After the confirmation of not having the terrain system and keep battles, I kept my expectations very low for this patch (save for the modding changes!). Still, I sympathize with almost everyone here about the game, it has no charm to it. The things you pointed out aren't meaningful enough for starting a new campaign, especially since these were already available through mods (not trying to say the implementation isn't fantastic as a base game function). Basically, QoL changes are always welcome and should be met with praise, however, as OP says, there is really nothing content-wise to warrant a playthrough of more of the same empty boring Calradia that we have right now.
I agree as well. For me a big enough addition for this patch would have been the roguery perk to let me create a big bandit army... just a new way to play the game, and it could be achieved through a single simple perk. But perks are being added so very slowly. And I get that they want to come up with good ideas for their perks (the new steward perks for example seem like a very cool concept), but for the roguery perk the idea already exists (no defection due to morale... you can also just make it "no defection due to exceeding party limit" instead, to not make morale irrelevant if that's what they're worried about, simple). It just needs implementation, so I don't know why they're not doing it already... it's been so many months, I've literally been waiting for this perk exclusively.
Still, with that put aside, everyone has to take into account their own hours spent in the vanilla experience. Since I have over 1000 hours, it's already hard for me to expect a monthly patch that will bring so many changes that it will make me want to play a new playthrough from start to finish, I've played it so much already. I haven't been playing a long playthrough for quite a few patches now. So I definitely get what everyone is saying, I feel the same way about needing more substance added, but still I have to keep in mind that I played the game so much it's really improbable for the monthly updates to truly make the experience feel like new again. Still, I can appreciate very good additions like those QoLs and the performance improvements because once some significant content comes (which again, can even take the form of one single perk!), it will at least be enjoyable to play and there won't be anymore of the frustrations that used to lower the enjoyment (like having to click 1000 times to upgrade all your diverse troops. I was literally not upgrading my troops because it was so tiresome).
I'll just give the benefit of the doubt and accept that they had other priorities for this patch, which was the modding issue, some multiplayer stuffs and some singleplayer as well which most of it was about performance and QoL. Good enjoyable content can easily come after those. I really hope they understand this point again, that even one simple but good perk can literally change the way the game is played and give another reason to someone to replay the whole game, which is a very valuable thing. A fresh playthrough would be possible If they just gave the possibility of a bandit-like playthrough (no need to go so in-depth either), and they just added a few more bandit units perhaps (looters should also upgrade into something, shouldn't they? at least give them a very cheap bow to replace those mighty rocks! Or some very light low damage javelins, or even better - throwing knives, keeping their throwing trend going).
So yeah, in its current state, with no more menu lags etc, if I haven't played the game 1000 of hours already I would have definitely enjoyed the hell out of it right now I feel like. It's just unfortunate I played so much. This is one fact that I think people are overlooking when complaining about the lack of new content after every patch, that they already spent a generous amount of hours into the game and so it makes sense to be so hardly pleased. Even if I don't get to play the game for long anymore right now, I'd still come back after 2-3-4 months when at least we'll have the terrain system, probably keep battles as well and some other additions, and if we're really lucky siege AI will also be drastically improved by then. It's just a matter of time.
