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Those are perfect examples for artworks/artsy designs. But that's because those artists have skill, it's less a matter of the tool they use.
I stand by my statement. AD is not a replacement for Illustrator at all. Even if you can work around the missing tracing and warp tools (though at the cost of spending multiple hours longer on a project, which is a no-go for a professional workflow). The lack of true customisable vector brushes alone is a joke for a "vector" app.

Unfortunately, as you can see with one of the major new feature they've added to APh lately (astro protography stacking), their focus still is attracting new enthusiastic hobbyists with fancy looking features rather than focusing on making the apps reliable tools for professionals.
I also wish they'd focus a bit more on adding "dated, yet needed" features to their apps instead of adding stuff which cut a fine figurine on websites and PR texts.

I started with Freehand 7 in 96 which did everything I needed it to 25 years ago, and back in 2014 saw Designer as a shining light as it showed so much promise, looking at all the missing basics planned back then, I thought within a couple of years I'd at least get similar basic functionality as freehand - now we're approaching 7 years from release and I just want to get work done, which is ultra frustrating as Designer is a brilliant beast - brilliant we recently got select same and contour tool but it took 6 years - 
Now at the point - wish someone could find the grave of Freehand and do a super Frankenstein job on it (no subscription)- massive shame Adobe got it hands on it.
Yes I know missing basic features aren't everything, you only have to use VectorStyler to realise how good the Affinity user interface is, I'm just tired of the workarounds on workarounds to get functionality I was getting 25 years ago with Freehand
Also some of us need to print CMYK to CMYK devices!?!?!? 
(Vincent Price type voice) 'O' RISE GREAT FREEHAND' 
Moan moan eff-in moan😕
Sorry guys woke in a mood realise the team are doing all they can to achieve - just getting stuff off my chest

The point is that some of these tools exist in-part already in Photo. Also they existed in past legacy Serif apps. No excuse for the missing tools - especially warping. 

So, you think, it'd be better if we'd all become Cheerleaders instead?

It’s kind of got to the point that the only way I can fathom out why we don’t yet have any form of vector distortions is probably because it can’t yet do it - I gather they started development in 2010, and for any software company who decides to build brand new vector design application aimed squarely at pros, vector distortions / Free Transform / Perspective & Warp Tools or whatever you want to call it would be pretty high on the features list, my guess is they must have been working on this from the start and maybe judging by the problems with boolean operations in the past maybe it’s still too glitchy for release - it will be seven years since release on the first of October —— gradually losing faith

Relative is relative, I know. But Serif was founded in 1987 which is ancient times for software developing business.

What's confusing to me is that Affinity don't seem to realize the sustained money blast they'd receive once they add this toolset. Artists are fed up with Adobe. Word would quickly get around that there was now a real, viable replacement for Illustrator with its hateful monthly rental fee.

Then why isn't the functionality built directly into Affinity Designer, if the code is already written?
There's no way that people are going to switch backwards and forwards between Affinity Publisher and Affinity Designer to do something that should be a basic built-in function within Affinity Designer. Get real!

Exactly - it is a crying shame that this fundamental capability is missing from this otherwise excellent product.

+1 for pattern in Designer

Still waiting on a Vector Warp tool. They exist in raster for Photo but I wonder what's taking priority over it? Not having any sort of intended features list is frustrating. 

There it goes, my inspiration that is, out of the window, and I lost it trying to change who knows what shortcut key... again.
As a professional in video, animation, 3d and audio I have used many many applications over the years, and find Affinity package a real refreshing leap forward. However, I must admit that the preferences window across all three Affinity apps (Photo, Designer and Publisher) is one of the most useless I have ever encountered. I am not afraid to switch and learn applications and am ready to customize the new ones I learn to my own best practices, and the preferences window is my friend or it should be, but Affinity's is not at all. Please let me try to explain what I find is wrong with and suggest some changes which I did not think a lot about, but seem much simpler to use. Let's start:
1. The preferences window uses a unique visual paradigm, completely different from any other dialogue I have encountered in the rest of the application. It has a header with Back/forward buttons, "home" button (with an odd icon and a drop-down menu) and search bar. No other panel, toolbar, manager, assistant or any other window in Affinity uses this paradigm or at least my humble knowledge of the app does not bring any into the mind. I doubt that this is good. For instance having tabs, like some other windows would do the trick no need for back/forward buttons, no need for home button, no need for drop-down menu, just 7 simple instantly accessable tabs.
2. search bar is a sneaky red herring! It is in fact dangerously useless! I'd like to change a shortcut for brush size in pixel persona? typing any of these terms does not help me to find where to do it. It seems that this search bar is good for searching only a couple of dozen words which does not make any sense at all, either you make every single preference item that can be change searchable or get rid of the search bar because the way it is now is frustratingly useless.
3. I will not go in depth on my thoughts about "General", "Color", "Performance", "User Interface" and "Tools" pages as I do see some benefit of "bite sized" preferences pages even if some items on them seem to belong to another page, and the number of these pages could actually be decreased. (for instance half of the "Tools" preferences could easily belong to "User Interface" tab)
4. Checkboxes, since they have really powerful results would benefit from tooltip help with a more verbose description of what they do.
5. "Miscellaneous" could easily be renamed to "factory resets" or something on that line, as that is what it does.
6. And now I come to my nemesis, the "Keyboard Shortcuts" page. Where to start?!
a) there is a search bar on the upper right, that is as we said a sneaky trap, and a red herring. It does not help us here, and will take us "home" probably finding nothing of interest.
b) we need to use these two fiddly drop-downs. The first one could easily be replaced with beautiful Draw, Pixel and Export icons cutting the number of actions for picking persona to edit to only one click (or even better none.. read on). The second one is really unintuitive as its items partially overlap in different personas. It took me a while to get the idea that this second one is contextual to the first one (as the list changes "behind the curtain")... I got it only after learning my way a bit around the app so I recognised that some items belong to some personas.
c)  a quick overview of other buttons and check boxes in this upper region of Keyboard Shortcuts page;
"Apply to all" -what? to all what? I had to dig through the manual to see what it does, and all it would take to fix it is to call it "apply shortcut changes to all personas" without this information there is no way to know that there actually are some connections possible between personas. As if the for instance, brush size in pixel and draw persona must be separate.
"Ignore Modifier—Lets you create shortcuts using a single letter designation instead of using keyboard modifiers." says the manual, and I still do not get it. Does it allow me to pres only the letter in application without modifier keys and get what I want? No, as Ctrl+S is stil "save" and "Ctrl+Shift+S" is stil Save as. Does it filter out the input of Modifier keys while assigning new shortcuts? No. So what does it do? Maybe a better explanation in manual would help, and a more verbose checkbox title or tooltip.
"Load/Save" what? it loads and saves what? a file obviously, but what does that file contain? All shortcuts, or only those in focus? Maybe "Load Shortcut configuration" or something on that line would be better. to be continued...

For those not familiar:
Illustrator's awkwardly named Merge performs two basic Boolean operations in one move, based on their color:
It Unions touching (abutting or overlapping) fills of the same color. It Punches (subtracts) overlapping fills of different colors. (Frontmost punches others). So it results in the minimal individual paths around visually contiguous regions of the same color.
One common real-world use case for this is when preparing a design for cutting from sign vinyl. In that common workflow, you don't want any cuts across same-colored regions, because as the vinyl shrinks over time, void slivers appear. So the Merge command saves a lot of time and tedium.
However, it addresses just half of that use case: When different colors of a sign vinyl design need to appear to abut, one actually does need a small amount of overlap for the very same reason: It's very difficult to physically perfectly abut different-colored pieces of vinyl when applying it, and even if you could, the eventual shrinkage would again cause slivers between them.
The practical fix is analogous to that of color trapping (chokes, spreads, and overprinting) in print.
So this is yet another opportunity to improve upon an Illustrator feature by addressing its shortcomings instead of just mimicking it in 'me, too' fashion: Such a command should incorporate an Overlap setting that would default to zero, but could be set by the user whenever a trap (parallel to the shapes) is needed. That would address the tedium of having to manually apply Offset Path (in AI) or Contour (in Affinity) to the results of a Merge operation. In other words, the suggested new feature function should incorporate three basic operations (union, subtract, and offset), not just two (union and subtract).
Illustrator could have long since addressed this by providing a checkbox in its Merge command: Respect Manual Traps or Respect Overprinting Strokes. But it doesn't. And its 'Pathfinders' generally ignore strokes anyway. Expand Appearance 'sees' manual traps built in Illustrator, but treats them as 'third' colors instead of as the same color as the spread or choked color.
Another low-hanging-fruit opportunity to surpass Illustrator's functionality by avoiding its endemic characteristic of too many grab-bag standalone features being 'unaware' of each other.
JET

Merge is in illustrator a "pathfinder" - an easier way to perform several steps - than all manual:
The Merge pathfinder is similar to that of the Trim command when applied to two multicolored shapes. When applied to three shapes, two of them being the same hue, the Merge action joins the two yellow shapes and trims the outline of the other blue polygon.
In a professional setup where time is money and the shortest path is always the preferred one such features are greatly appreciated - not to mentioned understood. Such tools are invaluable when working on huge illustrations/project where the user makes many, many, many adjustments and shapes. It is also totally meaningful that the software takes many operations out of the workflow so the creative can focus on being creating. Not focus on moving bricks around.
The whole point of using a computer is that such tools and features can help and assist the user. We need more than tools like glue, knife and scissor. A computer can combine their work into one single TATJING. 
It seems that these features comes at a premium price in other products, though. Fine. I have the premium products too. But they would make sense in Affinity as well. To me at least. I fooled around enough with scissors and glue in First Grade.

Can we add one more tool to the boolean set? A "merge" tool like in illustrator? The current "add" tool reminds me a lot of the "Unite" tool in Illustrator. It's like a scorched earth approach where everything is combined into one shape with one set of properties. The "merge" tool in Illustrator allows object with differing attributes to cut into one another like a cookie-cutter does. Also, I can put a fill shape of another color behind a vector fill with a negative shape and it will essentially fill that negative space. This is such an essential part of my workflow.  I watch others forced to fill objects when there is still a closed stoke or go back in afterward and re-draw the existing shapes as fills only. What about a live paint fill tool that does not require a continuous united path in order to fill it, but instead recognizes all four sides being closed in some way, whether by the same stroke or different overlapped strokes?

First of all, Thank you to the Affinity team . To the matter I was an Illustrator user for over 10 years and now am an affinity designer user. As a graphic designer i would like to suggest some features on upcoming versions.
 
RECENT FONTS - As a designer we use limited number of fonts ina single design. we use variations. but the number of fonts using in a single design is limited. So we would like to see Recent used fonts in font drop down. Its a small feature, but it will help us Big PLACE THINGS OUTSIDE CANVAS - Next feature i suggest is  as a designer we use different small elements in design. But we have only canvas to place things. If we place something outside canvas , it wont be visible. For print view, this is ok. We like to breath more freely. so lets place thing beyond canvas temporarily. so we can give them good place later.  (Firtst Screen shot-from Illustrator))  ERASER TOOL- Yes, affinity designer have an eraser tool in Pixel persona and it work well. But we need one in Designer tool box. Because when we use eraser tool from pixel persona. it remains same object. But in illustrator we could ungroup it . So either add the feature to ungroup erased parts in to different object (second Screen shot) SMOOTH TOOL - To fine tune curves , a smoothing tool is preferred  this is all from my side.. Hope you will consider it . thank you so much 

Please incorporate options such as "split into grids" in Adobe Illustrator, which is very useful feature to split any object into a specified number of equal-sized rectangles and can be change the number of Rows, Columns and Gutter this will save our valuable time

Is very impressive that there are designers that do not understand that tools for designers need to cover all designers, not only web developers or newbies that know about icons through a favicon web search. Icons are still widely used in many instances and is a profitable business. I find hilarious when people says the new way is better because is new, but the new way is more tedious than the old *.ico file... one file carries all the sizes you added to it, with inherit adaptability to size request.
Every time you submit a power web app, you have to upload dozens of images to do what a single upload would accomplish on an *.ico file. Same on the Apple Store or Google Android Apps, which is ridiculous. That process would be simpler and lighter with probably a new WebM icon file. But since does not exists, haven't done due research to be absolutely sure, you have to upload either one by one or on a compress file. And if you make a change then you have to do the whole process to produce the same list back again. Very ridiculous again in my opinion. Is that the new way you referring to? I'm not sold.
Anyway... Other Possible Solutions
You can use Gimp2 to create icons too. Open source and downloadable tool with pretty other nice tools that you won't find either in Affinity Photo or Photoshop without plugins... for example, exporting *.ico files and creating Normal Maps... among others.
The way Gimp handle it, you start by creating your 256px (like in old days) or larger icon size 512px, and scale that down per layer, and if a layer start looking blurry then you can import your small version or even create them in the same file. Once you have all the sizes you want to cover, Export your layered Gimp file as an *.ico file. Is that easy. Gimp even has an icon previewer if I'm not mistaken, don't quote me on this.
Also, Inkscape has an icon generator integrated. Another open source vector base application, with an icon previewer as well.

Guys, not everything is made for the web.
EG: desktop applications... .ico and .bmp support would be welcome in my work.
It sucks that I have to export to .png from affinity, then opening paint or paint3d and re-save that to .bmp for example.
or that I have to use an online .ico generator ... would be a nice win for me personally to have my lovely affinity do all the things 
:)

I'm working on web design a lot and I love Affinity Designer. This week I had to create an icon (favicon to be precise), which I obviously designed in Designer.
 
So far so good, but there seem to be no way of exporting an image as *.ico.
 
Are there any plans for adding support for ico files?

Any ETA on non destructive free transform, perspective and warp tools like those found illustrator/Photoshop?
 
 

@PaRunk
All nice and right what you're saying. But in the end the question for people who use the software to do their work and to generate income is: does it have the functions I need to do the job? At first, can it do the job at all, and second can it do it with the least amount of afford and the less time that's possible. And as sad as it is, I have to say that the Affintiy Suite is not the tool at the moment.
It is allways claimed that it's hard work to develop such software. Of course it is, no doubt! But if you look around, there are some softwares that are also created by smaller teams and that develop much faster. For me the most impressive example are the two guys behind Photoline. But take Vector Styler for another example, or Vectornator. And after all, there has been the knowledge at Serif to implement the features. They were mostly there in Draw Plus! and the other Serif softwares. Thus it's not the point that they have to invent the wheel another time. And last but not least, not all concepts and software techniques behind the features are intellectual property of individual companies and thus inaccessible. Many things are just mathematics, many are published as white papers or part of open source libraries. And many features that are missing in the Affintiy softwares are just small extensions to the existing ones (just make solo mode permanent, for example. Just don't leave it by clicking somewhere on the canvas).
And finaly, there's the point that we live in the year 2021. There are softwares that have evolved over decades and set the standards today. If you come into the market today (or better 7 years ago) and claim to have a professional software, you have measure yourself against the existing standards of professional software. You can just as easily not enter the car market today and say, "Hey, our car now has a gasoline engine and even manual transmission!"
I'm afraid Affinity has found its niche in the semi-pro market, both in terms of features and price. And at least for me, it's not the costs that count. I would happily pay more, really more, if the Affinity softwares would be pushed to a real professional level.

The Affinity team took down the roadmap awhile ago but it would be nice if they did something like this. While the 1.9 release candidate is being tested they could post what they plan to tackle in the next 1 or 2 updates. For example we plan on tackling gradient mesh and vector distort in ver 1.10, and bug fixes only in 1.11. This way us user's have a idea of what to look forward to. Right now the beta comes out and you look at the release notes and go aww still no features requested 4 years ago only bug fixes.

On my wishlist:
Object Styles that behave the same as - consistent with - Text Styles. All Apps.
Meaning:
They update; are amendable (currently not) They flow through to all objects where the Style has been applied In short: the same as Text Styles, but for Objects. Yes, I'm aware you might be thinking "so when Symbols vs Styles?".
Styles are concerned with fills, strokes and effects. Symbols are mini artworks. …therein is the answer. Indeed you could have an Object Style applied to several Symbols, in theory, couldn't you? Scenario: Brand colour combinations comes to mind - a plc I worked for had six different colours, as well as two core colours in their brand manual. The six could be used in any combination or tint. No doubt a designer's choice of fill-stroke colour combination would be questioned by marketing, or the manager signing-off. Everyone has an opinion on colour. The value of being able to update a style once and let it flow through to multiple symbols and objects, in say, a 56 page company report nearing print deadline (as is always the way) - then change it back again when they decide they like the designers choice after all ....should be obvious. Hope that helps you grasp the "why". (Saves a designer having to do an all-nighter... again).
!! Consistency: Currently we have two features called Styles in Publisher that behave in very different ways? Why? What justifies that?
Maintain this consistency across all the Affinity suite too please. I've not checked Styles in all the apps, but the ideal is that all Styles, where ever they appear in whichever app they're in, behave the same and perform the same function -  across desktop and iPad too.
Thank you.
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Really good start to these apps btw, really shaping up well - am a total fan - lovin them on the iPad especially. Appreciate they are in early versions, so still much to do. More things on my wishlist as they occur. Hope this helps.