VFX & 3D:
A lot of feature requests I came across have to do with visual effects and 3D, Instead of moving After Effects towards becoming a duplicate of other great VFX programs. I suggest to strengthen the things After Effects is good at and no other program can provide. AE could focus on how to make the collaboration between 3D and VFX programs better.
Progress:
Some people also have the impression that the updates to After Effects are slow and nothing gets updated in every release. One thing you have to realize is that the After Effects Team just re-wrote some of the key components of After Effects. So even when It might look like nothing changed, After a couple bug fixes the programs should be more stable and ready for new features.