We do have an excellent dedicated tech support person in our Hamburg team – her name is Anja – and if you bought Dorico in one of the countries that Steinberg services directly, she is almost certainly the person who would handle your ticket if you submit one. If Anja can’t answer a problem, then she hands it on to me or another member of the Dorico development and testing team, and we make sure that the problem is resolved between us. If you’re located in the US, then Yamaha has a team of support staff dedicated to Steinberg products, and in the event they’re unable to help, they contact me, and we make sure that the problem is resolved. Similarly if you are in other countries where Steinberg products are handled by Yamaha, you will typically get native-language support from a Yamaha support person, and they all know how to get in touch with us in Hamburg or London if they need help handling a customer enquiry.
So technical support is available not only via this forum, but by the usual channels. However, the most direct line to the people who actually build the software is through this forum, since several members of the team do visit on a regular basis, including me, the product owner.
To answer the specific point about the lack of import of playing techniques in MusicXML, it is certainly an unfinished corner of Dorico’s MusicXML import. The challenge is that MusicXML does not have a single, consistent and semantic way to describe these kinds of markings – in one sense, through no fault of its own, since there is no single agreed standard for such markings either in music software or indeed in published music more generally – which means that the import of these kinds of markings is non-trivial, since many different markings have to be explicitly handled in a number of different ways. We have chosen not to prioritise this yet in favour of spending our limited development time in other areas. You will understand from your own professional work that every project you undertake means there is at least one other project you cannot undertake – the famous “opportunity cost”. We are juggling these issues all the time. There is a reasonable chance that had we prioritised differently such that Dorico could now import more playing techniques from MusicXML, it would not be able to do something else equally important to your workflow, and if not yours, then to many others’.
The fact that the lack of this feature makes Dorico impractical for you is noted, please believe me. There are no further free updates planned to Dorico 2.x, though if any should come, they would undoubtedly be more in the realm of fixing bugs than adding new features. At this stage I cannot say whether or not improved import of playing techniques will be a part of our next major version: all I can say for sure is that at the time of writing we have not done any additional work on this.
I know that this is not what you want to hear, Sotto Voce. But I hope that you feel reassured that we do understand the need and we do plan to address it. I’m sorry that for the time being you will continue to need to use Sibelius in your daily work, and I look forward to the day – hopefully soon – when Dorico’s other advantages have sufficient weight for you to make it your daily driver for your scoring needs.