Coming up next for MASCHINE and MASCHINE+
Comments
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I’m curious, what is the ‘duplication behaviour’ you are referring to?
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In my opinion, discussions like this always go off on a tangent or just get drowned in the sheer volume of replies.
I have made a new thread at https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/957/maschine-software-improvements-ni-please-establish-a-sub-forum-for-maschine-sw-requests-bugs#latest called 'Maschine Software Improvements - NI, please establish a sub-forum for Maschine SW requests / bugs'
In it I request a dedicated sub forum called 'Maschine Software Requests', which is strictly pre-modded so that it follows this format:
- User places feature request/bug/improvement
- The topic is then closed to all apart from the initial poster and NI tech staff
- NI staff respond yes this is possible (with date if applicable) / no this is not possible / more info needed on request.
- Original poster can respond if more info etc is needed
This would be very beneficial for both NI in maintaining loyalty of Maschine users and, obviously, for us Maschine users
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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.
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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…
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But it would be a start - and certainly better than the current haphazard situation
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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....
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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.
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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.
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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.
@Kubrak said:
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...
I don't think it's a secret so I can elaborate a little bit:
There is a bug tracker, every company has one but I don't see any point in users having direct access to it. There is some internal desire to have it connected to the forum, obviously behind moderation, maybe that happens. Not sure if we need a sub-forum for bugs, it can be very useful to verify them, discuss workarounds or point users to a thread when they are confused about something not working but sub-forum clutter should be avoided, a tag like we had before worked OK'ish... The old forum being a lot like an alternative to tech support kind of made it very boring in the past, avoiding this direction also makes sense.
For requests, the beta always had a separate space for that where things can be sorted by order of support (likes), the top-voted stuff lines up with what we had in the old forum, "Hi-Res Support", "Modulation", etc, are high up there too. After years of requests, only users who are new to that platform actually engage, older users have given up long ago, all the last comments on the top stuff are from 3 to 5 years ago, again exactly the same as it happened in the old-forum... 😢
A user has to have some sort of crazy amount of faith to keep believing in requests that are 5-10 years old while still making new ones. Which brings me to the question: - Do we actually need a request section if the most asked for stuff has been the same for half a decade or more?
To be fair
Auto-Save
is high up there,Auto-Sampling
too but the cynic in me believes the former is happening due to the M+ crashing a lot and the former due to the M+ not running most of NI's instruments.@Kubrak said:
But NI listens to forum requests for sure. Integration of Maschine Jam to M+ is clear example of it.
"NI Listens to forum" is subjective, that Jam example doesn't prove that statement to be true, it's an exception, not the norm, it's also tied to M+ being a recent release at the time.
They definitively do listen when new HW/SW is released - I've seen it over and over, something new comes out and new official NI accounts pop up out of nowhere and start commenting on the forum, then they disappear completely 1 or 2 months later. This is pretty much the only time forum users have a chance to provide feedback that is seriously taken into account and might be implemented soon after; if people are smart enough to be on-topic instead of asking for other random things, they can actually make a difference.
That's a pretty specific scenario tho, this is not what people associate with "Listening" overall because what gets picked to be worked on wasn't prioritized by users.
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+10000, applause. So true.
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@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.
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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.
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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 dupeHook (1)
is not that bad altho I would preferHook (2)
, the problem was that this change also applied to the default names likePattern 1
, the dupe beingPattern 1 (1)
looks awkward and breaks the workflow of the users that relied onPattern #
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.
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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.
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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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