Have Extended collections been dropped?

You’re not the only one!

Just an update. I reached out directly to Support and they can't provide any definite answer on when the Extended Collections feature will be released, but they said the team is still working on it. This does answer my question whether it has been shelved or not -- it hasn't. 😁

🙋also eagerly awaiting here. What plug-ins did you try to replicate the functionality?

​@Loesing_Chet the suite necessary to address my company's needs at the moment, which could 100% be solved by Extended Collections instead, is kind of insane in my opinion:

• https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1271383289541400562 - To copy multiple collections at once
• https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1334258818515407420 - To Swap Variables from an external collection to local
• Figma's native copy and paste on Variables to update the collections individually
• https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1463049693632440758 - To delete duplicates when I copy and paste to update a collection
• https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1470820954128979386 - this one has just been released and helps me fix conflicting aliases after updating collections.

I have also experimented using Tokens Studio (https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/843461159747178978) but it doesn't handle Modes the way same way Figma does and ends outputting variables that are different from what was given as an input (when importing from Figma). 

This one https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1263743870981744253 is also valuable (and is the only Sheets-syncing plugin that correctly handles Aliases of all types) but there's no simple/compatible solution for exporting the variables in the format it demands.