Hi again! some answers to your post.
Point 1) Einspruch! (Objection) You are only looking at the situation of the sheep, eh, patrons, who have an appaling lack of rights in case of contract violation. I have patroned myself via various methods and patreon is one of the worst. But back to the point, L&P knows that his game does not belong to him fully any longer! Proof is this farcical "Decisions of Life", which is "porn" for Teenies, he has on Patreon. That he circumvents Patreon rules show quite openly that he went into this with his eyes open.
And please, If you are listening to your heart of hearts you know quite well, that no matter how Patreon beautifies itself, most people patroning there are closing a contract. This contract might be appalingly lopsided on rights the patron has, which is why Patreon is such a haven for milkers, eh, developers with unethical intentions, but at least a spiritual contract is closed. The number of patrons in the classical sense might be 1-2 of 10, not more.
2) Einspruch! You are deliberately focusing on only one part of the equation. Even L&P´s greatest critics have praise for his graphics, that is not the point on norms. It is the point that he is ultra-slow even taking the quality of art inro the consideration! That is simple math. 30 game days, we are on day 12 after 4 years. That would be even on the old speed 10 years to develop AWAM, which is far beyond any industry norm even for Indie games!
But since he went to smaller updates, 1/3 of a gameday per update now and as we can see it will be 2 updates per year max. (despite any promises that the smaller size would speed up development,"yeah right"), AWAM would end comfortably somewhere in the 2030s! That is really pushing the envelope and I find it extremly unlikely that AWAM will ever be finished under the current conditions.
3) I rhink we can agree on parts of his personality. Other parts of his personality have still air above for growth. Not only his rapid and often very uncalled for aggression does not paint a pretty picture, there are further things shining through. You can be an artist and perfectionist without being a self-censored self-censored at the same time!
4) Objection again! L&P openly stated that he went for 1/3 of a gameday updates to speed up development! Something which did not happen and something I predicted from the start of it. This 1/3 gameday update took longer than some of the former halfday to fullday updates! While it might be packed, the 0.130 update stil does represent only a 1/3 gameday update and it took longer than before! That promised speed up of updates is a complete failure and I am convinced that it is deliberately done.
5+6) Even if we give him 6 pics per day if we look at it magnanimously (and the GPU problems you overappreciated very much), this is still slow. You even said so too, but what makes it MUCH WORSE is L&P´s statement of working around 11 hours per day on the game! This is just disturbing and bombs your argument out of the water! Even with preparations, research and perfectionism counted in, his output in comparison to his own alleged workhours is catastrophical! Such low output in ratio of the workhours gone in is either incompetence or deliberately done. L&P has shown that he is not incompetent, so by elimination of arguments what remains is that he is deliberately dragging his feet!
As for other developers who bring out great quality renders at higher speeds normally, here are a couple: "After Choices", "1thousand", "Mutt & Jeff", "Oceanlab", Arath Sin", "Nefastus", "InsaneErotica", "King of Lust" and "Captain Kitty".
