Unity forum satisfaction

You can refer your "professional" friends to engines like CryEngine, where they get all the support they need... for the low, low price of $500k to $1 million.

 

That is exactly where they go.

 

Why? Unity is MUCH cheaper...

 

Well, that's kind of the point. One of the reasons companies go to those higher cost engines is that they feel those engines are for commercial projects and that engines like unity are for hobbyists. Adding some level of non forum support for pro users would probably help Unity develop a reputation as a professional tool. I also think there is a place in between hobbyist projects and large commercial projects where you still have professional developers who want robust support. When they look at unity it is a big turn off to not get any dedicated support.

 

The point is, if you can pay a million for an engine, you can probably afford the Premium Support on Unity instead. Save yourself several hundred thousand dollars.

Also, why does everybody act like UT is getting upset about not having the "professional reputation"? They are doing just fine. They're growing incredibly fast and more and more commercially successful games are being released all the time.

It will take time to become mainstream (if that's even their goal). Either way, they seem to be quite happy and doing very well as they are.

And again.

 

What other people say> Saving 1,000,000 dollars. Seems legit.

 

The kinds of questions that don't get prompt responses don't seem to have any correlation to how advanced the topic is; instead, they get answered based on specificity. Obviously, more experienced users are far better at asking the right questions.

The problem is that there aren't just two skill groups, and any metric you used to divide those groups would inherently be flawed to no benefit. The false assumption everyone is working off of is that we would magically be more likely to answer questions if there was a division in the first place. I'm a pro user, and I'm pretty adamantly against splitting the forums up based on that metric (or any for that matter, it's silly).

If your question is not being answered in a timely fashion, work on making your question more approachable. Too many users who seem to think that they're highly advanced come to the forums asking really specific problems and posting source code - but not giving an appropriate explanation of the problem at hand.

When posting a question you must ask yourself a lot of questions:

1) What exactly is the problem I'm having?
Articulate the problem in a succinct, but complete manner...

2) Have I done the appropriate testing to actually locate the area of failure myself?
Posting 200 lines of code saying "This doesn't work, it should do X but Y happens instead" isn't going to lead to a quick response. Find the relevance for the reader.

3) Once I've located the point of failure, is it possible for me to reproduce the failure in a simpler form for the reader?
If so, do it.

4) What source code is relevant to this problem?
Post the source code, comment the source code so the reader knows what you're trying to accomplish...

5) Are there any other systems interacting with this that the reader needs to be aware of?
Explain what those systems are, and how they are related in a succinct manner...

6) What is the higher goal of this system?
So many questions on these forums really boil down to a developer going down a convoluted path begging for errors to do something with a much simpler solution from a system-design standpoint; please, please explain what you're really trying to accomplish on a broader sense so the reader does not have to try and piece this together themselves.

I honestly don't see very many well formed questions go unanswered for long periods of time unless the problem is so niche few users, regardless of years of experience, would be likely to have experienced the same issue.

What you have to remember is that a lot of the very helpful members of this forum are not pro users, they are advanced student/hobbyist users still working off of free. The pro community in terms of active forum users is tiny compared to the free community; I know a lot of my peers (full time game developers) actively use Unity to create commercial products - but I'm the only one of the group that I know is an active forum users and I'm not that active. I'm not going to snob out and pretend that when I have a question the only people who could possibly answer it are other professional, full time developers.

I tend to poke my head into the scripting forum every day and read over the questions, but I only respond to well explained - specific inquiries. My time isn't that valuable, but generally I don't have much of it to spare in a single sitting - I'm sipping my morning coffee on the clock staying current with the community. I don't have time to spend 30 minutes trying to figure out what you're really trying to ask before I can even begin to answer your question.

NOTE:
I'm not trying to pretend I'm hugely active on these forums, I'm not - though I lurk 5 days a week. I'm not trying to pretend I'm one of the most helpful users on these forums, I'm not by a long shot. I'm only trying to give a little insight into why someone who is on these forums every work day (and most weekends at least a few times during the day) who has been developing full time in Unity for several years now doesn't answer more questions.

My primary goal coming to these forums every day is to just stay current, that's a large part of my job as Lead Programmer at Sortasoft, but I go to the scripting forum every day and answer whatever well explained, succinct questions I can that don't seem like they'll require much back and forth with the O.P. (because again, not too much time in a single sitting - I'm at work).

-----------------------------------------

tl;dr - Splitting the forums would honestly do nothing productive, encouraging users to ask better questions (and providing a good stickied writeup that people can point them to explaining what it means to ask a good support question) would do a lot.

 

Don't get too caught up in the huge "ONE MILLION DOLLARS!" That people are throwing around. Those rates are negotiated depending on the project type and size. For smaller non console projects there are great engines that can get much closer to unity pricing. There is always competition. All I'm saying is that having a better support system would help unity compete in the non hobbyist market.

 

Unity offers premium support:
http://unity3d.com/company/support/premium-support/

 

I actually have first hand experience with this, so I'm not just reciting what others have said. While working with Idea Fabrik (the shmucks who eventually bought HeroEngine), we contacted several companies and negotiated prices. The lowest price tag we found was $200k (and that engine was no CryEngine).

 

Remember I said for small non console projects. I've been through it too and for non console you can get much, much better than 200k deals. It's pointless to argue that though, the point I was making was that I think adding some level of support with pro would help unity with non hobbyists.

 

For that there's the support payment option though. Something you can buy for a full year for $6000, which is ridiculously competitive still.

 

I can't believe that there is so much anti VIP section from the unity people on here. We pay for pro and don't get any pro support, we get lost in the noise. OK so how about this, I will create a new forum for Pro unity users to post threads that anyone can read and answer. All I need is some way of knowing who is Pro and who is not. Will Unity let me have access to such information?

Come on Unity, you are lacking in your community support to actually help your paying customers. If you won't have a VIP section then at least have a team of experts that their only job is to browse unanswered questions and answer them in a constructive way to actually help that person.

 

I thought Unity worked with "professionals" like the wasteland 2 crew and others...didn't Unity bend over backwards to add functionality that was required for that project? That functionality was then released to the public in 4.0? I'm still on 3.4.2f and haven't been around here for months, so can't confirm but I thought that's where motivation for linux distribution came from?

Also being in local Unity meetup here in Seattle there are people from all walks, professionals and complete noobs, people from studios with published releases.

Have big companies like EA not make a Unity game, several years ago by now? To act like only kids in their bedroom are making games is wrong.

 

Unity paid support is Minimum $500 per month! This is madness amount for a full time indie like myself that only just about managed to buy the pro version and pro addons. I only ask about half a dozen questions a year, so this is way too expensive for that. I think I have come up with an alternative....BRB.

 

Ever heard of premium support mentioned several times in this thread?

 

If the free support available at these forums and others does not satisfy your needs, hire a consultant for the specific problem you're hitting. There's no lack of people who will help you for a nominal fee. Think of the "commercial work" section as a "Premium support, pay as you go" support section.

 

This is the problem though and is what is not addressed in your well thought out earlier reply. What several of us are asking for is more input from Unity engineers specifically as they are likely the only people who know the answer and sometimes more importantly are the only ones who might know that there is no answer. However its not quite what we feel is to the level that it should require additional paid support for.

I'll point out my post in the Shader Lab forum as an example again, 'Is it possible to use Geometry shaders with surface shaders'. I'll explain the process, but please don't misconstrue this as a complaint against anyone. Effort was made and gratefully received, it just didn't manage to get to the bottom of the problem.

So first off i'm pretty sure my first two posts cover everything you mention in your first post. Clearly written, specific errors quoted, full shader source provided, detail explanation of what i'm trying to achieve and what i've tried etc.

In my first shorter post I was looking for some quick info as to whether it was possible so as not to waste my time trying something that could not be achieved. I continued to work on it for a while but made no real progress, so posted my second reply. Another Unity user replied, but with incorrect information and then went on to suggest using a method which I had actually used and shown in my second post. Finally Aras stepped in and clarified that what I wanted to do wasn't supported in surface shaders directly and that i'd have to write it by hand.

Unfortunately this only really provided the same answers i'd discovered or suspected by my second post and it was unclear if his reply meant I couldn't even achieve it using code copied from a debug version of a surface shader (common practice) or not - i.e. exactly how much 'by hand' was needed here. He wasn't able to provide any further assistance at that time as he didn't have access to a windows machine and this is all in dx11. Unfortunately he never came back to the thread, though I can fully understand he probably has lots of other commitments and it was during the dx11 competition.

This essentially leaves my question unanswered and at a dead end as I suspect only Aras can really answer it or get to the bottom of the errors I came across. Yet supporting geometry shaders within surface shaders or at least being able to utilise Unity's ability to build multiple shader solutions (ie. for multiple lights, shadows etc), even if it means adding GS shader by hand is pretty essential.

I strongly suspect if I sent a little nudge directly to Aras he'd have a proper look at it, if he had the time spare, but that feels too much like over-stepping the bounds between user and developer. I have contemplated submitting it as a bug, but then its not really its more a lack of support or over-sight. So again I'm left feeling somewhat abandoned.

Obviously taking away from this discussion I plan to write an email to Aurore about this as that would seem to be the next logical step and hope that it gets passed on and that Aras has the time to jump back into it. However I'm unconvinced this is really the best solution as it places a great deal of responsibility onto Aurore.

I guess this is why i've pushed my own solution about free and paid users being given some small number of support tickets they can use up in specific cases such as this.

I do appreciate that if Aras did look into this it might well take a few hours for him to resolve and I guess that might call into question if its a good use of his time or even a case in favour of paid support. However I also feel the knowledge would be highly valuable to the community at large (at least those who write shaders and mess with dx11) and that this one question alone isn't worth a yearly support fee.

 

You pay for the feature set in Pro. Support is an entirely different payment option.

 

My opinion on the pro forum aspect of this: Let the pro users have their pro only forum. As long as my questions are answered, and they always have been to my knowledge, then I really don't care. As long as it doesn't distract the devs or anyone else from answering questions the free users (like me) may have I really don't see the issue.

 

I find the forums to be pretty good. I've gleaned a fair bit of knowledge by reading from other people's experience, especially during my first couple of years as a Unity developer, and to this day I find it a handy place to stop by and pick up whatever news might be current.

I've never found it to be too good at directly answering questions I have, though that's generally because if I can't figure out the answer myself fairly quickly and haven't been able to find someone who's had the same problem before, it's generally something pretty darn obscure. As a result, I'll end up changing tactics or solving the problem long before anyone else finds the same obscure issue and (maybe or maybe not) my posts about it and comes up with a solution of their own.

 

I don't make a living out of Unity product, I make my living out of development of software for my customers. The Unity projects I do, I do them in my spare time. Paying my graphic artist to produce the assets for my game did cost me ~$19.000 + the Unity license upgrades + graphic artist Unity license. So, paying minimum $1.500 for 3 months of Lite Support (you MUST take minimum 3 months of support), to answer the questions that cannot be answered by the forum users (because within a day the question passes from page 1 to page 2 or 3) is A) a lot of additional money for my serious spare time activity, B) unnecessary spent money if there would be a lesser noise pro forum, and C) "unfair" solution for those who have the same issue but no access to the answer due to the fact that the premium support responses can not be seen by all users.

I totally understand that the people doing support cost money. But apparently you still don't have enough people to handle this, if the same team handles 30.000 requests per year + must do the documentation + (if time) can answer to questions on the "Answer" site.

1. Give people ACCESS to a list of recognized bugs with information if these bugs are currently handled.
2. Lower the price for Premium LITE support (AND/OR don't enforce people to take at least 3 month of such a support)
3. Create a forum for PRO feature related questions (with read/write access for everyone) and try to convince a PRO user or a group of PRO users to moderate the forum for you.
4. Do a search on the forum about questions that have 0 answers or which have only 1 poster (might be *bumps*), and "mirror" them in an "unanswered" sub-forum for higher visibility.
5. Give people a ROUGH outlook of WHEN they can expect a new release (i.e. until end of May, until end of September, ...)
6. Give people the possibility to "upvote" ("like") answers to questions. This would allow people to find more quickly a qualified answer to a problem and possibly avoid double posting of problems.
7. Create a GUIDELINE of how to POST problems in the subsections, delete posts that do not fit the guidelines.

There are many more things that can be done to improve this forum, which has gotten absolutely useless for me.

 

Anyone who emails the support team gets an answer and we always try our best to help. Premium Support is a service that allows people to jump the queue (and we give Premium Support users more detailed, full answers.)

 

Unity tried a per-incident support model before I joined and it didn't work. The fundamental problem here is defining what a support case is. We can't really advise someone how to make an MMO. We can't really debug someone's iOS crash in their full game. Charging someone $25, $30, $100 to tell them the answer is asset bundles and to read the docs seems obtuse to me. I'd happily investigate resourcing for a support model that was paid by the hour. You'd be asking the world experts in the subject to address your issues. That would come with a price tag.

Sounds like Answers to me.

I am sorry to hear that.

 

and I've been wasting my time answering people over here.bye bye Unity forums, bye bye.... karma here we come. jk

 

Judging by this statement the only one blessed are the premium support buyers. The rest of pro users are treated the same as free users.

 

Like Noisecrime, I tend to only browse the Gossip section and one or two others. I haven't visited the scripting forum in years. For answers, I really rely heavily on the Google Custom Search that someone created to search Answers, Forums and other sites. I find the combined search turns up an answer pretty quickly and I rarely post a question.

Here's an idea: for new topics, the forum software can run the post through a Google search first. A person would have to scroll through all the relevant answers first before being allowed to post. This might prevent the countless reposting of questions that have been answered before.

Maybe it would get too many hits in the body of the post, but could be limited to the subject? Or, have a couple of required fields to indicate what kind of question/post it is to provide more targeted results...

 

Except that you also get the Pro features...

 

The support levels are:

a) Community support. Users helping each other on Answers, Forum, iRC, twitter etc. My support team, Unity devs all participate as much as they can. We've tried to set up two systems to solve two different requirements. Specific technical issues ("why do I get this assert when I use this API?") are intended for Answers, discussions ("what's the best way to make an MMO?") are better suited to the forum. Both systems have their fair share of noise.

b) Free support. Anyone can email us and ask for help. We try and reply as fully and quickly as we can. We say, in the auto-reply, that it can take 5 days to reply. It can be less, it can be more, but we'll always reply. As with questions on the forum and answers, rambling questions that are hard to understand are hard to answer in a meaningful way. Also, we do not have the bandwidth to spend long hours solving a problem, so the help can be advising customers how they can narrow down the problem. Free support is available to anyone, however, it's meant for hobbyists and indy devs.

c) Premium Support. This is intended for teams who know they will need some hand holding. It's a 3 month minimum commitment because we want to work with teams as they get started and to help them make the right decisions along the way. It is *not* meant for solving last minute bugs, but some teams do sign up to get last minute bugs resolved. There are two versions so that teams can decide how responsive they need us to be and how much they can afford. The thinking is that a team with 3/4/5 members, perhaps each getting paid a decent wage can afford a support contract.

d) Consultancy, which can deliver on-site training, or solve any project specific problems. This is paid by the hour or by the day. Our consultants are highly in demand, and helping a customer at extreme short notice ("I've just shipped my iOS game and it's broken on iOS6.1") is usually impossible.

Free users and Pro users can benefit from any of these.

 

Thank you for clarifications. I see this is the approved policy when it comes to support.

But I am still maintaining my opinion that pro users should be at least prioritized before free users.

 

There is so much anti-VIP noise because the large majority of users here are not Pro licensees. Only in this realm of the universe is there a big stink over VIP treatment.

My wife's boss owns a arena suite/corporate box at the arena, do you hear the public screaming that its unfair that they have to sit in the regular stands instead of the corporate box ... no. Because they know if you want a corporate box, then you have to pay for it.

Over here, Pro users pay for extra perks, but lack the enhanced support when they need it. Thus lumping the paying users, with the fly-by-night visitors, guests, regular visitors, trolls .... all vying for equal attention.

A Pro section, would solve a lot of issues for the Pro users in terms of being heard .... but too many non-Pro licensees are big cry babies and want everything to be free and equal .... which is not like it is out in the real world.

 

Or, you know, we can think past our own issues and see that a pro-exclusive section would carry with it more problems than it would solve. It's not a matter of being "cry babies" and more a matter of not being completely myopic.

 

Its not myopic, the only way to know for 100% certainty whether it would be a good idea or a bad idea is to actually implement it, and see how it does in time.

Speculating that it will be problematic in theory, is purely a guess with absolutely no basis of reference. If Unity listened to all negative uproar back several years ago, Unity would still be Mac only. So until Unity gets the balls to say enough to the anti-VIP cry babies and puts a Pro only section in action, they will never know if its good or bad. If its good, keep it ... if its bad, then get rid of it. Its not rocket science, someone just has to have the balls to do it.

 

Except all the problems with a "pro forum" are equally alleviated by having "advanced", "beginner", and maybe "intermediate" as options. There is nothing about the pro license that has ever carried an increased level of support. That's what the Unity Support program that you pay for is for.

 

But the issue is when I first upgraded to Pro back in the 2.x days, one of the many reasons I did was because the unity forums were so great, so many staff members helping out, answering questions ... it stood out amongst all the other engine developers out there. As time went on, that level of support slipped into the sunset, and they became just like the rest. The forums became too large, too fast, and it drowned out the initial greatness no one else could provide.

I am definitely not going to upgrade my 3.x Pro license to 4.x until certain things get fleshed out, or at least on track (which could be way until 5.x). If they dont, by then something else will be out there possibly, and then it would be there loss, not mine. But ensuring Pro users voices get heard, more so than the free users, will definitely sway me towards sticking with Pro versions as time goes on.

 

Except this could all equally be alleviated by having skill-level based sections instead of "who paid $1500?" This is about an overall problem with the forums, not problems only one sliver of the community faces.

 

Well I guess a section called advanced, with a posting rule being something along the lines
"don't get pissed if the moderator moves this to a more appropriate place" so that being 'aggressive' with moving threads isn't seen as a problem.

Now who decides? I guess we can self-moderate to a point, maybe instead of answering what we think is simple, we report as 'being simple'.

Problem is I just use the new posts feature....

I guess the only way to see if this works is to test it and see how it goes. Beta testing is the norm in everything we do isn't it?

 

Thank you Graham for the clarification but you must see from your own answer that us paid PRO users are missed out, we get no enhanced support for buying your product and are lost in the noise. I have quite a few questions on the forum and Answers that have never had a reply. Have you any idea how frustrating that is? I don't have the money for a team or support. I'm extremely grateful for those in the community that take the time to help me, but you Unity are seriously slacking here, I shouldn't have to rely on the good will of other users, there should be some commitment from you to help us Pro users out.

 

You purchased the pro tool, but not the pro support. A choice to add enhanced support to the pro license is implicitly a choice to increase the cost of a pro license. Unity has split the tool and the support into two separate products which allows the price of the tool to be significantly lower than it otherwise could be.

I get that a lot of pro users are hobbyists who think their nominal license fee entitles them to an extra engineer for 'x' hours a month on their team, but at the current license costs that would be totally implausible. Unity has determined what it would cost to provide direct support and charges accordingly for that service. I don't think increasing the cost of Unity Pro to offset the increased support costs associated with the license would make the vast majority of pro users who don't require direct assistance from Unity particularly happy.

Everyone seems to be under the impression that there is a free support service to be had that only doesn't exist because UT didn't think to offer it only to pro users and not to all users, but I can't imagine where.

 

I think you are completely misstating the situation. Unity does have some support engineers who help on the forums and via e-mail. Since most unity users are free users it is safe to assume that most of the support engineers time is going to support free users. The huge number of free users makes it so the support is slow and not much time can be spent by the support engineer because there are so many requests. A lot of pro users, justifiably in my opinion, are upset that they are the ones paying for those support engineers through their fees and upgrades, but the free users who are not contributing to the cost of that support are using most of the support engineer time. I think that pro users are right to want to have a higher level of support since they are paying customers.

 

Well said!

 

So basically, you think that because somebody has paid a one time fee of $1500 they should be getting support priority, despite the fact that there is a paid support priority system already? Unity Pro is not a support agreement. It never has been. It's a software licensing agreement. Not only that, but at $1,500, there's not a huge price attached to it either, which is likely why the support program costs money in the first place.

 

I use the free version of Unity (I paid $200 originally) and sell assets on the Asset store using the free version. Unity keeps 30% of the gross from the assets I sell and in just over a year, that has added up to a lot more than the cost of a pro license. Not complaining, I love Unity

 

"One time fee of $1500" - First, lets get the facts straight. For unity and the iOS and android you pay $4500. Then you pay 1/2 that ($2250) every year and a half to keep current.

When a free user gets e-mail or forum support from unity where do you think the funds for that support engineer come from? Pro users are already paying for support when they pay the upfront cost and upgrades. That support is watered down because the free users get to use those engineers at the same priority level as the people whose fees paid for it.

 

No we are asking that paid pro customers get some kind of enhanced support here on the forum and answers. At the very least a badge that says you are pro and some certainty that trained unity staff will answer them and try to help.
If you don't like badges just give us a pro section of the forum to ask questions.

 

Go crybaby to cryengine. 500k a year. You'll get premium support! It's only ten times as much as Unity! You give them an inch, they want a mile. Appreciate what they've done for so cheap.

 

You can get enhanced support. It starts at $500 a month for three months. The support EVERYONE would get (and this thread is about everyone, not just pro users, as many have failed to notice) would dramatically improve with a proper skill-tier support system.

These are software licensing costs, nothing more.

 

First - stupid juvenile posts like this are one of the reasons people want a pro only forum.

Second - I wish people would stop comparing unitys per seat license for Pc/mac/web with epic and cryteks site licenses for consoles that support 50 or 100 seats. You are comparing apples and oranges.

Third - I like unity, that's why I'm here. There is nothing wrong with unity's paying customers wanting to discuss how unity provides support .

 

And there's nothing wrong with the vast majority of Unity's userbase calling out how terrible that idea is, especially when it means they'll end up with severely diminished support if the half-baked idea does anything in the first place.

 

That's a fair argument, and I think the discussion as to whether or not users with a pro license should get priority queue time in e-mails is a completely valid one to have. That doesn't invalidate all the arguments against dividing the forums based on license level though.

I also think, as a pro user and someone who works full time with the Unity engine (virtually all of our billable programming hours last year were in Unity), there is a valid argument to the fact that supporting free users is a very important step toward converting free users to pro users - or getting free users invested enough in the engine to dip their feet in the asset store if not a license.

Unity is a business who, based on the meteoric raise over the past five years in the industry, we can assume has some level of competence in terms of how they are handling the conversion from non-paying to paying users of their engine. We can certainly assume they have access to significantly more analytics related to this discussion than we have.

Unity has gotten back to all of my rare e-mails in a timely fashion - not 24 hours, but certainly reasonable. Could it be faster? Of course it could be - am I going to pretend that I know more than UT about how to run the support side of their business? No. Please don't take this to mean that I don't think anyone has a valid complaint here, because I absolutely do - I only disagree with solutions to that complaint. The real issue is that the forums get drown out by very, very basic questions with no real way to sort through them, in my opinion. I probably should not have posted what you replied to in the first place - as I really try to stay out of these discussions. I only got involved with this thread to make this post http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/170208-Unity-forum-satisfaction?p=1164191&viewfull=1#post1164191 - and try to explain why I don't answer more questions than I do, and steps people could take toward getting their questions answered more directly, and faster.