MisterFulanito

I'm currently test driving all of the Affinity products in hopes of leaving Adobe's Creative Cloud, but am coming up just a little short on some key tool necessities. The biggest hole I can see is the ability to distort or free transform vector nodes, whole objects or outlined text (curves). 
This is a tutorial on creating 'curved' text using 'free transform' tools in Illustrator from 2000:
http://www.balloontales.com/curved-type/
Or selective scaling when nodes are selected. Here's an example of the function; keep in mind this isn't about WHAT is being created, it's the 'how'.
http://www.balloontales.com/tv-shape-balloon/
Just added functionality to node/vector manipulation and I can then say goodbye to Adobe Illustrator. If these functions already exist, can someone point the way to any related tutorials?
Thanks! Good stuff so far; just need a few more tools to be GREAT stuff.
G.

And, here is a video glimpse of some of the improvements coming to the Node tool.
 
NodeTool.mov
 

I’ve been a Mac user since 1993, and I remember some applications having this exploded layout and still do, but frankly none of the programs I’ve used were like this.  Adobe had this mode as an option, but always alllowed to have a background.  That would have driven me crazy if I had to work with programs while looking at my desktop and folders, windows, etc in the background.