Why have the choice to betray Penny at the college party? It's not on the same level, but it's the same kind of thing: deliberately choosing to hurt someone who is sweet and loving. Are they really much different from choices which could lead to bad endings for the MC (and presumably that means something bad for everyone else even if we don't see or read about it)? We either have meaningful choices or we don't. Meaningful choices, when you don't want a branching story that gets complicated to hold together, must necessarily be about either choosing certain characters over others, or be the difference between something good and something bad as a consequence.
Admittedly the Lauren choice seems like it was misjudged, given how people often react to that kind of content, optional or not, but I'll be forgiving, as I am of some other choices I've had to make in OiaL to proceed with certain characters (I'm not finished yet, only up to the end of the costume party) which make the MC into a not so good guy. I see OiaL as Caribdis learning from how other AVNs are made and choosing some aspects (like manipulating LIs into sex or taking advantage of them when they are not aware it is you) because they're very popular, even though they don't fit with the type of MC Eternum has (and mostly, apart from those things, so does OiaL) or the atmosphere of the story. If I was to pick one thing where Eternum wins easily over OiaL, ignoring the art and general improvement in writing, I'd rate that as the most significant. So far there have been only a couple of scenes where the MC had an option to do something not in keeping with the good guy I see him as, once of which could be written off as "immature horny teenage male" (Dalia in the bathroom), and both were easily avoidable and not necessary for future content.
As for "most choices in Eternum are obviously bad or meaningless or cryptic": I like the cryptic choices. They give me a feeling that there are stakes. I'm not going to automatically win. And I don't want to follow a guide because I like that feeling. For the rest of the choices, some people might want to be only friends with some characters, so the character selection choices are for them. The rest aren't much (e.g. which way you go on Andromeda doesn't really matter), but allow for some slight variation of experience, so I wouldn't call them meaningless.
I hope that choices like the amulet and similar are always in Caribdis' AVNs. Otherwise all you're left with is obvious choices. In that case you may as well eliminate every choice except "which characters do you want as LIs?"
