We have added the feature issue type manually to our jira issue type structure. This has prevented us from being able to use some automation aspects within Jira. HOWEVER, Project management tools and many companies have moved to Agile which is about Feature releases. We have company initiatives that have Epics linked to them. From there we create features under the epics as it may take more than 1 delivery team to complete an Epic.
I would like to see Atlassian have a feature issue type as standard technology.
No I will not rename the epic to feature and create a "new epic" above the orignal to resolve this issue as that suggestion is a very backwards solution to resolving a standard process.