Something I've realized more now as I've gotten older is that people generally overestimate how much a small indie team can get done when working on a big project like a game or a website.
And two factors that come to mind that are obstacles for small teams are:
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The "front end" and "back end" type stuff is separate and when you have to spend a month working on more behind-the-scenes "back end" stuff, people wonder why you aren't adding more forward-facing features or content
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Everything in life can really bring everything to a screeching halt. "My dog is sick", "I had a death in the family", "I was traveling last week", "I'm struggling with depression," "I got sick yesterday", "I'm having trouble sorting my taxes", "My car got a flat tire on Monday." These things can bring development down to a crawl and there's really nothing that can be done if hiring more people isn't possible. If your team has like 5 people, there's not a lot of room for people who can pick up tasks when someone is out of commission.
So really, best case scenario is that expectations should be set that users/players don't expect a constant river's flow of new updates. It's really hard to live up to expectation, especially expectations that are usually set from bigger teams.
(or sometimes the expectation of pace is set when the project first starts and motivation is sky-high and the creator or creators are working day-and-night obsessively)
And it also sucks that people generally want "transparency" on these things, therefore you might be obligated to actually share to the public that your grandma died or whatever to justify why you're going slow. It's like you're asking your users for forgiveness.
thinking about small teams again for no Particular Reason. it's a tough life!!!