Are you kidding me? We had more new features in 0.76b1 than in almost ... I dunno... the last 3 before that, put together?
I don't think we're short on people adding new functions to the engine. How many Lobby replacements are there?
Heavy hitters with lots of free time, for the major, grungy stuff that Nobody Wants To Do... ok, I'll buy that. Nobody feels like writing a new model and animation format. K. Nobody wants to do major changes to the pathfinders. K. Nobody's writing new AIs... ok, that's a little worrisome, but only a little.
Most of the big requests hinge on the two giant ugly things above. New hitbox code was available at one point, it'll surely show up again. Ok, so nobody has given me CEG code that will allow me to use animated textures yet, or moved all of the hardcoded FX to CEGs yet

But tbh, that's not earth-moving stuff. We can all live without it.
I guess it's fair to say that I'm not really concerned. LUA solved a lot of major game design problems, at least for those who've figured out how to use it.
But there ain't a lot of beyond that anyhow, other than remaining sync issues, and whatever bugs turn up in LUA. After all that's solved... the only stuff that's left is either tinsel, or major stuff that somebody very talented and motivated will have to handle. It's not going to be a problem we can just throw quantity at.