First of all - every day I am more and more convinced that we're living in some alternative reality. It's 2023 and we evolved from direct support (email, phone) that was easy to access into websites that works like firewalls against customers. Every time you want some help, you must fill bunch of fields (if you're smart enough to find support form in the first place) and then, if you're lucky, you'll get confirmation to your email that NI support will work on your problem. I would like support to also have to go to my website, go through the entire verification procedure and fill out 10 forms to respond to me. After all I am a person who pay them, not opposite.
NI is bigger and bigger every year so someone may say that it's normal to made it that way (special forms, online helps, AI chats etc). Is it? More and more customers should mean more and more people to help.
I remember times when I can contact directly with programmer when I had programmer's problem or with accounting department when I had a problem with an invoice. I am not talking about NI here, but in general.
Now the only way to contact Native Instruments (and some other companies) is contact with basic support, who knows how to copy and paste generic answers. "Please try this", "please try that" - why t... f... I should TRY something? I am not a beta tester of your software. If you know the problem, the right person to fix it would be programmer, not some random guy (or girl). If I would need generic answers or try something - I can do it without your permission, really. And - that is for sure - I can TRY various things, but this would be always some kind of workaround. I don't remember any situation where I drive to the mechanic and he asks me have I tried to drive another car and see if it drives well. Or did I tried to change the driver's seat and check then if my car works. I am reporting a problem and mechanic (not car support) check what is wrong.
In the case of plugins it works in a strange way - programmer probably is not even aware that user reports any problem and human firewalls (support) trying to bounce all questions. Probably to avoid annoying the programmers (or wake them up during working hours).
I reported problem with Komplete Kontrol. Serious problem that changes sound after project was reloaded (espeicially in Monark). In Reaktor it works without a problem, in old version of Komplete Kontrol it works well too (as far as I remember), but now it works bad. After many emails I get confirmation that support know the problem. It has even own number - KBDSW-7415. Great. I don't know where to track this problem or when some programmer starts to investigate it (probably within two working years), but hey - I have some number!
It's better than any other question I ask to support anyway. This is the first serious answer I get from Native Access. Still not solved, but hey - it has his own number! In other cases, I usually get some standard answer and then my emails are ignored. And my tickets closed by support (well, it's my ticket after all and my problem - I should decide if is solved or not).
Last time I checked if someone else have problem with Kontakt 7 slow loading time (first time open) and I found a lot of posts here. And one answer was especially funny (quote) - "since you're already in contact with the Kontakt specialist, there is no real need to copy your conversations here". Really? I thought that the reason to share problems with community is to find a solution that everyone can use, but as I see NI prefers to keep it private.
Seriously, guys - is it that difficult to made support a little different? If user have problem with your software - do not try to finding a workaround. Bad code is bad code. Game developers, when people complain about low FPS, trying to optimize their products instead of recommending Intel i9 + Nvidia 4090. You're so lucky that musicians are not gamers - they're not as patient and a poorly optimized game can seriously damage the company's reputation.
