As it stands, if people have an issue they post it and then sit and wait indefinitely with no idea if it has even been acknowledged.
Hardly ideal, well not for the end user anyway.
As it stands, people are
using it wrong.
As you said, the current method of using the support forums for most people seem to be:
1. Find a problem with their game.
2. Go to forums.
3. Post they have an issue.
4. Sit and wait for someone (a Dev) to personally respond to their problem and give them a lollipop.
5. Get frustrated, go to General and complain.
When in fact it is suppose to work like:
1. Find a problem with their game.
2. Search forums for similar issues.
3. Find other people having issues like theirs.
4. Read suggestions and possible solutions to issues.
5. Attempt the suggestions and possible solutions.
6. If 3 or 5 has failed: Open new post describing a
NEW issue.
7. Forum members read issue, think about issue, possibly point user to posts/info they have missed.
8. Dev eventually notices a new issue among the
handful of new threads opened in the past few days while they were working on things, and addresses it.
As it is now, people are flooding the Bug and Support forum with useless junk, making it hundreds of times harder for developers to actually get a clear idea of what is going on. Without a clear idea of what is going on, it becomes extremely hard to fix issues.