I don't agree with that at all. When writing this, I'm the top 29th Patreon creator on the entire platform, all categories – that's the highest I've ever been. And I just reached an all-time high in patron count, too - just 112 patrons shy of 20,000 patrons. I'm not seeing any decline in interest or a loss of faith – I'd say it's the opposite. Even though it's taken 15 months to release one episode, I've felt immense support from my patrons, with very few complaints throughout the development cycle.
I get that it's a long time to wait, but the content you get with each release matches the waiting time. Episode 11 was comparable in size to the entirety of Season 1. In terms of content, it was the biggest release for me and probably in the history of AVN.
The longer development time per episode is the result of the game reaching its end stages, and the story is branching out even more. With every episode, I need to put extra work and consideration into all the branches that I create. And even after I do that, you'll notice that not every character gets the spotlight. That's the beauty and the curse of the branching.
I won't release something I'm not happy with, and I've always been transparent about the development process. The rest of the game will take a long time to develop. Players should expect this; I don't hide that fact.
My workflow is as optimized as it gets by now, but I'm constantly looking for ways to improve the speed of everything I do. Ultimately, there's no getting around the fact that manual work is a bottleneck.