SOUND VARIATION has been an excellent feature ... But I think Presonus should rethink it from the start.
I agree with you that there comes a time that is too cumbersome with many articulations. Something that I would prefer and I think may be more intuitive is the ability to write each channel of an instrument identified with a color, as FL Studio does, much more practical.
I also found an impossibility in the current Sound Variations ... If you wanted to simultaneously write two different articulations (divided into two sections of the same Kontakt instance, for example Spiccato Ch1 and Sustains Ch2) You cannot do it because they are subject to the keyswitch of the sound variation. For simple arrangements it is common to use strings in this way instead of having two plugins with two editors for each of the articulations ...
But if you want a more COMMON EXAMPLE, any virtual instrument type bass or guitar (ample sound, shreddage, orange tree) or even, if you use a midi guitar to enter notes ... All these what they do is assign each string a channel midi, in the case of a midi guitar on S1, you would get 6 independent editors for the strings which is a bit uncomfortable when working as the same instrument. In the case of virtual guitar libraries you cannot use the sound variations either, since they can only activate one channel at a time, currently impossible to execute a chord specifying the strings that I want to be used, also many libraries like this use other keyswitches not only for articulations but to control the behavior itself... You can´t do it becuase ONLY sound variation (keyswitch) can be triggered at time... In summary, the Current soundvariations are very limitied for polyphonic purposes