Similar story really,
My first experience with a game maker was RPGmaker2003. I loved it and spent a massive amount of time designing maps and customising sprites but never released anything.
Was interested in Game Salad a few years later but it seemed like you only had a very limited set of inbuilt actions, what wasnt built in was possible but with raw coding and beyond me a that point (still probably).
I saw a lot of people using game maker but I felt lost as soon as I opened it. Like you I didnt want to invest the time in it. There were other smaller game makers around that time similar to rpgmaker but nothing that I felt I could grasp. I dropped the idea of making games for a few more years.
Finally, determined to give it another go I turned to TGB. It was a lot of coding but It looked promising, they had tutorials and even base templates for platformers or top down shooters (all of which I purchased). Progress was so slow... And at the end when it came to implementing something new I had no idea where to begin. The forums were anything but lively.
I kept finding myself looking for new programs (even though I had just invested a good deal of money in TGB and really wanted to stick with it).
I stumbled across C2 and have been amazed at how good it is ever since. (I have tried Stencyl as well and to be honest I wanted to like it, it just didnt seem as quick and easy to experiment with or anywhere near as flexable as c2).
Scirra having a friendly community is the icing on the cake :)