I keep harping because like I said, with the way the story is currently written (LI progression tied to main plot pacing), something has to give in order for LIs to be given their proper relationship build (and hence, allow the lewd scenes to organically happen, which is what I see you basically harping on) while also maintaining a certain pace that would please story lovers and those who want lewds both. And with 7 LIs plus one potential LI, you will never be able to do that* unless you - again - significantly decrease the pacing.
*which is why I disagree with your assessment that you can do this by tightening the narrative. On the contrary, I'd argue that the narrative being tight IS the reason why the focus on relationship milestones (represented as lewd events) instead of organic growth (which leads to organically written scenes. you can't have one without the other. even if you write them organically, without that growth to back it up it's not going to change a damn thing and it'll still be seen as "the girls jumping on MC's dick all of the sudden") is currently happening. It's so tight that it necessitates the need for a downtime chapter in order for the story to breathe a bit before it resumes its pace (which is what 0.5 basically is: a downtime chapter with added story progression and lore sprinkled here and there to not put the story on a complete halt)
I will give you this though: the "issue" that you are putting focus on also stems from the fact that we have too many LIs for the kind of story that the dev is trying to make, much less pace. Had we have fewer LIs (say, 4. If we're going to trim, the Carters could be merged into one LI; Annie could be combined with Nova's character because we need someone who would guide Orion (MC) in the earlier levels of Eternum and having said character have Dione makes sense; Luna can be kept as is because she represents the "veteran" character more than Nova and Annie does plus her lineage is heavily implied to be crucial to the plot, and Calypso is...well, she could also be kept as is, but she'll be the one who would likely have lesser character moments given that she's an Eternum-only character), then that just frees more time for them to organically grow and we would have time to focus on them per update instead of rotating through 3-4 LIs per update (and therefore necessitating the timeskips where the unseen relationship development between Orion and the LIs likely happened and also the focus on the major milestone progression (lewd events) in the LI relationships during "gameplay" moments instead).
But...that's not the kind of story the dev wants to make, and based on the support that he's currently getting here and in Patreon, is also something that his supporters likely don't want him to do. So.../shrugs
+1, customer demand is the #1 biggest detriment to Eternum.
What's popular is not what's good. Porn is the most popular and most sought-after content on all of the internet. Is that what makes the internet good? Fuck no.
There is no possible way to make everyone happy. Even if Eternum had no sexual content at all, it would
still be difficult balancing content out with all 6 love interests. Now we not only have 6 love interests intended to receive equal attention, we also need to pace sexual intimacy for them, which forcefully pulls relationship development along with it.
Now Eternum is incredible because Caribdis is world-class in making you feel very much for someone, in very little time. It's why he can make it work.
DPC of Being a DIK is a massive jerk, but I greatly respect him for openly telling the playerbase to go fuck themselves before he changes a single thing about how he writes his story for them. Not saying that Caribdis does, but the point is that
customers do NOT know what they actually want, and they will even lie about it.
I hope for Caribdis's next game he gets out of marketing in the "adult" genre entirely and goes more mainstream. No more obligations to pushing sexual activity to a certain level by a certain time, no obligations for perfectly balancing love interest time out of "fairness" to different fans. I'd love to see what he can do artistically with no restrictions.
Once in a Lifetime had a fundamentally unequal approach to its love interests, unlike Eternum, and it worked spectacularly. The vast majority of the plot involved Judie and Lauren together, even if you had some time for private interactions. There were never worries about balance. PIV didn't happen for either of the two until
very deep into the story, much farther in than we currently are in Eternum, and it was totally fine.
EDIT: started writing more of a jokey post like usual, then got serious, so deleted the jokey part