Short stories is the Devs specialty why is everyone mad? Lol
Short stories are best done with as few characters as possible, this game kept adding characters and removing characters from the story and characters where you could have a relationship with could be added fucked and removed. This SUGGESTS that a longer story is being told because the story took time to add these characters that were not important to the story told. The amount of "world building" and the characters added hinted at again a long story. none of these things are bad in normal story telling but short stories are hurt when you do such things, because the reader/player is given expectations that there will be a pay off for not focusing on the main characters but adding one off side characters, that the world building is added because it is again going to pay off down the line.
Just because you are aware of teh dev and know their "specialty" doesn't mean others are. I tend to ignore a game's dev because I care about content over who made the content and i prefer to approach media on its own merits not on what someone who is creating the art did in the past.
I expected more from the game because everything the dev did in the game told me that there was more story to tell. This is especially true when one of the main characters leaves with the expectation she is returning. And she returns only at the end of the story and that just feels "off" in terms of story telling. The basic structure of teh story makes for a better full length story than a short story. The last few releases all felt rushed but i set that aside thinking these "endings" where more in line with failed states to a longer story until i saw that no this feels rushed because the developer is done with the game. From my perspective it feels like this was suppose to be a longer game but the dev got bored and just tied off the loose ends as fast as possible. Which is better than just quitting like so many people do but this doesn't make a good story. And so people are disappointed and upset.
