I think he meant it's sort of a catch-22 in regards to DPC and the player. Not just the player.
For freeroams:
- DPC can just reuse a lot of the code and doesn't have to write entirely separate scenes in separate locations for each branch. On the development side: it covers all the many branches and it can be done quicker.
[...]
For just normal playthrough:
- DPC may have to make new renders for the characters, new objects, the location, etc. Also write more extensive dialogue, soundtrack arrangement, and so on. This results in a possibility of it taking more time for the development overall. Both for the writing aspects and for posing then rendering images. Which could mean updates come out even later than once a year.
I think there's a misunderstanding.
Not having freeroaming does
not necessarily imply using different locations for different branches.
DPC could have had Episode 9
in the same exact location, with
the same exact rendering and
the same exact dialogues that could have been reused among multiple branches, but
just sparing us the useless effort to do forced clicks here and there like trained monkeys.
I mean, at the first part of free roaming of Episode 9 your tasks are
- find your sword
- talk to Jamie
- talk to Sally
- talk to Rusty
Plus the optional tasks
- Talk to Zoey
- Talk to Derek
- Talk to the Girls
To carry out these tasks you have to explore the mansion in order to find things and people.
This exploring could provide a little ( 5% - 10% max ) more fun than normal playthrough
on the first run, but it's just
a trained monkey chore when replaying to explore different branches.
Besides, it's just an
illusion of freedom of exploration, because those tasks
MUST be completed in order the game to progress, and
the order in which you chose to perform them is irrilevant.
So it would be much better if
the exact same rendering and
dialogues with their choice menu were presented to the player in a fixed order in normal playthrough rather than forcing the user to click here and there to activate them.
Then the already seen contents would be
completely skippable with Fast Forward.
Instead, between one FF and the other, we are forced to click here and there like trained monkeys. Possibly with the "darkness effect" like in the "haunted mansion" which makes sense ONLY THE FIRST TIME.
Giving up freeroaming, DPC would have had
less coding effort, since freeroaming is just more complicated than a plain sequential playthrough branching only after menus... which is the basic way to use Ren'Py.
Freeroaming:
- for the Dev is
more complicated to code
- for the Player might
slightly improve the first run experience while
significantly worsening all the subsequent replays.
---
Since we have
5 major branches and the vast majority of players would like
to see them all (but without each time re-solving already solved puzzles...) a better user experience would be achieved if (alternatively):
1) a variable is memorized in "persistent" so that once the player has "found the sword" or "found the keg tap" or "found character X" he is not expected to redo these chores over and over in the next gameplays and he is directly jumped to the SKIPPABLE diaolgues
- OR, if option 1) is too technically complicated -
2) freeroaming is just dropped at once! In this way
coding is simpler, and user
experience is golobally better for the vast majority of us that
would like to play all the 5 branches but
give up because of the forced clicks to redo already done chores over and over... 
