This is a fair counterpoint, as there may indeed have been a contraction in Serif’s ambitions for the product. But there’s ample evience that Affinity Designer

This is a fair counterpoint, as there may indeed have been a contraction in Serif’s ambitions for the product. But there’s ample evience that Affinity Designer has fallen short of Serif’s own expectations: A 2014 post on the official Affinity product forum laid out a public roadmap for the 1.x cycle, including such Illustrator staples as mesh warping, blends, gradient mesh fills, and more. Some of the original roadmap was indeed implemented, such as the critical feature of artboards. But as the originally-promised “two years of free updates” stretched into more than four, the majority went unaddressed. The thread has since been deleted.