Hey all,
I see that there have been some questions around the what, why and how of the "Feature Ideas" section. In order to not clutter the feature topics themselves with a meta discourse on the format, I thought we can take it here.
Some people have been asking why we use this format, what it is for and how we intend to use it. I will try to share some additional context here to explain.
Background
Maschine 2 has been in the market for 10+ years. It is a very wide product that can do many things. It is a standalone application on Mac and Windows, a plug-in, a host, part of a hybrid hardware / software system, a sampler, a groove-box, a sequencer and so on. Therefore people use it in different ways and have different, valid points of feedback that would make the product better for their respective use case.
Maschine is also not a traditional, timeline based DAW but is understandably often compared to them because it is very similar in ways, but also uses a number of fundamentally different approaches (see Groups / Sound concept vs. Bus / Tracks).
Observations
When running research, interviews and product exploration we often see a very wide range of feature requests from all different areas of the product. Some people would like us to improve the software itself, some are focussing on Maschine+ and everything in between. There is rarely a simple, single thing that everyone largely agrees with.
If so, then these requests are often very high level capabilities that would consist of a number of multiple smaller features or functions combined (like performance recording, timeline based arranging, audio recording, automation, etc.).
Whenever we implement something, there is a large number of people of that are unhappy with the work we have done or that a feature or improvement they had requested has not been implemented.
Actions
In order to create more transparency around what is asked for, how frequently and to have a conversation with you around what and why we are considering certain improvements to the product and in what order, we wanted to take a part of the conversation here.
This will help us to quantify the desire for certain changes. And it will help you all to see how the individual ideas compare to each other and where there is a high or low agreement.
Also, the community is only one of several data sources for us. We are running ongoing research and surveys, we are looking at information from our Customer Support team, we have our Beta testing group and are also looking at how the industry develops around us.
Ultimately, this information here will help us to receive structured feedback an learn. And it can act as a tool for you to participate and creating a common point of reference.
Next Steps
We will continue to increase the available contents in the ideas section over time. This is just the beginning and it will take some time until the majority of frequent requests is represented and up for votes and discussion.
It is planned as a feedback loop and not a one-shot event.
I hope this helps in better understanding what we do and why. This thread can act a place to further discuss so that we can keep the meta-conversation on the format out of the feature ideas themselves.
