slippery slope... finding your thread moved to the beginner/noob section could be seen as an insult.

But this stuff has been discussed to death before and is only one of the topics raised by the OP.

 

Good point

 

Why do you consider a PRO forum being a hostile approach towards free users of Unity? The fact that they cannot post in there should be perceived as a reality of life. And also as a incentive/reward when they are going to buy unity.

 

Of course all free users aren't noobs, but the point is that pro users are far more likely to be dedicated and serious developers who gain experience. Therefore a pro-only area will contain a much healthier and helpful community. At the end of the day any development software can only ever be as good as the support available since all the advanced features in the world are meaningless if you cant use them. Dont paying customers deserve to get the most out of what they've purchased?

PS - dont think this is a bias opinion, I am myself a free user. Knowing I could get support when I needed it however would go a long way to convincing me to go pro when the need arises as opposed to considering alternatives to Unity for fear of getting stuck during development and not being able to progress any further or loosing large amounts of time due to the current support situation.

Also you'd still always have the standard free forums as they exist today, only the pro section would be read only for non-pro users, so you're not forcing anyone to pay for the community site. You'd just be providing additional support for pro customers, in the same way Unity provides additional features for pro customers.

 

Then they needed a reality check. Basic questions are basic, and they need to be in the right section. I answer noob questions when I know the answer, and moving them to a different sub-forum wouldn't change that. Most people don't answer questions to earn any street cred or anything. They do it because they want to help others.

In addition, people will have a clue about what level of answer the person is looking for, when it's usually unclear now. Sometimes people ask what appears to be a basic question, but they actually have a very complex situation. Being in the advanced forum would be a clue not to give them the basic answer, saving the answerer a lot of time.

Separating the questions into basic and advanced can only help that process, not hurt it.

 

Indeed

As usual

 

I agree. I *am* Pro, but it wouldn't have bothered me that there was a place people can only post topics if they have Pro, especially if everyone can reply. It would be irritating if I could read but not reply, though.

 

The problem is who decides what is basic and what is advanced? For example, if it was up to me 50-75% of what is in Support/Scripting right now would be pushed to a beginner section. And probably a lot of those people would feel insulted that their question just got bumped to the Unity kiddie corner.

I doubt this would be the case. Once these questions are shoved off into a corner it would most likely be that more advanced users would ignore the section completely and the beginners would be left with the blind leading the blind.

If everyone could reply then it would defeat the purpose though as the signal to noise ratio would quickly return to where it is now. And I don't like the idea of the OP being able to moderate his own thread or admins like myself having to keep the First Class section of the forum cleaner for our Pro users either ;-)

It's very difficult to create a Pro section that cuts down on the noise but doesn't feel like it's keeping people out... and that's why we've never done it.

 

Division of the forum, is it really the solution? Then how do you judge where to put your question?

With another contributor we started a few months ago a website to summarize some of the recurrent questions from Unity Answers. It happens to be that we have a lot of hit per day but the two of us are busy and the website is barely updated when we find the time.
We hoped some others would join in to contribute but in vain.

Unity is somehow victim of its success. Being accessible and free, you get all kind of people with few or no knowledge and obviously they will ask for help on question that have been answered many times because they are just not yet able to understand the answer when they see it.

Now dividing the Answers in subsection, there is already two websites (Answers and Forum) and see already how many questions on the Answers are told to be asked on the forum and in the meanwhile the forum is filled with technical questions.
And even on the forum, one question can get redirected for being asked on the wrong section.
Adding more section will not do anything good in my opinion.

The only solution would be to have some 24/7 professional Unity contributors. But I doubt the investors will agree on paying for such a team.

 

And what about "free users" who spend a lot of money on the Asset Store?

 

Not in my experience. Aside from Aras I can't remember a single time a dev has answered one of my more unanswered tech questions.
Eventually I just email support. (which does answer).

 

Because Pro users could retreat into their own forum, diminishing the wider community. A dangerous move when the forums are such a positive force for Unity.

 

Quite the opposite. Experienced users are already turning away from the forum from disillusionment since they never get their questions answered. Supplying a section of the forum where pro users are far more likely to get help will just encourage more experienced users to visit the forums more often, and whilst they're here and waiting for answers, some of them will likely help out some of the noobs.

 

It would shut out a large portion of the community not to mention also assuming that every free user is a noob and that they have no right to communicate with someone who has Pro.

What about a user who would not want or need Pro for their project, but are still advanced in their knowledge of development? What about those who are already Pro and advanced and who just simply doesn't understand how a specific function works and asks a "simple" question.

What is a simple question? Who defines what is simple?

It's just too black and white/clear cut, when reality isn't like that.

 

Have you even asked these people to see how they would feel? That desciption pretty accurately describes my own situation so let me tell you what I think.

Right now I'm using Unity free because I'm currently only using it at home for personal projects, I'm already emplyed as a developer and we're not using Unity for our project. We have discussed the possibilities of potentialy using Unity for future projects, and also always at the back of my mind is the intention of having another stab at independant development should anything happen to my current employer, in which case I would consider Unity.

Currently I get fustrated because I cant get any advanced questions answered with the current support situation. I know that's not very likely to improve as a free user with the addition of a pro-only section (although there is a possiblility since more experienced/advanced users are likely to stick around more), but nor am I loosing anything since I'm not getting my questions answered anyway with things like they are. What really matters to me is that, should I begin to rely upon Unity commercially, that I'm able to get support quickly when I'm on a critical path and delays will be costing me money or lack of support could potentialy even cause a project to fail. In that case I'm more than prepared to purchase Unity pro for additional support (I'd likely be wanting the extra pro features in this scenario anyway). My current experience with the forums and available support however make me reluctant to completely rely upon Unity in a commercial situation where my job or financial security could easily depend on having good support.

 

Agreed. Why split the community just because someone has pro and someone doesn't?
Just cos I have the money for Pro doesn't mean I'm a better community member and more knowledgeable than someone with Free.

Some people with Pro have never even logged into these forums, let alone help somebody with an issue, and creating a Pro forum won't change that.

 

Well lets look at it another way.

Right now, there are close to 7,000 people logged into the forum. If, lets say, only 5% - 10% of those people knew an answer to one or more questions posted by someone on the forum and actually posted an answer, there would be absolutely no question left unanswered. But I guarantee more than 10% know an answer to one or more questions posted, so theoretically there shouldnt be a need for a separate section .... just more users willing to answer something they know.

 

I agree with the overall assessment that what we have isn't working very well (especially in specific cases) and is only getting worse. However its also clear that many of the suggestions although initially sound good, all too frequently can be shown to cause more or additional issues, that may not resolve anything.

I wonder if part of the problem isn't the forums, but elsewhere? For example UT current 'learning' drive may well help to reduce a large number of 'noob' questions. that is by improving knowledge in other areas it may help to reduce the signal/noise ratio?

Alas unfortunately I suspect we'll still see many posts for what are very simple questions, which have been answered many times and where frankly the response of either RTFM or lmgtfy.com would be perfectly valid, if sadly not acceptable.

However as a paid Pro member, I'm unsure of what support i'm entitled too or can expect. I certainly know that i've had half a dozen or more questions that I really needed input on from a UT developer to get the correct answer. Sometimes that has happened, all too often it hasn't and either the question goes unanswered or someone from the community manages to step in. Worse sometimes a UT dev does step in, but can't give an answer at the time and then the post seems to be forgotten about. ;(

I would emphasis here its not the quality of the answers from UT devs that's at issue, just the lack of apparent response. So obviously i'd love it if the UT devs could monitor the forum more, but then they'd spend less time adding features or debugging.



As a somewhat off-the-wall and completely self-centred suggestion (being a pro Unity user) I wonder if in the very specific cases that several developers here have mentioned, when they really need to get an answer from a UT dev, a potential solution is that we are given X number of tickets per year to request a UT dev look at a specific problem/post we have made in order to resolve the situation?

Its not perfect, as you may run out of tickets, but then it does help to enforce you use this ability sparingly. Granted it does single out paid users as being special, but then we have paid, in some cases many times over (add-ons, updates) so should we not be entitled to some additional level of support?

I know that Aurore said to forward on posts to them and they will pass it onto the devs, but thats still not guaranteed and if it becomes common knowledge they should expect their inbox to become rapidly full of these requests, including noob ones. So whilst I certainly apricate their commitment and efforts, I have a strong feeling it would backfire, quickly becoming unmanageable for them.

Maybe in the interest of 'fairness' every Unity user gets a free ticket or two per year, with which to request UT developer help on a specific thread/post (this is important as we want any answers to be searchable and usable by other unity users), whilst Pro users get an extra couple.

I kind of like this idea, as there are a couple of unanswered questions of my in the forums already. For example in ShaderLab I had one about support for Geometry Shaders in Surface shaders. Something which is real essential for some of my shader work. Aras did step in once, but I get the feeling he then forgot about it (understandable), or maybe he's secretly working on adding support (hope)

In this instance I would gladly burn up a support ticket in order to get a clearer answer, have Aras look as to why GS shaders aren't working with expanded surface shader code or investigate adding support to Unity 4.1.

However i'm sure someone will have a problem with this concept or more likely identify an issue with, forcing it to be assigned to all the others failed ideas in this thread. Trouble is whilst we do this, as others have noted, its the forum, community and Unity that suffers. So I think eventually those in control of the forum are going to just have to take a punt on the lesser of the evil ideas presented and see what happens. To do nothing, which is what seems to have happened is just going to make things worse.


After all when you spend more time in the gossip section than all the others combined you know there is something wrong

 

I like this idea as a potential alternative solution. The only downsides compared to a pro-forum would be the lack of transparency which means that people couldn't learn off of the questions and replies of others, as well as meaning that you would only be getting potential solutions from a singular source rather than opening it up to the public. Maybe if these tickets could be made publicly visible in some way that would solve the issue, but then is that too far different from having a pro forum?

 

I agree, it is vitally important that all answers remain public and searchable/findable.

Thats why I state (though easily missed in my wall of text) that the tickets must directly relate to an actual problem posted in a thread on the forum. Although obviously that should also include Unity Answers too.

 

Well... this wasn't really about pro forum or not... it was about unanswered questions. The situation hasn't changed in 1 year. I already kicked off a similar discussion last year (http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/128822-Unity-problems...-fed-up...).

I'll not go into every single detail, but here we go:

Believe me, before a question is asked, it has been researched, googled, youtubed, etc. Starting PMing forum moderators is *not* what a forum is intended for (on a side note this would also do harm to your premium (lite) support which costs as much as a Unity license). So, no, this isn't a solution. You will get submerged with requests...

I couldn't run my business if this was true. If I cannot tell my customers what I'm currently working on or what bugs are currently in the works and estimated for the next *planned* milestone, I can shut down my business immediately. If I tell my customer that I have found a fix to a problem but, you know, it could be that the fix will not be included in the next 3 releases, he's faster off to another developer than I can say "Hello? You still on the phone?!?"

An open access buglist would be an *HUGE* improvement because at least we could see *which* bugs have been reported and recognized as such. If you don't have such a buglist, change your managers... (Sorry, if this sounds aggressive, it's not intentional).

@Pro Forum: While I'm not really for a pro forum, I can understand why this request has been done so many times. The argument that a non-pro-user can answer to questions I, as a pro user, have, does not stand up to the fact that they cannot answer to questions regarding pro features. For example I don't see a free user answer my questions in regards to deferred lighting and static batching. But then, those could be noob questions (even though they target pro features). So, yes... a pro forum would actually help focusing on pro feature answers...

If I sound so "pissed", it's because I have spent huge money on Unity Licenses (+Updates) and graphic assets. It has shown that between creating a prototype with Unity and creating a real life project is a huge difference in Unity (if the target market is PC/Mac and not mobile). And no, this is not due to me being a noob. I have 17 years experience in the business and I usually know what I'm doing.

Last year I have thrown away ~$10.000 of assets because I switched from a 2.5D platformer to 3rd person 3D (mostly due to the fact that Unity has a problem handling huge amounts of assets within the editor and the game design didn't work anymore with largely reduced level sizes). While I have reused some of the assets, a lot were tailored for a 2.5D environment. A promised "fix" for the performance problems has still not be integrated since the current version still shows the same symptoms. I've spent a lot of time writing work around tools for problems that shouldn't have existed in first place.

So, yes, I'm upset that Unity does not deliver as promised, I'm upset that they do not openly show which bugs are known, I'm upset that I cannot be sure that the way the prototype works will be the same way the project itself will work. And I am upset that questions I have remain unanswered if the answer should be clear to a Unity developer. And finally I am upset that I have to do a massive ranting to make Unity move...

 

I'd like to play devil's advocate.

I am hugely experienced in unity and able to answer nearly every question, but I simply don't, and here is a shortlist why:

The title was "help me!!!!!"
I don't even enter these topics and skip them entirely. Be clear with an intelligent topic title.

The question was poorly written, rambling, meandering and didn't get to the point.
Skipped, waste of my time. Help us to help you. Spend time on short clear posts.

The question was solved perfectly by google, by copying and pasting the author's topic line into google and pressing search.
I mean really? Are we slaves, googling for you? This is happens so often, its not even funny.

Too many questions in one post.
Keep it direct and clear, make it simple for us to answer.


I suspect I am not alone here. This isn't elitism, it is having the common decency and intelligence to put effort into asking for help, instead of being an entitled, demanding and stupid person expecting help on a plate. If someone puts clear effort into their question, and makes the information clear to read, to the point and polite (no need for begging, just simple politeness) - then I will make effort to reply, as I'm sure many others would too.

Perhaps Unity should encourage people on the correct manner to post, that would yield the maximum possible response.

 

I agree with what you're saying hippocoder, I've found myself thinking the same things many times. One of the deeper issues though is that there are questions which simply cant be answered except by support staff or the most experienced users because they are about aspects of Unity which are undocumented and Unity itself is a black box. At the moment its practicaly impossible to get answers to these styles of questions.

 

Ok thinking this through a little more. First i'm going to call the system 'Request a Dev Ticket'

One argument against it would obviously be that UT get flooded with 1 million forums request tickets as soon as it goes life. Whilst true I see this really as no difference to what will happen when word spreads about Aurore's gracious offer of emailing them the question/thread ink and them passing it on to a developer.

However the benefit of using 'Request ticket' is that the Unity web pixie's can create a page on the UDN to deal with these requests. It would show how many request tickets you have left and would actively inform you when you use one, that these are a scarce resource and double check you aren't wasting it on a simple question.

This page could then ask for links to the thread and perhaps an additional subject/title.

Before submitting your request, the page then searches the forums and answers and gives links to those that might have already answered your question. Sure this can be annoying, but hey, this is a service you are meant to use as last resort, so surely you accept a few little hoops to jump through. heck you may find your problem was answered but you missed it in your intial search.

Then you click on submit request. Again you get a popup saying 'are you sure', these request tickets are like gold dust you know

Once submitted it gets put into a system or forward to moderators. They are responsible for filtering the question/problem, maybe even denying the request if it is clearly not suitable (i.e its a simple obvious question that already has answers). If they approve it they forward it on internally to the most appropriate UT developer.

Then hopefully within a day or two (UT dev's have lives you know), they can post a solution in the thread or Unity Answers page.


As mentioned Unity free users maybe get 1 or 2 tickets per year, whilst Pro members maybe get 1 or 2 extra per Unity/Add-on and there might be an upper limit to the number of request per year you can make.

Though just a starting point, I feel this proposal might have some legs, but of course i'm biased, so it will be interesting to learn what others think, or what holes you can poke in it.

The only problem I can see here, is that unless the UDN is linked to a Unity install that users could simply create new accounts to get unlimited request tickets. Perhaps additional safe gaurds need to be added, such as an IP check and that you only earn support tickets (up to your maximum) for every few months you are a member of the UDN.

Obviously like any system its open to abuse and may well be overloaded, but at least it has a system and protocol involved which is bound to be better than swamping Aurore with hundreds or thousands of emails

 

That will be the day when you'll see people behaving in that manner. It was before opening the flood gates of free users, but I doubt you can enforce this policy now.

 

Excellent post.

Exactly what I wanted to say but far better written than I had in mind, which is why i left it as RTFM and http://lmgtfy.com/

As you say its not about being elitist, though when writing up those reasons it can so easily be misinterpreted that way, which is why I didn't bother.

 

You say this as if it doesn't already happen, it does, More often than not t's a case of "I need an answer within 5 minutes", which I usually respond for them to wait. If a post I get sent can be solved with google or by waiting a little longer, I'm not afraid to say it.

Hippo made a good point about creating a good post which could be something included in the forum guidelines (which all need a little pillow fluff and updating).

 

lol - you may regret this after i go back through my 2-3 year post log and dig out all my unanswered questions along with a few other devs in this thread I suspect

I mean don't get me wrong, having a sort of 'responsible' fast-track via yourself would be amazing and I will definitely look into utilising you. I just fear for your inbox

 

2-3 years? I'll answer those now, update Unity

Joking of course.

 

This. Nullstar, that would be horrible. It doesn't mean that we're noobs because we don't have pro. I have a fairly large team, we just can't afford pro at the moment. Not to mention that it would shut down half of the community. You can't just assume what our level of ability is by if we have pro or not.

 

Ah if only it were that easy to solve problems

 

Tell me about it

 

Did you read all my arguments? I've already stated that I'm not of the opinion that non-pro users are all noobs, I fall into that category myself being an experienced developer who's still using Unity free. The opposite however is inescapable, that the Unity-pro owner community as a whole has a far higher level of experience and dedication than the wider community as a whole.

Also as I've already pointed out, as an experienced Unity-free user, the introduction of a pro forum has no impact on me since I already cant get my questions answered anyway. There's not a deeper level of 'unansweredness' that would result with the introduction of a pro forum. What it does give me though is assurance that if I ever need support I can upgrade to a pro account and get that support.

 

That still leaves the free users in the dust.

 

As an experienced free user, the current situation has left you in the dust already. Its nearly impossible to get good replies to more advanced questions with things the way they are.

 

So that makes this solve... what, exactly?

 

I totally agree to what some of the people said here that this forum needs a Newbie scripting section (with even specific type of question like movement and camera,menu,score/health/ammo), also maybe Newbie general forum for general type questions. if it would be possible to make a section of newcomers to answers it will also be amazing.
Now for the part that some questions don't get a lot of answers, I don't think it's just because there's a lot of basic questions, I think it's also about how well you present the problem and being specific is key, although I believe there are small tricks to get the community more productive and helpful like I've seen in other engine forums like 20 line challenge threads (make useful/cool scripts with just 20 lines), stickies threads which update regularly with information and links, community projects, and maybe sort of reputation system like answers but for the forum.

also I'm not sure the community would agree but I would love if there could be a way to maybe pay $5 a month in order to have real pros come here and answer questions, and write some tutorials from time to time.

 

This depends upon your definitions of 'real pros' but in my opinion Unity are already doing this, or very close to it, with their new 'learning' drive and its for free! Check out the Unity blog to learn more. Whilst at the moment it would seem to be more tutorial focused from some of the comments and replies in the blog it suggests to me, they might be broadening it out a bit to get other 'pro' users in. This could be really interesting and incredibly useful.

If however by 'real pros' you mean actual UT engineers/devs, then i'm not so sure. I think I would feel a bit aggrieved thinking I'd have to pay $5 to get one to answer a tricky question.

 

So it's going to solve the problem by making only inexperienced users talk together while the pros that know what to do get to mingle in another thread?

 

Yes, because user X who just wanna know how to script a camera movement system for his game can be answered by user Y with maybe 2 months more experience then him, and user Y problem can be solved by user Z with more experience. the wheel of life. if you are a 'pro' and you wanna help someone it will be more efficient to help the most advance question you can find for you and not waste your time answering common stuff. leave the common stuff for common users to answer it will also help them by giving them tools to help users with less knowledge and become 'pros' themselves.

 

That is the most flawed argument I've ever seen. Many pros are happy to answer questions, and they'd know better than the one with 2 months more experience.