I see the weekly meeting of the NTR Eric Man Love committee has convened and decided to post en masse...
You don't compete with Eric at all! There is no competition as Eric is programmed to win EVERY BATTLE!
You can delay him with impotency and buy off influence with bribes, but in the end Eric gets the sex and you get NOTHING!
If you think not getting sex is a sex game is fun I guess you also think not having bullets makes a FPS great and better than any other FPS.
How is Eric programmed to win every battle? That is proven completely wrong by the fact that:
1. Eric could be got rid of (if you choose so) -> You win
2. Eric turned into your bitch (if you keep him) -> You win
Just because he won the early battle, doesn't mean that he won the war. And that is sadly something that anti-Eric people don't seem to understand. "Take 1 step backwards to move 2 steps forward", but anti-Eric people only saw the "take 1 step backwards", and assumed you don't get forward at all. Eric is immediately associated with NTR and the anti-NTR players are so offended/angry that they simply demanded Eric to be removed without actually exploring the possibilities of what could've been done with the character.
To me, the problem is not Eric (as a character), but the weakness here is how Eric is used in the game by DS. There are A LOT that can be done with Eric, but DS didn't really get to explore this because the anti-Eric people became extremely vocal about it.
Here's an easy example of how Eric could've been used more appropriately:
1. Introduce Eric as is. An asshole who clearly wanted to bang Ann, and every women in the house.
2. Eric gained more and more control over the family. Max losing more and more influence toward the women in the house.
3. Eric started to make a move to all the women in the house.
4. Eric made mistakes on each woman depending on their personal storyline (e.g.: got caught jerking off while peeping on Alice, etc)
5. Max found out about these mistakes and showed these evidence to each woman (one by one)
6. Each woman's mistake could be one version each (start from Lisa, then Alice, then Kira)
7. Slowly but surely, Max is turning the women of the house against Eric
8. Ann is still not convinced because she's under Eric's control. Ann + Eric vs the rest.
9. Max worked together with Kira, Alice, Lisa to beat Eric.
10. Eric got caught red-handed by Ann, and she had no choice but to kick Eric out.
11. Evidence forwarded to the workplace, Eric got fired, Ann got promoted.
Done, much better than what happened in the game. But we never got there because by step 3, some people were already super upset and forced DS to kinda make a change in direction.
Alternately, Eric could also be a worthy ally to have. Eric had what Max didn't (money and power). What should've happened is something like this:
1. Go to war vs Eric -> as above example on how to beat Eric
2. Become allies with Eric -> advance to sex faster and easier because Eric's words are valued more than Max's by the family. Remember nobody wanted to have sex with Max unless being told by someone else it's OK. Max is seriously a loser type of character. But with Eric's endorsement and support, these women will be more open to having sexual encounter with Max.