I agree, that is the biggest problem currently. I need complete freedom to place and size story elements. I would also like to have more options on the color and graphics displayed.
I wouldn't mind more control over the storyboard formatting, though that is a much lower priority for me than many other features (calendars, printing, even more control over style sheets, etc.)
One thing I *don't* want, however, is for the formatting to overshadow ease of content entry. I don't know if you can easily design a tool like this to have the best of both options. I don't know that it can just be an option you can use or not.
To give you an example, for many years I did all my process mapping in Microsoft Visio. Then I switched to IBM BlueWorks. When I first started using BlueWorks I was frustrated with the lack of control over formatting. But the ease of creating process documentation and the time saved were so striking that I stopped using Visio almost completely, only using Visio when I needed a highly formatted process map—usually for printed media.
Right now, I find it easy to use the storyboard, though I agree it can get messy looking. I quickly map out the story, link to topics, and use in navigation mode at the table. It is a core feature of the program that I rely on. If it becomes more like Visio, where I have to spend a lot of time fiddling with the formatting it would be much less useful, albeit prettier.
Being able to customize the fill colors should be an option that shouldn't post much threat to ease of use.
More control of icons...hmmm. I like that it matches the icon of the linked topic. I'd rather have control over the topic icons and let the storyboard continue to use the icons of linked content. If you could have the option to override this behavior to put your own icons on an ad hoc basis, without affecting the default behavior of using the icon of the linked topic, fine.
Being able to move nodes and flow lines around...this is what most of those complaining about the story board seem to be wishing for. I would think that this is very hard to code. Major products developed by huge companies are mostly one or the other. Visio offers great granular control but little in the way of automation. BlueWorks is awesome for quickly creating flow charts because of the automated mapping, but you have limited control over formatting. IBM has developed more formatting control over the years, but new formatting features are added slowly and incrementally because losing the ease of automation would destroy much of the product's value.
I would love to have both—and others with a greater breadth of experience in these kinds of tools might have more insight on what is possible and how hard the coding for all this is. But to me, it seems like it would be asking a lot of a small company. They likely have to make hard decisions and compromises and I hope when it comes to the storyboard, those choices are made in favor of ease of content entry.