I looked back and realized that you were a CR during the release of the second patch. For the first one, both the work prior to the release and the release itself were under Retamar's term if I read the dates correctly.
I wonder if the CRs (even the one before you) had any sort of involvement in the patch development because if you look at it from a community perspective, the patch is supposed to bring changes / new features improving the experience of the community players, so in order for it to match the community expectations, isn't it best to get the opinion of the community representative?
Maybe it has already been explained before and if this is the case, then I apologize. But if not, I would be interested to know a bit more about it. I doubt being the only one sharing that feeling but sometimes, the developers give this impression (not only on NW or Warband) to take decisions from their ivory tower, and because they often don't really play the game actively, especially not in a competitive aspect, their decisions end-up being completely disconnected from the reality.
No hate towards the devs, even if it ends up being a shared opinion, that doesn't mean its right, but I'm just curious.