Support

[glorybound]

How does support work around here nowaday's? I have an amendment need and although it's only been 5 hours, there was a time when things were answered within an hour, tops. I have seen support questions go days without answers and others simply never got responded to. Does nobody monitor the site anymore? Is there a time difference that I need to be aware of? Does someone stop by when they have time and if they don't, support questions go unanswered? Is there someplace I should be to get questions answered? Am I a sniffling little brat that thinks he is entitled? Should I be using Corona and will I get support over there like I once got here?

[GD3DESIGN]

Higher price + Less service = Progress

[svetlozar.draganov]

Does nobody monitor the site anymore?

We are still monitoring and answering on the forums.

Is there a time difference that I need to be aware of?

Yes, we are available from 9am to 6pm GMT+2.

Does someone stop by when they have time and if they don't, support questions go unanswered?

We don't have free time, hence if we wait for such moments you won't see a single post from us. We have a colleague on duty who monitors the forums and distributes the inquiries to the rest of the team.

Is there someplace I should be to get questions answered?

Yes, if you haven't got a reply here you can always call us or contact us from website contact form - those cannot be missed unlike forums.

Should I be using Corona and will I get support over there like I once got here?

For Corona inquiries it would be better to reach directly Corona team and forums, although both renderers are Chaos Group products we are still operating as separate Support teams, this might change for the future.

How does support work around here nowaday's?

It works the same way as before. Of course it's not absolutely the same, we are constantly improving and evolving in the things we do.
The truth is we have around 3x-4x times more requests than last year. We have some new products like Chaos Cloud, V-Ray for C4D, new forums and etc and those increases workload for the Support Teams. Of course our Support Teams constantly grow but we cannot expand our teams by 4 right away it is a gradual process. We are fully aware that we cannot answer every single post on the forums but we do our best to cover as many cases as we can.
Please note the main purpose of the Forums is not being a Support Channel - yes you can reach Devs, QAs Support and other Chaos Group employees here but probably half of the threads are related to sharing knowledge with other V-Ray users. As you probably know Chaos Group is a customer driven company and communication with clients is number one mission in our goals so I wouldn't say we provide less Support service it is actually much higher than even and the trend is going up.

Thanks for the signal guys!
It looks like we have to re-consider the way we are handling forums.

[vlado]

The official ways to contact our support team are either through support@chaosgroup.com or through https://www.chaosgroup.com/support/contact whereas the forum predominantly is place for discussions between users. In addition, you can always email me to vlado@chaosgroup.com

In addition to that, as Svetlozar noted, our support team is overloaded and has been for some time; we have more support requests than ever and they are more time-consuming (i.e. require someone to open a complex scene and dig through it, sometimes for hours, to pinpoint the exact problem). I myself am also busy with a hundred things for a hundred different people that need to be resolved yesterday and many of them are also complicated issues that require either some time to debug, or require significant time to implement as new features; as a result unfortunately I have not been able to keep an eye on the forums as I once did.

This has not been an easy problem for us to solve unfortunately, although we've been looking for ways to improve things. In the meantime if anyone wants to try their luck as a member of our support team, let me know at vlado@chaosgroup.com

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

Higher price + Less service = Progress

It's easy to carelessly throw words... There's a saying in Bulgarian, roughly means "on someone else's back, even 100 whip beats seem insignificant"

Best regards,
Vlado

[Ihno]

In the meantime if anyone wants to try their luck as a member of our support team, let me know at vlado@chaosgroup.com

Deflaminis

[glorybound]

Sometimes I have a feeling V-Ray is being put out to pasture to die. It's good to hear it's striving and alive!

[Vizioen]

In all honesty, I have the feeling that you're probably the only person here that as soon as something doesn't work you contact support while 75% of the time it's a "pebkac" problem, or there are already 10 threads about it. I've even seen you make several threads over the past years related to the same issues.

[vlado]

Sometimes I have a feeling V-Ray is being put out to pasture to die.

It's quite the opposite considering the amount of work that lands on my plate Keep in mind that the forum is not fully representative of everything that is going on; people are here mostly when they have issues or things to complain about (you are a bright exception to this )

Best regards,
Vlado

[^Lele^]

Sometimes I have a feeling V-Ray is being put out to pasture to die.

Your unwavering support and unbridled kindness, over the many years, have been duly noted.
We are collectively sorry for being unable to meet your standards, despite our very best efforts.
We'll try harder in the future, between a neigh and a whinny. ^^

[glorybound]

And they say I can't recognize sarcasm

[Morbid Angel]

glorybound, I think there are some support issues which definitely require support from Chaos group. However 80% of the posts here and to support are usually user errors, lack of knowledge on software, etc. If the support is overloaded, they will probably prio more serious issues, unlike things that can be solved by user himself. I find my self in that situation constantly. I email support / vlado about a problem when I wait for reply I already find a solution. Should I have emailed them first or spend few hours trying to solve the problem instead?

[glorybound]

Agreed, however, being an old timer I can tell you that feedback was much more responsive. I see people's post go unanswered and it's disheartening. Once the focus is off the end user, things usually fall apart and isn't a good sign.

[Deflaminis]

Deflaminis

Thanks for the honorable mention Inho. In my little microcosm of life I feel like I know a lot but there's so many people here who know more than I do about technical things under the hood in Vray that I learn most of my knowledge by reading their answers. If I can free up some time I would try.

@glorybound: Another thing to consider is that you and other users have come a long way. I have been following your renders and progress for years. As you get better an better, the list of people who can actually help outside of Chaosgroup gets smaller and smaller. It's a double edged sword. Every forum depends on users to be active, you can't put it all on the devs. It's pretty amazing that the devs themselves reply in the forums in the first place. That's super rare in the software industry in general. Ever tried to post a problem on Microsoft or Adobe forums? Good luck with that!

I don't think that the focus is not on the users. But focus can certainly be divided and that's just part of the cycle of business and software. I think people are just busy on both sides, and I look at a slowing forum as a good sign that the average user is having fewer and fewer problems, not that the software is dying. Production these days doesn't stop because of a flickering wanescotting in an animation, but back in the day that was a huge issue that required a lot of discussion. Now it 'just works' out of the box for 90% of the users.

As morbidangel said, many posts are related to things like not reading the help, hardware, drivers, pebkac, etc. It's tough, especially with W10 updating drivers and things without user input.

Best Regards,
AJ (Alfred)

[glorybound]

I agree, however, that is what made Chaos Group unique and price wasn't an issue for me. I always thought the personalized attention justified the cost of admission.