When you say "it used the bare minimum renders possible", that's probably intentional. The one complaint that has pervaded this game since the beginning is that it contains a whole bunch of renders that don't lead to sex. Even today I noticed a post asserting that the upcoming update is going to just be walking and talking.
So in terms of characters that patrons barely care about, the Vicky event is likely to be the one that L&P can pare down without it adversely effecting anything. As far as I can tell, doing the scene makes no difference to any of the routes yet. You'd probably need to be playing all four Filthy routes for it to even make sense, much like Sophia's actions in the prison event. Her fantasies about Larry make no sense on the lesbian route, but I imagine make more sense playing the Dylan route with Sophia finding out what MILF means and pondering about gangbangs.
Time will probably tell if L&P can find the right balance between having enough renders to be showing Sophia's progression and storyline (and not telling), with keeping renders down
This is where every creator has to think about the balancing act of too many / too few rnders, especially if they are trying to show more "realistic" progression to sex, as opposed to female MC becoming a fuckslut within 5 minutes.
To use an example from a very new game. In the first chapter of "Measuring my cum", the male MC has a conversation with his mother in the car on the way back from seeing a doctor. Now this conversation was relayed to us against a black screen, with no a single render. Now I realise that the developer was probably saving his renders for the later scenes when the mum strips down to her underwear. Now personally I felt that that that developer could have added one or two renders in the car to better set the scene.
Now just imagine if L&P had been doing that car conversation. We all now he could easily have spent 20 renders for such a simple conversation with every scene shown at a SLIGHTLY different angle. Its should be a balance between those two extremes.
Bringing it back to AWAM, many of probably could have shaved off a few extranoneous scenes where the characters are doing proverbial walking and talking. If L&P had pared down these unnecessary scenes then either he could have released slightly quicker or have progressed the story slightly further in the updates already released. Now ironically some of felt that L&P almost pushed the story TOO fast in v115 as Sophia seemed to progress rather more rapidly in her corruption with Larry and DeShawn than she had done previously with the main LI's.
I guess we will find out soon I next couple of updates whether L&P is trying to speed the story up. OR was it easier for Sophia to flirt with these new characters that she did nt have a familial connection with, or even those characters that we simply part of her social circle. Is it the fact that Sophia did nt know Larry or DeShawn that allowed to progress more quickly that say if it had been Neil or Dylan (just picking two characters at random).
The proof will be in next couple of releases. Will Sophia now flirt similarly with various LI's that she knows or is even related to? I think pretty much of all us want the story to progress more quickly going forward without losing that believable speed of corruption. Again it is balance. Most of us AWAM fans don't want Sophia to become an instant fuckslut, but also most of us don't want to have to wait a decade in real time for her to have sex.....
