I would say that, overall, I do not disagree with what you are saying. There are two thing though that I feel are the key points to the root causes of the current state of the game, and what has led to the disaster of the Age of Disaster (War).
The first of the two things is related to this.
I honestly do not believe at this point in time that Conan Exiles has ever had a “stable code base”, or at least not a stable foundation upon which could support the amount of growth in which the game has experianced over the years. And let’s face reality, since launch day the game had grown considerably. Just on the exiled lands map there have been new biomes added, new dungeons added, all of the new items from the DLC’s, the battle passes, the BLB. The addition of sorcery and mounted travel. The game has expanded tremendously (and shrunk in other ways coughsurvivalgameexperiancecough) And that goes without mentioning the addition of the Isle of Siptah map and the things which are exclusive to that.
The point is, with all of these things being added onto a foundation that was probably shaky from the very beginning (I mean, early access was buggy if you want to be honest, and official launch was no better), then after six years of adding and subtracting components, mechanics, items and recipes (yes how many times have simple recipes changed over the years for…reasons…) then is it really all that surprising that the state of the game is frankly a mess at this point? And due to this we fine the following problems:
Updates, literally, broke the game, every single time
Updates not only broke the game but resulted in players being banned
Known errors were not corrected in a timely manner
Old errors were re-introduced and ignored
Now, what I have written above is NOT MEANT AS AN EXCUSE FOR FUNCOM to continue to release untested, or under-tested and or, and in all honestly KNOWN broken updates riddled with bugs. That is inexcusable. Yet at the same time being forced to put out a new “chapter” every 3 months led them to be put “under the gun” to put out whatever they had and try to fix it after the fact because “deadlines had to be met”. Expect…as we have seen…those fixes aren’t happening after the fact.
I think that Funcom has realized that they literally cannot keep up this sort of pace and actually keep this game running, especially have this Age of Disappointment, and that is why they are now going to a six month interval instead of 3 months. Twice the amount of time to work on the update if better, at least one would hope, but I still think that giving themselves a set time frame is an error from the very beginning because now they are beholden to said time or they will be faced with rage induced negative feedback that they are late with their chapter!!! OMG GAME IS DEAD BECAUSE THE CHAPTER SHOULD HAVE BEEN RELEASED YESTERDAY AND IT ISN’T OUT YET! PROOF IT IS IN MAINTENANCE MODE!!! Crap like that in 100 different threads within an hour.
Then you have the second key part that I mentioned which is at the root of the problem the game is facing in it’s current state. And that is also something that you brought up as well, but it really aught to be expanded upon.
It has become blatantly obvious at this point in time that the current people in charge of making the decision for Conan Exiles are completely and utterly out of touch with the players of Conan Exiles, and even with what the game itself was / is supposed to be. Conan Exiles was made to be a Survival Sandbox game with barbaric PvP as well as PvE with a heavy allowance from the very beginning (even in early access) for modding and private servers to be rented to create your own vision for the game (which is why there are so many bloody server setting and sliders). What do we have now? Certainly not a survival game, that element has been virtually eliminated. Surely not a Sandbox game as with the Age/Chapter system they have made it more and more a priority to force the players to “do this limited time thing” in order to actually get any benefits from the game. No longer are you encouraged to “play your own way”, hell you can’t even pick up a bottle of dye you find in a chest and apply it to your coarse fiber pants at level 5 any longer!!! No, you are being level gated, location gated and forced to play “their way” more and more with every update. You cannot even sort your own items how you want to any more, they took that option from you as well FFS!
And that brings up a big point, they are completely clueless about what the people who play Conan Exiles actually do, how they play and what they want. When they announced the removal of precise stack splitting they said it was because THEY NEVER USED IT ANYWAY, yet the vast majority of the players used it almost exclusively and were extremely vocal about their hatred of this unwanted, unneeded and utterly despised changed to the point that Funcom had to add it back in. And this wasn’t even the only recent change they have made that was so utterly hated they have had to reverse either, to mixed results.
Mobs spinning and doing 180’s in a split second to “always be facing the player” to make combat more challenging. Removed (to a point). The removal of mouse facing combat? Removed (only if you know that there is a setting you have to click on to do so). I am sure there are others but you get the point. Which makes me wonder WTF they haven’t reverted the utterly reviled dye system that is so hated?
Now, when you look at the above issues. A foundation that was shaky from the start and crumbling if not in complete ruins at best currently and a team of leaders who do not understand the very basics of what the game is / is supposed to be nor what the players themselves actually do in said game or even want then you end up with on last issue.
I think this stems from the fact that the current leaders frankly are so out of touch that they simply do not know how to communicate with the playerbase. When they have made attempts it has not been well received, and often rightly so (the excuse that the size of the dye bench being the reason for the change to the dye system being one of the most asinine things any company could have ever given!!!). So they have decided that they are going to make the game that “they want”, and in so doing they stopped bothering to communicate to anyone else because they simply don’t care / don’t understand. I hope that I am wrong on this last point, but I am afraid that I may not be.
Do I spend them when I realize this? Not usually. 
I mean, I’ve been doing just fine without them and I don’t know what I want to spend them on right now so I’ll wait until I’m sure. Then I’m at 22 unspent… 
Again, lack of communication leaves us with little actual knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes.
