I think the main problem is the way TC is getting targetted at a general audience. TestComplete would love to put up a sign saying "you don't need to be a programmer to use our test suite", so the software gets dumbed down and "simplified", but the reality of it all is that 99.9% of test engineers are programmers. And those programmers are missing the features you decided to strip out or not put in because they were "too complicated".
TestComplete is not Microsoft Word. It's a tool for programmers, I wish the bears would finally get it and stop trying to make it something it's not. Programmers don't need pretty UI's, or animated windows, or auto-complete that looks pretty but doesn't work half the time. Programmers need something functional, flexible, and fast.
In the meantime, I think your only recourse is to use COM and build a controller that works for you. I highly recommend using a SQL database to organize it all, that your controller can chat with and do its thing. This is what we did here and it works pretty well. Ironic how the UI designed for 10 year olds forced me to write a whole set of applications to be able to do what I needed to.
The reality of it is a lot of things need to go from TC before they can even think of implementing what you suggested. The project file format needs to go (use proper XML that's why it was invented), the results format needs to go (storing data as HTML and images is nuts!), the current COM interface needs to go (it's ridiculously useless, it does about as much as you can do just from one toolbar in TestComplete), the UI needs to go (it's slow, bloated, and buggy), etc etc.. Really the only thing that makes me love TestComplete is the Object Browser and the test engine itself, most of the rest is rubbish at best.
