I literally said level design, and I expected that to key in its world building and art passing. But it guess it didnt. And I did mention their custom models, so I dont know how you veered off with the "custom asset" bit. I was expecting it implied, but the implication didn't carry again I guess.
My comment was about how the phrasing of your post implied the use of existing assets negated any work they may have put in, either to actually leverage their third party assets or make use of the ones they made in house.
The envy is very much on point, I feel it in my bones hehe. Under normal circumstances you'd be on point mention that its early alpha. But issues they have, and what they have done so far are things which I happen to know how to do myself in a short allotted time. With the time they've had, its surprising they haven't done it. Your response of the "20 years" thing does carry some weight. For all I know it could just be a mark of the character modelers time, while coders is very different.
I didn't say this outright in the last post, but their 20 years of game development doesn't even say what aspect of the companies they worked for. The team could well have people who worked in marketing or sales as well as people who worked in development specifically. They clearly have at least one person capable of creating new assets, and they seem to have someone capable of programming, if I judge by the launcher. But if the team only has one or two of each, this is a big project for them to carry on their own. Heck, it could easily be a two person team with an average of ten years each, and if it's ten years of specializing in one thing then they're probably going to be pretty lacking in the other hats they're suddenly expected to wear.
That said, I think that judging by their online presence and the setup of their patron, website, and steam pages, it's safe to assume that at least one team member is specialized on the marketing and consumer facing aspect, rather than game development. They could be hiring that out, but it seems unlikely if judging by the consistency.
Not to mention twenty years doesn't go very far, if it's a sum rather than an average. Two people? Ten years each. Four? Five years. Ten people? Two years is hardly enough to be a developer experienced in rapid design, development and deployment of a large scale 3d game.
Edit:
I never claim using marketplace assets is bad. But when it consists of 90% of a product, and making so much bank as if they were your own work... Its a balance between effort and income that worries me. So much less effort with all these shortcuts, it hides the flaws in ones own made content and lack of ones own made content, but cashing out anyway? Such a thing is morally bankrupt to me.
Something to consider here is timelines. One and a half weeks ago, when the last update hit? They were at 900 subscribers. The prior update, four or so weeks ago? 600 subscribers. When I first subscribed nine weeks ago? 400 subscribers on Patreon. The game released on Steam ten days ago, which means they've picked up $0 from that thus far. In terms of incoming money to finance further development, they're only just starting to hit a point where their income can do anything beyond just supporting them.
In January, with ~600 subs, their Patreon made anywhere from $1,800 to $60,000 before Patreon's cut, depending on subscriber tiers. Making the (very false) assumption that every subscriber was Ascended, and thus has access to every update, they would have made $12,000 before Patreon's cut, which is barely enough to support just the in-house team depending on how many people are there. For the ~900 subscribers they had by the end of February, those numbers change to $2,700 min, $90,000 max, $18,000 bad estimate pre-cut. The game has had literally no updates since February (aside from bugfix builds), and the next one is probably this weekend.
I'd watch what goes on in the future, rather than complaining about what's going on right now. Development wise, the game doesn't even have many of their core planned mechanics and features yet. Your specific complaint about the sex scenes is valid, and they already have publicly stated plans on that front. (They've explicitly stated they want a free camera mode and dynamic interaction, and most scenes they're implementing at the moment involve them toying with some aspect of animation or new features, directly or indirectly.)
But yeah, right now? The game is way too early in development to tell. Ethics of selling an indev testbed aside, I'd be making my call after the money has a chance to talk. Three months from now is when I'd call whether the developers are capable of doing this, six months is when I'd say it's a fair call on whether the devs are actually trying to make the game rather than just make money.