I understand your frustration if you view it from that point. I, however, view Patron more like: I will support you for a while and then another game will get some of my money, or support them on the 1 dollar level. That way, it is not a huge investment on my part. You just have to set your own limit on how much money in total you want to spend.
And if they take their time and deliver a masterpiece in 5 years, I think we will be well pleased by that time. Maybe not now, but good things can come to those who wait.
When that happens I will become a patron for a month for a $20, maybe even higher tier, get the full game for a decent price (like all my other games) and enjoy.
A few posts back the dev got butthurt I got the money issue into discussion. Proper developers always invest money and time in games but they also bank on the final product paying for those expenses and then some. These guys seem to want us to pay for the whole thing.
No one can say for sure when the final complete product will be released in this instance. I play a lot of indie games on <vaporised water> (don't know whether we can advertise other sites or not, sue me) and usually, they release alfa or beta versions of their games but you only pay ONCE. Patreon (I know I saw this one many times in this forum) and others like it got corrupted and a lot of people (devs and patrons alike) think this is the way it's supposed to work. I agree to some extent but I see others that work much harder and get much more content out for their patrons (not always that many) than a lot of the "developers" trying their hand at an 18+ only game.
I tried and succeeded in making a game myself. It was just a short project mostly to see how hart it actually is. Using an engine like renpy is ridiculously simple and the only time-consuming thing for me was the art (used daz). I have no idea how long it takes this team's illustrator to come with new images but I know there are a lot of assets being reused. I wish we had more of an idea of what's going on behind the scenes, like other devs started doing, e.g.: action trackers, a full plan including completion date (without too many spoilers where possible). It would be easier for some to see exactly how long this (but not only this) game will take, where it will go, and then decide what tier patron/supporter they want to be or if it's worth it.