Right, and I don't ever suggest they do, but considering they've officially decided to cut support for the game opening it up isn't all that bad of an idea. I figure we wouldn't even have Rising Storm if Tripwire had a different stance on modding with the previous titles.
Except that still requires people to download files when connecting to the server, and if I've learned anything over the years, 2014 was the last year before the average gamer became overwhelmingly intolerant and blessed the communities with an attention span no longer than 5 minutes.
With that being said I still can't find reason to justify the exclusion of something to help and not even necessarily directly fix Skirmish. Whats the point in releasing a final patch aimed at fixing things as an effort to retain a playerbase while excluding things that would only benefit that cause. I preferred Skirmish overwhelmingly to the larger modes, but because Skirmish was still active, during down times I would join larger modes. Now that Skirmish is gone I've just uninstalled the game entirely...
I'm in the same boat in that I cannot find something to fill the void I'm left with. The gamemode and its rules were so unbelievably appealing and nothing else in this money craved industry comes close. Games like Hell Let Loose, Squad, and Post Scriptum suffer from scope creep that simply overwhelmed their production efforts. With time I can see them being incredible games, but when I compare them to games prior like Battlefield 1942, the mod FH1942, BF2 and its expansions, Forgotten Hope 2, the Red Orchestra titles... It becomes pretty evident that these new titles lack gameplay features that fill those long moments of inactivity.