I love Plastic, but some issues: Novice Plastic user running out from Unity Collaborate first impression.

[AlanMattano]

Hello, my name is Alan and I'm an Italo Argentinian. This is a general Plastic impression. Please, MODERATOR, move this thread to the corresponding place.

I love using Plastic. Is addictive and I love to commit or make a push. I'm a new Plastic user and my nomenclature knowledge (semantic) is improving while I growing up my version control capabilities. Plastic is a robust life time saver that I can pass with my family!

Collaborate is like the microwave. If you do not eat the bread after the 30s it became a stone that is not useful for cooking well. Collaborate looks cool, handy, and simple but fails when you need it. Collaborate fails as a version control in the most important main task because is just buggy. Unity Collaborate was a siren that eats you at the end. Since it fails in its intention so also the process of making a game up to the end.

What can the Plastic team improve:

• Migrating from Unity Collaborate to Plastic is a nightmare for a new Plastic user with no Plastic experience.
• Plastic does not have a standard interface. Is more like a 90s creative UI approach Blender or Zbrush. It is very creative and minimalistic. Like a merge between PC interface and web. Is not using conventional positions layout interface so is not intuitive. For example: if I want to check for the update button? is there one, where to find it? since has not had a conventional layout you need to look around or press the wrong button. I press the update button on the top toolbar, it updates and destroys my project or updates Plastic SCM?
• Improve the website links: There is no link to this forum. I can only find this forum by googling it. The videos are old not updated. Delete the old videos or explain that that solution works only in Unity 2019, not in 2021 and adobe, etc. When you are using Plastic, the actual forum menu, as a user, is not useful at all. You need to expose in the main menu Dashboard, Migration, Forum, Video Tutorials, Ideas, new features, and hide actual features, cloud, game, devs, and other pure publicity pages.
• Need a more deep explanation for a novice of semantic, nomenclature meaning, structure layout, and differences between what is a repository button, workspace button, a local workspace, local repository, cloud button, etc... Especially after Collaborate migration that creates extra "Cloud" content (some time organisations and on the inspector is call "Server") on the dashboard (Dashboard/Cloud/¿¿¿organisations???/RepositoryName). In Unity Plasic SCM component, in the inspector, if we "Create a new repository" (window) there is a "Server" drop down option to choose the organisations or clouds. more consistency in the name chosen like for example "Server Organisation" can be handy.  A video tutorial is need it.
• Economic problem: there lot of us that earn less than 100 USD a month that we are growing up and in that process click as you go, pre-loaded credit card, is a very scary approach so we just do not click at all! As an example, the  migration tool.
• All the above create extra issues like has a not useful steep learning curve especially for how is not using it frequently at the beginning.
• And unconventional UI layout creates confusing false-positive bugs: with just the  Ereditage presumptions problem that sometimes I assume is a bug (when it is just a UI layout problem) because usually, the quality of Unity new products was poor, especially in Collaborate. The lack of conventional layout sometimes triggers the issue that you think is a bug (for a novice user) and the solution was just elsewhere clicking an unconventional button.

All my best to the team,

Alan

[ollieblanks]

Hi Alan,

Firstly, thank you for providing such an in depth account of your experience. We are very grateful for feedback that has the intent of improving our software. As a Unity employee who started using Plastic SCM around 2 years ago, I can relate to a lot of what you have said.

• Regarding the layout, nomenclature and interface; I can assure you that this is something the team has been working very hard to improve on this year and is something we plan to improve on greatly in the coming months. We are currently working on feature parity between the OS's that we support with an overhaul to the GUI. I will be sure to pass on the feedback you have presented to our Product Management team.
• Regarding the public documentation and videos and steep learning curve; We have a dedicated team working on updating and improving the public information around Plastic SCM. One notable thing that this team is currently looking into is the onboarding of Unity users and making the migration from Collaborate as seamless as possible. Again, I will extract the feedback and share it with the docs team. P.s. I smiled at your microwave metaphor!
• Regarding the pricing; We have very recently made a change in this area and you should have been notified by email. Unfortunately, as Plastic SCM is a "pay for what you use" service, I see no easy way around having a payment method available on your account. If you have further ideas around this we would be happy to hear them.

I think I have covered all points you have raised. If there is anything I have missed or you want to raise further concerns, please do and I will be happy to process it accordingly.