Me and a few friends had this discussion once. From a marketing perspective it's probably best to group them into monthly patches or do what KSP does and just have them "soon, soooon, very soon, almooost, PATCH TIME". But with an Early Access/alpha/beta I think it's best to stick to weekly since your top priority should be making and improving the game. Then my friends shut up because:
There certainly is a fine balance that is entirely situational. Frequent patches may work for one game but not another. Frequent patches may work well for a game at one stage of development but not a later stage. Lots of moving parts...
We got weekly patches for the longest time for SMNC. It did a fair bit in burning the company out and making the community feel too entitled.
This happened to Awesomenauts as well until they switched to this system. The Vault fixed the community and the developer fatigue in one fell swoop.
