I do see your points there, but if we're talking about solo work or a very small team, I'd pick Figma any time. It's free. You don't have to download cracked versions if you're just starting out. You don't have to spend $99 or starting a trial, just to find yourself hooked to a tool and having to pay to continue using it. It does lack some features that come out of the box with Sketch, but you can say the same the other way around.

Filesize is non existent hence the cloud, and not having "local" files aren't that big of a deal in our age of technology and wi-fi spots in every corner. I'm talking about US of course so your experience might be different.

I do see the problem with subscription, but, sketch license has it's downfalls because it has one license, which costs $99 and only takes care of one person. So in all you have to add "seats" and that costs grows up big time. Figma is using $12/person/month, so it might actually get more expensive, I can't tell. You can also have a team of two people in Figma for free.

Have been using Sketch for 3 years, and then within a day I switched to Figma. Never looked back.

I only miss some plugins, like Looper... But honestly, it was just for play more than anything. I don't see myself using Craft plugins at all because instead of using dummy data I started caring for content, where it goes and how it will look like in the end. There's always lorem ipsum for help, so why bother making it more "prettier".

I'll agree that a test file, a file that is identical in sketch & figma would be an interesting way to see which is better performance wise. Now, how do we determine what is "big project" though. What that "big project" needs to utilize that gets both tools to the limits.