Hang in there friend. We were a bit hard on ya, but you sparked a good discussion.
Seriously... good topic
Thank you, I appreciate that.
What frustrated me was that things like dark mode, font size, and icon size felt like normal usability requests, but somehow the discussion turned into defending the platform itself.
I think I understand it better now. This is a tight-knit community built around helping people use Ignition, so criticism can sometimes sound like an attack even when the intention is improvement.
I got frustrated enough that I started deleting my posts and even requested the thread be removed because it felt like the discussion was no longer moving toward a solution.
If two sides keep pulling in opposite directions, how does the luggage ever move forward? 
I've enjoyed the discussion, and I think allot of your points are valid! (As a 6-year Ignition integrator)
Thank you, I appreciate that.
But honestly, I still really want this thread removed. I don’t really feel like it was a discussion. It felt more like I was getting chewed up in the street by bulldogs while people who may have agreed stayed silent and just watched.
Now, after I’m already left with a bad taste from the whole thing, some supportive voices are finally showing up.
I’m done with it. Maybe there were good intentions here, but the experience still felt toxic to me haha
It happens sometimes. Most of us regulars have taken a beating in the forums more than once. I once had somebody go so far as to call my work an abomination. That kind of thing sticks with you.
Most of the time, though, it isn't toxicity; it's just the normal give and take of peer review. Obviously, feedback can be positive or negative depending on the merits of the idea being presented. In this case, though, I'd say you're right; it definitely crossed the line and got a little toxic.
That said, for posterity, I wouldn't delete any of those posts. I imagine a lot of future readers are going to sympathize with your position, but it'll be harder for them to understand what happened if they're missing the context.
Some of us were slow to respond because you happened to post this during ICC. ICC is a conference where a lot of the most avid Ignition fans are going to be if they can.
It's great to be around Ignition people because some of us (myself certainly) have an awkward level of Ignition focus that is less awkward in that environment.
Hello,
I'm sorry it took so long for the supportive voices to come out of the woodwork. When I read your posts, what occurred to me is that a lot of your concerns are actually addressed the further you get into the programming. Things like font sizes and colours can be grouped and coded into presets that you can grab and deploy really quickly, but they don't come until some of the later lessons in Ignition training. They start you off slowly because it's a REALLY diverse software platform, and to really shine at the later levels, you need a strong foundation.
At first, learning Vision and basic Perspective can be a little bit of a slog. Like you said, it can feel like you're constantly clicking the same set of checkboxes, and it can seem very tedious. But this stage is really helpful for students and beginner developers. Ignition lets you get running relatively fast, and you can go from a clean PC install to a SCADA server in a day or less, even if you've never touched it before.
Where Ignition really starts to shine, I feel, is when you get past the basics and begin working with more data-oriented features like UDTs and Templates, allowing you to do your setup once and then deploy it as needed. Then you start to learn about some of the deeper configuration options, such as setting default colour schemes across your Vision project or Perspective resources. When you start working toward the Core Certification, you learn about the deeper functionality of Ignition, and it really starts to open your eyes to its flexibility, especially when you begin getting into Python scripting!
Then, if you go deep enough to pursue Gold Certification, you learn that Perspective is, in many ways, a glorified CSS stylesheet platform that can give you SO MUCH flexibility. It really starts to feel like programming with code rather than endlessly checking boxes. I know it may seem weird to say, "It gets really good when you're a year or two into it"... but it does! Ignition is such a large and diverse platform now that there's more than one way to make your SCADA dreams come true, and it just takes some time to work through it all.
If you're still interested, I'd suggest digging into UDTs, Templates, Tag Indirection, and Perspective. To me, it sounds like those are where your interests lie.
I was talking with one of my colleagues about this and he suggested having a separate designer for Vision than Perspective. It's probably worth looking into. Generally you're using one or the other.
Segregating visualization by which designer you use would decouple the two and would allow a lot more flexibility without breaking backward compatibility. Kind of like how Perspective Workstation isn't Vision Client Launcher.
Anyway, I thought it was a good idea so I'm repeating it.
Not a response to anyone here in particular, but for the sake of the OP's notifications and their request to disengage, I'll meet them in the middle and close this thread to further posts. I think there's definitely some side-car threads that anyone could spin off for their own discussion threads, and then OP can choose to continue to engage with at their own discretion.