CM0

Although I meanwhile do like to work in Affinity Designer (as well as Photo and Publisher), it still is a major disappointment to me that there are no real vector brushes in Designer.
I've been working in Illustrator for 20+ years and I've always thought it's amazing what you can do with real, resolution independent vector brushes there (like vector based scatter brushes which encorporate random values for several properties from a predefined range etc.). I actually took it for granted that a new and promising vector design app like Affinity Designer would certainly take it from there and offer this functionality as well...
So this is one of the things I really do hope will get addressed in future versions (but somehow I'm not overly optimistic...). Nevertheless, I guess it would make a big difference for a lot of designers and illustrators.

Definitely not.
The actual power of Symbols.
If anything, the ADe's Symbols and the APh's Links panels should be merged because those do basically the same thing.
See this example which I've recorded just yesterday for another thread:

ade_aph_apu_linked_symbols.mp4 You need to create symbols in ADe, but then you can link and unlink any of its attributes via the Links panel. The "Symbol" type of container "only" (it's likely a complex thing behind the scenes altogether though) expands on the linked layers feature.
That aside:
create a symbol add it to Assets it will remain a symbol even as an asset Voilà, there's your global symbol.

As telemax has pointed out, this isn't a bug. Its just the unfortunate side effect of having gaps at the start/end of the brushes source texture. However it would be nice to include the ability to ignore the start/end elements of a brush and just use the repeating area for closed curves so I will move this to Feature Requests.

Thanks. 
It seems to me there have been a number of bugs that seem related to using multi-artboard documents in Photo (and possibly the Photo Persona of Publisher) that all seem to involve improper binding of effects, filters, Fill or Pixel layers to the right Artboard. That might be an area to focus some testing on.

Thanks for letting me know. Much appreciated.

FYI, I didn't copy and paste the text and filter directly.  I selected the artboard itself and duplicated the artboard.
Thanks for looking into it.

I agree, I truly hope the next update can be a major bug fixing release of many of these long standing bugs open for years.
Fixing many of these bugs would be the equivalent of adding new features since some of these bugs simply prevent you from using Affinity in the ways you would like.  I think the vector brush gap bug on closed curves has been there since initial release.  Because of that, I simply can't use vector brushes in many cases where I might would otherwise for interesting effects.

I agree, I truly hope the next update can be a major bug fixing release of many of these long standing bugs open for years.
Fixing many of these bugs would be the equivalent of adding new features since some of these bugs simply prevent you from using Affinity in the ways you would like.  I think the vector brush gap bug on closed curves has been there since initial release.  Because of that, I simply can't use vector brushes in many cases where I might would otherwise for interesting effects.

Mark, is there any timeline around solving the brush highlights issue as reported in the thread 'What Brush am I Using'...
(this thread beginning in December 2016) 
...and the GUI problems as reported in the thread ' preferences: add option to remove/hide brush outline'?
(this thread beginning December 2017)
As I see it, neither issue has been addressed at all and cumulatively all I think are ground zero hindrances to artists who would be looking to make the switch to AD and/or AP from CSP, Painter and the rest - a huge market. The 'sneak peak' of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnfxzknVK_0 is interesting and welcome, but as ever with so much of Affinity development, handling 600k object layers feels so much like an eccentric edge case in comparison to basic GUI problems that make the apps hugely unusable if you are a digital painter.

1.10 feels like a milestone release but it is crushing to try out the beta and find all of these conditions as they were five years ago.
With thanks,
Peter  
 

All issues and concerns from this thread of have been logged or existing bugs updated - thanks all. 

#1 - Thanks!
#2 - I will experiment more with this and get back if I figure it out
#3 - By design makes no sense.  Why would I want to apply an effect to an artboard that doesn't use the artboard as the context of the effect?  If this is truly by design, then these effects should be disabled when you have artboards in the document.

I use art boards a lot because they significantly speed up my workflow and management.
However, when I need to do some more advanced work in photo, it often is painful due to how broken the art boards are in photo.  The root of most problems seems to be that photo ignores the boundaries of the art board and tries to perform all operations on the entire document causing lots of weird issues.
The better integration between apps is supposed to be one of the key advantages of the affinity suite, but it really falls flat in this area.
I really hope this could be fixed.

I see a “Pattern Fill” function has been added to Affinity Photo in the 1.9 update!!!
Grrrrr why for photo and not designer!
Hopefully it will come across soon. 
Still waiting on my Adobe free future. 

The number of these bugs that seem would be easy to fix that have been open for years is seriously giving me pause on whether or not I should continue investing my time into Affinity.  Affinity should do a release of nothing but bug fixes to catch up at this point.  I've encountered more bugs than I have time to even report.  And the fact that reported bugs don't get fixed lowers my motivation to even do so.
Please make the features that already exist actually work.

Vor vier Jahren (19.3.2017) MEB QA/Suppoert: "We are already aware of this issue". Dass man in dieser Zeit diesen Programmierfehler nicht behoben hat grenzt tatsächlich an Ignoranz.
Der Vorschlag, die Kurve zu öffnen ist für eine sehr schwache Notlösung für eine einmalige Verwendung. Scheitert jedoch spätestens bei der Verwendung von Pinseln kläglich.
Keine Ahnung, was sich Affinity dabei denkt, oder ob überhaupt jemand nachdenkt.
Eine Schande, ist richtig peinlich. Bei solcher Trägheit kann man Affinity-Software nicht mehr mit gutem Gewissen empfehlen.
Four years ago ( 3/19/2017) MEB QA/Suppoert: "We are already aware of this issue". The fact that this bug has not been fixed in this time is really bordering on ignorance.
The suggestion to open the curve is for a very weak stopgap solution for a one-time use. However, fails miserably at the latest when using brushes.
No idea what Affinity is thinking, or if anyone is thinking at all.
A shame, is really embarrassing. With such inertia, one can no longer recommend Affinity software with a clear conscience.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

The number of these bugs that seem would be easy to fix that have been open for years is seriously giving me pause on whether or not I should continue investing my time into Affinity.  Affinity should do a release of nothing but bug fixes to catch up at this point.  I've encountered more bugs than I have time to even report.  And the fact that reported bugs don't get fixed lowers my motivation to even do so.
Please make the features that already exist actually work.

The number of these bugs that seem would be easy to fix that have been open for years is seriously giving me pause on whether or not I should continue investing my time into Affinity.  Affinity should do a release of nothing but bug fixes to catch up at this point.  I've encountered more bugs than I have time to even report.  And the fact that reported bugs don't get fixed lowers my motivation to even do so.
Please make the features that already exist actually work.

The number of these bugs that seem would be easy to fix that have been open for years is seriously giving me pause on whether or not I should continue investing my time into Affinity.  Affinity should do a release of nothing but bug fixes to catch up at this point.  I've encountered more bugs than I have time to even report.  And the fact that reported bugs don't get fixed lowers my motivation to even do so.
Please make the features that already exist actually work.

I wonder if this will ever fix it, because it's really a "crazy feature". Not only are vector brushes not vector, but this complicates their use even more 😞