The power vacuum among the unaffiliated orcs came about because Rokgrid and Tekgrok are both considered to hold pretty extreme opinions and Dajrab, while being more middle of the road, basically lacks the charisma to pull too many over to his side. A lot of the orcs are also said to be more or less unconcerned with the future and just want to focus on the now. Sabia doesn't command all of them either, but she puts herself out there as someone who's offering the chance for blood and treasure and the chance to get out of the camp and crack skulls, which is all most of them really want to do anyway. One thing that bothers me is that it's really unclear how big the tribe actually is. It seems to me to be at LEAST a few hundred, but that's just me guessing. How big each faction is is left unsaid as well, so it's hard to draw a bead on a lot of this.
The extreme views are also why Rokgrid and Tekrok and Dajrab are in stalemate. Everyone who thinks they have the right idea joined up with them already, and none of them (Save perhaps Dajrab, but he's got other issues) are willing to compromise on their beliefs to attract more followers. They aren't pursuing more power because there isn't any left for them to grab until Warchief Groknak bites it. Just about everyone you meet reinforces that idea. The tribe is dying a slow death because it's stagnating and doesn't have any easy way out of the situation.
I addressed the Arena point already. Lutvrog flat out tells Sabia that one total victory in the Arena is enough as far as prestige goes. He only goes through it again to test his skills and because he likes to fight. It's worth noting that he wins the current one himself and no one rushes over to his side or anything because Arena victories aren't worth much past the first one. Sabia herself has no intention of doing it again because she got far enough to get the recognition she needs to start leading her own raiding group. This goes back to what I said before about all the Captains having proved themselves long before she fell into the camp. Every orc knows they aren't to be fucked with. Not a single one offers them any kind of physical challenge. They know they'd be mincemeat if they tried.
As for killing Sabia, maybe they could have managed that after the trial and gotten away with it. It's worth noting we still have no idea which Captain ordered the raid on her scouting party. But she's established herself as a force within the tribe now. If someone came for her head, the entire tribe would be in an uproar about it, and who knows how that would play out. The Captains know she can't lead the tribe anyway, and that she has no desire to do so; she just wants a force of her own to go off and do her own thing. The other Captains are a much more immediate threat to each other than Sabia is in that respect.
Warchief Groknak makes it clear from the moment he first talks to Sabia one on one that he's technically the leader of the tribe, but really he has to act according to the tribes desires, not his own. He dislikes Sabia primarily because she's disrupting his carefully constructed neutrality between the Captains and Lundar. Killing her would destroy that neutrality entirely even on the Solo route; if she was allied to a Captain and he ordered her dead that Captain would make their move immediately. It'd be instant civil war, and Groknak fears that most of all.
Like, I get that most of this is only apparent if you actively go looking for it, but it's very much there. As for the early implementation of stats, that's a game dev thing. It's better to have a variable recording stats from the beginning so future builds don't have to have some way to retroactively figure out how much influence you have with Dajrab or something. Most of them probably won't matter for a while, or matter in ways that only Hreinn and
@JohnDupont are actively aware of. That's fine. I don't really know why that's an issue for you.
Also, it seems to me like you're ignoring all the issues I have raised with the game because it's easier to make some blanket statement about how I'm just a fanboy. I do like the story. I like the characters. I also think the combat is annoying even if it is easily gameable, the Bar scene was a classic example of a freshman screenwriter's error and seemed tailor-made to piss everyone off, the sex scenes average out to serviceable in almost every case and that's particularly galling given Sierra's long writing history, some characters are being utterly wasted (It's been at least 3 posts since I've bitched about Elmy and that's a record for me), and that the amount of content we get per version really doesn't justify a schedule of 3 updates per year. I've made long-ass posts about all of those things.
So yes, I wouldn't sit here spilling buckets of digital ink over this game if I didn't like it a lot and wanted it to be better than it is. Sabia is my favorite feMC by a mile and I've been playing these kinds of games for way too long now. I want to see where her story goes. Are there problems? Absolutely. Do they (aside from the update schedule and Elmy) get my dander up? Not really. Anyway, I've probably said too much as it is, but I felt it needed saying.
