I feel the need to clarify that I didn't start the thread with the intent of bagging Frontier, more to open a discussion on just how
quiet things have been of late.
As I stated in the OP, I am certain there are good reasons for this diminishment in community interaction from Frontier. I don't feel
entitled to answers from them, I have never once asked for a roadmap for DLC, and I'm not asking for anything in particular; I only mean to say that things have been dead quiet. Likewise, the July Catch-Up did nothing but confirm what everyone already knew, which is that the Frontier staff are working from home. Now we're in August.
Another thing that concerned me was that there was a
wide gap between 1.2.4 and 1.2.5, and the latter really didn't add much to the game. The fixes were minimal and addressed very little in terms of what people needed addressing. This was, of course, during a period of confusion and uncertainty in the UK especially surrounding Covid-19 and the response thereto, so I don't blame them for not having something more substantial to show us, but even so this is just as assumed explanation rather than one given by Frontier.
I don't doubt that we will see something
eventually. To be truthful, I hadn't even played the game in a long time until the day I started this thread, and even then I've since put it away again simply because there are certain features I want before I dig back in again (or at least, I want something
new). The main things I want are longer, curved rope pieces (up to 12m) to build realistic primate rope courses and of course mesh building pieces. Now, we have had absolutely no confirmation of either of these features, so I'm not specifically waiting for them (that would be delusional), but I think it shows that even something "boring" (i.e., not flashy) like that would really regenerate my interest at this point. New animals and gameplay features would be nice, sure, but right now I'd be happy with something small but engaging like a few more bits of rope to play around with.
In any event, interest in the game dwindled prior to every DLC so far. There was a major downturn especially between the Arctic Pack and the South America Pack. This is probably just like that. They'll drop a new DLC
at some point and the hype will return, and everyone will be back into the game for a couple of months and we'll get more updates. And then we'll all get bored again.