Well, my father died between v0.17 and v0.18, and I moved countries as well, so that was a special case. That took months upon months to get through. (The legal nonsense behind it all was a mess. Both from my father's death and moving countries.) v0.18 did have slightly less content than v0.17, but still more than v0.16.
I've thought about this for a while but how close are devs to being able to reliably use tools like chatgpt and other workflows to significantly reduce time to create updates whilst keeping quality the same. Might just be a pipe dream. Surely we're close to tools like blender integrating with chatgpt to assist with asset creation etc. not that I know anything about making games but would love to know your thoughts since I think it may change the industry for the better