So I have said it before, but I’m gonna say it again, because I want people to get behind this idea.
I think modifiers should act a little bit like a mix of scenes on the octatrack, and sound pool presets. So each modifier button could be held down and a knob could be twisted to set that value to that modifier, like scenes on the octatrack. This way you could save four different variations on a sound.
Then you could press the modifier trigs while the sequencer is in live record mode to record a performance of those trigs into the sequencer. This way you could get variation in the sound of a single channel without having to go in an p-lock everything after the fact.
Then the Key part of this idea is that when you then change the sounds on the modifiers, all of the trigs associated to that modifier change in turn.
With this functionality you could make 4 quick variations on a sound, record a performance of those variations, then change all four sounds in real time as the sequence plays. It would allow you to get a lot of the interesting variation that comes from P-locking, but in an instant and performative way.