At the current state of rebuilding a lot of the game I doubt we'd see strong defined patch notes ahead of time. Like you said they just can't make promises at this point in time that have the chance to do even more damage to the reputation of the game within the community. For now I think getting the patch notes an hour before servers restart on the day of the patch is sufficient enough and I wouldn't really ask for more. Maybe in a year when the game is more solid can they start being a little more flexible with their information.

Yoshi said they'd give us an in-depth description of the new battle system in his next producer letter so I'm really looking forward to that.