I am afraid that Lately I see 
Ashley being fast to reject ideas coming from forum members. Perhaps it's just me, having no experience from other game developing forum and not being a very old member my self. I know that answering to all us is time consuming and perhaps most of the time a mundane task, and I really appreciate and honor his effort. It's just that I'm noticing either a "it can't happen" or not commenting at all policy lately.
I don't understand why Ashely have to change the design of construct2, and take the idea to have the "spaghetti"... for me is unclear when I see the line with the little windows...You can't see how the "script" works... When you make a real script, It's like writing, in construct2 you see your script very clear, you start from the top, and just write, write, write.... with "spaghetti"? (same for behaviors)
1) Timeline: A way to animate-timing up stuff within the layout and be able to trigger those animations with events. Perhaps this can replace the path system feature request. If not,
2) Masking: A proper masking system that allows any Sprite or Layer to mask in/out any other sprite or layer, taking into account either the opacity/alpha or the Gray-scale values.
+1 for real time preview-editing!
Agree with you, timeline can make simple a lot of things, but I suggest to insert a special behaviors for every obj, when you add in your object, just make a timeline on the top of the layout screen, where you can make the action "stop, play,loop and insert a specific event on it)
Masking system, it's the first thing I though when I Use construct2 at the first time, I was using flash so, you can't make a special things like flash...the best method for the sprite, where you can place sprite inside a sprite with your code, and masking everything... but I don't know how can be difficult make in construct2 (sprite in sprite)
Lastly, since this is a recurring subject, I haven't voiced my opinion about native exporters for a long time, but after seeing this on this topic, I must say WOW! This is a huge difference! I don't know about fps or any technical mumbo-jumbo, but it just feels so damn fluid and good! No jitters, no jerkiness, no wait a few seconds for the code to settle (in layman's terms), no nothing!
Anyone noticed that the mouse doesn't lag behind? In C2 can anyone manage to make "every tick---> Sprite set position | mouse.X, mouse.Y" and not having the Sprite lag behind the mouse cursor?
native export is the best solution for run a software... because when you export your project the script is "light", and java is not very good for the performance....(like flash, in my opinion), if you make a simple test, one in construct2 and another one in lua,c, or other script, the app will run better...this is one of the most reason why who want to make a BIG game, have to use others engine (like unity), where you can make your script in different way and export in native...
obviously, when you use construct2 you have to know how make everything good without waste memory or something like that...
> As an artist though
>
I totally agree with everything else you said, including the quickdraw "meh", but the part I quoted might be the most important one - there's plenty of artists/designers who come to C2 for the ease of use - they are told "Make games without coding" and while that isn't really 100% true the most annoying aspects of real programming are taken care of which is great.
Construct2 is the best software without coding, and the performance is very good.... In construct2 you can make a fantastic game/app/... without study a real programming, but when you use it, if you had the logic of the programmer is like a piece of cake... ask someone how is annoying just for make a sprite, animation with collision in real script ...in construct2 you can do it in two click, and I try a lot of software (some for fun, and some for work)...
the artist is advantaged in this case, because it's easy to make whatever someone want in construct2, and the most difficult part when you are using a visual script is the arts/music (I spend more time to think about arts and music....)