Venting about bad features.

OK.  I'll respond. 

But for the record...in my experience, someone who HATES a software as much as this original poster is NEVER going to convert to liking it.  The die is usually long cast by now in their mind and their version of what the app SHOULD be is never going to be achieved.

But in the interest of answering SOME of the points raised, here goes:

1) You can't copy your work from one slide to the next. All the variables reset or it makes new ones.

ANSWER: You CAN copy your work from one slide to the next, but to avoid internal conflicts the newly pasted objects will receive new object IDs.  Where the slide or its objects are linked in some way to advanced actions or variables, those will also be duplicated for the same reason, to avoid possible conflicts.  On a side note, the functionality ALLOWING slides to be copied along with their AAs and Variables was something we users requested so that we could package up interactions on slides and transfer them from one project to another.  Obviously there would still be some rework required when you transplant stuff this way, but that's better than breaking the courseware every time you graft in some piece of functionality.  Programmers usually understand how easy this can happen.

2) I have to hack everything. This is not software that allows a great user interface. EVENT DRIVEN? I have to problem solve the crap out of everything just to make a nice user flow.

ANSWER: The user interface of your elearning modules is mostly what YOU the designer make it.  Event driven interfaces are not inherently ugly. That's up to the designer.

3) Corporate clients expect better in todays online climate. The user experience is mandatory.

ANSWER: I do lots of work for corporate clients.  Most are multi-nationals.  I've not seen them complain about the user experience of Captivate courses.  In fact, most are impressed with what can be achieved.  So again, I think this may simply be a design-related issue.

4) Most of the problem solving is done by people who can code. Why not make the tool more coder friendly. Editing Javascript is a nightmare.

ANSWER: Captivate was originally conceived as an authoring tool for people that COULD NOT AND DID NOT WANT to code.  Flash was Adobe's coder tool.  Over the years Adobe opened up Captivate to some extent by allowing AS3 coders to create widgets that could extend functionality.  (I know this because my company created and sells ten such widgets.)  Additionally, for many versions now it has also been possible to insert JavaScript directly into Captivate modules and execute the script via Advanced Actions.  But for serious coders NONE of this is ever going to be enough because they are accustomed to the total freedom of creating everything from scratch.  If you want to be that coder, by all means use another tool.  Captivate started out as a simple app for people that preferred something without the complexity.  It's now grown into this middle-ground tool that still TRIES to be simple, but with a lot of head-room for the tech-heads.  But if you want total freedom, go get Dreamweaver and program your stuff from scratch. Captivate is NEVER going to be YOUR tool.

5) Can't branch large courses - Don't know why but for some reason captivate won't wait and load everything. Videos don't work. I had to make separate courses and export them as different scorm packages just because Captivate can't handle a large amount of content if you branch.

ANSWER:  Captivate CAN certainly do branching and it can also do preloading.  But your issues here are most likely due to trying to create a single monolithic course module. That's simply a bad idea. You need to learn more about the SCORM standard and why it's advisable to break courses into smaller modules.  It will definitely also improve your user experience.  There can be any number of reasons why videos don't work, including that the video mime-type has not been allowed on your web server, you got the links wrong, or your LMS copies files to TEMP directories before delivery and that is breaking links.  Captivate is not necessarily the issue.

6) Must buy the elearning package from Adobe even though I have the cloud and I'm paying for captivate monthly. How many ways do I have to pay.

ANSWER:  There has been no version of the Adobe E-learning Suite since version 6.1.  That's now over 2 years ago.  Captivate doesn't belong to the Creative Cloud family. We all gripe about that, but it's Adobe's choice how they run their business.

7) Widgets - They barely work if ever (plus you can hardly customize them without going into flash). They should be removed entirely or made as slides that you can access and repeat functionality.

ANSWER: Removing all widgets just because SOME don't work as well as you would like is an extreme and somewhat selfish viewpoint.  Adobe originally provided Learning Interaction widgets bundled free with the app because users demanded them.  If they ditched all of them now there would be howls of protest from the user base.  If you hate them so much, don't use them.   

8) Slides should be objects that you can copy and have all the same functionality underneath. Think Javascript.

ANSWER: Again, Captivate already DOES this. You can copy a slide from one project to another and it will take all of its related variables and Advanced Actions along for the ride.

9) Mutli SCORM packager should have options of how it's displayed in the LMS.

ANSWER:  You need to learn more about what IS and is NOT configurable in SCORM...reliably. The SCORM Packager keeps very much to the areas that can safely be used across all LMSs.  How the content is displayed in the LMS player is mostly up to the LMS and needs to be configured there.  Some LMSs (e.g. SumTotal) provide for code to be added to the imsmanifest.xml file that will change how the content is displayed. But this add-in code is NOT part of the SCORM standard.  It's not Adobe's job to do this.

10) The timeline - How bad is this thing(see edge or aftereffects for proper keyframing etc.)

ANSWER:  Captivate's timeline is designed to communicate frame-based animation in a very simple way. Remember that Captivate was intended for NON-TECHNICAL, NON-CODER users.  If you want more complex timelines with keyframes, go to Flash or build your e-learning as video in After Effects. 

As soon as I learn how to wrap SCORM around a different editing system I'm moving on. I lose more time trying to make captivate do the simplest of things. I understand that articulate is near as bad because everything is based on powerpoint.  WHY WOULD YOU BASE ANYTHING ON POWER POINT?

ANSWER:  Both of these tools, Captivate and Articulate, were designed originally for users who were already comfortable with PPT content and wanted an easy transition into the complex world of e-learning.  As far as they go, they both do a great job and most users are very grateful that there are tools like these that make authoring of corporate e-learning accessible to almost anyone willing to spend some time learning how to use them.  HOWEVER, there is no ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL e-learning tool out there.  If you hate these tools, by all means move on to something more to your liking.  Life is too short to keep doing things you hate.

It's interesting to me that Captivate itself gets criticized by some for being too complex, while other people (like the original poster) criticize it for not being powerful or flexible enough.  Whenever I see a software tool that gets criticised alike from opposite directions for opposite reasons I think to myself that the designers of that tool have done a pretty good job of positioning it squarely in the middle of the marketplace.  Perhaps that's why Captivate still retains it's spot at the top of the market.