I am writing this from the top of my head rather than pre planned so I hope it comes across as intended rather than a whole lot of mess.
Firstly, my confidence was waning, the reason was constant missed dates and an over reliance on discord for communication, seeing the lead dev in the community discord throughout most of the day (I know this isn't a fact but more of a perception still....)
Recently though my spirits were peaked with the introduction of DS&S, at last I thought, I can start actually planning my settlement in earnest. This was again dashed by a missed deadline.
So that was the negative bit, now for how my head is on the project at present. I scan through discord and see that the team are quieter, whilst this interaction will be missed by the community, it gives me great confidence that the team is working as hard as possible to get the work done.
The removal of dates from DS&S means that no more will confidence get knocked and whilst we all know its around the corner and some people are itching to see it, this is a much better situation imho.
It also seems the team have listened to the community, we don't need things dangling like a carrot, sometimes a simple design journal written by snipe on the current process of the map generation, or some peaks into combat are a much incentivising than a date.
So I wish to say in earnest, thank you for listening, thank you for the hard work, and please snipe keep the journals like these coming:
https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/30921/meanwhile-back-in-the-lab-combat-technique-design
https://chroniclesofelyria.com/forum/topic/31535/shiny-time-making-the-maps-part-3