RE Eric / game overall a few points for the dev / posters on this thread:
- Eric. Keep him, but get rid of him. I.E Have an option to get rid of him, not by doing tasks and having to see him get on with Alice / Lisa, not by seeing him with mom, just give Max the option to put a landmine down when he first enters the house. That way, people who don't want to see that content can skip it straight away and hopefully reduce the amount of people complaining about him. Those who like the challenge or like the type of content can keep him around. Pleases both sides.
- Keep developing the content for Eric. I'm impartial to Eric content (keep him or leave it, is whatever), but those that like it are just as insufferable as those that don't like it (basically: humans are annoying and none of you / me are an exception). Balancing things out (by developing both routes), will output the best response from people imo (won't please everyone, but at least it's fair to both audiences). PS (not for the developer but for everyone else): If you just want your route developed, you can skip on telling me, I know and everyone else knows you guys exist.
- For posters (exceptions apply): Stop trying to argue that he's a challenge or whatever, there are plenty of ways to introduce challenges without forcing people who don't like certain type of content to watch it. A way of perhaps (hopefully) get the point across is this: Imagine if the only way to keep Eric was to watch 10 scenes per week of scat (Max and Lisa eating it, Alice and mom bathing in it, Eric taking a shit on Kira's face, etc.). You wouldn't like it, neither do people who dislike the Eric content. PS: For some (not all) that are arguing that he's a challenge but are instead so obviously into ntr and are just trying to get a better look out to everyone by seeming impartial, you're not fooling anyone.
- Reduce the grind. Seriously, please... The original game was extremely annoying for this, you can improve on it... please do so.
- Perhaps get a team of playtesters if you haven't already, send them private builds before posting them for your patrons and see if that helps reduce the amount of bugs.
- Keep up the good work.
I agree with most of what you said.
Although it is the developer's decision to whether the players will be forced or not to get through Eric's content, as I think it's much healthier for the developer if they feels able to choose the direction for their game to follow instead of being forced to listen to the demands of the player-base (as that's a very demotivating factor and one of the reasons why I think a lot of developers just quit making their games).
Now the solution, per say. Well as you said the developer can try to find a way to make everyone happy, although if he chooses to force the Eric content out on people, then the players are the ones with the choice, of keeping playing this game, stop playing this game or finding their own way to avoid it, like they did last time... through mods.