#Why is it so hard to get assistance on Unreal Slackers

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

latent tree
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To all those that keep deflecting with essentially "well that's just the way it is go do your research like the rest of us", you're missing the point.

This is about improving an actual issue which seemingly no one is arguing exists.

For example, lets admit things get buried in conversation all the time. Would it not be helpful to experiment with a forum like this one where we aren't burying questions people have in discussion about a subject?

spring hill
random mica
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dyor should be mandatory. It trains respect and brain cpu.

spring hill
unique valve
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Also when we brought up forums we got people being upset about the idea of having to use forums

ancient rapids
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I think your missing the point of people helping others on their own personal time. True, forum posts might keep some questions lingering around in view longer. That's not really what discord was designed for, the majority of the users here don't like the forums feature, so asking the mods to re-design discord with the limited tools that discord gives is a little unrealistic

jolly echo
# latent tree To all those that keep deflecting with essentially "well that's just the way it ...

Except the thing is that when you join a community, you're expected to know at least a few baseline terms and procedures.

For example someone new to the car community would still be expected to know brands, models, maybe a few trims. They don't need to be an expert in mechanics or racing or driving, but they do at least need to know their cars.

Same way, I can't be expected to find the Unreal community useful unless I have an idea of what goes into making Unreal projects, basic concepts behind lighting, modeling, etc.

I think the issue is that people are asking for an introduction to these topics here instead of first learning about them befpre they come here with more specific questions.

I don't ask questions because I need to still learn a lot of basic things about game design, and i don't expect anyone here to be able to give me a crash course ON MY TIME. Because everyone is busy and there comes a point where you're so familliar with something that dumbing it down is very hard.

cyan geyser
# jolly echo Except the thing is that when you join a community, you're expected to know at l...

Who says that you're required to have a base amount of knowledge. This is extremely Gate keeping. This server is supposed to be welcoming to beginners

""👋 Welcome to Unreal Slackers!
You've joined a thriving community of Unreal developers from all over the world. Our mission is to provide resources and support to anyone who's creating with Unreal Engine, regardless of industry, background, or experience level. From beginners to veterans, hobbyists to professionals, game developers to filmmakers, artists to engineers: we welcome you.""

It's in the welcome message so coming in and saying that you have to have a base amount of knowledge before you're allowed to ask questions is toxic gate keeping.

That being said yes this is everyone's free time no one should be nor are they required to answer messages. That being said there is an issue of questions not getting answered. Now how we fix that or if it's an issue is the whole debate of this thread. But saying that you have to have a base level of knowledge to engage in the community is extremely toxic.

spring hill
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saying that you have to have a base level of knowledge to engage in the community is extremely toxic

No it's just the truth. Being able to participate in any conversation is going to require you to be at least somewhat aware of the topic.

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if you have 0 knowledge, you're not even going to know what section is the right place to put your question (and then you complain here, but there is no solution for that)

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as evidence, there's plenty of times when people who do know stuff don't know where something should go

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most people who aren't getting help are vauge posting in inactive channels

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the solution is more details and posting in active channels

cyan geyser
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So you're saying my question has to fall under the 5 active channels or I don't get help but also don't post the question in the wrong4 channel. You saying that even experienced people don't always know where to put their question also highlights part of the problem. Saying that no matter your experience level you'll still be confused where to put things but God forbid you put it in the wrong channel it has to go in the channel that hasn't had activity in 3 weeks. This is the toxicity that I'm talking about. If you want to gate keep then you do you but you're just adding to the toxicity.

opaque onyx
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how is that different?

spring hill
cyan geyser
amber kelp
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my main pet peeve with threads and such is that these do not get stored in a way that they show up on google. so any information we gain/gather wont be searchable trough search engines, and that is fairly stupid.

opaque onyx
latent tree
latent tree
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"You can't use this feature because it already exists somewhere else"

There are many not on forums but here and vice versa.

Also, why would we not use a useful feature? Doesn't the fact that the unreal forums provide this feature & it provides value mean that it would also provide value here?

unique valve
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To be fair, the two forums versions are very different in features. Discord forums are not as powerful as a traditional forum

spring hill
unique valve
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This is more a #969373879904641055 discussion, but we never intended to turn this Discord Server into only forums

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It was mainly meant to check what parts of the Server work better as a "Forum" than a Chat Channel

latent tree
# spring hill I think you're misunderstanding my take maybe? I'm saying that forum users and c...

I def don't think you should be duplicating, and I see your point, but I still think there's a need for something more readable than just plain discord channels here. There are those that don't even have a forums account, and this might be a useful place to do that.

I can see the argument that it could split the focus, but if we work to link to forums & answer here when necessary it will probably catch a lot of questions that normally go unanswered. Idk, you could technically make the argument it should just all be on forums at that point 🤷

Think the bigger point i'm making is that there is a need for more organization here and even though forums do exist elsewhere, this new feature would provide a bit more clarity on some things;

  • Which questions are being left being & not answered
  • Better organization & likely more accompanying information given with each issue due to format
  • Better ability to search through archived posts; making duplicate q/a's less likely & providing a better chance for users to find relevant information.

And i'm sure a few more. I just have a distaste for the rolling channel view where things get buried and lost forever and if discord is offering alternatives I think it's worth a shot

swift moth
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Or access the asset marketplace

cyan geyser
unique valve
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Well, you can't even download the Engine without having an Account (:

jolly echo
jolly echo
swift moth
# cyan geyser While technically this is correct I think the more accurate thing is there are p...

It also sounds strange though to turn on the forum feature for people who don't want to use the already existing official forum which uses proper forum management software.

I think if we'd have to determine the value of this community and we'd give it zero points in terms of giving assistance / helping people then there'd still be a net positive.
The way I experienced this community is that helping people is one aspect of many. Different people look for different things in this community - which is perfectly fine.

It's a problem though if there is somehow an expectation that you deserve to get assistance. Because in the end we are just people hanging out here. So the best way to get help, just like in real life, is to stay for a while, listen, learn how the community operates, make some friends and then write clear and concise questions.

latent tree
latent tree
sand heron
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On the topic of support I would like to do more but I find it difficult to watch numerous channels in which I have skills to answer questions, because there are no skill tags I would use more of my own time finding people to help. Ive seen servers with skill tags though and theres still debates exactly like this one, even on the official forums it can be tricky to find people to help.

The assumption tends to be one that people are ignoring you or trying to gate keep information when it can simply be as hard as it is for you to find someone to help there is someone on the other end looking to help but also doesnt have the time to wade through channels, forums etc.

dusty olive
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Love the unreal slacker supporters sniffing copium thinking that oh just figure it out is good advice. The point is that the unreal slackers server is horrible for getting help in and all the moderators do is nothing. They don't interact and for a professional work setting to have one of the moderators promote their onlyfans is laughable. This server makes me genuinely want to leave game development as a whole when literally everyone in the community is as genuinely uninterested in helping one another as possible

elder ridge
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Also a large portion of moderators here are actively helping answer questions and it's worth noting that we are all volunteers, we have real life stuff and jobs, we help out here when we can

random mica
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Frankly, dude looks like venting without much of rationale involved. Devs burn out

elder ridge
unique valve
unique valve
dusty olive
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mods dont need to help dont get me wrong but the server seems to be a free for all and constantly being ignored and looked over when i find a genuine bug with unreal engine is just eh

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im going to bed

unique valve
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Lots of stuff is also hidden behind a paywall via UDN

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I can fully understand the frustration with being stuck on something but you have to see Unreal Slackers as a place you can TRY to get help at.
Maybe your issue is just so special that no one had it yet

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Or solved it yet tbf

restive anchor
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Coming from Unity and having lurked a ton of different Discord server, that is most definitely not my perception... Unreal Slacker feels very welcoming and friendly, even more than the majority of Unity Discord servers I have frequented. And it seems to me that there are a lot more experienced users actively providing support here than with Unity

toxic gale
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nope. unless i insist on the question then some get attention

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usually if you post it will get lost

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and no one even bother with it

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so i suggest to repost after a hour or so when you dont get help

toxic gale
restive anchor
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Unity actively tries to make itself attractive to casual and aspiring game developers. While in the early years it might have been done with good intentions, nowadays it seems like the main intent is to lure people into their marketplace by filling them with hopes that they'll be able to create amazing games if they drop enough $$$ into acquiring assets. I am referring to top-level management of course, not the devs who are probably as passionate about game dev and CG as we are. In my opinion, that's not an environment conducive to a healthy community as that can only promote frustration and bitterness among Unity users, as well as unrealistic expectations.

In contrast, UE seems more "niche" and if I had to take a guess, I would wager the distribution of UE users is skewed towards more experienced developers, and people with more realistic expectations about what UE can do for them, and what it takes to create a game (or simulation, video, etc.).

spring hill
# toxic gale usually if you post it will get lost

You need to be actively asking your question (over and over, but not to the point you're spamming or being annoying) while researching on your own until you get answered or find the answer.

It's not reasonable to expect anything else.

brazen salmon
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Answering questions is a lot harder than asking them, especially when questions are highly technical in nature and/or vaguely worded

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One thing I've noticed being here a bit as a "veteran" game developer is a lot of people pose questions in ways that make them very difficult to answer - "why isn't my cube showing up on screen?" It helps a lot if you can phrase questions with enough contextual info

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A lot of questions are either vague enough that they are very difficult to answer ("my game crashes help") or specific enough that not many people are capable of answering them

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I don't think this is unique to this discord - there are more people with problems than people with the time, inclination and ability to help sort them out

toxic gale
toxic gale
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🤣

ancient rapids
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if this is a professional work setting I need to go delete some #lounge posts then lol

inland wharf
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the truth is that no one really knows the answers to most of the actual questions and we are all just beta testing the software

swift moth
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Hmm just had a thought that one difference between a forum, StackOverflow and discord is that on a forum and StackOverflow you often get stats per user.
Meaning you can see if a user is a veteran or a newbie and how many people they've helped. I think this is a huge incentive to get people to help and answer questions.

If you've got a high ranking on StackOverflow then you can even impress employers with it because it shows you know your stuff.
On discord however, you won't get anything in return than appreciation from a stranger or the community. Don't get me wrong I think that's great as well but it's still not the same value that you'd get if you had answered the same question on a forum or StackOverflow.

So I guess one idea for discord in general or this one specifically could be to somehow allow people that have been helped to show appreciation more and make that count (e.g. levels of badges, highscore, stat, etc.).

Of course this would need a bot, organization, planning and monitoring (so people can't abuse it). So, somebody would have to take that additional responsibility on - which would be the first problem to solve 😉

spring hill
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We've already been over this in this thread, but I think the consensus among the people who answer questions is that none of us want or would care about stats...

This is a phantom issue, as we've addressed; anybody who is not getting an answer is asking incorrectly or the answer isn't known by the people who see their question...

It's not like there are people who see these questions and know their answers but are choosing not to help because we have no stats.

swift moth
# spring hill We've already been over this in this thread, but I think the consensus among the...

I didn't mean to say we should add stats. I was just thinking out loud and comparing different content types and coming to the conclusion that stats might add some of the benefits a forum has over a discord channel. However, I still think a discord is not a forum and the two content types should be separated and each used for the need it can fill best. I think it's totally ok for this discord to stay the way it is as there are other means if somebody needs an answer and can't get it here (e.g. the UE forum).

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The questions is though what are we gonna do with this thread if it gets bumped endlessly? Is a mod ever going to close it? Since I don't think any action will come from this thread. No matter which side of the debate "wins".

spring hill
spring hill
swift moth
rapid crane
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There is no action to take, we can't/aren't going to force people to answer questions that are poorly asked, or they don't have the answer to, or have the time available to answer them. We do have some things in the works for easier access to commonly asked questions, that will continue to grow and expand via the bot, and will be released very soon. Stats and tags won't solve the problem or even aid it, but instead will leave people feeling exhausted and using this server will become a chore for them rather than something fully elective. Fundamentally I feel this boils down to a minority of users having a misunderstanding of what this community is for, how to use it properly, and how to get the most out of one's time here in this community. Many people help, surprisingly so actually, and for 70k+ people, it's astonishing that this place isn't more chaotic, and the percentage of questions that do get answered is exceptionally high realistically. There is always proper learning material, and the forums, and they are there for a purpose, this community is not a replacement for either of them, only supplementary and supportive.

ancient rapids
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please don't do stats, this will become a vets only server where no stats users will get ignored, just like the real stack overflow

uneven sonnet
# ancient rapids please don't do stats, this will become a vets only server where no stats users ...

Rest assured that we are not going to be doing any form of Stats or Roles indicating competence or specialty, everyone here is on the same playing field (hence why there are no other Roles except for those that aid in server management) and will remain so going forward. We have made the reasons why we have decided this way quite clear in the past and the major component of that is set in the idea that those types of features only serve to fracture the community and create a culture of elitism (just as you have pointed out with Stack Overflow).

wheat kelp
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I don't know if this has been discussed (I tried reading this whole forum post but it was too long 😫), but would discord threads help this issue at all to guard against posts getting buried? I am new and noticed this server doesn't seem to support threads

unique valve
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We don't like the way threads are implemented, compared to for example slack. So we never activated it. We did want to utilize Forums though but nothing set in stone yet

slate prawn
# uneven sonnet Rest assured that we are not going to be doing any form of Stats or Roles indica...

This sort of feature is used all over various communities though and they are not fractured or lead to elitism, or separation of community in any way. As an example below, is pfist now an outstanding member? or does he keep his distance from the community because he has 3 successful problems solved (answers)? Seeing this on my own profile, I'd personally be motivated to put my free time here and help more people. Lots of us are gamers and are motivated by stats. Very clearly this suggestion/feedback needs a solution and shutting it down or rejecting it is a step in the wrong direction.

unknown.png
rapid crane
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Solution to what exactly though?

That there are numerous questions from people that go unanswered? Stats won't resolve or help this unfortunately, at least not in any way that would be noticeable or felt, and runs a risk of causing other issues in general.

Do you think you might be assuming it's a lack of motivation or desire on the part of people who want to help? That perhaps they need some additional incentive to motivate them to help? I have not seen evidence for this to be the case, if anything it's the opposite, as in there tends to be less of a motivation for people to take on proper learning practices, or ask questions in the correct areas, or formulate the question in a way that doesn't require private tutorship, doing a dive into the person's project, or watch some long-winded video because they were "following a tutorial on youtube" so that way the person can understand which of the 100's of ways anything and everything can be done, that the tutorial told them to do (hopefully correctly).

We acknowledge there are many questions answered, and many questions that aren't answered.

The questions that do get answered are one's in which a person who knows the answer, sees the understandable (comprehendible) question and has the time to spare to answer it.

So if the goal is to get more questions answered, then the goal is to simply better match up people who have a specific question (the more narrow the question the better of course) with people who know the specific answer to said question. The majority of questions that do go unanswered are sadly the easiest but extremely broad questions, but they would require repeating the same thing 100's of times a day in order to answer each of them.

The new bots (soon to be introduced) will aid in this, as they will have a growing and community driven FAQ command that will answer most of the generic questions, and will grow to be more and more specific and niche with it's questions and answers.

We're also taking a look at how the channels are segmented, organized, and handled in general so that when someone with the knowledge to answer a question, can more easily find those with questions that they can properly answer.

These are but only 2 of the several things being worked on at the moment to help and continue to aid in the growth and usefulness of this community.

Unreal Slackers is not a replacement for proper learning material, is not a replacement for the official forums, it's not a replacement for UDN, it's not a replacement for tutorship and private education. It is however a powerful tool within the arsenal of Unreal developers and designers to utilize as a supplementary source of knowledge, wisdom, and expertise.

slate prawn
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Yay for new bots. That does sound potentially super helpful. Possibly as helpful as when you call anywhere for customer support and get an automated system. Or when creating a question in the Unreal dev community and get the recommended threads that do not help most of the time. Maybe the bot will be better, seems like it could be with time.
More channels sounds great too at preventing peoples questions from getting missed.

I am talking about a solution for the amount of people available to help/answer questions. It is no ones job so help here is completely lucky and should be appreciated BUT things can be done to encourage more of that. I personally joined Slackers because Unreal is a beast to take on alone and reading docs, finding the right ones, watching vids isn't interactive enough. I think its safe to say most of us here joined because we had a question or hit a wall, usually very frustrated by that point, and the last thing we want is a bot or our questions to go unanswered especially if this is our last resort.

I am assuming its a lack of motivation on my own part (and several others who are not here) to sit around and help people with our free time. When I have gotten help, I am so grateful and want to pay them, but one reason or another payment isn't required, the least I could do is give a point of some kind. I have been helping people and the time it takes to solve some of the problems usually runs over, taking more time than expected and by the end of it, I don't want to come back the next day (or few days) because I've got nothing to show for that time. But then I feel bad seeing questions that I could answer, that so many people could answer but don't, because there's no benefit (beyond good feelings lol). And this is especially true if the person doesn't gain new knowledge from the help or the problem doesn't get solved.

Both of these (FAQ bot and more channels) together will NOT increase the amount of people/humans (bots could be people haha) available to help.
You said: "...the goal is to simply better match up people who have a specific question ... with people who know the specific answer to said question."
To your point exactly, by using a point system to track victories (answers), we would increase the chance of that match up because more helpful people could be incentivized to stick around (according to what's proven from games and peoples desire to grow stats and character development).

If we don't see any benefit for giving points after some trial period of maybe a month, can just remove the bot or the feature, but I'd bet the people that latched onto that system and were proud of this one stat would be disappointed. And the people who don't care about it will still stick around to help but you'd lose a fraction of helpers at least. I expect there is more to gain from this than could be lost, because it bolsters the community at its foundation, through its members, in one way compared to just not doing it at all.

Also, there was concern for elitism or separation of community with this system, but this server has roles, 5 that I can see. And that's because people have credentials and that establishes where a person is coming from/background when talking to them. Then someone mentioned that we're all on the same playing field but that's actually not the case. You probably know more about VFX than I do, or production, or Deadmou5 lol or the game industry than I do. There's nothing wrong with that and no harm in knowing that. If anything, it's helpful. If me and you were helping someone in the VFX channel, and you had more correct answers (points etc.) I'd consider your input more heavily than my own AND I'd let you lead the help on that specific topic, switch to listening/learning more than typing at that point. It just simplifies who the priority speaker could be.

inner light
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It’s because there are more new people asking questions over the people who want to help. Can’t tell you the times I’ve asked a question and had 30 people message me wanting payment to answer it. Nobody wants to work for free when they’ve spent years learning something.

unique valve
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Ah, that's just one of many reasons though.

torpid swan
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I've literally never had a person ask for payment for answering a question I've posted.

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Granted I don't post that many.

drowsy steeple
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Same here.

gray hedge
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I've never had that happen in the multiple gamedev/tech servers that I'm in.

spring hill
unique valve
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The only situations where this happens is if someone asks for help on a larger task or tutoring for that matter, which is workload that someone should be hired for and that person then being redirected to the job board.

paper cape
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maybe because a server with several thousands of members will not always be able to reply to your question?

amber kelp
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I --sadly-- think its also because we are currently in the start of a new loop.
At some point the people who have answered the same thing many times for ue4 now see the same questions pop up again (and again) because new people are jumping onto ue5, and at some point they/we are either tired of answering the same thing over and over, along with people having moved onto more time consuming tasks and do not have the time to answer these things (yet) again.

So once the newer people are getting their grips with the engine, they'll hopefully be the ones answering those questions.

I do think there needs to be a much bigger reliance on self-study and self-teaching, and the first thing they'll need to teach themselves is how to use the search function on discord along with google.
And there is not really an excuse to not do so, we have the dev hub, google, forums, reddit, discord, and many more places that either have the answers or provide tutorials. and once those basic hurdles are out of the way, it opens up the better side of trouble shooting as its easier to explain the problem a person has, show what they tried, and therefore receive more and more accurate answers and solutions.

Time is becoming more and more valuable a commodity as well, so the clearer the question, the faster we can provide an answer or at the very least some keywords to do self-studying on the topic.

unique valve
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It might also be, and don't get me wrong here, that a lot of people, due to Engines like UE being freely available, are trying out to become a GameDev in all sorts of categories (which is awesome), but these peeps might simply not be up to the hard task of learning this on the fly.

So they run into the issue of not understand things and asking questions somewhere, and sometimes to a degree where they don't understand how to do really big and complex things (for a beginner even bigger and more complex) and people just don't want to answer that.

While the proper way would be to learn the "basics" or even go as far as taking lessons.

It's really not easy to just grab UE and start learning, cause Docs are often garbage and even if they would be good, some people just really can't learn like this. They need guidance and they search for that here and on other platforms, and they won't get it, cause it's too much asked.

And then they will hear "Hey, you need to pay me for that." which is totally valid.

But that's just a thought that comes to mind.

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I have no idea about any % on that, but I would assume that a really big chunk of people who pick up UE, for example to program, will ultimately drop it or never really make it, because they either misjudged that they aren't good at it (we have the same in like University, where peeps just stop to study cause it's not working out for them), or because they are lacking proper "education" on that specific topic. A structured guide to programming for example.

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But again, that's just one of many many reason why someone might not get help here or somewhere else.

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And i'm not even sure what I wrote is valid.

torpid swan
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sometimes to a degree where they don't understand how to do really big and complex things (for a beginner even bigger and more complex) and people just don't want to answer that.
I ignored a question earlier because it would take so long to explain the solution, I just didn't want to invest time into it.

unique valve
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I very, very, very often do that

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But I also sometimes take the time and guide someone who's totally lost and lacking the fundamentals through their issue

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But of course, peeps don't have the time for that all the time

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And I think that's totally fair. That's where the whole "we do this for free in our free time" hits.

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If you need dedicated help for larger issues, you gotta pay someone or be lucky that someone is bored.

torpid swan
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I think a lot of those questions shouldn't even be answered by people.

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They should be answered by actually learning the engine through tutorials or whatnot.

unique valve
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Yeah or through a tutor that can take dedicated time with preparation

torpid swan
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If it's such a broad scope, there must be a lack of effort.

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(for someone to explain it for free that's kinda annoying)

unique valve
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We have a lot of tutoring clients, some that just want to check in every now and then and ask about issues they had through the last weeks.
Others that want to bombard us with beginner questions where docs just didn't help them and they needed a hands on example.
And again others that just want a rundown on some topic, while they take notes/record it.
And there is probably other categories on tutoring clients.

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Lots of those would probably never get the help and kickstart they need from posting into forums or discord.

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Cause those sessions are 2 hours long and sometimes multiple are needed. No one has time for that here.

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But yeah, again and again, ONE of many reasons.

torpid swan
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I'd be happy to help if I were paid for it! 🙂

unique valve
torpid swan
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#already-employed

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I'd probably price myself out of the market instantly anyway hah

unique valve
torpid swan
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I could absolutely do it. I should probably read my contract again, it's been a while.

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I just mean considering it would further cut into my free time, it wouldn't be cheap. 😛

unique valve
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Tutoring is honestly really chill and cool. So many people are just super happy to learn stuff and they are always so grateful

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Always surprises me how thankful they are, given they also pay already for it haha

torpid swan
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Haha. Nice!

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I do appreciate the thanks, I must admit.

unique valve
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100%

halcyon root
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I think it depends on the topic you need help with and the people involved with it. If I need help with C++ I literally get it in a few minutes on the C++ channel bit I had a problem with Paper2D the other day that was just unacknowledged entirely. I often find that if my problem isn't related to C++ it takes a while to get an answer.

torpid swan
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Yeah. The more obscure it is, the less chance you'll get answer quickly (or at all.)

halcyon root
torpid swan
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No problem. Happy to slack of... help when I can! 😄

unique valve
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I think Paper2D is an example of a topic that is generally underused.

torpid swan
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I was using it a little the other day.

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Found a tutorial video that was pretty useful!

unique valve
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We are using it for a client, but with PaperZD Plugin in addition to remove some of the lacking features.

weary minnow
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If Unreal Engine was strong in 2D too, it could kill Unity once and for all

cloud wing
torpid swan
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BASIC > Unity

drowsy steeple
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Godot > unity

bold cloak
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Is Unity that bad or u guys making joke?

amber kelp
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jokes :)
use whatever you are comfortable with!

unique valve
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It's all just copium jokes.

forest saffron
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I’m very late to this, but I just want to bring to light that if you are having a problem, it can be a great idea to put your question into the search bar for this discord, to see if somebody answered it first. Kinda like a makeshift google or stack overflow

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And that way you don’t actually have to waste people’s time if it turns out it has been answered before

torpid swan
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Haha.

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That is definitely what should happen, but it's the only thing that never happens 😛

drowsy steeple
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Yeah the ideas are great in theory but then you get people. And we dont work with theory 😛

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Hell, guilty as charged myself for not doing that

opaque onyx
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if the bot had a nice fuzzy matching search it might work

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but as it is you'd need to use the same words in the same order

torn hound
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ironically, an answer to those dissatisfied with inconsistent assistance, is for those very people to assist others.
A lot can be learned by helping others, even with issues one has no familiarity with.
A potential gentleperson's agreement could be for those who have received help to post the question and answer to it freely available to others in the future in a searchable format (on the forums? not sure) (edit - in a channel in discord as suggested by @torpid swan)

torpid swan
#

Discord is that searchable format.

unique valve
#

We have no statistics on how many people ask questions and how many answer them.
Would be cool to know though.

#

but I would guess that there are maybe 20 people per wider topic (e.g. #cpp ) and then maybe + some due to timezones.

#

At least based on looking into the channel

#

And then maybe some more that just pop up randomly and answer questions to then vanish again for a week

#

But while the people who ask questions also answering them would sort of help shifting the numbers, it's questionable how many questions those users could answer. Not even thinking about that those users could potentially spread wrong information

torpid swan
#

I know I do a fair bit of vanishing.

pastel osprey
#

worth looking at is how the python discord server handles questions. They have dedicated channels for asking questions, that have a 'Vacant' & 'Occupied' status set using a automated commands system

#

I find the general "UE5/UE4" discord channels a bit ambigous .. as it can be a place to both:

  • ask a question
  • discuss in general Unreal Engine

So I think the questions get lost somewhere in the conversations other people are having

#

Blender discord also separated the "Help" and "Discussion" channels

#

this format is also helpful for answer givers, who are just looking to quickly answer a few questions, but don't have the time to scroll through previous messages

cloud wing
unique valve
#

You shouldn't take this stuff too serious. Unity might lack a lot but is also a lot better in other areas. I wouldn't want to use it but can't deny that fact

robust galleon
#

I have never had a problem

#

Sometimes i don't get an answer

#

But that's fine with me. Have gotten alot of help from there

kind patio
#

Bro whatever @gusty moat said, is cheap excuses, i noticed in general the unreal community to be highly unhelpful, compared to blender discord, unity ( i still use unreal to the idiots), drawing 2d in general, no matter how narrowed down or easy the question is....

kind patio
kind patio
unique valve
#

That's a very entitled point of view you have there

#

The people who answer your questions also had to go through learning the stuff.

gusty moat
kind patio
unique valve
#

Sorry that you think that way but no one here owes you an answer to your questions.

kind patio
#

It goes throughout the documentary of the software down to the users, take this criticism as is, its not a personal attack lol

unique valve
#

It kinda is personal cause you label a lot of us as lazy

#

Cause we don't spoon-feed you your answers.

kind patio
#

Its even your reaction to critcism that shows how far up you out your nose

#

No i label you lazy because lazy ppl give no f. And give these kinda excuses, that other community deal better with

#

Its just truth

#

You were the one bothering to defend a part of this community that is highly lacking

unique valve
#

I'm sorry for not offering my free time so you don't have to learn something on your own (:

kind patio
#

I am not asking anymore

#

I am just telling you that the guy who ran into this is not the only one

#

And you are way to arrogant to take it as criticism, its not up to you to change it

unique valve
#

Yop and a lot of people explained why this is the case. You labeling everyone who isn't answering as lazy is just plain up rude.

kind patio
#

We all know and have our shit going on, somebody pointed out this out and besides excuses and a discussion about unity theres no real help or even the will to do better

unique valve
#

Alright

gusty moat
kind patio
#

No rather dont exprct any answers

#

Not even directions

gusty moat
kind patio
#

I've came pretty far on my own

gusty moat
#

Anyway, pressing the magic button now

unique valve
#

Yeah, let's leave it at that. You made your point.

kind patio
#

My ungratefulness towards this specific topic of the discord results by the whole community lacking some social qualities

#

I am sure in your friend groups arround here you are pretty great 🤣

#

But when someone enters as a newb its no help

#

And thats the friggn truth

kind patio
#

Why dont you jst delete my entrys instead of blocking for 10 min. That would be a real power move 😂🤣 sry i jst had to write this, nonetheless have a great day

unique valve
#

Why would I hide your behavior for you? Also openly discussing moderation is not allowed. Please read the #rules once more. That includes the unsolicited DM you sent.

drowsy steeple
#

Have you ever considered this behaviour may be why no one wants to help you?

Exploding into an entitled rant is generally a good idea to not get help.

Plenty of newbies get help. Sometimes it takes a while.

A lot of the time between GMT 23:00 and GMT 08:00 is empty because a lot of people are asleep or busy for example.

It also doesn't help that unreal doesn't have many great tutorials. For beginner guidance most will just point to the Dev community and that's it. A lot of tutorials and courses teach bad practice, and there is nowhere near the quality of community resources that blender and unity has. Mainly due to factors like lifetime. Blender and unity have been around a lot longer, and therefore have more veteran users

gusty moat
#

Well, Unreal have been around a lot longer, but it wasn't until UE4 that it's opened up to the public, and it wasn't free until a year later

drowsy steeple
#

Well yeah, I meant to say ue4 specifically, as a lot of its users will be newer

gusty moat
#

nitpicky TsubaPero

edgy hazel
opaque onyx
#

Wow, that's a very open question with a lot of fluff and not many details. It's also pretty hard to read as written and not technically a question.

drowsy steeple
#

Yet somehow it was narrowed down and easy. Not only this but also asking about a very niche area lmao.

Makes you wonder

ancient rapids
#

blender discord is like what hotkey is this, how do I visualize the direction of my normals, what is a good practice for doing this? his question is "Hello, I have no experience with unreal engine and it's least used feature, AR. Can you sacrifice your time and life answering the questions that are answered on the TOP of the docs page in unreal? thanks!"

#

2 days go by and they still can't find the docs page? your on your own there bucko, nobody will answer you. let us know if you have any real questions that you cant find the answer to, but in the meantime... https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=how+to+AR+unreal

LetMeGoogleThat.com
Let Me Google That

For all those people that find it more convenient to bother you with their question than to google it for themselves.

unique valve
#

Let's not overdo it here and leave it at that please.

steep adder
#

I did have the thought the other day that it would be nice if epic actually bothered to assign people whose job it is to help with questions. I understand that people with expertise don't really respect people who are just learning. But I'm down the rabbit hole of banging my head against the wall again and again, and i'm tired of banging my head against the wall, with nobody around to tell me how to get around or over the wall. There seems to be a culture of blaming people for their bad questions instead of actually respecting people and their perspective.

gusty moat
steep adder
# gusty moat Unreal Engine Evangelists are a thing, but they're less hanging out on Discord t...

I can only say I'm down the rabbit hole at the moment trying to find something out on my own for the past x days. I'm not stupid, I have a degree in engineering. It would be invaluable to be able to get direction on these problems because they are very complex sometimes. I don't expect people to solve them for me. I just don't think that people really respect those who are learning, and the culture of 'that's a stupid question' is very strong on unreal slackers.

gusty moat
drowsy steeple
#

For some reason c++ tends to bring out the elitism

gusty moat
#

Many other programmer forums do tend to be plagued with elitism. I have muted #cpp for a long time and just try doing my own problem solving.

steep adder
drowsy steeple
#

So were they I assume.

#

Most unknown questions get ignored. Super beginner questions get answered with learning resources. Medium to advanced problems get answered with psuedocode and guidance in my experience

gusty moat
#

And if all of those count as disrespecting and condescending, then I don't know what else that count as respecting to you.

Problem is that some people treat the discord server like private tutor, just because Discord is realtime chat.

drowsy steeple
#

Obviously there are the edge cases where you get generous people giving walkthroughs, and others being rude but those are very uncommon

gusty moat
#

If you have private mano-a-mano tutor under agreement and you owe them money but they just handing out links and leave, then that could be condescending.

drowsy steeple
#

And Makoto pointed out something well. People aren't gonna be a private tutor, nor are they gonna give you copy paste code because that isn't helpful for either party

steep adder
#

Your response is condescending, because it makes the assumption that anyone who expects any kind of support is not willing to put the work in themselves, and expects some kind of private tutor. That's condescending.

torpid swan
steep adder
#

Epic push this server too.

torpid swan
#

That's besides the point.

#

There are a couple of very helpful Epic employees who hang out here, though.

steep adder
#

I'm sure that it the case, but every time I've looked for help it's been crickets. I'm just disappointed that there is no way to get any help when you're just trying to make things work.

gusty moat
steep adder
#

I already respect myself and my ability to work, this conversation is moving in circles and going nowhere 😦

torpid swan
#

The ultimate answer is, if you ask nicely, give enough information and don't act entitled, you are likely to get an answers - if and only if somebody who has the time and knowledge to help you actually reads your message

#

If you've asked at the wrong time, it sucks to not get a response, we get that.

#

It's nobody's fault. 😦

steep adder
#

So, who defines what 'entitled' means, because someone asking a question and hoping for an answer being called entitled just seems toxic.

torpid swan
#

I'm not saying you are being entitled. Sorry if you inferred that.

steep adder
#

As for getting a response, happens like 1% of the time

torpid swan
#

There are people getting responses constantly here.

drowsy steeple
#

Me too

#

I did not mean for you to interpret my response this way

steep adder
#

I'm only telling you my experience, take it or leave it. I'm venting a bit, no disrespect intended to anyone, just frustrated.

#

I'm just disappointed because I feel it could be much better if Epic put more resources into this.

drowsy steeple
#

I also don't think it's fair to categorise the whole server over your limited sample of 77 messages.

steep adder
#

77 is enough to get indication i think.

drowsy steeple
torpid swan
#

If you want Epic support, you need to pay for it, unfortunately.

drowsy steeple
gusty moat
drowsy steeple
#

It sucks but it's no ones fault

gusty moat
#

And going back to my private tutor analogy, this is where Epic's Unreal Developer Network (UDN) program come into play.

drowsy steeple
#

^^

steep adder
#

Yes, that is an unfortunate reality. Some might argue that Epic would be well served to take better care of people who are learning. I know it's a huge topic, and many different parts to Epic's learning ecosystem. I've been learning since 2020. Just that it's been a frustrating experience to be down the river without a paddle on so many occasions.

gusty moat
#

With UDN you do get mano-a-mano private support from Epic, but it's only available with VIP custom licensees, not public ones.

drowsy steeple
#

Yeah sadly with community driven resources, it's very much YMMV. And the more complex your problem, or the more vague it is, the more it varies

gusty moat
#

And before you make neighbor parallels, I've spied Unity server and it's pretty much the same thing there

steep adder
#

My vision is someone who's paid by Epic to help with questions. If someone is, then maybe a bit more is needed.

gusty moat
torpid swan
#

I hear something like $1500/yr for a basic level of support similar to posting a ticket and getting a response.

#

For 1 person

drowsy steeple
torpid swan
steep adder
#

fair enough. I'm not going to pay 1500/yr. I'll continue to sweat over every problem I encounter and hope for nothing.

#

it's just a huuuge time investment unfortunately, but I've already carved my path with this.

#

The problem is that sometimes the documentation doesn't give enough information. So without support it's a matter of trying everything. Build, rebuild, crash, restart rebuild. Rinse and repeat.

drowsy steeple
#

Yeah UE documentation leaves a lot to be desired. The one thing I concede unity does better

gusty moat
#

I won't contest that UE docs are mixbag. Some part are gold mine of information, some other are generated from code.

steep adder
#

well, in any case, nothing personal against the moderators of this channel, or the people who contribute here. I just wish for more.

amber kelp
#

while I sorta agree, compared to some of the other software I use on a regular basis, the docs for unreal engine are a breath of fresh air.

ancient rapids
# steep adder fair enough. I'm not going to pay 1500/yr. I'll continue to sweat over every pro...

epic is hard at work, they don't have the resources to pay people to hang around here and answer questions for free. if your really stuck reach out to epic for help. you don't need to pay $1500 per year, you need to put in the effort to reach out to them. You should start by applying on this form and waiting for a response https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/license#contact-us-form

Unreal Engine
Unreal Engine (UE5) licensing options

Explore your options for licensing Unreal Engine and getting premium support, options for private training, and more.

torpid swan
#

Except they'll ignore you most of the time.

#

That is, I've heard 1 success story about UDN and several people complain that they don't get a response.

ancient rapids
#

That's a assumption from something you experience probably years ago at this point, they will get in touch if this form gets filled out

#

Just saying that the effort made in necroing this post could have been used to contact epic, despite what is said above they will get back to you as long as your not asking for help on how to run google ads in your upcoming cross platform mmo

#

Also that's not UDN

torpid swan
#

It's all the same stuff. Their backend support for companies, whatever you want to call it.

steep adder
# ancient rapids That's a assumption from something you experience probably years ago at this poi...

except I'm not looking for premium support or private training. Just a bit more availability when I'm stuck because there is literally nowhere to turn to. This could amount to more resources dedicated to help channels. It's not impossible. And it's arguable that this would make sense from a business standpoint. I'm not filling out a form looking for premium support or private training when what I'm asking for is more consideration when it comes to resources dedicated to help channels in general, for the whole community. Plus I'm tired of these snarky 'phnarr phnarr I know better than thou' responses on Unreal slackers in general. It's annoying so stop.

spring hill
#

Not to beat a dead horse but these are the issues you're having from what I'm seeing:

  1. Your expectations for what Epic will do for free are unreasonable.... they already provide the whole Engine for free, and you want free support too.

  2. Issue #1 is causing your unreasonable attitude/expectations for the community to pick up the perceived slack in educating beginners.

  3. You're not realizing that there are more game developers then ever currently. There's not much value in Epic or any game company spending money on beginners.

  4. You seem to forget that this Discord server has nothing to do with Epic games. If they were going to offer more unpaid support in an official context it would be on their forums. Complaining about Epic's support or docs here does nothing.

spring hill
# steep adder except I'm not looking for premium support or private training. Just a bit more ...

... because there is literally nowhere to turn to
Also another thing to think about is that you literally have the source to the entire engine.

I know any given dev may not personally have the required coding background to understand all of it, but it is possible to learn the required c++ and answer literally any question you could have about the engine.

This is not the case with most software. With UE you have the rare opportunity to answer your own questions without needing insiders to explain how stuff works in a binary that you don't have source for.

I guess what I'm saying is that with UE there is never a case where you have literally nowhere to turn to. Turn to the source.

torpid swan
#

#2 is definitely a thing. It is extremely unreasonable to expect Epic staff members to come to a community Discord server, for free, to help you with your specific problem.

#

It is unreasonable to expect to receive help from anyone in a free community help forum.

#

Let alone Epic.

gusty moat
#

B-but they promote the server, it must be official!

ancient rapids
# steep adder except I'm not looking for premium support or private training. Just a bit more ...

I'm sorry and believe me, I really do understand your frustration. But your asking for free help from paid knowledgeable people who are spending their work time trying to get ahead in their career, or people who are trying to build a career. What you describe simply doesn't exist outside of FOSS software. Someone is going to laugh at this, but I recommend playing with an AI chatbot like ChatGPT. That right there is where you can turn when there is nowhere to turn to. ChatGPT is being incorporated into bing, it can successfully write complex code like shaders and path tracers that you can copy and paste into shadertoy (most the time). It can hallucinates a bit sometimes, but it's all completely upfront and manageable. It's a good valuable tool to be able to access for free right now.I promise you that you will get something of value from it just going back and fourth describing what your issue is

#

Also you need to throw out all assumptions that there is any business gain or that Epic is even related to this server at all. There are probably 4 epic employees that are actually active and they are here hanging out in their spare time

#

Frankly the more I think about this line Just a bit more availability when I'm stuck because there is literally nowhere to turn to. This could amount to more resources dedicated to help channels. It's not impossible. the more insulting and entitled it sounds, as if your genuinely angry that people need to figure out how to solve problems on their own or something, or as if none of us have ever had to struggle on our own and it's our fault you can't fix your issue. It's not our responsibility (you seem to be talking to the mods here) to be your safety net

drowsy steeple
#

That's a very fair point. In my experience the people that complain about this server are the ones that expect too much of it. And expect to have their issues solved.

edgy hazel
#

"I understand that people with expertise don't really respect people who are just learning." is very contradictory to my experience here. I mainly use #cpp and occasionally #multiplayer,#gameplay-ability-system, and #slate, but a number of people here do a lot to help those who are learning. Hell Dieter and Laura both have written blogs that contain information to help newcomers specifically. And just like others, have almost always made an effort to help point people in the right direction when their starting out. Also, if the learner is actively showing that they are looking to learn and not just a quick fix/answer, people have gone out of their way to help facilitate that. #cpp definitely has it fair share of undesirable moments, but it never starts that way. I would never say that those with expertise here have no respect for those who are learning. If the learner is actually asking proper questions and listening to the information being given, and showing they are actually invested in learning, almost always I've seen the more experienced do what they can to help.

unique valve
# ancient rapids Also you need to throw out all assumptions that there is any business gain or th...

To be fair here, Epic does use the Server. There are more than just 4 Epic Games users with a role and probably more that don't have the role.
We also added channels like #epic-online-services where Epic is actively posting into. And not just the community peeps.

But in the end, that's the extend of it. Epic employees probably don't even like showing themselves because people don't get that they can't just ping them directly for everything.

#

So yeah, despite that, Epic is probably not using the Server much. Sometimes they tell us about some news we can post.

ancient rapids
#

That is what I'm saying, yes there are more then 4 epic roles that is just a figure of speech based on whats active when leafing around the channels. Maybe you're saying they are required/encouraged by epic to monitor the channel, what I am saying is as far as it's publicly known, that they aren't, and OP assuming they are and should be available and helping him are out of line. They are answering your in depth MRQ, EOS, GAS, Metasounds and more questions because that is their interest in their free time, not because epic pays them to monitor this discord, which is obviously a misconception here. I think the most argument could be made for them officially using this server is they occasionally ask for new channels to be made here so they can silently see what people are working on and any common issues cropping up, just like scrolling through the forums while making coffee

unique valve
#

They are tasked with engaging users in those channels.

#

But that's the extend of it. And of course not all of them. Some do it in their free time, that is correct.

ancient rapids
#

Ah okay, that is definitely a misconception then on my part then. With that being said I still wouldn't go into those channels asking questions expecting Epic or anyone to help me, or expecting that epic or the moderators provide more here then what they have already have. There is endless information on the internet, and going even further then that many users here have written blogs, posts, and giant compendiums that have become the community documentation. Maybe the problem here is that I'm not understanding OP's root issue since I've hung out around here and seen the resources that are available here (this is a gamer chat app be lucky there is any valuable info here that isn't googleable elsewhere)

drowsy steeple
torpid swan
#

The OPs root issue that is there are a lot of questions which go unanswered, even those properly formulated. It can be frustrating to be ignored.

#

Unfortunately, it happens.

drowsy steeple
#

which is true! and perfectly understandable. but it's nobody's fault, and saying people don't respect people who are learning, and using that as the basis of the entire server being like "that's a stupid question" is just plain wrong, and a bit outta left field

ancient rapids
#

Of course it's frustrating to get ignored. And probably even more frustrating now that the most engagement you have ever gotten in this server is from a complaint post on the issue. I'm just saying I think the initial approach taken here was not the right one and the comments made afterward are insulting to everyone who has gone through this and is currently gone through this

drowsy steeple
#

i fully agree with this

stuck plover
#

my very humble opinion:
i just want to say that it is not only frustrating, it's very frustrating and all too very frequent.

one of the things i find frustrating is people talking random things on specific channels. but when someone asks a slightly off-topic question, those same people *shame * (unacceptable) the person who questions, into posting in another channel, while they keep chatting about random stuff and making personal jokes in a specific channel.
i don't think this is a matter of expecting professionals (which i am also) to help you out (and i do help others without expecting retribution). in fact, i think that, assuming that anyone that has a question is not professional or has less pressure than you, is a quite derogatory and a bit contemptuous.
i think it is a matter of being organized and respectful.
if people want to make jokes or talk about news or stuff like that maybe they should have a lounge channel for them to do so.
just watch one of the most used channels (not gonna name it) and see how questions routinely get drowned by random commentary, even while someone is trying to help someone out.
its almost a lack of netiquette, and i find it quite unfair.

on top of that, i love helping people, but everyday i come and there are questions buried below many many many chat-like/joke-like/personal commentaries. i certainly don't have time nor intention nor the capacity*1 to catch up with everyone's commentary and find those questions and reply (1considering im also an introverted which makes me overwhelmed).
im not saying people shouldn't have conversations, because, after all, discord is a chat thing, but maybe we can be more organized.
one option is to try to have threads for questions, or something like that. or maybe ONE thread per channel which is ONLY for support, and leave the channel for the rest of the things.

unique valve
#

We had the topic of Threads (they are shit) and Forums (people screamed when we proposed them) already.

#

The arguments for and against whatever OP mentioned originally also go in circles.

#

I do know that for example #cpp is very chatty, but the peeps there also jump on almost every question that comes in.

elder ridge
#

Yeah I'm often lurking in #cpp and while there is a lot of off topic chat often, every questions gets attention

unique valve
#

So chatting with each other in between the questions should be totally fine.

edgy hazel
stuck plover
stuck plover
elder ridge
#

because that's not generally what happens

stuck plover
elder ridge
#

I found this and I don't see off topic chat around the questions
#cpp message

stuck plover
#

im not saying all my question has offtopic chat around it. im saying its quite common. and its' overwhelming for certain people like me.

#

but it's ok, if it's not an issue for you, i won't try and convince you. im just exposing my pov.

#

You say "every" question gets attention, and i find that a bit of an overstatement.

elder ridge
#

Should have said "majority" instead
Just because a few questions didn't get answered it doesn't mean the majority doesn't, at least #cpp is probably one of the most helpful channels here
For example with the questions you posted, people were answering a lot of other question that were posted before and after yours

unique valve
#

It will however be the same list of possible reasons:

  • No one wanted to answer
  • No one had time to deal with it
  • No one knew the answer
  • The person who would have helped wasn't looking or even online
  • etc.

I'm still struggling to understand why users believe all there questions need to be answered.

stuck plover
#

Well, youre dismissing my pov, which is "it's frustrating" because my sentence does not fits. But what you are expressing is basically exposing that there is an issue with the way we communicate, because questions do get ignored from time to time. i don't care that much about the root issue, but i do care about there being an issue.

unique valve
#

Or at least the majority of them

#

We are aware that there is an issue

stuck plover
#

Great, i proposed an alternative, i hope that helps.

unique valve
#

You proposed Threads

#

They have their own problems and won't solve this.

#

The only way to solve this is to ensure that every channel has an all-knowing, always online, user who is able to answer every single question.

#

Which doesn't exist

stuck plover
#

what about having a lounge chat? where people can have their offtopic chats there?

elder ridge
unique valve
#

And on top of that the other side who is the person asking, being able to properly formulate their question and also not ask the simplest things that could have been googled

#

Which is also adding to the spam and people won't answer those questions

#

Sadly the search functionality of a chat like Discord is garbage

stuck plover
stuck plover
unique valve
#

That's great from you

stuck plover
#

but i admit that might be an issue for other people. so i wont dissmiss it.

unique valve
#

But I don't expect this from anyone

#

Spoonfeeding users is also shit

stuck plover
#

sorry, yeah , i just posted at the same time.

unique valve
#

They will come back and won't learn from it

stuck plover
#

what about this though?
nande
:
is it appropiate then having offtopic conversation on a channel like cpp where there's already a very high influx of messages?

unique valve
#

I think it's fine if it doesn't spam away questions. The users who go offtopic are the ones who are usually answering. If they don't answer a question while being offtopic then that's not great, but I doubt they would have answered it either way

#

It's impossible to forbid all offtopic

#

Discussions evolve easily into this

#

No one just jumps channels to continue a conversation

#

On top of that we already cut down those offtopic discussions if they go on for too long

#

And you are free to report them if you think it's too much

#

But I don't think I will vote for outright forbidding it

#

Then we would turn into a Forum after all.

#

And I also think that then the Users who do the offtopic stuff would stop using the channel in question that often

#

Cause they can't talk to each other there

#

And the channel would get emptier

#

I don't think it's that simple. Things like these are quite alive and breathing

#

But again, I see the problem of unanswered questions

#

We did propose Forum Threads

#

They were disliked before we even had a chance to release them

#

People are here cause it is a chat forum, not cause it is a forum

#

(and threads are really bad, so forums would have been the only possible solution there)

stuck plover
#

but can we do something about it? can we at least remind ppl about that?
i m not the kind of person that likes to forbid, much less tell people to go elsewhere, (even though like i said i find it overwhelming), i was 1) checking what's the official stance about this. and 2) wondering if theres a way to state something light but straight about the ideal for having offtopic conversations. and above all raising the awareness that while it might be pleasurable to have them (i have them from time to time), it might be challenging for people asking questions as well.

stuck plover
#

have to leave now, i won't be able to reply anymore today, sorry. thanks for the exchange.

unique valve
#

No worries

#

We can remind people, and we should

#

Again, report their messages if it gets too much

#

We get notified and can remind them

#

But to put this thread back on track:

  • We know there are unanswered questions.
  • We thought Forums might be a solution -> They were disliked to the ground.
  • We believe that the nature of a Discord Server that offers free help comes with it's problems

Namely that:

  • Questions get spammed away
  • Users might not be online who can answer the question
  • No user might be willing to answer the question
    -- No time
    -- No energy
    -- Just doesn't want to
  • People asking questions:
    -- Might as questions that are easy to google and people will ignore them for asking it the 100000th time (not everyone but it's a thing after all)
    -- Might state their questions really vaguely or just simply format it bad
    -- Might not provide enough information
    -- Might post in a way that makes it look like the answering user needs to do their work (as in, they don't seem to put any effort in solving their issue themselves)
  • Question might need a lot of time to be answered cause:
    -- It's complex
    -- The asking user might have trouble understanding the solution
    -- The asking user might need special, slower, help to understand the basics or even something intermediate

Not everything is answered in 30 seconds. A lot of users here spend sometimes hours helping one single person with their issue, even debugging it themselves, all for free.

After all, no one here has to answer questions. No one here should post a question with the idea that it has to be answered. Everyone should be really freaking grateful that their question might be answered.
Otherwise one gotta hire and pay someone for it.

#

That's mostly my 2 cents on this. I posted this before and I will probably have to post it again

elder ridge
edgy hazel
#

Otherwise one gotta hire and pay someone for it.
Trying to get more business for salty pandas I see 😂 /j

unique valve
#

Glad you mention that sweeney_activate

torpid swan
#

I think if it became like that, as in off chat topic was strictly prohibited, a lot of the actual helpful people would leave or just not pay attention to channels as much.

#

While there is off topic chat, if people ask questions, generally they do get helped. Questions aren't ignored because somebody is having a joke about something, they are ignored because people can't or won't answer them at that time.

spring hill
#

Also simply saying "I've been asking this for a bit and I haven't gotten any replies" will encourage people to let you know what's wrong with your question (just roll with any jokes that come your way we're all here to have fun too)

opaque onyx
spring hill
#

Another one I forget to mention is people getting offended at being directed to other channels...

We're not doing that to be jerks, we're telling you those are the channels with the people who know the answer to your questions.
Most of the time we'll still help you if we know but it might be more niche than you think.

ancient rapids
# unique valve We had the topic of Threads (they are shit) and Forums (people screamed when we ...

surely this was a year ago by now, and opinions have changed since people see forums and threads successfully implemented everywhere else while they are no longer considered here, due to a pretty much a handful of users "screaming" for a couple days because of the initial implementation. threads or forums need to be here to avoid your spoonfeeding you hate so much. with such a chaotic live chat how the hell is anyone supposed to see any question they are interested in? forums need to be revisited

gusty moat
#

In particular because of the grid view

edgy hazel
ancient rapids
#

Problem: people are pissed because their questions get buried, complete RNG of time and users.

Answer: Make questions persistent, a place for a chat and a place for persistent questions like the rest of dev discords are starting to do

Solution 1: Tell people to use the search function.

  • Progress update: Here we are. People just don't, discord just won't make it more obvious, it's not what the average users thinks to use in this kind of app.

Solution 2: Use what works elsewhere here, or we will be stuck in this feedback loop for 2023 also

gusty moat
torpid swan
#

It's the users who are at fault.

spring hill
# ancient rapids Problem: people are pissed because their questions get buried, complete RNG of t...

While I'm one of the people who don't like the idea of forums for the help channels we're talking about (not the other channels where they make sense such as galleries like #work-in-progress / #released / #generative-ai ) because I hate having to switch channels / threads; I also don't really think they'll solve anything.

Some questions will always get missed/ignored/unanswered and the "problem" is that some users are upset because they think that number is high..... I just think this will always be the case no matter what is done or not done.

spring hill
ancient rapids
spring hill
spring hill
ancient rapids
#

Nah they won't search Discord for the same reason they won't search Google... it has nothing to do with finding the search box.

I don't like having to switch channels/ threads.

These are the exact same thing

#

There is no real why for the user here just for you

spring hill
spring hill
#

what's hard for you to wrap your head around

spring hill
# ancient rapids `Nah they won't search Discord for the same reason they won't search Google... i...

if the help chat was a forum in stead we'd have to switch between threads... with a chat we can just hang out and wait for the next post without switching anything.... this is an actual reason for not liking forums and it has nothing to do with how they're implemented...

in what way is that the same as people not using search because they don't search on any platform.... they're 2 completely unrelated behaviors/preferences

image.png
ancient rapids
spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

The argument doesn't have to be valid to you though. It isn't even an argument, it's an opinion. You can just dislike something.

spring hill
#

thank you

drowsy steeple
#

I also dont like the extra work they bring in. Having to navigate a mess of threads and then that one you commented a month ago in pops back up again because someone necro'd it. With the level of questions posted here it would still get buried in forums. I already find it hard enough to navigate server feedback and that has nowhere near the volume.]

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

it brings no benefit here. it allows even more necroposting, things still get buried and things still get ignored, and no there is nowhere to even slightly have a little joke around in between questions.

#

if you want a forum like help system we have something called the unreal engine forums

#

no need to cosplay this discord as that

spring hill
#

eventually they will get their way and people are really gonna see what it's like to never have questions answered

drowsy steeple
#

my interaction will probably stick mostly to lounge if help forums come in

#

i dont like the forum experience

#

thats why i help in a discord server

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

not to mention it makes spambots even more weaponzied.
Picture a month into threads, blueprint maybe has 150 threads total. nitro scammer comes in and reawakens all threads. now all questions are buried because they all have recent activity

#

I can understand why people want them, but i can guarantee it will only exacerbate the issues people have

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

the only one i can see it being useful in is #work-in-progress and #released
maybe #generative-ai too

that way if someone is working on something they like, they can subscribe to the thread dedicated to it, as an easy hub for updates. Thats the only good use i can picture.

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

what are the chances of that

spring hill
#

for art it would be great because it has a "Gallery" mode now

drowsy steeple
#

might also help for #game-jam-chat
could have forums for various gamejams going on

#

but for asking and answering questions, that get posted in the hundreds weekly. its too much. discord forums is quite half baked imo

spring hill
#

yeh there are defiantly channels that could be forums with no downsides; I'm only against completely replacing help chat channels with forums

drowsy steeple
#

I mean hell, there is a post here that last had activity from the 9th August, yet isnt even considered an older post

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

imagine all the blueprint questions that have been posted since 9th august

#

now multiply that for each channel

#

it would become a hard to navigate-not-fun-to-use mess

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

yep

#

The year is 2028, a forum post from 2022 asking for help on reversed normals resurfaces by someone posting "Having this issue, but that fix didnt work, anyone got any ideas"

#

obviously exaggerating but you get the point

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

that would be another issue

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

There are so many good forum solutions for help already. StackOverflow, StackExchange, Unreal Engine Forums, etc.
We don't need another ctrl c-v

spring hill
drowsy steeple
#

pretty much

#

despite the even less ability to regulate them

cloud wing
drowsy steeple
#

Quick fixes would be great but a lot of the common issues already get answered. If people aren't looking for the answer before asking here I'm not sure how much quick fixes would help realistically

Granted discord search ain't the greatest tool ever made but

torpid swan
#

It'd be useful if each channel, like #cpp or #umg, could have this list of quick fixes and useful information somewhere. Almost as if they could be pinned to the channel... oh wait!

unique valve
#

The idea of turning Discord into the all-in-one solution for getting help and infos for UE is not gonna work out.
It's a chat. Not a Forum (and shouldn't really replace one), not a Wiki, not a Blog.

#

Questions should still be posted to Forum and AnswerHub.
Bigger Guides should still be posted to Unreals new Community thing, a Wiki or your personal blog fwiw.

#

Yes it's nice to have pinned messages, but that is probably the extend of it

#

The only other thing we are doing or at least Nick is preparing iirc, is an /faq slash command

torpid swan
#

It's all about your personal preferences on getting help (and helping out). Be it discord chat or forums.

cloud wing
torpid swan
#

Lack of organisation is another issue. 🙂

#

I noticed in the #slate channel useful posts keep disappearing from the pinned messages. No idea what's going on with that.

unique valve
#

Pretty sure someone would need to actively remove them (or delete the original message?) for that to happen

torpid swan
#

Then someone is doing that because the original messages are still there.

#

Like Lighthouse's git guide or the qt to slate guide. Both excellent resources are regularly removed

ancient rapids
# unique valve The idea of turning Discord into the all-in-one solution for getting help and in...

The idea is adding some more persistence to this booming community. Forums do that. Keep the chat, add forums. Whenever someone asks a question, give them the ability for the bot to mark it in a questions feed people can scroll through. Time and time again people ask for 1 thing, a better way to be seen and heard. There they are, forums. There they are, other big servers doing it right. They do forums, or they do question feeds and some even let you vote for posts that get auto put into some kind of best of feed. There are many options and clever implementations and none of them are being explored in one of the biggest discords out there

#

Literally anything would be better then what it is now. Don't see how forums add more scrolling or clicking to the already chaotic feed of discord

torpid swan
#

Nobody is going to scroll through a questions feed.

#

That's far too formulaic.

ancient rapids
#

Well how did you get here then? Everyone is thinking it’s some massive change where it’s not removing anything it’s adding organization for the people who want it.

torpid swan
#

I'm here because I care about how the server operates. I don't care about rando's c++ problem enough to scroll through threads or forums. I like helping, but not enough to scroll back through history or go through a forum feed.

#

I'm sure that's true of most people.

ancient rapids
#

Right, so why would you post a question in #cpp then you'd just be interrupting lounge 2 and your question would go unseen by anyone. Where can rando post their question then? Forums? Then what's the point of this discords mission to provide resources and support to all unreal users?

#

Maybe you just downloaded 5.1 and want to see some kind of forum like feed to see what kinds of things people are finding are broken in the new update

#

A forum feed is much less information and interaction then this channel here

torpid swan
#

If you want to find out what's broken on a new update, go to the forums. If you want to chat to people about the new update, discuss what's broken and possible fixes and generally be social, you come to Discord.

ancient rapids
#

You are missing the point entirely

#

Epic asks for channels in this discord so they can monitor just like I've described above

torpid swan
#

"Asks for channels" ?

ancient rapids
#

Yes they will occasionally ask/reccomend the mods here to open a channel, like metasounds

torpid swan
#

I'm not sure how that's related to anything. Are Epic asking for forums? Are Epic unhappy with how the server operates?

spring hill
# ancient rapids Right, so why would you post a question in <#221799439008923648> then you'd just...

your question would go unseen by anyone
In #cpp your question will still be seen.... actually the more people you're "interrupting" the more people will see your question and you'll have a higher chance of getting an answer.

Also let's make it clear... this is a group chat, there is no "interrupting". All conversations are going on at the same time, if you expect 1 on 1 back and forth, ask the person if they'll let you DM them.

spring hill
spring hill
edgy hazel
# spring hill `what's the point of this discords mission to provide resources and support to a...

The first paragraph of #more-resources says:

You've joined a thriving community of Unreal developers from all over the world. Our mission is to provide resources and support to anyone who's creating with Unreal Engine, regardless of industry, background, or experience level. From beginners to veterans, hobbyists to professionals, game developers to filmmakers, artists to engineers: we welcome you.

(Just pointing out where they most likely pulled that from)

drowsy steeple
#

It's also not like a forum channel gives resources that aren't already accessible.

#

Anything Uber important gets pinned anyway

spring hill
edgy hazel
gaunt meteor
#

I mean, this problem would be solved easily if a questions channel was added. That way those that need help can ask without budding into other people's conversations, and those that want to help others can do so. I am not sure why this is difficult to do.

drowsy steeple
#

thats the point of them

#

its just in between questions we like to chat

gaunt meteor
#

Being a new user to the discord, it doesn't really come off that way. The channels just seem like general chats. I think it would just be more streamlined if they had outright questions channel for ue5, c++, and anything else. I have been in many a discord that have this feature and it runs very smoothly, and it is helpful to users. Rather than sending a chat a channel and hoping somebody responds in the middle of their conversation.

drowsy steeple
#

they arent general chats. we have two of those, theyre called #ue4-general and #ue5-general
the rest aside from SOCIAL category channels are question channels

#

#more-resources also clarifies this, by saying if you aren't sure drop the question into a general and wait to be redirected.

#

I mean you also look in any channel and see people are asking questions. it probably means it's a question channel

gaunt meteor
#

I do not think we should get rid of the channels, I am submitting that there needs to be a better way for users to ask questions. I understand that the #more-resources channel has this, however, whenever I go to the channels that it suggests there is too much going on between users. That is why it would be optimal to have something more streamlined. Creating a channel like this forum for users to ask questions would be a great idea as well. I am highly suggesting that it needs to be changed and I will leave it at that.

drowsy steeple
# gaunt meteor I do not think we should get rid of the channels, I am submitting that there nee...

if you want a more streamlined experience you can ask on the forums. Discord is a chat app. the questions will always be chat styled.
As someone who helps fairly frequently i can tell you i wouldn't touch a help forum here at all because i hate them. I know a few other regulars here that agree.

The point will always remain if you have a well formulated question, that isn't vague, or very complex, and has lots of supporting information, like code snippets, and what you have identified as the issue, etc., you will nearly always get an answer. In my experience most of the unanswered questions are formulated poorly. Forums will not change this imo

#

Obviously factors like luck affect this as well as availability of users, but this applies to forums too.

spring hill
unique valve
#

I think the misconception is that questions that are in fact unanswered between those "dead air filling" scenarios are ignored because of the chatting.

#

While in fact that would have been ignored either way.

#

Due to all the reason I listed already

#

There is also a high chance that with introducing Forums to, e.g. #cpp , that the people who are actively helping and have the knowledge to do that, would just not use the cpp-forum anymore.
So we would go from "unorganized" chats that don't answer all questions, to "organized" forums that wouldn't have people left answering questions cause the people who do don't want the forums.

#

So we would need #cpp-forum and #cpp-chat, and then they would just all sit in -chat, and people would probably also ask questions there all the time cause their -forum questions aren't answered

#

etc. etc. etc.

#

Forums are nice. Forums can be used for this Server (e.g. #969360633386655744), but I'm relatively sure they would not solve this issue if we end up having no one of the helping people want them

#

Additionally, if whoever isu nhappy with the chat version, why not post into the official forums and answerhub

#

Where your question is visible and won't get spammed away

#

Cause surely all questions are always answered there, right?

opaque solar
#

My experience getting help was very positive, I asked my questions politely with a lot of respect to the UE community since I am new to it, and they all answered me in a very quick and polite way, I am very pleased with this server, good job everyone!

torpid swan
#

_Hands Solys the 💰 _

gusty moat
#

NP: Pink Floyd - Money

radiant jolt
#

They've approached us to request a channel be added, but only once or twice in the entire 7-year history of the server.

#

This is quite the thread, folks. I'm finally reading it all to catch up.

torpid swan
#

It's a wild ride with some heated discussion!

radiant jolt
#

It is, and I love it. Some of the best feedback comes from discussions like these.

#

Forum channels vs. text channels is probably the most fascinating debate I've seen in Discord's history.

#

They both have pros and cons, different tradeoffs.

#

But it's very polarizing.

toxic gale
#

this thread still active?

#

dang

toxic gale
radiant jolt
cloud wing
#

I prefer text channels too, but it really depends on the topic

toxic gale
unique valve
#

That's actually super tricky to track. You'd need to make a version of each for a specific topic and then let them run on their own for some time.
Different topics might have different activity already. Some topics might work better with forums, others with text. Having both at the same time might only show that the core group likes one more than the other (or other way round, the people asking like one more than the other but aren't getting answers). We can't really have them both at the same time, so I don't think you can really argue with activity if we just don't have the numbers.

cloud wing
#

help channels should not at all be forums, they become dead, in literally every server

gusty moat
#

We already have UE forums, and forum channel is better suited for feedback channels or gallery channels, e.g. #work-in-progress or #released

#

Though #work-in-progress might be better off using the text channel thread feature think

radiant jolt
cloud wing
#

I'm watching the WC so I'll share an example later haha

gusty moat
#

I spied Unity server, the help channels are text channels

radiant jolt
radiant jolt
torpid swan
#

Honestly I don't see why we don't give it a try.

#

Just a generic UE5 help forum.

#

See what happens.

radiant jolt
#

Well I'm going to try it with the sharing channels very soon.

torpid swan
#

I'm not sure that's a good comparison with a help channel, though.

radiant jolt
#

They're pretty overloaded channels. Very busy and chaotic.

torpid swan
#

So archiving the ue4/5 channels and replacing them?

radiant jolt
#

Yes. Just an idea for a smaller scale experiment.

torpid swan
#

Sounds like a good plan.

#

I wouldn't mind seeing that idea I had where you have a forum, but there's a sticky in there for chat. And all the topics people post are below that.

gusty moat
#

I wonder if bots can still access forum posts

surreal valleyBOT
radiant jolt
#

With all the discussion lately, one thing is clear: we should try more small experiments with forum channels before implementing anything more substantial.

radiant jolt
#

For example: it would be possible to implement a "Mark as Resolved" feature similar to AnswerHub.

#

Although it wouldn't be as useful because bots can't edit the OP message to say "Solved in <this post>".

#

But the bot could add a "Resolved" tag.

#

A bot could also send a message in a new post as soon as it's created, with reminders of formatting or post guidelines, etc. I've seen other servers do this.

#

Here's an example.

image.png
torpid swan
#

A bot that asks all teh stupid quests we have to ask automatically?

#

Sounds perfect!

radiant jolt
#

Maybe reminders like "Which version of Unreal are you using?"

gusty moat
#

Though maybe it would be nice if it's context aware somehow

cloud wing
#

@radiant jolt Here's an example

#

Keep On Coding, a programming YouTube channel with over 283K subscribers and a Discord server with a 5 digit member count

#

I was an old member there, and I have seen when the help channels used to be a lot more active when they were text channels

#

but now

#

it's a wasteland of dead posts that nobody bothers touching

#

Stefan Mischook, another programming channel with over 237K subscribers, and a 4 or 5 digit member count Discord server

#

active text channels where people help each other out

#

It's pretty much the same in other Java, Python etc. servers I used to be a part of

#

forums = activity death for help channels

#

Hardly anybody feels like involving themselves in multiple posts

#

Text channels are more like, drop in, give advice, leave

#

forums make you feel attached to the problem

radiant jolt
#

Thanks for the examples.

radiant jolt
#

I consider that an advantage of forum channels, not a disadvantage.

#

Some people simply prefer hanging out in a chat vs. helping people in threads, I get that.

radiant jolt
#

The trouble is: chat can get very chaotic at this scale. Imagine when we hit 100K members and higher.

cloud wing
#

And here's another thing, if there's a text channel named #python or something, people can discuss anything related to python, it's not exclusive to helping people with their problems, that just sort of casually happens if someone asks for help between a casual conversation

But by making it a forum, you kinda kill conversation, because forums have the stigma of being strictly question and answer, nobody is going to be like, Hey I wanna have a casual conversation about Unreal Engine 5 and then start a forum post for it, it's just a short term urge to talk to people

cloud wing
torpid swan
radiant jolt
#

It does change. I've seen it over the years here. #ue5-general is a great example.

radiant jolt
cloud wing
#

Yes

#

Agreed

radiant jolt
#

The way I see it, it doesn't make sense to simply convert all our help channels to forums. Some some be merged, some should become tags in a forum channel with a broader topic.

#

Another possibility that's been discussed is a hybrid approach. For example: A Rendering category with #rendering-chat at the top, then a few forums for subtopics such as lighting, materials, vfx, etc.

gusty moat
#

If you want to do a test run, maybe threads test run on both general channels? We never give it a fair chance. It's accessible on both mobile and desktop

cloud wing
#

I have no problem with a test run, I support the rapid experimental approach 💯

radiant jolt
#

I sit somewhere in the middle. Try to utilize the new features available to us, but don't change things too much or too rapidly because there's thousands of people using this community and I don't want to disturb the UX much.

cloud wing
#

Maybe we can keep a text channel and a help forum, and there could be a bot people could use to optionally create a forum post for their issue? That can easily be abused though

#

I don't know anything about bots

radiant jolt
#

Hm yeah, that could get convoluted as well.

gusty moat
#

Now that forum channels officially become a thing, at least we can compare that against threads

radiant jolt
#

Indeed.

#

The sharing category is getting the forum treatment next, so that will provide useful data.

#

I have other ideas for implementing forums on a small scale as well. One I'm excited about but might be totally wrong: I think I want to turn #industry-chat into a forum similar to Hacker News. I would love to facilitate more discussions there about everything from Verse to interesting articles about game dev, XR, AI-generated art, etc.

#

I think it could become a really great destination in the server to see what folks are talking about/interested in at the moment.

#

But that's unrelated to this topic, i.e. getting help. I digress. 😅

torpid swan
#

If you turn something like that into a forum and there's no posts for a while, there will be pressure not to make new ones, I feel.

cloud wing
#

True

#

Another reason I dislike forums

radiant jolt
gusty moat
#

I do think threads could be a good non-destructive addition to the help channel, and in case of threads, there is a long search bar that covers inactive ones

torpid swan
#

If you see a forum that is abandoned, you are disincentivised to make new posts or even read old ones.

cloud wing
radiant jolt
#

That same logic applies in text channels.

torpid swan
#

That's more apparent on a forum because a post is more of an investment than simply popping a message in a chat channel.

radiant jolt
#

People are reluctant to post in text channels because it seems like no one is around.

cloud wing
#

This ^

torpid swan
#

Forums just emphasize it.

radiant jolt
#

On a traditional forum, sure, but I'm not sure that would be the case here.

cloud wing
radiant jolt
#

Well then again, I'm talking about a pretty broad forum that has nothing to do with help/tech support.

#

So the use case is different.

torpid swan
#

Help/tech support would actually alleviate the problem because there would be frequent posts.

radiant jolt
#

lol

torpid swan
#

If nobody posts on an industry chat forum for a week, it would feel abandoned.

radiant jolt
#

I don't think that would happen.

cloud wing
#

Debatable

radiant jolt
#

It's a pretty active channel, and there are always new things to discuss. This would involve some effort on my part because it's a significant change in the culture, but I have a good feeling it would work out.

cloud wing
#

Experiment 🙂

radiant jolt
#

Fair. If I'm wrong, I can always abandon it.

#

First I should probably address the channels list as a whole. It needs some reorganizing, at least.

#

Now that people will be able to customize the channel list, we need to rethink our assumptions.

#

We got early access to a very interesting new onboarding system, too. I'm hoping it will make the server more accessible for new members.

torpid swan
#

The problem with customising the channels lists is that people 1) won't have done it before joining the server 2) probably don't even know about it.

#

So you can't assume that iwll fix anything

radiant jolt
#

Basically, we choose a small set of default channels everyone gets, and the rest of your channel list is built based on your answers to a series of questions.

#

It's really neat.

#

For example: I could add the job board if people say they're here to hire talent or find a job.

torpid swan
#

Ah.

radiant jolt
#

The channel browser is there to allow you to make changes after joining.

torpid swan
#

I was actually just thinking about having a short list of channels when you first join.

#

Seems they read my mind... from the past.

radiant jolt
#

It's something I've wanted for years.

#

It's one of the few things I miss about Slack.

#

You couldn't do the questions there, but you had default channels and the rest were opt in.

#

Once we set this up, every new member's channel list will be different. It's going to be interesting to see how that affects activity here.

torpid swan
#

Though, I'm not sure a questionnaire is really the best way to go. Simply having Important, General and Social and then a big welcome messaging saying "CHECK THE CHANNEL LIST, ITS OVER THERE" in big flashing letters might be more effective.

radiant jolt
#

Well I'm going to try it either way. Looks exciting to me.

cloud wing
#

That sounds like a really cool idea!

radiant jolt
#

Yeah I'm excited about the potential.

#

I think it will be more effective than our current welcome screen.

#

I think it's time to make a dedicated post and stop derailing every feedback thread into the great forum channel debate.

spring hill
# radiant jolt That's sort of the point, though, isn't it?

I'd say it isn't the point though... Why should the helpers attach themselves to any particular issue?
The only person I feel should be attached to any issue is the person with the issue.

People who help should feel free to drop their 2 cents and walk away if others are helping and giving different advice; especially when issues mutate beyond the original helper's area of expertise.

radiant jolt
spring hill
spring hill
#

Text channels make it easier for others to see what's going on and jump in

radiant jolt
radiant jolt
spring hill
radiant jolt
#

You have a unique experience then.

spring hill
radiant jolt
#

Plenty of people (myself included) have experienced going to a very busy text channel for help. If there's multiple people getting help at once, it's very noisy and would be impossible to track without the replies feature.

#

Even with replies, it can be challenging.

spring hill
radiant jolt
#

I'm sure it's easy for you. This is not the case for a lot of people.

#

Especially people who are new.

#

I know many people who just shut down and walk away when they see such a busy chat.

#

I also know people who grow increasingly frustrated by having to constantly scroll to follow the replies of the one guy that's helping them, and that's if they were pinged. This frustration then colors their whole interaction with the community.

spring hill
spring hill
#

there's nothing to scroll when you get immediate replies

radiant jolt
spring hill
#

I think maybe these are issues the general or BP channels are having

#

I wouldn't know about those... I never go in #ue5-general / #ue4-general .... I kind of don't even know why they exist since nearly every topic has it's own channel

radiant jolt
#

I am confident there's a way to accommodate both, but not without tradeoffs.

#

Everything involves tradeoffs.

spring hill
#

except 1 group is already mostly happy, and the changes to make the other group happy will make them unhappy

radiant jolt
#

By "the changes" I assume you're specifically referring to turning #cpp into a forum.

spring hill
#

and I think most of the people with this POV are the question askers.... not the people with the answers, and making the people who answer things unhappy will make them leave and kill the channel

spring hill
#

the other UE topics like #slate would be awesome to have as active channels, and I would go in them if they were... but they are dead mostly

#

it feels like Daekesh is the only one posting in #slate

radiant jolt
#

It's a constant balancing act. Either there aren't enough channels or there are too many "dead" channels. It depends on how you use Discord.

spring hill
#

I only joined the Discord to get immediate replies... If I wanted to wait on a response I'd have used a normal forum like the official one

slate prawn
#

Just need a point system to incentivize people hanging out and helping. leveling is a proven example that provides a sense of accomplishment in games and can make even the most pointless or mundane tasks worth while. This thread has gone on so long clearly, anything to encourage the helpful few to spend some more time here is not a bad thing.

spring hill
slate prawn
#

also appreciate pfist for being here open to feedback. I know it's a lot. good job.

spring hill
radiant jolt
spring hill
slate prawn
radiant jolt
#

If Discord didn't add any new features and remained "just a chat app", this community would be worse off.

spring hill
#

And I joined Discord back then... by picking Discord I was choosing to use a chat

#

Now the clarity of that choice has been eroded

torpid swan
#

You could say.. it's creating discord.

radiant jolt
#

I understand that perspective quite well. Chat is the reason I started this server. I wanted an alternative to the forums. I liked the #unrealengine IRC but one channel was too limited. So here we are.

spring hill
slate prawn
spring hill
torpid swan
#

Points system would just encourage people who don't know what they're talking about to talk shit for points.

slate prawn
#

I just dont feel like its worth while enough if the help doesnt reach a conclusion or I have nothing after the effort put in.

torpid swan
#

Granted, I'm wrong quite a lot, but at least I'm wrong for hte right reasons! 😄

slate prawn
#

lol

spring hill
radiant jolt
#

Yeah unfortunately I don't think a point system would solve the problem at hand. We have many helpful people here who donate their time when it makes sense for them.

slate prawn
#

Credibility is established with the point system too. If you were wrong most of the time, youd have low points and then someone like matheew wadstein (name? spelling lol) would come with 500 points like "no sir you just press the "build bugless game" button.. then he has 501 points.

torpid swan
#

You can be wrong, but appear right.

spring hill
torpid swan
#

There's a lot of bad advice that works.

radiant jolt
#

Personally, I think it would be more effective to focus efforts on those encounters when people decide to help others, and make sure both parties have a great experience.

spring hill
radiant jolt
#

Rather than convincing helpful people to help more often than they already are.

slate prawn
#

point system would encourage those helpful, who care about points, to help more. Thosee that dont care about the points, would help as often as they do. and people who care about the points who dont help, would start.

spring hill
slate prawn
#

AI for the win haha

spring hill
torpid swan
#

Depends on your definition of "bad" 🙂

slate prawn
#

We are mostly a game development community so makes sense to go for a leveling or point system. and if we dont we really should have tested before opting out.

torpid swan
#

We'd also need toxic points for Laura, though. 😂

radiant jolt
spring hill
slate prawn
torpid swan
#

Some random arseholes definition of good, "them noobs got trolled good by that ai"

spring hill
radiant jolt
#

I don't like what it does to incentives. I'd rather leave points out of it. I guess I'm old school in that regard.

slate prawn
#

should only be positive, similar to the likes on facebook (a feature that works).

torpid swan
#

I don't see the problem with achievements in games. As long as they aren't stupid.

radiant jolt
#

I don't want to make this place like other social networks. I know a lot of servers give members profiles with points, levels, etc. I get the appeal and how they can reinforce cultural norms, but I don't think it's appropriate here.

spring hill
slate prawn
#

Did not mean to suggest turning this into a social network (even though thats what discord is haha). Just referencing the example of positive reinforcement that incentivizes engagement/activity

radiant jolt
#

The incentive to help someone should be "I can solve this problem and I'm a human being who wants his knowledge to be validated and useful", not "I'm 3 points away from leveling, I should help 3 more people."

torpid swan
#

I'm not even talking about that. Thinjg slike "take 50000000 steps" or something. Literally just "play the game for x hours". It's not an achievement. It's just time spent.

radiant jolt
#

Yes, that can be good in some scenarios, but most of the time (in my experience) that leads to rushed or sloppy solutions because the points are now the incentive.

spring hill
#

The first time somebody ignores my help simply due to a low point score (due to non-participation) is the last time I even attempt to help somebody here

slate prawn
torpid swan
#

To be fair, Xero, your attitude is far more likely to get them to ignore you 😂

spring hill
torpid swan
#

You take no shit.

spring hill
torpid swan
#

hehe

slate prawn
spring hill
#

how do you delude yourself into valuing something that means literally nothing?

slate prawn
torpid swan
#

I progress a lot on here just by being involved in the help process. Learn a lot.

spring hill
#

what's much more valuable than some points is knowing that you helped somebody with their problem imo

slate prawn
#

I agree.. both points are good.

#

and those people who dont care about the points would be here still.

spring hill
torpid swan
#

If it comes to the point where we need points to get people to help on here, you might as well close the server.

spring hill
#

so they'll leave

slate prawn
spring hill
slate prawn
#

I have helped a few people here, made good connections but those connections fade, time spent helping them has mostly been review of what I already knew. Got nothing to show for it and that could matter to anyone who plays or makes games. Purely talking from the perspective of a game designer with a background in human motivational psychology.

#

Just see no way that this reduces help for this community or improves the point of this thread.

spring hill
slate prawn
#

This thread has gone on for 6 months.. and that tells me that the leading ways of thinking to solve this problem are not the way. Not saying mine are, but somethings gotta give and the karma system could have been a step in the right direction, just executed wrong (possibly).

spring hill
spring hill
torpid swan
#

The thread has gone on for 6 months because there will always be people who don't get help - in any system - and they come here to complain.

slate prawn
torpid swan
#

But, of course, in any system, there is always room for improvement and it should be iterated on.

spring hill
slate prawn
#

right

radiant jolt
#

That's not the only reason, but that is most of it. I've been tracking it the whole time. Sometimes it stays active because a productive debate is sparked in here, and I'm fine with that. The more feedback the better.

#

The title is also kind of clickbait. It's attractive.

spring hill
radiant jolt
#

It's actually been a helpful way to collect complaints from people who didn't fill out our last survey.

torpid swan
#

To be fair, other than a place to vent about not being helped, this isn't too useful for the people actually not being helped. If they had a bad experience, they should report individuals.

slate prawn
#

There are people that would take points and levels as a form of payment and take helping here very seriously, especially completionists and trophy hunter types.

radiant jolt
#

You're right. I Just don't want to foster that kind of community.

#

I will be putting more effort into fostering fun here next year, though. I like to keep this place pretty professional and civil, but I think we could use more opportunities to let loose and connect in ways unrelated to development.

#

I'm actually hopeful those efforts will end up benefiting the tech support side of things, too.

#

A decent number of people in the last survey said they'd be interest in game nights, for example.

#

Some years ago we played games on Friday in voice chat for a while, and it was pretty great.

slate prawn
radiant jolt
#

Especially when we played Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes.

slate prawn
#

But being able to give nothing, and then also paying real money, is possibly worse for a community then a virtual point as a thank you.

radiant jolt
#

Giving money is a very reasonable way to express generosity. It makes a difference in someone's life.

spring hill
#

I am always saying people who need lots of in depth help should just hire a tutor on the #hire-a-freelancer board (or something like that)

slate prawn
# radiant jolt Giving money is a very reasonable way to express generosity. It makes a differen...

I agree. I can afford it. Not everyone can as "starving artists" and that kind of foundation is also not the sort of community you want to foster here, where money is the encouraging factor for helping each other. But a thank you is not enough in cases where ive been helped. I want so badly to thumps up someones profile to say "this guy knows his stuff and thanks!". Closest thing to that is thumps up, net positive, system. badges for helpers.. similar to roles we see with this discord such as "forum mods" or "eu community team" roles.. establishes credibility.

torpid swan
#

I'm sure the people that helped you were satisfied with the thanks.

#

Most of the time, they don't even get that.

slate prawn
#

Points for badges/level maybe. I dont know what the final form of this would be but I keep thinking about how the mee6 bot has levels and xp progression for any kind of activity. has a direct impact on discord users activity of any server size.

spring hill
slate prawn
#

Another idea, in addition points for community members, a way to hit a different group of potential server helpers is to get funding from the unreal dev grant to pay minimum wage/part time junior unreal specialists who just got out of school or who don't quite have enough experience to get hired. They pass a test, get a role here, treat the role like a job, add that experience to their resume and and its a win for everyone. The discord gets dedicated helpers, people who would otherwise get a part time job NOT related to their goals to make ends meet, could get paid instead to work closer to the industry for the same amount. Then you help the community here AND help them get a job.

#

So hard to get into the industry even if you have the skills. Sometimes people just need a hand up and an opportunity to prove themselves.

spring hill
torpid swan
#

Nobody is going to earn enough here even as a part time job.

#

The people who know enough already have jobs.

spring hill
slate prawn
slate prawn
torpid swan
#

You have plenty of opportunity to prove yourself without a points system.

#

I got a job offer for the work I did helping people out over chat with no points systems. Seems Xero has as well.

#

Several actually.

slate prawn
#

Paid UE Specialist role does not rely on point system. And those offers that you've gotten for you both are good for you. But some won't spend the time here if it isn't worth their time because they're to busy improving themselves or their skills. But as a role that counts toward a job, it could mean something. Some say the best way to learn is to teach.

torpid swan
#

I'm pretty sure a monetised role is well beyond what pfist wants for this server.

#

If you mean a role like moderator, etc (@helper or whatever)

spring hill
elder ridge
slate prawn
#

I do. Would be like an internship where people who have dedicated themselves to the engine could directly help the community, mesh themselves into this network, but also come out on top of that experience with all the rapid fire questions and a stronger web of references for finding a job.

#

Just another way to have more helpers in the discord.

torpid swan
#

That's just not gonna happen.

elder ridge
#

A mega grant wouldn't last long for us to support paid helpers long term
And me personally I dislike that idea, this is a community server

torpid swan
#

If people aren't willing to help others and are only doing it in the hope of a job offer, it kinda lessens the worth of the community, tbh.

#

And if every question is responded to with a monetary amount, everyone would leave very quickly.

slate prawn
#

The people who do help, will continue to do so, but some need it to be in line with their long term goals.

elder ridge
#

Paid position are not sustainable for us, we make no money from this server

spring hill
slate prawn
#

Everyone would not leave lol and that is assuming every question is answered with monotone responses lol. The person is here because they want the role, just like how if you work from home you deliver on tasks because you want to be there.

spring hill
elder ridge
slate prawn
#

You want the role to help get a job... Wanting a job and taking the steps to get there is the wrong goal?

torpid swan
#

If there were people here being paid to help... I would probably not help as much. Not because I didn't want to, but just because I'd, I don't know, feel like I deserved something for doing it if other people are making money. It'd just feel wrong.

#

On top of that, every time I helped someone, I'd be taking money from someone. That's not a good feeling.

spring hill
elder ridge
torpid swan
#

I think he means the money would come from the people being helped, rather than the admins.

slate prawn
torpid swan
#

(or maybe I'm wrong)

elder ridge
spring hill
slate prawn
torpid swan
#

Plus they literally have employees already helping here, albeit in their spare time

elder ridge
spring hill
torpid swan
#

Ah. I have that channel filtered 😄

slate prawn
gusty moat
#

Unreal Evangelists are a thing, though I don't know if it's a paid position.

#

I mean, I can't really speak for others, but I help others when I got some time to kill, and not driven by monetary goal.

slate prawn
#

for example, just from appreciation for inspiring my career in game development, I support a patreon for a character artist of a game that started my journey. Small monthly contribution is nbd for the impact on my life it has had. same goes for this server and how its helped my career.

spring hill
#

I can't even convince people to buy a stick of RAM for themselves

radiant jolt
slate prawn
radiant jolt
#

But rest assured: it will never involve advertising.

#

I intend to keep everything we do free from ads forever.

gusty moat
#

I'm not willing to think monetary incentives are the way to get your questions answered ASAP in a community run server.

Also as far as paid help goes, Epic have the UDN, which is the VIP support program for custom licensing.

slate prawn
#

Nice. I imagine there are tons of industry veterans that would love to give back to this community, especiaally if the understanding is that it could go toward helping new devs get started.

#

Any support financially could be used to improve this community in several ways, and in any of those ways, really would be helping people communicate here.. even without the paid role of UE Specialist. So, contributions inevitably would be helping new devs get started even if indirectly.

spring hill
#

OK guys we got $5 in donos this month.. Everybody gets $0.00000000000000001

gusty moat
#

Maybe it's just me then, I kept rejecting paid help offer done in public channel lol.

spring hill
gusty moat
slate prawn
gusty moat
#

Last time I did, the client was huge PITA with no regards to time zones

#

Oh wait, time zones existed?

Aw maaaan

slate prawn
spring hill
gusty moat
#

If only everyone can live in a one time zone as me, it would've been jolly great...

slate prawn
#

coffee removes time zones haha

elder ridge
spring hill
radiant jolt
gusty moat
#

Speaking of which, is it just me or the mod application button is broken? It just reloads the same page (at least on mobile)

drowsy steeple
#

Unrelated but I find the Quinn report button to be broken 50% of the time. It just infinitely says "sending command"

opaque onyx
opaque onyx
opaque onyx
#

@radiant jolt I can share an invite to a server with a very successful forum help system if you'd like

cloud wing
opaque onyx
#

link sent

cloud wing
#

It has only one forum, which I wouldn't call thriving, and it isn't a programming/technical server

drowsy steeple
#

I still think forums for help here are absolutely the wrong call. We have unreal engine help forums. It's called the unreal engine forums

#

Also sad to see the first channel up for consideration is the general chat. The one channel where it makes most sense to have a slightly off topic convo

cloud wing
drowsy steeple
#

Sorry I should have specified help channel. I thought I did

toxic gale
opaque onyx
radiant jolt
drowsy steeple
# radiant jolt What do you think is the biggest drawback of using a forum channel for help?

It feels like a much stricter environment. Not only that, they're ugly. This channel still has active posts from August that haven't had a word spoken. At the rate topics get brought back up too, individuals will get still get drowned. Not to mention the second a nitro scammer joins and reawakens every forum post.

Splitting it into forums also forces casual conversation out. It's just help individual and leave. I don't like that, I like being able to have a bit of a conversation related to the topic in between questions. Forums remove that.

If people want a forum experience, it exists, we have unreal engine help forums already, I don't see why we should turn the one unique thing this community has going for it into an existing product.

I cannot stand forums. Never liked them, never will, it's just something I never vibe with. The reason I'm active in helping here is because it's different, and the chat style works well.
Forums don't solve any of the issues of the chat system currently. The only issues they solve are in the cases such as the sharing category.

#

Forums are already not fun to navigate for this channel. I could not imagine it being done to the most active channels in the server

radiant jolt
#

Thanks for the detailed response. Really appreciate this kind of feedback.

drowsy steeple
#

No problem, if you need any further clarification I can into a bit more detail on anything

radiant jolt
#

Splitting it into forums also forces casual conversation out. It's just help individual and leave. I don't like that, I like being able to have a bit of a conversation related to the topic in between questions. Forums remove that.
What if the forum channel did allow for posts that weren't asking a question? Hypothetical example: let's say #lighting becomes a forum channel with tags for Lumen, Lightmass, GPU Lightmass, etc. Most of the posts will be people asking for help, but maybe someone creates a "Share your optimal lighting settings/config" post. I would want to allow those types of posts.

#

Maybe there could even be a Help Needed tag if you were someone who just wanted to answer questions for people.

gusty moat
#

Occasional casual convo can mess up forum posts IMO

drowsy steeple
#

I'm still not a huge fan. Unless it was say a forum that had posts for lumen, light mass and GPU light mass.

I've never vibed with the forum style. I think converting this server to forums is a bit reinventing the wheel. Plenty of people like forums, and like helping on them, in which case we have unreal engine forums. If I liked forums id go there.

Sacrificing the one difference if this discord though doesn't feel right. Hell, I'd probably just stick to lounge.

It still doesn't solve any problems. Instead of messages getting drowned, it's now posts getting drowned out by people necroing other posts, and the sheer amount of posts per day. Then if someone necros one, everyone that tried to help has it pop up in their channel list. In a large scale channel this could potentially flood, especially with scam bots.

gusty moat
#

Sharing channels are much more appropriate for forum channels, they serve as gallery for people's works and Discord forum posts accomodate that purpose

drowsy steeple
#

^^

radiant jolt
#

Agreed. About to deploy that in a bit as a matter of fact, so we'll see how it goes.

radiant jolt
#

Hypothetically, 10 people could be getting help at once in a single channel, all without disturbing each other.

drowsy steeple
#

That's why they're good there. You follow a specific creator for updates. Chat works a lot better for helping, since I don't necessarily want to subscribe to that channels every message.

Say I have 3 messages I'm actively helping in #blueprint, that's one channel in my list, and you can keep track easily with reply pings. With forums, I now have 3 extra rows on my channel list. You help enough people and then you need an unlockable scrollwheel :P

radiant jolt
#

I acknowledge the drawbacks you've mentioned, which is why I ask a lot of questions about this. I'm cautious about forum channels and want to use them correctly.

gusty moat
#

If this server's future is forum channels for all help channel, I might as well just go to the official UE forums. At least that can be picked up by search engines.

radiant jolt
drowsy steeple
drowsy steeple
radiant jolt
drowsy steeple
#

My main point still remains is that we have unreal engine forums if you want that dedicated help. Format a question well and you get answers.

drowsy steeple
radiant jolt
#

Ah, sorry if I misunderstood. You were referring to casual conversations, not questions.

drowsy steeple
#

I was referring more to questions that are actively being answered, as I see multiple questions being answered at the same time if they're good questions. The ones I mostly see buried are poorly formatted new questions, or ones that have been asked ad infinitum

radiant jolt
#

In cpp I regularly see multiple people being helped at the same time.
I see this all the time, too, but it's not a great experience. Thank goodness for replies. Way easier to track than just mentions.

drowsy steeple
#

Exactly. If replies didn't exist I would 100% agree, but since replies are easy to see. It lessens the benefit of a forum

radiant jolt
#

I remember the time before replies when all you had to go by was mentions, and there's no guarantee the person helping you will mention every time they respond. That sucks.

drowsy steeple
#

Fully agree

radiant jolt
#

Some people turn off mentions for replies, which also sucks in this case. But that can't be helped.

drowsy steeple
#

Replies were probably the best addition on discord

gusty moat
#

Also might worth giving threads a try, at least on #ue5-general and #ue4-general, despite the drawbacks, at least the change isn't destructive

radiant jolt
#

Yeah I like replies a lot. Crucial feature.

#

I don't think threads are very good in most cases.

#

I think forum channels are better than threads in most cases, especially for a large server like ours.

drowsy steeple
#

Threads could be a good middle ground actually. Let's you go in detail on a specific feature if youre flooding a channel, and you aren't forced to use it.

gusty moat
#

I mean, if you don't like it after the test period, you can disable it and the channel itself isn't gone

Forum channels are destructive, in a sense that it is a separate channel

radiant jolt
#

Alas, for now I'm just changing the sharing category.

radiant jolt
#

So if we replaced a channel with a forum channel and the community pushed back, we could revert to the old text channel(s).

edgy hazel
#

Just to throw it out there, with the amount of people that seem to want forum functionality here, has the idea of integrating unreal forums been brought up at all? E.g. an art server I'm in has a bot that will post links to new art posts on it's subreddit. What if we were able to set something up like that, where when a new forum post is created, a bot creates a link for it and posts the link in a corresponding channel here in this server. Idk if that's even possible, just wanted to toss the idea.

drowsy steeple
#

I can say for certain. That if this community changes all help to forums, then I'll just stop helping.

I see no value in forums, especially considering the already existing forums, whose results pop up in a search engine, so has a bit more use.

By using discord for helpz you realise and accept that normal discord things may happen

#

I don't think we should change the entire server for the extremely small few that complain

radiant jolt
#

It's closer to a 50/50 split between the those who like their support experience here and those who don't.

#

That's why I'm talking to so many people about it.

drowsy steeple
# radiant jolt It's not an extremely small number of people that complain about this, to be fai...

Relative to the size of the discord and the amount that get help i would say it is.

Hell most that have complained in this channel either posted barely at all, feel entitled to an answer, or had glaring issues with their question.

Granted you get a fair few that are just unfortunate in their experience, but I have rarely seen a question that got ignored even with reformatting of the question and some persistence

#

I can't speak for DM feedback

radiant jolt
drowsy steeple
#

But I also don't know where 50/50 came from, some clarification would be great on that, as I only have my experience as a user, not the owner

#

Ah! Jumped the gun there lol

radiant jolt
#

For example: in a survey of 585 people, 101 people said tech support was what the liked most about our server; 81 said it's what we could improve.

drowsy steeple
#

That makes more sense, but as I said it's important to understand why they didn't get help. A lot I've seen expect too much of a community resource or have just asked poorly; think "Why won't my character do X" as opposed to "I am trying to get my character to do X, I have(not) identified where it is going wrong, attached is a demonstration of the issue and the code responsible."

In my experience 99% of those questions get answered. If they don't normally it's too specific and complex.

Forums won't change questions like the former not being answered, because a lot of people don't like having to spend 20 minutes just to get a question rephrased

#

It's the same in other help servers I'm in

#

Well formatted questions usually get a response, no matter how busy the channel is

radiant jolt
#

Yeah that's totally fair. We can only get so much from survey data. It's hard to know exactly why someone thinks we need better tech support unless they tell us, and only some people elaborated.

drowsy steeple
#

Yeah one of the major drawbacks I find of surveys, they're too surface level

radiant jolt
#

And yes, bad questions are something we can't change regardless of channel format.

radiant jolt
#

I prefer data-informed, not data-driven.

gusty moat
#

ECS leaves the chat

drowsy steeple
radiant jolt
#

Part of the reason I added "don't ask to ask" to our faq command.

gusty moat
#

Even sometimes bad questions do get probed, but the OP didn't follow up since

hybrid jewelBOT
drowsy steeple
#

In fact I'd even say a better way to encourage help would be instead having the landing channel when you join demonstrate the format of a good question, and even have Manny DM then with a message explaining the best way to get help

radiant jolt
#

Yeah that's something I'd like to add to the welcome channel.

drowsy steeple
#

Just a lil something that says "Hey, you're new here, here are some tips to ensure you get the most out of your help!

  • identify your issue: if you can't that's fine, but try to identify what's going wrong

  • explain what should be happening: in most cases the people trying to help don't know what your solution looks like. Explaining what should be happening is a great way to narrow down your problem.

  • what have you tried to do to fix it: again, if you haven't, that's fine, but sometimes a non working fix can make the issue worse, or even be the issue. It can also help narrow down the problem.

  • Screenshots: screenshots are essential. Its impossible to visualise what youve done without seeing it, as sometimes what you say isn't what you've done. Showing screenshots of applicable areas helps showcase your issue, but can also point out immediate issues in the code."

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Those are often the 4 key points to a good question I see missing here. And if more people were aware of how to ask a good question I think it would do wonders more for support than forums

edgy hazel
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  • Screenshots
    Please no screenshots for code ;-; we beg you
drowsy steeple
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Fair enough, I meant more for BP :P. It should specify if you use c++ encasing it in backticks is better

cloud wing
steep adder
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So in revisiting this thread and reading a few updates. I guess my original frustration as the OP isn't necessarily directed at the slack channel, but more at the ecosystem in general. That oh too familiar feeling of 'ups I'm up the river without a paddle and I don't really know where to begin looking to find the information I need to fix my problem' ... asking on slack and getting a bunch of snide replies about how you should read the documentation or the engine source or ask on another channel, if you're lucky enough to even get acknowledged, and the frustration with that. And imaginably so also for the people who have to repeatedly answer the same questions. I'm simply hoping the powers that be take notice and recognize this is an area that could be improved upon, though there is a lot of good work being done of course, and this is not to diminish that. I also see that it's a huge ecosystem. I used to work as a support engineer for a large data management company which served the world's largest companies and organisations. Something which worked very well for us was an issue tracker. i.e. every question asked is categorised, and linked to another issue, or solved. I imagine something like this would work very well for the epic ecosystem, as a kind of managed central knowledge hub which could be a starting point for anybody to resolve their issues. Trying to imagine a better system is not difficult. Though it's in practice more difficult to execute and has to be carefully considered. I think it's the kind of thing you have to go all-in on to actually make it work. And I don't know enough about Epic's inner mechanics as a company to know how they might approach such ideas. In any case, thanks for the feedback to those who responded to this.

spring hill
gusty moat
spring hill
gusty moat
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Yes, Epic promotes Unreal Slackers as one of the community platforms in official publishing and few Epic staff come over from time to time, but it's more of getting noticed by your senpai than formally declaring affiliation.

unique valve
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Yeah it's very important to keep Epic Games out of this whole Discord Server when talking about managing it :P

spring hill
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Another thing I noticed was confusing Slack and Discord.... it kinda sums the issue up...

Slack is a professional communication and collaboration tool

Discord is a community chat app

I think this explains why you're looking at this from the wrong angle

gusty moat
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This server apparently started off as Slack server until it hit the limits, so yeah

spring hill
spring hill
gusty moat
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IMO Slack kinda sucks on that regards, pricing wise, you'd need to pay lot more to raise the limit, compared to Discord and whaling to LV 3 Boost to get more than Slack's limit. I digress.

unique valve
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Even without boosting. Discord is far better for communities

steep adder
spring hill
unique valve
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Slack is made for internal teams

gusty moat
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I use Discord for internal team, would I ever regret it? Maybe not.

unique valve
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And even those use Discord most of the time

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Cause who the f wants to pay for the same stuff

spring hill
unique valve
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The market sucks though

steep adder
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So we need an issue tracker, affiliated with Epic or not 🙂 ... just a suggestion, but I think it would make life easier. I know easier said than done.

unique valve
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In almost all software solutions for business

gusty moat
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But then again, if you're not in UDN circle, you can expect far slower response

unique valve
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Epic has the issue tracker mentioned above. There is 0 reason to make a community one

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Even if tracked by us, epic isn't tracking them so they won't be resolved.

steep adder
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fair enough, I'm just idealizing

gusty moat
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I filed a bug about the built in water line misaligning, got response for a year, just to be backlogged recently.

spring hill
unique valve
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I think we are still running in circles here

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I already listed all this stuff at least twice

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:<

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This channel is an endless story by now

gusty moat
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The UE Forums are also a thing, your posts in it will get picked up by search engine, and if you're lucky, someone will answer it.

steep adder
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Well, because if there was an issue tracker for unique questions, then this would be the first place you would search for a solution to your problems. If nobody has ever truly asked your question before then it would be added to the database, which would be easily viewable and filterable. It would take a lot of the frustration out of the process of trying to find a solution. Which I feel is very inaccessible at the moment

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I understand the forums do this to some degree

unique valve
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Almost feels like 3 sides.

People who think the current systems needs to be improved.

People who think the current system is the best we can do and should do.

Mods and Admins that can't really please both sides. Sigh

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Anyway, I'm heading to bed. Will read up on this tomorrow

spring hill
gusty moat
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And in a twist, all of this seem to stem from misunderstanding on how things worked.

edgy hazel
steep adder
spring hill
spring hill
steep adder
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Indeed, further development of the forum would be something that could improve the experience. I'm just throwing out ideas.

spring hill
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See the rest of us are talking about actionable ideas

gusty moat
steep adder
spring hill
edgy hazel
spring hill
steep adder
gusty moat
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Or, you know, answer other questions you can answer, but I guess you have to be a know all deity to do so.

spring hill
# steep adder This makes no sense.

Sure it does... some questions are not going to appear to be "the same" when they in face are....

An expert can tell this at a glance, a machine cannot (yet)

edgy hazel
gusty moat
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Still, though, I'm drawing the conclusion that this whole post stems from misunderstanding on how this server works and its capacity for support.

edgy hazel