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Pro Users..are you getting better support?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by imtrobin, Jul 11, 2015.

  1. imtrobin

    imtrobin

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    So refunds are long over, and I kept my Pro license, to see how things progress. While I appreciate a lot of physx bugs fixed U5, I think the QA/support is still lacking.

    1. Since first version U5, I reported that Assetstore Sort by Purchases is broken. A QA staff got back after some time, and said all bugs as they know are fixed, and that's that. So even now after 6 major releases, it is still not fixed.

    The last two releases, the Assetstore download is broken, the download goes more than 100%. Reported and still not fixed.

    2. My project faced an issue where the Library folder has millions of files, after a month of reporting, the QA says this is not Unity problem, and it is my problem instead.



    Unity library generates millions files in Library folder, and it's my problem, not Unity?! And since when deleting the Library folder will misbehave when there is meta files now? Does the QA know anything? After a few months, another QA tested and confirm it is occlusion culling that generates the file. Reported Since 4 April, and no known fix date.

    3. I also reported that water reflection is broken in U5. I noticed the issue is known since March, marked as fixed, but still not fixed after a few major releases

    http://issuetracker.unity3d.com/iss...rs-if-occlusion-culling-is-baked-in-the-scene

    It seems that my tickets are answered in one batch every couple of months. Tickets are not answered a few months, then all answered at once.
     
  2. jerotas

    jerotas

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    That's false information. I delete my Library folder in various projects almost daily so I can downgrade to old versions of Unity again and work on stuff. It causes no problems whatsoever.

    But no, I don't think that pro users get any better support. You probably just got unlucky and got a particularly clueless QA guy. Or they were having a bad day.
     
  3. TechiTech

    TechiTech

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    I'm a pro user and nope you get no support unless you pay for it.
     
    melkior likes this.
  4. ImpossibleRobert

    ImpossibleRobert

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    I wonder what the pro feature "Prioritized bug handling" is supposed to mean then. @unity Are there any KPIs or criteria attached to this statement?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 13, 2015
    melkior likes this.
  5. LaneFox

    LaneFox

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    Your repro directions are not actually repro directions, you're basically just saying you have too many files and cant delete them, twice. 'I have lots of files. Windows won't delete the folder. Fix it.' isn't helpful.

    You probably would have got a better response if you would clarify what your project contents are that might have led up to you having "millions" of files in your library. I don't think I've ever had a project over 60,000 files and it was enormous. My tighter project directories stay in the 10,000 range. The support guy is actually just assuming that you've put your GI cache in the library folder and suggests moving it out if it is indeed there, but he has no clue if you do or not since the provided information is so vague.

    I'm a pro user and reported a few valid bugs but they didn't get fixed for several months. I think what often happens is a bug will get reported, reproduced, confirmed, prioritized and finally fixed when appropriate. Eventually the various reports that lead up to that bug being produced will all be connected and flagged as resolved. Bug severity, report volume and current features being worked on can all be factors in when something gets fixed.
     
  6. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    My guess - and that's all it is - is that bug reports made by Pro installs are queued ahead of bug reports made by free installs. That would mean that the first step in the chain happens more quickly, but there's a lot of variation in the rest of the process.
     
  7. tswalk

    tswalk

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    I'm not sure having a higher level of support was a part of the deal... a little better visibility to & with other Pro users was though, and I'm not sure that has happened yet here on the forums.

    Besides that, I believe the deal was we would see more Pro "service" oriented features.. perhaps that was a mixup as service and support could be considered similar?
     
  8. QA-for-life

    QA-for-life

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    This.

    The pro bug prioritization certainly happens. When a bug is filed, we give it a rating on the server based on how much information is supplied (description, project, screenshots) from 1 to 5. Our priority to pick up these bugs is as follows:

    Pro rating 5 > free rating 5> pro rating 4 etc.

    Thus meaning that if you are a pro user and submit bugs with less info than a free user, you will be behind him in the queue. And that queue is bottomless with all the users we have, many of which do not give us much info to go on in the reports. Last time we made a thorough pass we found 13% to be valid.

    Support is a completely different matter. It is a paid package, you get a different ticketing system and you get direct conversation with an SLA with our support staff. That is a very different thing from a bug report.

    Did you manage to solve the problem with your folder?
     
  9. 3agle

    3agle

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    Just a thought here, but wouldn't exposing this rating to the reporter make sense since then they would know they have not provided enough info and could amend the report to be more helpful?
    Should I report that as a bug? :D
     
  10. Devil_Inside

    Devil_Inside

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    @QA for life
    What exactly is prioritized? Checking out the bug reports or actually fixing the bugs?
    I've reported a bug a year ago (Unity 4) which is now on the second page of the most voted active issues on the issue tracker. Seems to be a trivial fix, yet it wasn't fixed.
    Does it make sense to report it again with Unity 5 Pro to:
    1. Update the report to show that it's still an issue with Unity 5
    2. Give it a PRO prioritization
     
    MrEsquire likes this.
  11. melkior

    melkior

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    My guess is probably not -- people would get feelings hurt like the OP when they have misunderstandings or have an OS problem or some other problem that is either under-informed or poorly documented but they would not only blame Unity like the OP they would furthermore feel a sense of persecution by exposing that their issue was not a '5' all the time right?

    Even as a pro user I understand the need for them to have internalized processes.
     
  12. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    Yup, just look at answers. There is a portion of the community that gets upset when you tell them there is not enough infomation for a relevant answer. Or reject their question for a dozen other reasons.
     
  13. Tautvydas-Zilys

    Tautvydas-Zilys

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    The thing that's prioritized is QA checking out the incoming report and either closing it or actually turning it into bug. Once it is marked as bug, it makes its way to the issue tracking, and then it's up to developers to prioritize the bugs however they want.
     
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  14. QA-for-life

    QA-for-life

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    What Tautvydas said.

    No, that will only get closed as a duplicate of the original and add to our work.Voting on that bug IS the right way and we DO look at those bugs with a lot of votes. It still doesn't mean we get to fix them, for many many reasons.

    Since the bug is already confirmed, that will not do anything.
     
  15. Devil_Inside

    Devil_Inside

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    Thanks for a detailed answer.
     
  16. imtrobin

    imtrobin

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    I think here lies the problem. Unity is a tool for developers, there are certain things that QA doesn't get it, and it will never be made known to developers. Some of the bugs are minor and easily fixed, I presume the developers are never made aware of them. E.g some of items here

    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/un...on-developers-or-interns.268086/#post-1814812

    In contrast, take a look at this


    Original link: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/LeszekGo..._why_do_you_need_an_engine_programmerquot.php
     
  17. Meltdown

    Meltdown

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    I don't attach my project to my bug report, I upload a cleaned repro version to OneDrive and add the download link in the description of the report.

    Please tell me QA scans the description for a download link before rating it as 'no project attached' ??
     
  18. Dantus

    Dantus

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    As far as I know the rating is automatic (at least, it was like that for a long time). If you kept your description as short and descriptive as possible, you got a lower rating. I would be surprised if that automatic rating algorithm realizes you actually have created a reproduction somewhere else.
     
  19. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

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    That bug was actually assigned to dev 3 weeks before that forum thread was started. QA might have not communicated that properly, but I assure it's really rare that QA won't ask dev about the bug if his and user's opinions differ.

    Usually we simply try to help out user ourselves and save dev's time, but if it's something outside of our knowledge we add devs into discussion.
     
  20. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

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    No, we don't as we can't easily verify a link and it can be changed after the report.

    The limits are quite low, so even with short description it's quite easy to full fill the one for highest rating.
    We are planning to add rating in the bug reporter, so that user can know if he's missing something.
     
  21. Meltdown

    Meltdown

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    Well that sucks, so all my lovely cleaned repro case projects are giving me a low score :(
     
  22. Schubkraft

    Schubkraft

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    What stops you from submitting these via the Bug Reporter?
     
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  23. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

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    We've discussed possibility of having a checkbox "I'm attaching link to the project" or something similar, but for now I'd recommend dirty workaround of attaching empty project via bug reporter
     
    Meltdown likes this.
  24. Meltdown

    Meltdown

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    Nothing really, I guess I just like to have a reference on OneDrive of all my Unity Bugs projects marked with Case #'s.
    I'll attach from now on.

    Does the attacher only include the Assets folder and ProjectSettings? Or does it include Library and Obj as well?
     
  25. alexzzzz

    alexzzzz

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    I just keep all my repro projects in a separate folder called Bugs. Also thinking about putting them in a repository to keep track on their versions.
     
  26. ImpossibleRobert

    ImpossibleRobert

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    I have to say I am a pro user and I have very positive experience with support so far. Just in the last week I have reported around 10 bugs, some very serious ones and got an answer either the same day or the day after in 80% of the cases. That is remarkable! I usually don't manage to produce a repro project but try to have at least the stack trace attached for crashes or screenshots showing an error. 2 items were closed as duplicate, 2 or 3 could be reproduced and were forwarded to development, 1 was consulting and the remainder is still in discussion with some back and forth. Good job Unity! Now it's down to the devs to prove it does not take months to solve these.

    Disclaimer: Since March I am always on the latest beta with my projects, that might give the reports higher prio.
     
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  27. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Yup, I actually got a response on one of the bugs I submitted in Beta.. It was two months, but I got something.
     
  28. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

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    It zips whole project folder and everything in it including builds and Library, so might want to check the folder before reporting or best case scenario export package from the scene which reproes the issue and import it to new project.

    Indeed, latest (alpha,beta) versions are prioritised as they are highest risk and beta users proved to be great bug reports countless times already. We have something around 80-90% case handling in pre-release versions.
     
  29. Meltdown

    Meltdown

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    Can I please ask you to look at this case (Case 711585). I did link to a repro project. OR at least increase it's 'status' as having a project attached. Thanks.

    This is a pretty serious issue.
     
  30. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

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    Bumped it's priority, android qa will check it out when they have a chance
     
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  31. imtrobin

    imtrobin

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    So, your suggestion is I install the beta and use it to report bugs?

    I always used the latest version to report. It does not make sense, some bugs I report are never looked at after months, and by that time, there are already newer versions, so it means it gets bumped down again? And some of them are really ridiculous easy to fix, e.g Sorting by Purchase in Assetstore is wrong, since reported since first Unity version, and still bug remain. So if I reported them using beta version, they will be looked at and fixed?
     
  32. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    That seems like something that could be easily and quickly improved and would save a lot of bandwidth/effort/storage.
     
  33. idurvesh

    idurvesh

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    I usually get replay to bug report within a day or two.So I do think Unity's Bug reporting QA is pretty impressive
     
  34. imtrobin

    imtrobin

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    wow. can u share some of your bug reports? I like to see them. What's your secret?
     
    idurvesh likes this.
  35. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

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    Not exactly, reporting from newest beta version does grant you higher possibility of case getting looked at, but we don't control which bugs get fixed.

    In case with sort bug, I'm pretty sure that asset store team is aware of that, but the fix isn't as trivial as it seems or they have higher priority fixes to be made first.
     
  36. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

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    Thing is that we don't know if those folders are there for a reason or not.
    For example:
    • Library is quite vital to a reproducing a lot of crashbugs.
    • Project settings are often also important.
    • You might have actually wanted to share your iOS build with us, because it uses multiple plugins and you wanted to show how those should be linked correctly to make it work.
    • People sometimes add a video, screenshots or readme files to their projects showcasing the issue or repro steps.
    Admittedly there also as many cases were those files are not needed, but they can be simply deleted by user if he knows that they are not needed.
     
  37. imtrobin

    imtrobin

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    Not to sound offensive, but your reply is exactly why I said your QA is inadequate to look at of these bugs.

    The fix is very trivial, Any programmer worth their salt can fix that in under 10 mins, if some dev actually bother to look at it

    If it is the not high priority enough to fix, then I'm very sad to hear that. Unity has 160 engineers, and you can even spare one to fix these easy to fix bugs.

    Here, you say fixing bugs in your top priority.

    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/what-has-happened-to-the-qa-in-unity.341915/#post-2212721

    Yet some of these bugs goes unfixed for months, and years. Maybe you want to see this how your competitors is doing on the bug fixing

    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/what-has-happened-to-the-qa-in-unity.341915/#post-2211837
     
  38. SpiriTx

    SpiriTx

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    Any case confirmed as a bug by QA is when passed on to dev team, which decide on its priority and milestone, so all cases get looked at by devs

    Fixing bugs is indeed our top priority, it's just we also need to constantly choose which ones will be fixed first based on their negative impact and amount of users they affect.
     
  39. rextr09

    rextr09

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    Being a pro user, I didn't even get a reply to my bug report (case 686379) which I sent 4 months ago.
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2015
  40. landon912

    landon912

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    But he does have a point. Some of these low priority bugs are very annoying and can negatively affect workflows. Maybe instead of using a linear model of priority, you could also factor in "how costly to fix vs benefit". In this model, fixing those bugs should be just as high of a priority as fixing a fundamental flaw.
     
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  41. superpig

    superpig

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    The problem is that working out how costly they are to fix is often a large part of the total time involved in dealing with the bug - i.e. many bugs take ages to work out what is going wrong, but once you have identified the problem the fix is easy. Diagnosis is definitely not free, and is a big part of why you hear us ask for quality repro projects so often. (Diagnosis not being free is also why so many of you don't have the time to put them together for us).

    We are taking steps to try and help with this - putting more assertions into the code, verifying things more proactively, etc - but it's tough to know where to put them until after a bunch of things already went wrong in that area...
     
  42. landon912

    landon912

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    Having worked on QA for the last three months for my job. I can say it's fairly easy to determine if a bug like "sorting order in Asset Store is wrong" is going to be easy. Sure, I understand with freak bugs. Those can be anything and any level of work. But easily replicated and consistent bugs, those should be able to be given a pretty good difficultly level rating by an engineer. In fact, I'd say for half of these "low priority bugs" at my work, I know exactly what is wrong(a very narrow area of search) before even looking into it. I'm sure it's a different degree when working on a more foreign and diverse code base. But to say that it's impossible for some of the low priority issues is kinda ridiculous.

    Edit: I'm specifically talking about low priority/annoyance bugs.
     
  43. superpig

    superpig

    Drink more water! Unity Technologies

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    You have no idea ;)

    Anyway, as @SpiriTx said:
    The devs already factor in 'how hard do I think this will be to fix' when deciding the priority and milestone. Bugs that are 'obviously' easy do tend to get fixed very quickly, but the reality is that the vast majority of bugs we get reported are not 'obviously' easy, no matter how easy they might look to an outside observer.
     
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  44. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Technically true, but I can say from experience that people almost always just click through what's right in front of them. Fair enough if there are cases where those files are needed. In that case, perhaps a check box for "Strip Library and binary folders" with a description to the effect of "Select this to reduce upload size if these files aren't relevant to your bug."

    I know it's "easy" either way, but that's a double whammy of making it easier either way and making it clearer to the user what's going on.
     
  45. minionnz

    minionnz

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    Based on my experience as a developer in a similar process:

    Just because something seems easy to fix doesn't mean it is. There are always reasons why simple bugs don't get fixed straight away. Maybe it's because it requires changes in other areas of the application - changes obviously requiring specification, review and testing which are all time consuming processes that have to fit into the existing release cycle.

    Maybe it's because there are other urgent, critical bugs affecting a lot of customers and the developers are too busy to spend multiple hours fixing that 10 minute bug. It's not just about how long it will take to fix - reproducing, debugging, fixing, testing and reporting are part of the dev process too.

    Or maybe it's that it simply isn't as easy to fix as it appears.

    I can understand why people get upset when they don't seem to hear anything back about bugs or they don't have a fix soon enough - but I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the company or employees. I'm sure they'd love to fix every bug that comes through straight away, but it's never that easy.
    It's not because they don't care, and it's not because they're being lazy - it's because there are a huge number of tasks/bugs to juggle and only so much time in the day to fix them.
     
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  46. idurvesh

    idurvesh

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    @imtrobin aha,I always make sure to provide as much as detail required with screenshots ,text information on Scenes etc.and I think that seems to do wonder for me with wonderful QA team ;)

    Here is one case where I got replay on same day 704570
     
  47. Aurore

    Aurore

    Director of Real-Time Learning

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    The brief description on how you are using the particular feature of Unity within your game was also extremely helpful.
     
  48. imtrobin

    imtrobin

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    I don't see how's different it is, I also have repro steps. It seems you are really lucky or you have some insider friend.