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  • Schmapps1
    Schmapps1 Member Posts: 141 Pro
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/5342#Comment_5342

    I’m curious, what is the ‘duplication behaviour’ you are referring to?

  • Murat Kayi
    Murat Kayi Member Posts: 433 Pro

    I think it takes a hell of a lot of more structural work behind the scenes to set up a standardized way of publically dealing with feature requests than a thread in a forum.

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,814 Expert
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/5368#Comment_5368

    There exist tools for that very purpose. For decades. And yes, they require quite some configuration, but allow for very structured and trackable communication.

    But we digress from this thread.

    @tempsperdu has many valid points. Maschine currently has a bit of a retro vibe. Once it was the future of sound. Now it should be further.

    But I don’t think the development changed the user experience to the worse on purpose. It’s something that usually happens if features are not planned from the start, but have to be crammed in later — especially on hardware.

    And what is this thread and many posts about? Even more features to be crammed in…

  • Sequencesounds
    Sequencesounds Member Posts: 62 Helper
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/5368#Comment_5368

    But it would be a start - and certainly better than the current haphazard situation

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 3,066 Expert

    Well, you do not know, what runs behind the curtain. There is for sure some kind of bug tracking and feature request system. Just not accesible to customers...

    But NI listens to forum requests for sure. Integration of Maschine Jam to M+ is clear example of it. But some probably easy to implement feature requests are here for years... And still not implemented...

    But it may be difficult to make priorities.... And the managers do the decisions, not developers.

    And concerning little changes. While it may be 10 minutes of programmer's work, it might require day, two manhours to pass all the burecracy... The burecracy is orders more demanding than actual work. So, it seldomly happens... Programmers prefer to do the coding and not spend their time filling forms and so on.....

    Friend of mine has spent several hours to be allowed to make change that took him 10 seconds at most.... And several other people had to spend their time to allow him....

    That might explain why it is so difficult to implement small, easy things... I do not know, how it works at NI, but it is big company, so it is not going to be as flexible like one man or few people development team....

  • tempsperdu
    tempsperdu Member Posts: 425 Pro
    edited February 2022
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/5343#Comment_5343

    I don't understand how you cannot have seen the changes to duplication of scenes and patterns.

    It was certainly commented on in the old forum.

    OK... It used to be that if you duplicated a pattern, it did just that......you have pattern 1 in a scene, and you want to reuse it in another, you duplicate it so in scene 'x' you had pattern 1 and in scene 'y' you also had pattern 1. Logical, useful and easy to read.

    Now pattern 1 becomes pattern 1 (1), and if you use it again it becomes pattern 1 (2) etc, etc, which is much harder to read and whilst for some could be useful, for others like myself, it's a real PITA so why not make the legacy behaviour optional in Preferences. The code exists for both behaviours.

    Even worse, if I try to duplicate a scene, it used to be that that scene would be the next unused integer, which makes sense and is reasonably easy to read.

    Now if I duplicate a scene, it becomes Scene 1 (1) which whilst for some is possibly useful, but it really slows down people that used the next unused integer to keep track of things.

    An awful lot of music works by repetition, so say I want the scene repeated four times to create a 'verse'

    I press duplicate 4 times and I get scene 1,2,3,4. Easy to read and understand.

    Now I would get Scene 1(1), 1(2), 1(3), 1(4) which is hard to read, and if I duplicate it for four or more 'verses' I'm on to Scene 1 (16). Not only that, but I can't easily see how many scenes I'm using in total. Now anyone wanting to use the previous workflow has to manually alter every scene number as they do it.

    Compounding this, on the old forum, D-One did a magnificent job of collating the feature requests. I don't recall that being one of the requested features, please correct me if I'm wrong.

    So basically, time that could have been used on requested features has presumably been spent on one that actually for some makes using Maschine worse.

    'Back of the net' as they say........................🤥

    Why does NI seem to think it is beneficial not to have some kind of symbiotic relationship with its users?

    If NI can be successful in spite of itself, then just imagine how successful it might be if it actually worked in concert with its users.

  • Staykool
    Staykool Member Posts: 78 Helper
    edited February 2022

    D-One is a good dude for sure. He has helped me in the past. Company culture rarely comes from the bottom up but mostly from the top down. I remember when NI had an office in California. Beside this one horrible guy Rocky [who knew his stuff but was horrible to deal with] there were lots of great people who used to help me out there. I enjoyed talking with them. I was sad to see them close that office. NI actually used to have phone support and I was astonished when they did away with that. So I understand your frustration. I think if we are a dedicated group of users who are passionate about NI products.Not being listened too after you've spent lots of money over many years can be tough.

    I like working with Kiawan and D-One who have been very helpful. I think the changes have to come from the top. I do agree that working in concert with users could take NI to another level but that change has to come from the top.

  • olafmol
    olafmol Member Posts: 210 Pro
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/5422#Comment_5422

    +10000, applause. So true.

  • tempsperdu
    tempsperdu Member Posts: 425 Pro
    edited February 2022

    @D-One Said:

    On the Duplicate naming issue: The intention was good but the implementation failed a bit, this feature should have just been postponed for further refinement and discussion, this might still be under consideration, not sure but hope so

    I'm sorry, but for the life of me, I cannot understand how the intention was good in any kind of way. For many, the way it worked was fine, and to change it without even consulting with the users doesn't really sound well intended. Where are the plus points for changing it? I cannot understand how they don't acknowledge or seem to understand how destructive it is, let alone repair the damage. Similarly, with the darkened theme, which is hardly readable on my laptop.

    The user experience really seems to have been put out to pasture here, with nearly every step forward producing more and more speed and usability issues. To some of us, those are the really important issues and the main reason for using Maschine.

    A bit like this board really... we change to this for readability to be far worse, the quote feature to seemingly be uneditable and a multitude of emoji's that IMHO are worse than dire.

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 3,066 Expert

    Yes, you are probably right. That confirms my mem "managers decide what is to be implemented not developers".

    Althought not having M+, I kept giving arguments why support of Jam should be included in M+. Despite the fact Jam has been EOL. And managers have decided to spend some more money on completing Jam integration...

    So, you are probably also right that timing of request is also important.

    It seems to me that managers want more new features, than to polish/improve existing ones. It looks better in spreadseets and feature lists.... They probably do not understand the fact that tiny improvements here and there may bring more satifaction/customers/money than 3/4 baked products....

    I am not Apple guy, by far, i´ve never touched iProduct, but my feeling is that sort of perfection is one of the aspects that attracts people to Apple products.

  • D-One
    D-One Moderator Posts: 3,562 mod
    edited February 2022
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/5435#Comment_5435

    I didn't want to go in-depth because posts look huge now, I'm always worried about talking too much and making TL;DR posts... Anyway, that happened because users requested it in the CLIPS pre-release stage, people wanted that when a custom-named thing was duped the name would be preserved with a number added at the end for obvious reasons. Duping something named "Bridge" into "Pattern X" is mad annoying especially on... drumroll.... a standalone with an awkward on-screen keyboard. 🤷‍♂️

    If the name is custom, for example, Hook making the dupe Hook (1) is not that bad altho I would prefer Hook (2), the problem was that this change also applied to the default names like Pattern 1, the dupe being Pattern 1 (1) looks awkward and breaks the workflow of the users that relied on Pattern # names to keep track of things, no doubt... That's why the change had good intentions, they tried catering to a request but the implementation is just not that good.

    This also shows how one small addition can have major repercussions on peoples workflow, so everything needs to be carefully thought out prior to release, going back and forth on decisions is a big no-no.

  • Rico010
    Rico010 Member Posts: 137 Advisor
    https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/5437#Comment_5437

    Makes sense. But this brings me to thought “maybe this is the right time rebuilt maschine from scratch with a new”. Cannot talk about this, I am not part of maschine development team. But I am a software architect overall, and what I read here seems like a old monolith which need rewrite. Please get me roght, I am happy with existing maschine, actually M+ and I love it, it helps my workflow. Not requesting anything in this post, just thinking out loudly.

  • Kubrak
    Kubrak Member Posts: 3,066 Expert

    Hard to say if Maschine requires rewritting. If it has been designed well it may easily live 30+ years. Some parts might require rewritting, some parts may live almost forever....

    I guess, the main problem of Maschine is that lots of resouces go to maintaining Apple compatibility. And that there are not clear revenues Maschine brings, so it might be hard to finance the development. Manager with spreadsheet wants to see what income the investments bring. And it is hard in case of Maschine.

    I thought, M+ would freeze/slow down Maschine SW development. But I was probably wrong. M+ needs well working Maschine SW and improvements of Maschine SW may be reflected by M+ sales. And it finds its way to manager´s spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations....

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