Keep features and don't remove them.
I read in some of the comments, some artists wanted to remove some features because they are less used than others.
I consider Blender the complete package for anything to do with CG or video production, audio mixing...etc.
However, it still needs various tools and customizations for users to do tasks easily and efficiently.
That's why I suggest that Blender not to remove any feature but enhance it, Blender is available to any artist to do their work without the need to keep paying subscriptions to other software and we love it to be always this way.
It is about priorities in adding features but not to remove them. I strongly suggest not to remove any feature but to enhance it or have a better alternative, and have priorities in adding these features to keep Blender always powerful and inclusive.
Thanks!!
5 Comments
Features are not removed because someone didn;t liked them or there is not enough user-base. There are reasons for that.
There had to be made decision what feature sacrifice for other features. Because with limited developers You cannot eat cookie, and have cookie.
Sometimes developers make decisions perceived even for majority of users as bad eg. removing blender's subdivision algorithm with only worse opensubdiv. But well, shit happens. Without cristal ball you cannot always be right. Other times it can save one year of useless development eg. removing blender internal. Yea, it would be cool to have all the features ever created, but to have that you would have to still work on those old features to allow them still working. And every release would take twice as long and whole program would be more buggy anyways.
Remember, if there is certain feature in old version you can still use that older version.
+1
There can be many reasons behind a feature removal, and the preference of some users is rarely one.
More often than not, it is because the feature was causing issues somewhere else, may it be breaking stability, or being too complicated to maintain.
A great example is the Blender Game Engine : it was old, has never been finished, no developer dared to touch it for over ten years.
Because of that, the BGE became a literal dead weight holding back development elsewhere.
And so the decisions was made to completely remove it for the 2.8 series, in the distant goal of creating something similar in the future, the "Interactive mode".
Sometimes some features are replaced by other solutions, may it be a library update, a new algorithm, a new tool that does somewhat the same.
Sometimes you have a replacement failing at being better, it happens. But most of the time the features are added up without removing legacy features.
The issue with keeping everything is that you simply can't keep up their development in the long run. You only have that amount of dev power, you can't expand infinitely the software more that what the devs can handle, it's as simple as that.
It is also why addons are useful : to "outsource" some features that become more niche with time.
TL;DR features removals have reasons. And you need to remove features to prevent your software from becoming a bag of mess.
What I am trying to say is having inclusive features is essential in Blender to make it a complete tool for artists. For example, if users don't use video editor as the other features, it is preferred to keep it as well since it is considered as a part of the production process, when this feature is removed, artists will need other software to work with beside Blender.
If you would like to support often unused features to keep them in blender, become a developer. Otherwise, there is nothing you can do.
Sometimes, a feature is better removed than kept but abandoned. The texture node editor is a good example of when blender failed to remove features. It is practically unusable because the community and the developers did not find a use for it. It has been an annoying part of blender ever since.
Sometimes it is good to weed out the dead things.
What I am trying to say is having inclusive features is essential in Blender to make it a complete tool for artists. For example, if users don't use video editor as the other features, it is preferred to keep it as well since it is considered as a part of the production process, when this feature is removed, artists will need other software to work with beside Blender.