As far as RNG goes, there's also the randomness in what you find in the hotel, which can delay the wine related scenes.
I agree. This game lost a lot of interest besides the quality. I still don't know why people are still following, slow sandbox gameplay, no animations, no SFX or sexy moans, limited open world, grind and more grind, two separate stories with small or short updates and terrible engine. Big Brother was good game, because there was a story and perverse plot, but glamour? I was interested in Kate’s story, but over time you realize that it’s not worth watching anymore. And Max's story? it's not much fun. So, you have my support, this game is a crap.
Sad part is, Kate's story still hasn't even managed to catch up to where the QSP version was in a lot of ways. There's still no cooking, for example, and the mall serves essentially no purpose.
Personally, that's the story I prefer, though I like Max's as well, but yeah, this game just goes out of its way to shoot itself in the foot. And I don't get why it is even made as a single game. The two stories are separate. Like the progress you make in Kate's story doesn't impact her on the Max side of things. If you want to make it one game, then you need to intertwine the stories, and let the player swap back and forth between the two protagonists to advance different aspects. Otherwise, make two different games.
Then there's the online version, which is laggy as fuck due to the server side aspect if you have don't have a nice high speed connection. If they want to see what people are doing for analytics, then, sure, have the game send that info in, but don't slow the gameplay down for no reason by making it wait for a response (and there is no reason, as can be seen by the offline mod). The game can be a bit grindy, and when you make the commands laggy, well, that just makes that worse. Why would a dev choose to make their game suck like that?