JGD

No, I did. And I while I think considering which fingers are usable etc is good, I think it is mostly an over elaborate thought process that has resulted in the most basic thing being sidelined.
Even with your explanation, you've stated that the index finger and thumb are both good at independent actions, so even if someone were to have fingers ready to go hovering over each button, the difference in usability is tiny between CMD and Option. Compared to going contrary to probably the most consistently followed drag modifier action there is.

I agree, the to a certain extent the horse has already bolted. All that muscle memory that would need reprogramming. 
The best solution I can think of now would be to be able to set them up as you want in preferences.

Interesting. I've just had a look and this is the entry @JGD refers to I think.

I'd say that was pretty explicit to be honest.

Not explicitly as such, but implicitly, yes.
Much like there's the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law, if the only mention (that I could find, at least) [see: Pointers > Drag copy] in Apple's HIG to Option+dragging is to a cursor (which, while I'm at it, you should consider using if this “ghost” functionality is to be implemented, to further visually distinguish such a “dragCopy” operation from a regular operation), well… you're not supposed to use other modifiers for the same function.
UX redundancy in such a context is undesirable. It's not different enough to feel like it's an alternative (like, say, an explicit duplicate command, with a menu item and a keyboard shortcut of its own, or regular ol' copy'n'paste) and confuses the user instead.
Why you're still arguing with me about this eludes me, and just feels petty at this point. I'll suggest you try doing other Modifier+drag operations in other apps just to see what they do, but I can assure you (and I'll bet both my kidneys on it) that it's never a duplication.
Control+dragging is probably not even an option in most cases (see: Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Defining Keyboard Shortcuts):
As for Command+dragging, in the Finder, for instance, it forces it to always move a file even when the default, unmodified action would be to copy (such as when dragging to any kind of external R/W media); perhaps Command+dragging objects across Affinity apps could have the same effect, and I'd expect all other apps to adhere to this convention – written or otherwise…

There must be a vaguely pyramidal distribution of people with those who don't ever need apps like this at the bottom (the widest part of the pyramid) to those specialists who use them all the time.
Somewhere in the middle, there is a large chunk of people that need these apps some of the time. Because they dip in and out, they aren't going to remember all the complex menu options or key-combos.
Which brings us back squarely to the topic.
Ghosted originals would be great for those who dip in and out. Complex key combos / modifiers, especially non-standard ones (looking at you CMD for copy) are not.

Fair enough. “Gentleperson” it is, then, since there aren't, AFAIK, gender-neutral honorific titles (though the good people at Serif, being British subjects and all, might be able to enlighten us on those. ).

I agree, however, equality is something that can and should be discussed every time, place and context that it crops up.
If others want to then get worked up about it and take the discussion off-course that's for them to worry about.

Thank you, but just in the interests of balance, I'm sure you don't know whether I am a man or woman. And I'm happy with that ambiguity . Let's stick to gender neutrality unless it's absolutely necessary or relevant

I suppose what I'm actually arguing is almost the opposite. That those who are creating content in Adobe or Affinity apps 90% of the time will have access to both and can pick and choose based on the task and time pressures.
Those of us that have ditched Adobe (yay), now have no choice and are all in. When an Affinity app doesn't have a feature (select by...) or is clunky (this ghosted / snapping issue) we just lose out because we have no alternative.
I'd argue that many of those who have gone all in with Affinity apps are probably using them as part of a wide range of diverse tools (ie not just Adobe). My hunch is that very few use them 90% of their time and don't also have Adobe CC also as a fall back.
As such, I'd suggest that Serif should be focussing on the markets where people use their tools as part of a wider and more complex workflow. After all, a licence sold is a license sold. They don't make more money from someone using the products all the time vs someone dipping in and out. The market for those dipping in and out must be massive compared to full time graphic and designers / artists.
I don't know what the numbers are for graphic designers in the UK, but I know there are over 30,000 registered architects. Plus many many thousands of people doing the job of an architect who are not registered. Probably similar with engineers of various sorts. Surely a very large number of product and industrial designers too. All of these are in creative industries that likely spend most of their time doing other things but would happily consider £120 or whatever it is for the suite but would NEVER have considered £50 per month.
My point is that the market of part-time users is potentially massive and that's just in a couple of sectors in one country.
 

@JGD
Sorry, I was referring to people who use Adobe or Affinity or whatever apps 90% of the time. I spend a lot of my time emailing, doing CAD, 3D modelling etc. What I mean is that someone whose primary job is using creative apps such as Adobe or Affinity are likely to still have a Creative Cloud subscription.
Those like me, who use these types of apps only say 10% of the time always struggled to justify the Creative Cloud rip off. We've embraced Affinity with enthusiasm. It always felt like Adobe were profiteering from large sectors who didn't need their apps for core business functions but they were essential for some tasks. Affinity is the big hope and is WAY WAY better than any other attempt at competing with Adobe in recent years.
BUT, those of us that have ditched Adobe have no fall back. Ie, now fully reliant on Serif and their Affinity apps.

Yep, even for $500.00, you don't necessarily get what might seems like such a necessary feature.  People have been wishing Corel would add it, and making macros for decades.  Corel still hasn't implemented. Meanwhile they're doing all sorts of other things, including creating the entirely new Mac version of Coreldraw.  That feature is never going to come to Coreldraw.  There's no reason to think that it will after all this time.  The same is true with Affinity Designer.  People begged for it in the days of DrawPlus, then continued begging for it in Affinity Designer.  Anything is possible, but there's no reason to think that it's ever going to happen.  Or maybe, you'll be retired before it happens.
 
I've used that feature for decades and I've never felt that it was meager.  People are begging Serif for it for 10 years.  People were begging Corel for it for much longer.  I don't know or care how long it takes to create the feature.  I just know how useful it is, and that it's not meager in Illustrator.  We may all hate the subscription model but we all must still be thankful that Adobe exists since they're the only company offering the features that everybody else is begging for!  So what happens if Adobe goes away?  Many people will go from getting their work done with expensive tools, to not being able to get it done at all because there are no other tools that can do the work.  

Ok. Imagine I have an object, any object, and I want to offset it by half its length/height; being able to snap it to its former centre point needs that feature.
Imagine that I have a triangle, and I want to put one of its vertices where a different one was; same thing.
Clearly none of you must make much use of vector editors for precision work, because I, for one, use that feature in Ai all the time and I miss it dearly.
And no, this isn’t snapping an object back to its original position, you’ve just described undo. The feature I’m aiming at is being able to snap an object’s nodes or paths to the positions its nodes and paths originally were in before starting the drag operation, but still performing a drag operation to completion.
I’m not even bothering with making more demos at this point because I’m way too busy and stressed out for that. Please fire up an Ai CC trial, turn on Smart Guides (Ctrl/Cmd+U), create some objects, drag them around and notice how they interact with themselves mid-drag. Designer lacks that feature and is much more cumbersome because of that.

Also, on this subject, I should add that, for consistency and usability, objects should already snap to their originals when doing Option+Drag duplication operations, which is already their behaviour when performing Command+drag operations.
And I've just realised, while looking at the status bar messages, that apparently Command is [now? Since v.1.6? Since… ever?] the default modifier for duplicating and Option the default modifier for ignoring snapping. This, per Apple's Human Interface Guidelines is completely unacceptable and inconsistent with the behaviour in the Finder and pretty much all macOS apps.
When you click and drag an icon (or an image or block of text in any text editor, like TextEdit or Pages, or any object in Keynote) while pressing Option, you will always get a duplicate, and when you click and drag the same icon while pressing Command, in a window – or the desktop – with “snap to grid” activated, the Finder will ignore the grid (and so will Keynote regarding snapping, if you're dealing with objects). WHY should Affinity behave in such a blatantly inconsistent way with the rest of macOS? It started out as a macOS app, first and foremost, and if you really must have it be consistent across OSes, at least allow the users some degree of finer control as to how modifier keys affect its operation.
You don't want to become the new Adobe (or, worse even, outdo them) when it comes to OS-app UX inconsistency, trust me on that one. Designers do not take that lightly.

Hi again. This is a rehash of yet another feature request I made more than four years ago, which is still preventing me from working in Affinity Designer in a sensible fashion.
As you know, Ai implements drag operations in an '80s/'90s style “ghost” drag model (not unlike the Classic Mac OS window and icon drag model). The WYSIWYG part of the equation is the original position of the object, while the new position will be shown as a “ghost”, i.e. an outline, which you can snap to the original position of the object. This behaviour, while not being completely WYSIWYG or very elegant, is VERY useful, especially – but not limited to – when doing modular typography.
Affinity Designer, on the other hand, features a completely WYSIWYG drag mode, in which no “ghosts” exist. You just can't snap an object to its initial position, period. This is suboptimal, and forces the user to use impractical workarounds, such as duplicating objects instead, or to rely on complex grid arrangements, which may be overkill for simpler projects.
[For some context, InDesign features both Illustrator's drag model, when you perform a quick click+drag operation, and Affinity Designer's model, when you perform a longer, click+hold+drag operation.]
My suggestions (either a single one of them or a combination thereof) as to how this problem can be solved are the following:
• Add a toggle in preferences so a different drag model can be used instead of the current strictly WYSIWYG one;
• Allow users to perform a different drag model, perhaps like in InDesign, by holding the position after clicking and before dragging, but reversed (the preferred default model should still be a selectable option, as above);
• Allow users to use the Command+Drag operation to temporarily activate a ghost of the initial position (currently, this shortcut duplicates the object, which makes zero sense as the Option+Drag shortcut already does this and there's no need for two redundant shortcuts for the same operation).
As before, if you want me to make a little demonstration video of the intended behaviour, I'm more than happy to do so.

Well, I am an architect and I can totally understand the benefits of a ghosted original (compared to the Ai ghosted future).
I have read almost all of this thread this morning and I must say that it has been interesting. As is my impression from other discussions, flashy and very clever tools in Designer the downside to these is discoverability. It took @JGD producing several narrated videos to tease out some suggestions that are completely non-intuitive.
That comes to my main point really, that the ghosting idea is fundamentally intuitive. @Ben has repeatedly stated that snapping to invisible elements is undesirable and I fully agree. However, this was never suggested in this thread. Seeing a visual cue as to what is happening and allows snapping to the original is much MORE intuitive than holding shift to constrain a translation for that very same reason.
The power duplicate feature looks clever and I'll fire up Designer in a moment to give it a go. But for someone that only uses Ai / Designer for a few hours here and there the chances of remembering it is low, where as a visual cue is just there as soon as you start working.
When it comes down to it, there are multiple ways these problems can be solved in Ai and it seems in Designer. The key is to be flexible enough for different users and different workflows. The only downside I can see to adding this feature is the one that @Ben highlighted over conflicting snapping situations. These occur all the time anyway, for example when a centre point is close to an edge. In any app with snapping, you have to be careful what you are snapping to. 

@Ben, I just recalled something else extremely important:
“Ghosts” in Ai aren't just useful for moving; they also work great when using resizing handles. Most of the time, I cut objects in half (or in quarters) by resizing them towards their centre point.
You may say “but there's already an alternative” (like inputting “/2” into the W and/or H fields). Indeed, but it's usually much slower on a 27'' iMac.
When I'm creating, I don't want to take my focus away from my artwork, and if I can do simple calculations visually, I'd rather work that way. If I didn't, I'd be an architect and use AutoCAD instead.

Hi again. This is a rehash of yet another feature request I made more than four years ago, which is still preventing me from working in Affinity Designer in a sensible fashion.
As you know, Ai implements drag operations in an '80s/'90s style “ghost” drag model (not unlike the Classic Mac OS window and icon drag model). The WYSIWYG part of the equation is the original position of the object, while the new position will be shown as a “ghost”, i.e. an outline, which you can snap to the original position of the object. This behaviour, while not being completely WYSIWYG or very elegant, is VERY useful, especially – but not limited to – when doing modular typography.
Affinity Designer, on the other hand, features a completely WYSIWYG drag mode, in which no “ghosts” exist. You just can't snap an object to its initial position, period. This is suboptimal, and forces the user to use impractical workarounds, such as duplicating objects instead, or to rely on complex grid arrangements, which may be overkill for simpler projects.
[For some context, InDesign features both Illustrator's drag model, when you perform a quick click+drag operation, and Affinity Designer's model, when you perform a longer, click+hold+drag operation.]
My suggestions (either a single one of them or a combination thereof) as to how this problem can be solved are the following:
• Add a toggle in preferences so a different drag model can be used instead of the current strictly WYSIWYG one;
• Allow users to perform a different drag model, perhaps like in InDesign, by holding the position after clicking and before dragging, but reversed (the preferred default model should still be a selectable option, as above);
• Allow users to use the Command+Drag operation to temporarily activate a ghost of the initial position (currently, this shortcut duplicates the object, which makes zero sense as the Option+Drag shortcut already does this and there's no need for two redundant shortcuts for the same operation).
As before, if you want me to make a little demonstration video of the intended behaviour, I'm more than happy to do so.

Spot on. I did expect a holiday, but what I got was a bit of a bastard hybrid. A “holication”, if you will. 
(That sounded way better in my head before writing it down. Oh well  )

It seems that there’s a good reason why the British English phrase “on holiday” is replaced in American English by the phrase “on vacation”! (For anyone missing the subtle distinction, “on holiday” implies that you’re not working, whereas “on vacation” merely indicates that you’ve vacated — i.e. left — your usual location.)

This is how to read a post with more than 100 words:
1) Read the first 100 words
2) Then, read the remainding words
It is good practice for reading The New York Times or whatever. And to keep this at bay:
 

This may be difficult sometimes if trying to create a regular pattern of irregularly shaped objects that still happen to fit together... puzzle pieces perhaps?
I'm not sure how that relates to this request, however, as in creating something like this you would be snapping similar objects to each other, rather than to themselves.

Not in isolation. From what I gather, this show its value in a larger project: to make a comparison, it makes no sense having a feature like "Select same..." when you have two Objects on the screen, but when you have 1,000 and not all of the are the same, it saves you time. Hope that makes sense.
 
As of now, none...
 
How long does it takes to setup a grid? Now, how long does it takes to setup 4 different grids in the same project? This is where I believe the need is starting to make a bit of sense. And that's why I said to JGD that some sine qua non examples are needed.
 
I see that these "limiting" features don't make sens to you a lot of times, but the limiting nature of the Feature doesn't mean that you can discard it right on the spot.
So, to summarize:
We need a better example with a complex Project because that's the way I feel this will prove its value. To me, it makes sense in really Large Projects. "Limiting" is not really bad and not a reason by itself to discard anything. Best reagrds!

Not necessarily bigger, but just one that makes sense of a need that cannot be achieved any other way.
 
I'm also still not convinced that the clone+delete method isn't good enough in common practice. It only takes a fraction longer, and the extended examples in those videos demonstrate that the result is better achieved with power duplicate anyway - so I still only see people struggling to maintain their choice of workflow against more powerful tools already available in Affinity.  The positioning is usually only required for the first couple of instances - power duplicate should take care of the rest.
That binary cloning approach is pure madness anyway when it can already be done quicker - even if using some temporary objects to set up the initial offsets.
 
The self-snapping positioning shown in the examples to me seems so specific that the real justification still has not been met to warrant compromising the common use of the tools.
 
Are there any other examples other than this regular pattern stuff???

Then we agree that we need a better and bigger example. Because in the Stripes example, I believe I managed to achieve the task in a faster way than what was even asked for.
But that's it, it was faster for that example alone.
Best regards!
 

Please give it a rest already. Also, can't we discuss stuff among ourselves as fellow users, now? This isn't just a one- or two-way communication street with Serif (for that, there are DMs), but a public forum. Can't we, fellow users, discuss stuff among each other? And who's to say I wouldn't, as the OP, edit the original post with condensed versions of all the suggestions offered during that discussion?
It's not like I'm the only one here writing posts way longer than 100 words (some are 50% longer, some are twice as long, and have lots of screenshots, to boot), which very interesting, too. Do you not enjoy those, either? It's just that I didn't see you telling @Mithferion, @CLC, or other users here and on other equally (nay, some of them way more) important threads to cap their posts at that “magical 100-word mark”, so… maybe that's not your only (or main) criteria here?
As for my answers to Ben, they were the size they were because they had to, not because of some meanness on my part or something. Some of his comments were way off base, and some of what I said obviously wasn't yet clear enough; was I supposed to just accept those lingering misunderstandings and not retort at all? Also, I said what I had to say before, and proceeded to discuss stuff with other people (even though I did ask them to discuss that in the other thread), please let me be. When I have new demos to show, I'll post them here and tag Ben accordingly.
But anyway, if you really want a digested version of this current thread, there you go (with the added bonus that the Serif team will get it as well if they do check out the thread):
• Designer's Move Tool is limited (doesn't snap objects to themselves).
• Ai's Selection Tool is complete (snaps objects to themselves).
Nineteen words. However, how do you expect me to explain that limitation or add any suggestions in only 5x that amount of text (a measly two lines)? Without it coming across as “Ugh, feature x limited, Designer baaad, Ai goooood”? And in a way that convinces the arguably – and self-admittedly – stubborn team at Serif that giving users a choice to have this feature isn't any different than, say, having both Corel's and Adobe's selection models in Designer [], when no other app that I know of does it?
No, really, try and do that yourself if you can, and then tell me how. In under 100 words, of course.