The way I take your opening line, is that he is cutting ties with the hard-core crowd? "A Take It, or Leave It" attitude. Basically the same one we've dealt with for years. And these are the same people who have supported TW since day 1. We've hoped and asked since then for many of the initial promised boxtop features, to be fixed. Many have gone out and added several mods to test the limits of what was available.
If this F-14 "sim" turns out like we're hearing, I don't know that I'll purchase it. TMF has given us an excellent model(s) that is/are hard to beat. The only thing missing is true A-G radar targeting, but that is a limit of the game. As for a new terrain, there are several freeware out there that beat the stock ones hands down. I'd rather just invest my money into CA and keep them afloat. I didn't even pay for the last Exp2. It was a gift from a good friend who paid for it for me.
I like the ideas of the DLC, just not overjoyed about the content. I've bought 1 so far, despite it being already in out as a skin. By looking at the number of people who have given money to keep CA's operating budget alive, TK should see that these same people are not going to pony up money for little updates. IMO, he needs to raise the price of the next sim. $19.99 is a steal for any game, but in order to allow it to progress, the price needs to be increased a bit. And that will hopefully squash the budgetary limits he mentions frequently.
I'm thankful for the patches over the years. Many were excellent upgrades with new content or fixes for broke ones. Lately those patches have seemed more like beta testing, but that dead horse has been beaten already.
We are the consumer, TK has the product that we want. But is he keeps going down this path of the same ol' content in a new shiny package, his product will stop selling.
-Jeff