Sadly, I agree. It's also one of the reasons why Mike left - the stagnation of GMS2 over the past year especially. Even with the censor, I know exactly which engine you're talking about. Not long ago I even went as far as downloading it and making a small game with it just to test it out, because I've been standing with one leg out of GM for the past 2 years now. The engine you mention is very solid, especially considering that it's literally free vs. the $1200 I forked over for my current GMS2 license, not to mention the full price I paid for GMS1 Master Collection back in the day. One of the only things that engine is lacking is proper console support - their Xbox One module is basically just UWP (no native) and their Switch module is still in beta and costs $3000 (which is, believe it or not, with a discount). PS4 basically doesn't exist. So if you want console support, you're pretty much SOL. Other than that - it wipes its ass with GMS2. And it hurts to admit that, as someone who's invested thousands of dollars into it, as well as 15 years of my life.
It speaks volumes for my current dissatisfaction that this is the first time I've experimented with a new engine since I found GM in 2004. More than that, I've noticed that more and more developers, even (or maybe especially) the more high profiled ones, are leaving due to similar reasons.
I really badly want YoYoGames to succeed - not only are they very nice, passionate and hardworking people, but even from a purely selfish standpoint I have a very vested interest in their success, figuratively and literally. I don't want to flush 15 years of use down the toilet and start over. But there comes a point where you have to weigh what will be best long term; starting over now with a solid foundation for the future, or keep praying that things will get better. I've done the latter for 2 years now, and it isn't looking much brighter.
TL;DR; I hear you, and as much as it pains me to say this, I agree.
Oh, and as a side note; I've not even really thought about the GUI stuff you mention, as I've pretty much just come to accept that you have to build pretty much everything yourself, so last year, I spent 2 months building my own GUI framework with support for buttons, sliders, checkboxes, radiobutton lists, dropdowns etc., all extremely flexible, skinnable and customizable, and with extended use in mind. Now, the real issue here for me, is that I made it as an external package so that I could always just plug it into future projects, but then I bumped into the fact that GMS2 doesn't allow you to import your own local projects like GMS1 did, completely negating all my carefully designed module designed work. So yay.
I stopped using GMS2 and spent a few months last year using another engine, and seeing as for some pathetic reason even the name of other engines is being censored I will just say the one I used tries to bring people together - unite them some might say....
I also tried the other 2 well known engines as I have an Oculus Rift and wanted to experiement with some VR stuff which was fun, but I ended up coming back to GMS2 as I'm an old fart and heart is in 2D games, although I did learn a lot of 3D stuff that will be helpful for me going forward even in relation to 2D and asset creation.
There have been many threads like this over the last couple of years, most of which I have been a vocal part of (especially Spine related stuff which is finally being brought up to date at last) but the takeaway I got from it was that there isn't much point in continually going over the same problems over and over again as they never go anywhere other than being locked for talking about alternative engines or them being deemed by mods to be unconstructive or conjecture.
The bottom line is that you have to talk with your wallet and your feet, if you aren't happy then go and find an engine that *does* make you happy, because as cathartic as venting on here or reddit etc is, it really doesn't achieve anything in terms of affecting change, seeing less users and less income might.
Mike is a massive loss in my opinion, literally irreplaceable in terms of his talent and familiarity with the engine, but life goes on and I'm sure (or I hope!) that YYG would have planned for his departure, the future and have an understanding of where they are going and some of the roadmap improvements sound great.
That's not to say that there still aren't some really talented people at YYG because there obviously are, the most visible and well known of which would be Russell who I feel just the same as Mike about in terms of his experience and talent - if he left as well I really would start worrying and looking elsewhere - but as I said things change and I'm sure the other existing and new devs there are extremely talented and are going to get their chance to shine and show what they can do.
It could be a disaster, or it could be an amazing time for GMS2 with an injection of nw talent to the team - time will tell I guess.
The issues I have are the speed at which things are implemented and how well they are tested before being released, as the last 18mths or so has made YYG look silly at times with some releases having very obvious bugs that should have been caught in QA way before release but weren't for whatever reason.
They have improved their communication since the big thread last year, I think that is plain for all to see, although support is still pretty slow at times but maybe that's because my tickets are usually quite in depth and not basic issues. Also a special mention to Ross Manthorp who I think is doing a great job as Community Manager and handling things really well, he's also a really nice guy from the interactions I've had with him - so keep that up please Ross!
As I said my heart is in 2D and I personally think GMS2 is better for that than any of the other engines I tested when I take into account my knowledge and understanding of the engine and the speed at which I can get things up and running in comparison - and I've already paid for my licences so I'll be here for a while yet especially with the Spine update opening a lot of opportunities for me personally.
Ultimately everyone has to make their own decision for their own reasons.
For the GUI stuff my opinion is that GMS can't possibly include every feature that every user might want, they can just provide the tools which allow the creation of any of those things - which is what they have done (for the most part)
The marketplace has loads of assets that fill the various gaps that aren't in the core engine ( skinnable UI's included) and whilst I also much prefer having some features in-engine and "official" as opposed to relying on a 3rd party or individual to maintain an asset, I think most of us are aware that being "officially included" or maintained / developed by YYG doesn't mean that it will be kept up to date or maintained either.
We only have to look at Spine, Google Play, various mobile extensions and the Facebook Instant Games extension to see that "official" extensions are often worse than those provided by people on the marketplace in terms of features and updates.
@JeffJ
You *can* export to consoles using the engine you mentioned, but due to the open source nature of it they can't include libraries etc to enable it as standard.
Porting to XB1, PS4 and Switch is possible and available from a company that is listed on their website that has developed their own in house exporters and tools to do so, but of course this is a paid for service and you'd have to contact them for prices of those services to see whether it would be worthwhile.
For the asset packages you can upload them to the marketplace, mark them as free and then they appear in My Library inside the IDE and you can pull them down into any project you like, or download the .yyz file and then drag and drop it into any new project like you would with any other asset.
It isn't as easy as it should be I agree, and fixing that is on the roadmap - but it is possible if you spend a few mins to go through the marketplace upload etc.